Sorting out the drainage in the lower field and other gubbins. An apprentice digger driver writes.

[6feetdown]

interesting Q Rory ..... used to do a lot for an outfit called Apex Drilling whenever they were working in this area ... quick repairs for them ... they were here once doing a bore hole up on a mountain locally and were telling me they'd done in the region of 12+ holes on one site trying to find a salmonella free source ... were down 1300+ feet in places ... amazed me ..... these guys guarantee a quality source, for a fixed price .. hence always being busy
IIRC they were from Bridgend area or may have been Somerset

Yeah there is a company Cardiff or Bridgend way do a lot of diamond drilling used them in the past

 

[LKSF]

As said earlier clay isn't something we're short of here so when I saw a chap advertising in need of some I replied.
Turns out he's putting a cob floor in his house and needs a fair few tons, so I scooped him a few out:

Mmmm, finest Pennine blue. You could make the best bone China or some Royal Doulton from that.

He turns up in a 1.0 Yaris, drops the seats and spoons some into the back. Drives away for and hour or so, then reappears and takes some more.
The money will pay for soil to fill the hole which is something I can use

Last year Myxomatosis hit and wiped out most of the rabbits, but they're coming back. This one has decided my new compost heap is a good home:

The reason is probably it's lovely and warm under there, as night time temps are down to 4'c. This is hot composter Mk3, every day it goes up by about 1'c and is currently at 30 in the centre. Can I actually heat something (Polytunnel? House?) from it in the future, who knows, time will tell.

 

[Grahams]

View attachment 34837

The reason is probably it's lovely and warm under there, as night time temps are down to 4'c. This is hot composter Mk3, every day it goes up by about 1'c and is currently at 30 in the centre. Can I actually heat something (Polytunnel? House?) from it in the future, who knows, time will tell.

I've seen pictures of people using composters to heat water. https://www.onegreenplanet.org/lifestyle/hot-water-heater-with-compost/

 

[V8Druid]

I've seen pictures of people using composters to heat water. https://www.onegreenplanet.org/lifestyle/hot-water-heater-with-compost/

can generate enough heat to catch fire, so must be pretty good at heating water .... you'd want metalic pipes in there though .. stainless ideally

 

[LKSF]

I've seen pictures of people using composters to heat water. https://www.onegreenplanet.org/lifestyle/hot-water-heater-with-compost/

Yes that's it, the article has everything in it i've been reading, i've even got a book on it
It started last year when I regularly passed a stables which gave away the hoss muck ready bagged. I pulled over and loaded up everytime, soon I had a cubic metre of it, followed by another:

It gains about 1'c per day up to about:

It's a copper tube with the end sealed up, filled with water and a temp probe dropped down it:

Problem is it was all 'green' and no 'brown' (despite it looking brown ) so it ran out of oxygen and failed. It needs carbon which the Mk3 has in it in the form of the moorland rushes which are like straw.
If you get it right is should keep hot for 6 months to get you through Winter.
If you can get crushed wood chips for free or cheap they're perfect.

 

[modelman093]

Another use for compost heat

Pineapple pit - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[LKSF]

This was the old house when we took it on:

It looks reasonably tidy, but it was not. It clearly had a major damp issue throughout and needed sorting out.
I think from day one, or maybe in it's early years (maybe something had triggered it) it had been a problem house. It is built from sandstone and millstone grit on the most exposed facades which are solid and 500mm thick, the others are from shale. We get days of continuous rain with howling winds in Winter. The wind drives the rain into the porous stone until it comes through. You can see very poor extensions with roof pitches which are too low. Water gets into the original stone house wall and runs down behind the flashings of the extension roofs and comes in. It drives through upstairs too.
The first move (decades ago) was to repoint the house in OPC, this is Ordinary Portland cement and was a very bad move. Houses like this were built using lime mortar which breathes, OPC does not so it made the problem worse. You see, water can get in, but now it can't get out very easily because the cement mortar is holding it back. You can see it here:

Some bright spark came up with the idea of coating the whole gable end in black bitumen. This made it even worse again. If you've ever grafted and sweated with waterproof clothes on then you'll know about damp build up on your body, this is very much the same. The water can not get out and be evaporated by the sun and wind so it just sweats.
That didn't work, so the next move was even better. Someone mixed OPC with water into a thick paste and painted the whole house in it
Then it was coated in numerous coats of plastic masonry paint. At this point if the house could scream I think it would have.

You absolutely cannot stop water from entering a masonry wall, you have to deal with it when it's in there as you will not prevent it.

