Nothing new but a leaky house

After a windy night with heavy rain, the first since the scaffolding went, there was water inside the house on the timbers under two windows. Expensive triple glazed windows in a pretty airtight house. I’ve lost some hours of sleep over this unsettling matter. Andrew our consultant had a look and is convinced the water was already in, perhaps when the windows were in the tilt position… I’m happy to be put at ease but reserve judgement. At the airtightness test there was no leakage from the windows – so maybe my cladding has done something, though I can’t see what or how… The scaffolding provided some shelter from driving rain and is now gone. All we can do is keep an open mind and a sceptical eye on the situation and pray for rain from all directions.

Had I not told you this (hopefully irrelevant) detail I would have had talk about larch cladding and plumbing again.

Early this week we finished battening the workshop, apart from the north side under the roof overhang, and now all the full length backing boards are on the south and east elevations. Before adding boards above and below the windows I need to add sills, heads and side reveals but that needs the wood to be dry so the expanding foam strip will stick. The 40mm planed timber for the sills is dry, it’s been hanging in the house since before the screed went down, but I didn’t think to bring in the boards for the reveals until earlier this week. It’s now spaced out on the living room floor, but still damp.

As I started looking carefully at the workshop windows, thinking about how to finish the reveals I realised that unlike the house there is insufficient height to fit the forty millimetre sills between between the window frame base and the wood fibre insulation. I must cut the protective pink membrane (no anaesthetic), cut away some wood fibre to an appropriate angle then tape up the membrane to seal it. At the moment everything is too damp for the tape to stick, so we need a couple of good dry days.

Did I say I longed for birdsong? Early this week I heard a woodpecker drumming. It ain’t singing but a sign of the season moving forwards. The days have been stretching noticeably; four forty five and enough light to work outside.

My fingers are swollen and itchy with dry scabby skin, not all ten of them but the ones that count most. I’ve had enough of the cold and wet together, one or the other I can take but both together, day after day are too much. I spent most of today indoors, emptying the plant room, moving everything off the two temporary shelves and rearranging it in the stair well or on the shelves recently rehabilitated from the ungarden.

Today’s weather was strictly Atlantic – swinging between freezing fog, hail and cold showers, sun, blue skies and rainbows and sheets of rapidly moving dark cloud.

When the sun was out I measured cut and fixed backing boards round the cat flap tunnel, retreating indoors when the dark sky started spilling wet.

So I’ve started plumbing again. A little copper to get me to the other side of the plant room to feed the air source heat pump and hot water tanks then I’ll switch to plastic to carry hot and cold round the house. By the end of this evening I felt about ready to a start soldering tomorrow. Now who has a pipe bender I can borrow…

Last weekend by the loch these leavings: some shellfish opened but uneaten, some droppings full of shell fragments. Had our scent before us disturbed an otter mid meal? By the number of droppings – ‘spraints’ – close by it’s a place the otter frequents.

Our opened and now eaten meal (starter) – two spoots. These are from the local fishmonger but we’re dead set on finding our own…