I'm laying a new patio and have suffered delay after delay due to problems that I wasn't expecting. Started removing the turf only to find that the previous owners had turfed over a manhole cover - and as the patio has to slope away from the house, the manhole cover is too high. I have a total of four manholes on my property and three of them are simple cast iron covers over a brick-lined manhole. Not this one. This one has pre-cast concrete liners with a four inch think slab of concrete on the top. To lower it I've had to heave the slab to one side, dig down around the liners and remove the top one before heaving the slab back into place. It's now too low, of course (even for the inset cover that I will be using, so I'll have to build it up a little!
So that I could lay the patio flags right up to the house I've broken up the concrete path that ran across the back of the house with a sledge hammer (not easy as the path was up to five inches thick in places!). Of course something had to go wrong and in removing the concrete from around a rain-water gulley I've cracked the clay gulley (down at the bottom so the water in the trap just drained out!). Spent all morning digging that out because it was set in concrete itself. Replaced it with a plastic gulley but I needed 9" of piping to reach from the differently designed gulley to the drain. Builders merchants tell me that the shortest length of pipe they sell is 3 bloody metres - so I had to buy 9' 9" of pipe to cut 9" off the end! (Still I suppose it will come in handy sometime!).
Why are things never simple??!!
Kev