Then we came along and bought it, warts n all
I have a building trade background so had a good idea of what I was doing, but even so there has been a lot of history to uncover and learn.
Within a few weeks of moving in I got quotes for blasting all of this s**t off the house. They started here:

Which grew:

And went on:

If you look at all the pics you can see how dark and damp the original house walls (not the extension) are. That was in August/September after it had no driving rain for maybe 6 months.
They say solid walls like these dry out at an approximate rate of 1mm per month.

You can see how the front is drying here, but this gable is still damp. That's why the old sycamore is getting a bit of a prune

After many decades of torture the house at least looked like it should, could now breathe and start to dry out. This was just the first phase of many though. At the moment I'm chiselling off the cement pointing ready to re-do it in lime. Whoever did it at the front and Westerly gable made really strong mix (it's like granite) and put plenty on. It's bonded well to the porous gritty stone and is taking a lot of hammering to get it off.

 

[Grahams]

This was the old house when we took it on:

View attachment 34850

It looks reasonably tidy, but it was not. It clearly had a major damp issue throughout and needed sorting out.
I think from day one, or maybe in it's early years (maybe something had triggered it) it had been a problem house. It is built from sandstone and millstone grit on the most exposed facades which are solid and 500mm thick, the others are from shale. We get days of continuous rain with howling winds in Winter. The wind drives the rain into the porous stone until it comes through. You can see very poor extensions with roof pitches which are too low. Water gets into the original stone house wall and runs down behind the flashings of the extension roofs and comes in. It drives through upstairs too.
The first move (decades ago) was to repoint the house in OPC, this is Ordinary Portland cement and was a very bad move. Houses like this were built using lime mortar which breathes, OPC does not so it made the problem worse. You see, water can get in, but now it can't get out very easily because the cement mortar is holding it back. You can see it here:

View attachment 34862

Some bright spark came up with the idea of coating the whole gable end in black bitumen. This made it even worse again. If you've ever grafted and sweated with waterproof clothes on then you'll know about damp build up on your body, this is very much the same. The water can not get out and be evaporated by the sun and wind so it just sweats.
That didn't work, so the next move was even better. Someone mixed OPC with water into a thick paste and painted the whole house in it
Then it was coated in numerous coats of plastic masonry paint. At this point if the house could scream I think it would have.

You absolutely cannot stop water from entering a masonry wall, you have to deal with it when it's in there as you will not prevent it.

Then we came along and bought it, warts n all
I have a building trade background so had a good idea of what I was doing, but even so there has been a lot of history to uncover and learn.
Within a few weeks of moving in I got quotes for blasting all of this s**t off the house. They started here:

View attachment 34857

Which grew:

View attachment 34858

And went on:

View attachment 34859

View attachment 34860

If you look at all the pics you can see how dark and damp the original house walls (not the extension) are. That was in August/September after it had no driving rain for maybe 6 months.
They say solid walls like these dry out at an approximate rate of 1mm per month.

View attachment 34861
You can see how the front is drying here, but this gable is still damp. That's why the old sycamore is getting a bit of a prune

After many decades of torture the house at least looked like it should, could now breathe and start to dry out. This was just the first phase of many though. At the moment I'm chiselling off the cement pointing ready to re-do it in lime. Whoever did it at the front and Westerly gable made really strong mix (it's like granite) and put plenty on. It's bonded well to the porous gritty stone and is taking a lot of hammering to get it off.

You have certainly got yourself a mammoth project, what with the house and the fields. Keep you busy for years. Fair play to you, I don’t think I would have taken it on.

 

[Monkeybusiness]

If you constantly remove heat from the pile does it not slow down/stall the composting? (Not something I know anything about, I’m just curious).

 

[LKSF]

If you constantly remove heat from the pile does it not slow down/stall the composting? (Not something I know anything about, I’m just curious).

Yes I think you have to be careful how much you remove at once otherwise you could cool the stack too much. I've made a small coil of pipe for the centre and hope it will do. The bigger the stack the better it is and the more heat you can remove though.

