Something completely different

Much happened last week but not much building from me – Tash arrived last weekend and after an emotional reunion we spent a precious week rebalancing and finding out what we’d been unable to imagine about the other’s separate existence.

Tash for instance found out that my cabin is fully equipped with a dedicated toasting cubicle (where the heat and smoke don’t trigger alarms).

On site the team finished covering the house in it’s blue airtight membrane, and meticulously taping all the joins before hiding it behind a 240mm thick layer of pavatherm wood fibre insulation…

…which then disappeared behind a pink waterproof membrane with 45 x 70mm vertical ‘battens – all held in place with insanely long and expensive screws.

Part way through the week Patryk came to say goodbye – he’s now starting on his own house just along the road and up the hill and left me his stepladder for a few days.. I went online and ordered steps, a ladder, a bath and a chalk-line.

Our week’s weather was mixed but after the first two nights we cooked over an open fire on the plot, just where the land drops away to the sheep field and oak woods. A palette with a back used for delivering windows made a great settee and when it started to rain I screwed on a bit of OSB as a roof.

An eagerly awaited delivery arrived – Tash’s new electric bike – representing freedom – but the battery wouldn’t charge.  We drove down to Ardpatrick and walked out to the shed at the end of the world.  Perched at the far end of the point it has two square eyes looking towards Islay and Jura.  One end of the roof is missing its felt and decayed boards let the sky through.  The structure is uneven with age and strapped to the rocks with steel cables.  Apparently it was built in the 1930s.

On our way back along the spring tide strand line we came across the gentle S-curves of a backbone four feet long, tapering from a gnawed point to a few broken and untidy ribs at the other end – perhaps the remains of a harbour porpoise?

A little later a large brown bird of prey with the long narrow wings and the tell-tale white rump of a female hen-harrier crossed the flowery turf then, opposite the last house on the track, we watched an otter reclining in the water, gnawing something long and eel-like with a clear fan-shaped tail.  It dived every few minutes, invariably appearing with a similar fish which it consumed, sometimes using both paws. Good fishing.

One evening Andrew and I measured the roof of house and workshop for the ‘tin’ (corrugated steel sheets), discussed details  and how to set the panels in place.  Two people and a pair of mole grips…. I’ll tell you more when I get to that bit.

Design of the mechanical ventilation and heat recovery system (MVHR) is in hand.  This is essential in an airtight house, it expels the stale damp air but takes its heat to warm the incoming fresh. Andrew will sign the generator over to me when he finishes – any time now! I plan to set up my mitre saw in the house next week and make the bench for the garage, when I’m not pressure testing the plumbing or fixing the OSB panelling. I pay two invoices from Andrew – insulation – extra glass for house walls and 25mm foam to pin the under floor heating pipes to.  I sent his £435 invoice for the generator and fuel to Octopus Energy who are responsible for not having fitted an electricity meter in February. Apparently they are now less green than their boasts in January.

Tash and I drove north for low tide on a sandy estuary, looking for cockles. A couple of ospreys are high above but we don’t see them fishing. We come back via a site famous for its cup and ring marks, about four and a half thousand years old. The sloping rock surface lay fringed in heather and bilberry with many marks. Inscrutable and far bigger than I’d expected.

And then (another day) we drove south to the long beach at Machrihanish. These things we’d expected to be doing on our evenings or weekends months ago.

and found two lots of washed up goose barnacles on hefty chunks of driftwood, drifted from who knows where.