Demolition Day 5

Thanks for photos David & Lori

Thanks for photo Kate

Demolition Day 4

Thanks for photo Kate

Demolition Day 2/3

 

Thanks for photos Ed

Thanks for photos Elise

Demolition Day 2

Demolition Day 1

Gas / Electric and Exit

Gas
Had a meeting on site with representative of Wales & West Utilities from installation department to discuss the unsatisfactory gas termination. He was most interested in the technique employed.  Was the pipe 'pinched' before it was cut? - No.  Was there a smell of gas? -  errr I got a full blast of gas from the cut end of the pipe pointing at me. Oh!

He confirmed that W&W U would absorb all further isolation costs and I would be compensated.

Electricity
Electricity cable was cut without any fuss after the man from Western Power spelt out the irreversibility of the operation; when this cable is cut you will not have any electricity we cannot reverse the process!

Pretty impressive cutting through the cable while live!
First the consumer switch was switched off so there was no load, the cable and sheathing stripped down and the earth  cut, followed by the neutral and finally the live conductor.

The main company fuse was cut out from below the meter and tossed onto the soil next to the excavation like entrails from the body to indicate that the job was complete and safe.

Exit

Late night clearing out on Wedneday and early rise on Thursday morning, deflated the mattress packed the car and took some photos. The Site Manager arrived around 8.00am and was soon contracted by the Demolition Contractors with news that the Foremans wife had gone into labour 7 weeks early so unless a replacement could be found and the paperwork for the demolition altered there would be a slight delay!

Ground Floor workshop - polythene to party wall ready to flap up when floor removed

2 Days later

Thursday morning

First Floor - polythene to flap up when roof removed

First Floor

Kitchen Area

Utilities

Gas Pipe Adaption

Visit by Contracts Manager from Pollard (Main Contractor) who advised that the gas pipe would be OK if it is tucked close to rear of footpath with protection over, bedded in sand and is clear of the foundations.










I dug a narrow, curved trench  and surrounded the pipe in sand and covered with a very heavy pre-cast reinforced concrete coping stone.

100mm thick concrete coping stone protecting the gas pipe with closest foundation marked in timbers

Virgin Communications Cabinet
First stage of the very expensive relocation of the Virgin cabinet, a distance of about a metre for about £4,000.  Unfortunately it is blocking the new driveway position so it is essential work.
First the new cabinet was installed in the new location to the left and ducts installed to the existing junction box. The guy at the rear is leveling the new base for the cabinet. Noticed that cold cure 'tarmac' in premixed tubs is used to make good.

Bit of a mess inside the existing junction box

This will be followed by rewiring to remove the old cabinet and finally the existing junction box will be lowered by building a new brick surround at the same time that the new driveway is constructed and the dropped kerb installed.

















Open House
I have attached DPM polythene in 4 metre wide continuous strips about 12-15 metres long and 4M high to ground floor and first floor attached by battens screwed through to the wall battens.  These have been carefully positioned so that the contractor can flap up a top section when the roof is removed (working from the first floor while it is still in place) and make a horizontal lapped joint when the first floor and structure is removed.  I developed a system of unrolling the roll of DPM on the ground, cutting to length, marking the point of attachment with a white tip-ex marker, then rolling-up the polythene on a couple of cardboard document tubes.  This was then raised up on a step ladder and gradually unrolled while attaching lengths of batten, worked a treat.

The black DPM made a great backdrop to display the drawings (and blue-tack sticks to it !) at the 'open house' on Sunday afternoon, with friends, neighbours, cyclists and local freecyclers in attendance.   
Old Rosie cider, my favorite, was the most popular drink, which reminds me to finish off the flagon! Try some.

 

Last hot shower

Gas Disconnect Part 2 

3 Wales & West Utilities guys came knocking at the door late this morning.
Van parked in the middle of the road and my offer of a parking space declined.
One guy knelt down to the yellow supply pipe in the trench, snipped through it with a big pair of 'scissors', held his hand over the pipe to stop some of the gas escaping, the first bung and cap did not work so another was thrown from the back door of the van.  I was standing at the front door as the jet of gas was pointed vaguely in my direction. Did I want the riser pipe to the meter removing? - yes.            

Whole job took less than 5 mins.  van was holding up 2 cars in the street so off they went.

Phoned W&W Utilities - job is showing as 'complete' - cost £535

What happened to the essential disconnection at the main in the street, digging the trench, repairing the road and the traffic management?