 

[Furniss]

Maybe farmers could incorporate something into a silage clamp construction to utilise the heat build up ....or maybe some do
I know we bumpkins used to dig a hole and see how long you could sit in it, no ps4 back then, thankfully

 

[LKSF]

Spring is well under way:

I want to grow some stuff here and want to water it without costing me. Pleasure and taste aside I think the trick with growing stuff is to do it as cheap as possible otherwise you might aswell go to the supermarket.
We have a spring halfway up the hill here where that black tank is

It used to be the water supply to the house.
The problems are it isn't high enough to provide enough pressure and it's very much governed by the weather. Right now it's down to a trickle about 3mm across, when it's really chucked it down in winter it'll fill a 3" pipe.
So I figured I could pump it from there up to a tank right at the top of the hill which would give me just over 2 bar of pressure. This means dealing with it when it overflows, filtering it as it spews grit and stones out and then somehow switching the pump off when it gets too low (so the pump doesn't run dry), but runs when the lower tank is full, but upper one is low. I was going to use a solar powered pump, but all in all it looked like it was going to be a PITA.

I could have worked around it, but then thought about using the existing borehole in the yard so I levered up the cover for a look:

I need to get the whole lot high enough up so I can drop the 12v pump down.

I took off the cap bolts, but can't get the blue pipe off. I've undone the black connector there, but the pipe has no lateral movement at all. It's locked in with mortar, goes through the ground and has a 90' bend on the other end so will not slide.
So I'm a bit stuck at the moment!

 

[V8Druid]

Spring is well under way:

View attachment 36119

View attachment 36121

I want to grow some stuff here and want to water it without costing me. Pleasure and taste aside I think the trick with growing stuff is to do it as cheap as possible otherwise you might aswell go to the supermarket.
We have a spring halfway up the hill here where that black tank is

View attachment 36120

It used to be the water supply to the house.
The problems are it isn't high enough to provide enough pressure and it's very much governed by the weather. Right now it's down to a trickle about 3mm across, when it's really chucked it down in winter it'll fill a 3" pipe.
So I figured I could pump it from there up to a tank right at the top of the hill which would give me just over 2 bar of pressure. This means dealing with it when it overflows, filtering it as it spews grit and stones out and then somehow switching the pump off when it gets too low (so the pump doesn't run dry), but runs when the lower tank is full, but upper one is low. I was going to use a solar powered pump, but all in all it looked like it was going to be a PITA.

I could have worked around it, but then thought about using the existing borehole in the yard so I levered up the cover for a look:

View attachment 36137

I need to get the whole lot high enough up so I can drop the 12v pump down.

I took off the cap bolts, but can't get the blue pipe off. I've undone the black connector there, but the pipe has no lateral movement at all. It's locked in with mortar, goes through the ground and has a 90' bend on the other end so will not slide.
So I'm a bit stuck at the moment!

cut the pipe about half way of the distance between wall and fitting -- fit a 90 bend, horizontally, then as much pipe as the chamber allows with a.n.other 90 on the extreme end facing the bore .. turn the lid through 90 degrees - replace the tail in the fitting with a length to bring you in line with the new 90, fit a 90 bend to that and ..... then join the two 90 bends on the 'legs' with a straight length .. will give you plenty of flexibility in all directions and however you choose to disconnect it in future

lovely piccy of the owls

 

[Gecko]

. will give you plenty of flexibility in all directions and however you choose to disconnect it in future

Not nearly as flexible, but I'd just shorten the pipe a little and add a barrel union.

Thinking about it, does the valve serve a useful function?
Surely if you want to stop the flow, you just turn the pump off?
If the union replaces the valve, you wouldn't need to trim the pipe at all.

 

[V8Druid]

Not nearly as flexible, but I'd just shorten the pipe a little and add a barrel union.
View attachment 36141
Thinking about it, does the valve serve a useful function?
Surely if you want to stop the flow, you just turn the pump off?
If the union replaces the valve, you wouldn't need to trim the pipe at all.

did consider that one too, but OP still has to uncouple what he has .... assume the valve is to stop any back flow when disconnected, not as there'd be a lot and as you say, superfluous otherwise ... take the top out, cut the body in half to remove and replace with a couple of barrel nipples and a union ... original installers want their arses kicking for not including one

 

[LKSF]

Some good options there and even a diagram, thanks Not a job for a Bank Holiday weekend then
I'll investigate what fittings I need and where to get them from, i've never worked with screwed water pipe before.
On the other side of that lid will be a very long rigid pipe and on the end of it the pump will be screwed on. If the pipe is steel it'll need replacing one day with plastic as they rust through.

The first pic is a small Copper butterfly which isn't rare, but it's sat on some French Lavender which is - in a way. They were on 'special offer' at B&Q so I bought 3 to brighten up that banking you can see there. Put them in last Autumn and was told it was a bad idea as they won't tolerate UK weather like British Lavender does, British Lavender doesn't have as impressive flowers on it though.
Fast forward to today and it's survived many gale force winds, -5 and being buried under snow. I think it's survival is down to the fact the bank is very dry and stony, this means it's not stood in cold sodden soil in Winter.

