Boxing in the Hopper, Bricking up the Pumphouse, Sorting out the Water

Mike has been in the cider barn making good of the housing around the new hopper:

And also been blocking in the old doorway on the pumphouse:

It's fully insulated on the inside now:

And after a tough few days fitting it out with 18mm plyboard:

Hendy's have been in to attach all of the inner workings: 

So it's looking like it won't be too much longer now until we have 

clean, filtered, spring fed water - yay!

Creating the Kitchen

The guys have been hard at work making good of the gable end, now that the chimney is down. The speed at which it has been happening has been quite astonishing too! After only two days we went from oil tarred stonework to this:

The bedding in looks great:

And if you hadn't known there'd been a chimney there 

I don't think you could tell now by looking!

The steels are in to support the weight of the wall:

And the block work has gone in to stabilise the new roof:

The tiles from the old utility roof have come down:

And the opening from the inside looks fantastic:

They've also been hard at it digging up the floor ready for insulation and heating. We weren't too sure what there would be under the suspect lino, but there were some fantastic flagstones waiting for us:

They need a bit of a clean up but we think they will look just great in the new conservatory 

(in a few years time....)

The salvage yard is filling up quite nicely now:

And it's great to see mother nature still making her mark in amongst all the chaos too:

A field called home..

After our meeting with Simon about the static home, he said we didn't need the hard standing and that the field itself would be fine. So, in anticipation of our new home arriving, we marked out a spot in the field, strimmed it down and waited.

At 7am the following morning the phone rang - Simon was waiting with Aspen in the field:

We showed him the spot and he backed her up - our new home was literally falling off the back of a truck! 

After an unusually long while levelling the van 
(that hill in Clayhill is really dramatic in places!) we were up and ready to go. 

Well, almost...

Next we needed to attach water, gas, electric and drainage. Water and electric was fine - we could run this over from the pig stys. For gas supply, it was a quick visit back to Simon for the bottles:

and a borrowing of the paving slabs from the patio to level them:

Then it was an afternoon's ring round for certified engineers to check the gas for safety and for available plumbers to connect the van for service:

We then needed to address access through the meadow:

secure the pipework and lay an accessible lawn:

Mike got to work building some steps from old pallets: 

And by the end of the week it was home with hot and flushable water home!

Hooray! 

The sunset's not bad:

And the morning is even better!

So I think we could be quite happy here for a while now...

Fitting out the Plant Room (+ some more piping)

It been a busy few weeks for the heating engineers. The boiler arrived and it was a good job the whole team was on site - it weighed a tonne - literally!

A fantastic bit of kit though - Austrian engineering at its best:

It took six men + a series of straps, ropes and ties to get it down a makeshift ramp to the plant room:

Got it in though and it's looking great!

The hot water cylinder had a huge big jacket that was a bit of feat to get zipped up:

And the complexity of pipework coming off it is quite something:

There's also been a lot of progress in the house with the piping:

The beginnings of an en-suite: 

with diagrams to help:

The flue for the boiler has gone through a series of configurations:

And commissioning should be happening later this week too!

Setting up static

As this is the state of the kitchen:

and this is the kitchen sink:

We're now having to wash up in the bath:

Good job there's still running water then! Yes, but not for long.... 

We decided it might be time to consider some temporary accommodation. So, we spent a few days looking for a short term rental but no one would take us with the cats

SAD :( FACE

The one place that would had an infestation of fleas!? And as we really need to be down here more permanently now, that means moving the furry ones. So after much discussion, the only option is to find ourselves a static caravan. It does seem silly, there being so much space in the house, but with most of it unusable, covered in dust and us being in it is actually causing more problems, it would be good to have somewhere that is clean and that we can retreat to at the end of the day.

Looking around the site there is the ideal spot in the old pig sty:

It has hard standing, is facing away from the building site, 

but the only problem might be shifting it over the wall:

Perhaps we could just park it in the field - not a bad view to wake up to in the morning!

And without knowing it, we'd already put in provisions for electrics and water:

The septic tank is nearby too, so ideal really!

We visited a few places to have a look at what was on offer - SurfBay Leisure in Brean and Winkleigh plus Strand Leisure, an independent, in Burlescombe. It all came down to speed of delivery really. Both offered delivery as part of the sale, but with Surf Bay having a 4 week lead time and Strand Leisure able to deliver *NEXT WEEK* guess who we went for!? Simon from Strand Leisure came to visit the site to check that it would be able to be delivered, it could, so we went back again to choose our new temporary home, and here, er, she? is:

I found an excellent resume of what we have lying ahead, and you never know, this could become another renovation project later down the line....