I know what I did this summer

Oh ... do English Heritage know about what you did John? ;-)

Nice job though (as always).

Cheers, T i m

Fred West would be proud of that;-)

Best not print off the photos and show them to Rose next time I work at HMP New Hall.

Nice job John.

Great work! I feel quite exhausted just from reading it. ;-)

Tim

If it stays undetected for a certaintime they cannot change it. Obviously in the dark here. Brian

In message snipped-for-privacy@brightview.co.uk>, John Rumm snipped-for-privacy@nowhere.null writes

Impressive! Just consider what employing a contractor would have cost:-) Now we know why building control get so stressed by visible tree roots in foundation trenches.

Reading that I'm glad I haven't got a garden.

I fixed a few holes in the cornice this summer.

Owain

Can't imagine it being of much interest to them - hardly an example pre reformation patio restoration :-)

Ta.

That might explain some of the sinking in certain areas that I did not go near!

Well if you want tips on hiding bodies, she is probably not the best one to ask given her current location.

Ta

I am guessing "more"! (especially as I am still under £2k all in so far)

I did occur to me, that had I started the job knowing how much remedial work was going to be needed, I could have hired an excavator, pulled all the walls down, lobbed them in skips, and rebuilt it all from scratch with new materials, and it would have likely been quicker and easier. (although many times the cost, and far less variety of jobs).

Having said that, it was quite good to get out and have something tangible to do.

Yup it was quite surprising how much damage they can do and the forces they can exert. Even the very fine tendril type stuff seems to have been able to force itself out between the top cap of concrete and under the slabs for quite some distance, in many cases loosening the slabs.

At some point most of them could probably do with lifting and relaying (or replacing with something a bit less fugly) to get them all level, and remove the weeds growing between some. But since I hate laying slabs I will put that one on the back burner for a bit :-)

;-)

What I quite like about what you did is the combination of: removing the causes of issues where possible, use of existing where possible, strengthening what needed it to give the best result for the least complication (stopping stuff moving / falling to bits again and fabricating the slabs etc).

Plus the extra effort of documenting the key steps to give others some insight of the options people can use.

Cheers, T i m

In one sense, its fairly "easy" content to create since I tend to take lots of photos as I go along anyway - partly just for a personal record, but it also to helps me to answer questions like "where exactly did I lay that pipe a few years ago" now want to drill a hole, or even just "when did I make/build that?"

Its also quite a good way of getting feedback from others, or tips and and techniques for how stuff could have been done.

On Sat, 12 Sep 2020 15:41:26 +0100, John Rumm snipped-for-privacy@nowhere.null wrote: <snip>

Yeah. I tend to do similar with anything that I might need to refer to in the future like, wiring / mechanical configurations and the like, way more so than events and people. ;-) [1]

Too late when it's all under bricks and concrete of course but if it's 'one of n' similar things, as you say, someone might be able to point you in a better direction.

Cheers, T i m

I had a swinger

Mine was later than the Swinger, just a plain wedge shape.

Still fascinating at the time though. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

The swinger you had to coat the print,,,,such fun...moved onto Pampas grass....

Or carefully knocked them apart and re-used the bricks intermixed with new ones !, and using a sledge to turn the old mortar and broken brcks into hardcore ...

Which is what I actually did - with the aid of this contraption:

I bought just under 400 of the stock bricks of which probably 300 went into the new raised beds - the rest were replacing broken ones etc. Most of the time I mixed them in with the reclaimed ones, although on the first section of wall I did all new ones on the inner leaf, simply because I had run out of reclaims at that point.

Some of that I lobbed into the base of the new beds, since they did not need to be solid soil, and it will probably help drainage a bit, but other than that, did not have much use for hardcore (hence why 2 - 3 yards went in the skip)