The owls are a pair of Tawneys, they roost in the Sycamore next to the house you can see in some of the pics. Not in Winter though as the tree loses it's leaves so they go sit in the only thing around which still has, a Laurel bush.
This year as the tree was growing its leaves back a pair of blackbirds moved in to nest there. Bad idea, the owls came back too and took the chicks. Nature is a cruel thing sometimes, but it is what it is.

There is more than one nesting pair though and the others have moved into the safety of my log pile. The logs are waiting to be processed, so lots of long stuff and branches for them to hide in.

We often come face to face around the yard and they don't fly off, we just look at each other for a bit. I think this female was just having a rest, usually they're waiting until I turn my back and then they dive into the nest thinking I don't know it's there.

 

[maz]

Loving the thread, that stone house looks amazing when you blasted the paint off, I hate when they cover up lovely stone work like that. We took on a similar project as yours, 1880 built house with stone walls a meter thick, absolute nightmare if you need to put a cable through the wall or anything. Fortunately we don't have quite the difficulty in land drainage you have...we have a "wet field" according to the cow farmer we rent to, which means it gets slick as soon as you drive on it, but no bog pits like yours. I've maybe hit about 20 of the clay pipe drains in the digger while running water/electric trenches but they are always filled with a thick silt/clay like someones made a mould out of clay, doubt any waters been going through them for a long time...wife is into perma culture and has been asking me to build a "keyline plough" which is a sort of non destructive sub soiler that if done correctly can improve drainage and soil quality. She's also been planting Willow in various places to help soak up some of the water. Keen to see how you progress with your project. Keep it coming!

Regarding the compost heap...Jean Paine used to build a compost heap with pipe through it to provide heating and hot water for his home, as well as putting tanks in the middle full of pig poo to produce methane for cooking and running his car

Methane tank on the top of the wagon...fancy turning up to Tesco's in that..
Inflatable rings for storing the methane.

Get a feeling a lot of this will start making a revival with people who have available land...price of heating oil up massive, electricity doubled...don't know if I'm quite there yet for a 40 ton compost heap

 

[Gecko]

On the other side of that lid will be a very long rigid pipe and on the end of it the pump will be screwed on. If the pipe is steel it'll need replacing one day with plastic as they rust through.

I was wondering what is below - steel sounds like a PIA.
I've just put in a bore and used 45m of plastic which, being flexible, is easy to deal with.

 

[V8Druid]

with a pump on the bottom of an MDPE pipe I'd be attaching a safety cable/chain/tether between the pump and pipe outer ... asking a lot of the poly joint, hanging a pump off it ... ditto at the top too

 

[V8Druid]

Some good options there and even a diagram, thanks Not a job for a Bank Holiday weekend then
I'll investigate what fittings I need and where to get them from, i've never worked with screwed water pipe before.
On the other side of that lid will be a very long rigid pipe and on the end of it the pump will be screwed on. If the pipe is steel it'll need replacing one day with plastic as they rust through.

The first pic is a small Copper butterfly which isn't rare, but it's sat on some French Lavender which is - in a way. They were on 'special offer' at B&Q so I bought 3 to brighten up that banking you can see there. Put them in last Autumn and was told it was a bad idea as they won't tolerate UK weather like British Lavender does, British Lavender doesn't have as impressive flowers on it though.
Fast forward to today and it's survived many gale force winds, -5 and being buried under snow. I think it's survival is down to the fact the bank is very dry and stony, this means it's not stood in cold sodden soil in Winter.

The owls are a pair of Tawneys, they roost in the Sycamore next to the house you can see in some of the pics. Not in Winter though as the tree loses it's leaves so they go sit in the only thing around which still has, a Laurel bush.
This year as the tree was growing its leaves back a pair of blackbirds moved in to nest there. Bad idea, the owls came back too and took the chicks. Nature is a cruel thing sometimes, but it is what it is.

There is more than one nesting pair though and the others have moved into the safety of my log pile. The logs are waiting to be processed, so lots of long stuff and branches for them to hide in.
View attachment 36145

We often come face to face around the yard and they don't fly off, we just look at each other for a bit. I think this female was just having a rest, usually they're waiting until I turn my back and then they dive into the nest thinking I don't know it's there.

got a pair of blackbirds on the Zetor's power steering ram ..

and two pairs of wrens in the high tip skip hinges on the Thwaites ... usually have Wrens in the wheel chock on the 'Drema, too, but not this year