Week 3, Day 5:

• Good progress demolishing the remaining few walls of the old barn and cow shed and clearing the rubble from the concrete slab of the cow shed ready for using that to store building materials.
  • These are out of shot to the right of the overview photo – see separate photo below.
• Compacting the hardcore covering the parking area.
• Digging a trial hole at the south-west corner of the house to check the feasibility of using a soak-away there to take the rainwater from the house roof.
  • Doesn’t look very promising – there was hard red clay at the bottom of the hole and a bucket of water poured in at the end of Friday was still there on Saturday morning (although it was raining).
• Completing the smoothing-out of the sand at the bottom of the GSHP collector trenches.

Week 3, Day 5

Partially cleared concrete slab of old cow shed, from northern end

Test hole for soakaway

Northern GSHP trench ready for installation of collector pipework

Southern GSHP trench ready for installation of collector pipework

Week 3, Day 4:

• Further work on levelling the bedding sand at the bottom of the GSHP collector trenches.
• Laying hardcore where vehicles are going to be parking and turning, based on the experience of how slippery things got with the rain on Wednesday.
• Forming a passing place on the access track through the field, to avoid vehicles attempting to pass at random points and damaging the crops (or getting stuck).
• Building sand delivery ready for laying the concrete blocks.
• Research into alternative options for insulating the ground (beam-and-block) floor.

Week 3, Day 4