Manager will phone me..............

Party Wall Protection

Started battening the party wall in preparation for the DPM polythene sheeting.
Will take the polythene behind the downpipes in a continuous horizontal sheet and allow flap overlap up/down by contractor when the roof and floor are removed.

Gas Disconnect

Dug the trench to expose the gas pipe in preparation for removal tomorrow by Wales and West Utilities (the only company that can do this work for me).

Just paid my gas supplier £85 for Wales and West Utilities to remove the gas meter - it took less than 10mins!!!

Moving week

Van shuttle to LA
Having secured the lock-up garages in Long Ashton at the last minute I decided to use the existing van hire planned for a Cornwall trip to shuttle the short distance to 'LA'.
Spent the weekend frantically packing and preparing as many boxes and objects as possible ready for a cheap van hire from National in Muller Road, Monday lunchtime.

Friends Rachel and John joined me to help load and unload, especially the big stuff from upstairs. 
In 3 trips we had moved all big domestic furniture and boxes into Garage No. 6.

Spent the evening and a late night organising the contents of the workshop including timber and sheet materials I wanted to hang on to.  Bed at 1am and up again for loading at 8am, just about managed 2 big loads and practically filled Garage No. 4., raced back across town to return the van by the 1pm deadline, annoyingly the fuel needle had just moved to reveal the 'full' marker so diverted to ASDA petrol for a top-up,  decided on £4 injection (I had only done 40miles) but the fuel gauge was stuck in the same position! my erratic driving managed to encourage the needle into the full position by the time I got to Muller Road bang on 1pm.

Machine Move to Cornwall

Spent Wednesday organising machines ready for a 7am pickup on Thursday morning.
Most of the heavy machines had already been broken down, all the heavy accessories were packed into a purpose made packing case and I had made a 'landing', a kind of jetty leading from the loading dock out beyond the doors so that the machines could be hoisted vertically onto the truck.

Managed to bollard the street corners and moved the neighbours car to ensure the truck, whatever size it was, could get to the workshop doors with ease.
Although I had promised to get all machines outside the evening before the move it was raining at 10pm so this was impossible and I went to bed.  Up at 5am on Thursday morning and after porridge and coffee arranged the machines in a line ready for take-off along the jetty.

Gently moved the big machine weighing about 1 tonne onto the jetty but found that the vibration mountings were grounding so quickly wedged each corner up while the feet were removed taking care not to leave any fingers under the machine!

The machine moved more easily along the pre-determined line but there was a slow sqeak from the MDF deck and the front wheel crashed through without much drama.  I tried to lever the machine out of the hole, but 1 tonne is not possible to shift and the lorry was arriving in 15 mins!  I had overlooked the fact that the 3 roller points are not symmetrically arranged so the front steering wheel designed to run along a timber joist line was in fact bearing on 18mm MDF - think; elephant in stilettos!


Driver pulled up and shook his head - always the same; I was promised all machines would be outside ready grrrr.  
I feel like a complete idiot.

We put our heads together and attach the hoist to the front of the machine to first extract the wheel from the MDF and then lead the machine like a dog on a lead at Crufts, out along the jetty.  Very nervous process a few inches the wrong way and the machine will crash to the floor.  The driver was pretty skillful and a pot of tea later we had the lorry loaded and sheeted albeit 45mins later than the 1 hour allowed.  In hindsight, departure from Bristol at 9am was completely clear of commuter traffic so an 8am departure would not have been sensible.  I also promised a quick turnaround in Cornwall which we managed in 20 mins so everyone was happy.  The cost of the move was pretty pricy but I could not fault the driver + lorry - Thank you Arthur Booy Transport.




Cornwall

Was feeling pretty shattered on arrival, but the sun was shining so no worries about messing around in the rain, after a wind-down BBQ, stayed overnight and started to prepare a small outbuilding before moving the big machine into place.  It will have to be moved out again when I level up a decking floor but this can be done on my next visit.   The train from Liskeard to Bristol on Friday evening was full of happy day trippers returning from a sunburnt day on the beaches of Cornwall.  The buffet was more like a (bikers) pub with a train attached travelling along the most beautiful coastline through Dawlish before heading north through Exeter. 

Day Off on Saturday for stroll and few beers around the Harbourside and short Sunday bike ride today to Arthur Booy in Easter Compton nr. Cribbs Causway to pay remainder of the transport bill, returning via Tesco to stock up on chocolate and peanut butter