Spring in Rocommon

Dad has his first go at shuttering up and mixing concrete. This was the run of cables and pipes from kitchen to utility room (the former "office"). The walls of the house here are 50 cm thick and it wasn't realistic to drill through from utility room into the dining room, so the run of 2 cables, 4 water pipes (hot tap, cold taps, hot feed to radiator, cold return from radiator) and the waste pipe from the utility room sink were run outside the house at the base of the wall, then in through the kitchen wall which is a sensible thickness. The waste actually then falls down below the new concrete floor and unites with the kitchen waste to go out to our sewer/drain on the west end of the house. These pipes and cables were fixed to the wall at heights to give the waste a fall (slope). Dad then erected shuttering made of wood and old slate and poured concrete in to enclose the whole and protect it from the weather. The cable is of a special grade (NYM-J) which can handle being buried in concrete.

The other pics here show general spring-ness. Haggis is at the back door gazing out, we think wondering when the job will all be finished and he can finally lie down and sleep in front of a warm stove. There is a picture of the front door with its tete-a-tete daffodils in their pig-mash boiling cauldrons. The other picture is of the Tígín looking in the outer door and through to the yard through the other door. In our dreams the yard is a lovely sunny place, especially in the morning. Finally free from mud it is flattish and covered with pea-gravel, populated with nice terracotta pots of flowers and herbs, plus maybe a decorative piles or groups of the big boulders we have dug out of the house floor and apron. A white painted metal café table and chairs provide the breakfast coffee support. The resident coal tits, wrens and chaffinches nip about and the dogs laze in the morning sunshine.

Ahhh... soon.
Deefs