Gutters at Last

 Two of our longest standing story lines draw naturally to a conclusion. Mum's Fiat Panda has to be re-presented to Carrick on Shannon's NCT (Car Testing) station for it's re-test, resplendent in new front tyres and lower wishbones at silly o'clock on the 13th. Unlucky for some, but not for us today, as the car passes easily and we come away with the required multi coloured slip of paper to go in the third pocket of our windscreen stickers making us finally legal on that car, at last, displaying, as required by Law, proof of insurance, road tax and NCT test.

 On the same day we are hoping that the apron concreting guys will also show up and finish the concreting but the Ready-Mix boys are unable to deliver, so we must wait till tomorrow. However, out of the blue Gutters O'Grady phone. These guys priced the job up yonks ago and then vanished. It feels like about 6 weeks but might be less. Sparks was still around when they came, measured up and explained the method of producing formed aluminium profiles. Nobody uses plastic guttering lengths or cast iron any more unless they are made of money. We agreed the price and then waited for the call. And waited. And waited.

 Then they take us by surprise by phoning on the morning of the NCT test and asking whether they can come and do the job that same day. Of course they can. especially now there is no new wet concrete for them to put their ladders in by mistake.

2 guys arrive, the boss and an Eastern European lad named Denis. In 6 hours from about 11:30 to 17:30 they whizz round whipping off the old brittle and broken metal gutters and pulling out or breaking off the old supports. They make new gutter lengths using a fascinating machine in the back of the lorry. The machine holds a reel of sheet aluminium about 18 inches wide but feeds it through a forming machine which bends it into gutter shapes. These lengths slowly emerge from the back of the lorry and the 2nd man just supports the weight of the free end and walks away from the lorry till the first guy gets the length he needs and stops the machine to guillotine the end off. Ends are crimped on with pliers and sealed with mastic. The shape includes the brackets inside the gutter trough, which will be fixed to the fascias with special fixing screw/nail things.

It is quite funny to see, in side view, the man apparently pulling a length of gutter way too long to have been in the lorry, out of its back. Sparks tells us it looks even more bizarre when the machine is in a short vehicle like a Transit van.

So, the boys fit all the horizontals and then run all the down-pipes to direct all our storm water into the drain gulleys and so, under the new yard, to the dug-out ditch below the house. Next time it rains we all enjoy watching the water being directed 'properly' and hearing it gurgle down the drains. We enjoy even more that it is no longer pouring off roof ends and down walls, filling window boxes to overflowing and water-falling past windows. There seems to be a lot less making puddle in the yard, too!

That's more like it!
Deefs

Water, Water Everywhere

If there's an aspect of this house renovation which occasionally winds us up is probably the fact that some of the damage and dereliction could have been so easily avoided. Setting aside the idea of leaving the house shut up for 15 years in the cold and damp, much of the damp did not need to be there in the first place had a little more thought been given to the house's ability to shed water - the drains and the 'apron'. The poor ol' place had clay right up to the walls, and often moss, weeds, brambles and ivy clambering up its lower walls (the ivy right up to the gutters). The gutters, even when they were new seem to have been set up badly.

The roof is brilliant, so the water flows off it easily and the gutters (now cleared of 15 years of blown leaves and pine needles carry the water away well to the down pipes. The down pipes, though, dump their water into the most silly places. In one case into the 3 inch gap between dining room outer wall and the out-building we call the 'office'. In another case into the uphill side of the kitchen and Tigin. This would have made the soil permanently wet just uphill of the kitchen and, with no foundations except for the plinth-base of the kitchen wall, the damp would have flowed as ground-water through the clay to under the kitchen. Here a pathetic sheet of 'cake icing' cement was all that was between your feet and the cold, wet clay. The floor was glistening with damp.

A big part of our work has been about sorting this out and improving it. First we have dug out the floors to 17 inches and separated our feet from the cold, damp clay using 8 inches of '804 sub-base', 6 inches of thermal foam panels and 3 inches of screed. 2nd we will be re-routing gutters and down pipes so that they dump their water on the downhill sides of the house. Then we have had Paddy the Drains in over last weekend to dig gulleys and lay drain pipes which collect up all these down-pipes (green circle and 2nd picture)and send them under the cattle yard and into an outflow downhill from us (see bizarre picture of pipe end!). At some stage we will be creating a concrete apron around the uphill side of the house which will shed water away from the house for a meter.

Finally, if you look at the third picture you have some completely counter-productive places (not so much water-shedding as water-gathering) e.g. where the end of the Tigin's sloping walls fire water straight onto the outside wall of the kitchen (red circle) due to no-one thinking to create a gap here or flashing the join with lead. This we will solve by creating cement 'chevrons' guiding water onto the corrugated iron sheeting.

Ah well. It all makes work for...
Deefs