In Sapa, Vietnam

In Sapa, Vietnam

About Me

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Sharing time between Southampton and Noyal-Muzillac in southern Brittany. Sports coach, gardener, hockey player, cyclist and traveller. I studied an MA in Management and Organisational Dynamics at Essex University in 2016-17. Formerly an Operations Manager with NEC Technologies (UK) Ltd.

Saturday 10 December 2011

Lucarne Labours

Adam has spent the last two weeks transforming the cut stones we got from the quarry in October into the finished Lucarnes (stone gabled windows). He's produced a finish that looks very natural and even included a few "accidental" imperfections to give them the look and feel of hand cut and worked stone.

Adam at work on the stone lucarne surround

We opened up a new gap through the roof for Adam to work on the new lucarne

The scaffolding is up at the back of the barn now and Adam starts to build in the stone uprights

The vertical pillars in place

Winching up 140kg of stone top lintel

The lintel in place still attached to the winching chains

The complete lintel

Saturday 3 December 2011

Weekly Update

I've not updated the blog in the last week so here goes:

Kevin Furniss dug drains around the outside of the barn and laid agricultural drainage pipes in the trenches and then filled them in with drainage stones - appropriately enough this is known as a French drain, Kevin used a grading laser (the yellow equipment in the foreground) to ensure that the drains had a fall to take the water away around the barn.

Drainage pipes along the north side of the house and barn

After this there was a slightly anxious wait for the inspector from Veolia to come and inspect the Fosse installation, all the trenches had been left open for this inspection. The inspector found the same discrepancy in the Etude de Sol that Kevin had (the length of the drainage trenches had two different values). Skilfully he argued that the fosse was the same size as the one for the house that had been signed off by ....... Veolia - brilliant! This sort of unanswerable logic usually works well in France with any sort of officialdom and Monday was no exception. So Team Furniss were able to close up the trenches:

Finola completes the raking of the fosse bed after the trenches have been filled, Kevin is finishing the new talus line constructed with the spoil from the barn excavation.

Final touches - after a bit of grass seed this will look exactly like it did before.


Meanwhile Adam started work on carving the stonework for the new lucarnes

Kevin was on-site for just under three weeks, apart from a couple of rainy mornings we were blessed with dry weather which meant that the heavy machinery was able to move around site without churning up the ground too much. Right on cue the rain started just before the lowloader picked up the digger. Next day we had heavy rain and the drains started taking water away from the barn walls at an impressive rate - we had found the original barn drains built from concrete pipes and ducted our outputs into them. Although they are probably more than fifty years old they are clear and work very efficiently.

Furniss Terrassement http://www.brittanydiggerhire.com/ did a great job and have made a big difference to the project. Things aren't always straightforward with a renovation project on a 200 year old building and Kevin dealt with the problems we found in a way that was sympathetic to the building and produced a good solution.

Thursday 24 November 2011

Barn Floor Installed!

Today Kevin organised the delivery and installation of 14 cubic metres of self-levelling concrete - that's 120 square metres of floor in total.

We brought the concrete in through the doors and a window.


   
Kevin supervises the chute positioning
The first of eight cubic metres of concrete is delivered into the main barn
Delivery Lorry in position
All hands to the pump to rake out the concrete - From left Kevin, Tim, Keith and Adam
Adam performs the final float levelling of the cement
The finished floor is poured and level

Wednesday 23 November 2011

Barn Floor Construction


The barn floor - having been excavated down to its base level - has now had the first and second stages of the new floor added. The sub-floor is called a herisson in French; confusingly this also translates as hedgehog. The herisson at La Basse Cour comprises a layer of 14-20mm stones which have been washed to remove any sand or clay. The purpose of the herisson is to ensure that the floor underneath the concrete block is ventilated and moisture has a way to be routed away. To ensure that the moisture gets away a drain system was put into the floor comprising a network of perforated pipes, these are the yellow pipes in the pictures.

Herisson drain pipes in the living room area

Fionula - the other partner in Team Furniss - and Adam start adding the herisson stones

All the exit pipes in the barn go out through the same corner ...





Kevin loads the herissonage into the lean-to
Lucky we took the roof off the lean-to :o)
Dropping the herissonage into the lean-to

The lean-to partly finished

The herisson stone fully laid in the barn and compacted down




The next stage is to lay a protective matting layer over the stones and put down a DPM (Damp Proof Membrane) sheet on top of that ready to receive the concrete.

The Geotextile protection layer is installed
Unrolling the DPM in the main barn floor area


DPM down in lean-to

And in the main barn

Tomorrow 14 cubic metres of flooring cement will be poured into the barn floor, there will be two deliveries. Wish us luck!!



Sunday 20 November 2011

More things you don't see every day

The ibis arrived last week en route from somewhere cold to somewhere warmer, nineteen landed in the field at the bottom of our land, very elegant birds.

Last winter a group of 12 decided that between us and the bird sanctuary at Le Guerno there wasn't much point in going further south.

Saturday 19 November 2011

Busy Week!

We've had a busy week - lots has been achieved and the barn interior has been transformed as Kevin has excavated the floor of the barn down to a level base, the support wall for the step in the barn floor has been laid, the lean-to floor has been excavated and we've installed another concrete wall support in the lean to. The fosse is finished and waiting for connection and sign-off.

The drainage pipes and gravel beds for the fosse are installed

Finished drainage bed

Adam has finished rebuilding the new lintels and stonework for the lean-to
Kevin Furniss excavating the barn floor
We found that most of the barn floor is composed of hard compacted sand which has some mica crystals apparent - good news as this is relatively hard and stable and well-drained.

Adam contemplates the shuttering for the step foundation

Kevin brought in a special micro digger to excavate the lean-to that could get in through the door

Adam starts work on the new hole in the wall to carry the drains running out of the barn
Kevin Furniss unloads the excavated material from the lean-to

Checking levels - again

The final part of the old concrete floor is lifted

.... and loaded out of the barn

Adam checks the level on the second wall support beam - this one's in the lean-to

The walls in the lean-to seem to have been built at different times, the side ones are older than the one along the back - this seems to have been built directly onto the soil hence our decision to support the walls in this area.

Checking levels for the lean-to wall support
The foundation is cast for the step in the floor

A bit of modern help for the Barn

Here's how the new concrete wall support looks when it was finished (see blog post12th November):




We've used natural materials throughout the build where appropriate but in this situation had no hesitation in using concrete and steel to support the foundations.

Wednesday 16 November 2011

Heavy Works II


Having a new Fosse installed for the barn involves putting a new 3000L tank into the ground and connecting it up to the outlets from the barn and running the outlet across the field and into a new drainage bed. Here's what that looks like:

Kevin (driving the JCB) starts the excavation of the fosse


Lifting the fosse into position





Starting work on the drainage bed

A new beast is spotted at La Basse Cour