Routy56 - can you just....

[V8Druid]

Busy most of this week......
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"Dave can you just sort out our yard up by the stables"
May mate Les (from the Lodge) and his wife keep horses on some land with a barn near here
Under those stingers behind the car is a hump of rubbish and bonfire ash - about 20 tons of it!!

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So got out the landscape rake for the brambles and s**t

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It ain't me eating bacon butties

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Our Nicola popped down to see the horses. She'll be down at the weekend with her girls to ride them.
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One is a bloody race horse - what can possibly go wrong

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Raked, graded and banked up. There's hardcore/crushed under that lot of 'made up ground'. Job jobbed
"Les you just need some road planning to sort that lot out. And don't forget to spray the weeds off regularly"
Then there was the 20 or so tree stumps out the back for a "Can you just...." before I finished another long day
That evening got a text "Hi mate. Huge thanks for all your hard work today. The place looks pucker."
Great to be appreciated

field with the racing dobbin in looks pretty wet Dave ... you had a bit of rain?? ............ sposed to have been lashing it own here all day ... been bootiful, with a 2 minute downpour 'bout 5.30 and now drizzly enough to wet your head ... looks like it'll clear shortly though ..... bright sky in the distance, where it's coming from
that rake makes a decent job of sorting it .... you have it on back'ards and push it up ?
no where to spread it and lose it ?

 

[Routy56]

field with the racing dobbin in looks pretty wet Dave ... you had a bit of rain?? ............ sposed to have been lashing it own here all day ... been bootiful, with a 2 minute downpour 'bout 5.30 and now drizzly enough to wet your head ... looks like it'll clear shortly though ..... bright sky in the distance, where it's coming from
that rake makes a decent job of sorting it .... you have it on back'ards and push it up ?
no where to spread it and lose it ?

Yep it’s been very wet over here for the last few weeks
And that rake enabled me to pull out the rubbish and push it up and away over the top. Then graded it off with the remaining soils and stuff burying the rubbish
Economy job on mates rates
Now they are thinking of sticking a couple of 40’ boxes on my nice clear space

 

[Routy56]

Last week I was very busy and out with my machine most days
Domestic job for my mate and ex-collegue, Dan the Man
He's the DIY extension guy that I did the footings only only a few years ago.
This weeks task was the tidy up and dig for his new fences and gravel finished driveway

Rocked up nice and early to this mess
Under that blue cover is an old fashioned safe that I had to move with my big red hook and stick it in the front door

So Rod sent Scotty over for the first grab lorry load.
Did I tell you that Rod is now Transport Manager and he's interviewing new drivers every week.
They collected 2 new Mercedes lorries last week - the ones with cameras instead of mirrors

Then broke up all the crappy concrete with my now fully working Arrowhead S20 thanks to @Dr pecker

Ended up with 2 separate piles for 'muck away'. The local guys cannot get enough concrete for their crusher run.
Found that Silvertons offered the best collection price for the concrete at only £120

Dan - "Dave, can we just put some SWA in for the electric gates before the Type 1"
Loads of 'can you just' on this job - think he was making it up as we went along

Then Scotty came back with a load of Optimix Type 1 which he had to grab off the lorry onto our Geotextile sheet
There's a 'can you just' do a soakaway going in beside that baggie of pea....

Soakaway ended top about 7m from house into good gravel soils at about 1.8m deepAll the time I'm doing this other stuff is being delivered and getting in the way

Then Rod himself turns up for the next load of Type 1 - even as Transport Manager he had to go out.
They were 2 drivers down that day with lorries in the yard and customers waiting.
Must say that we got excellent service
Then he had to go back to the office to untie a bust driver who wanted to come over to the dark side

So me and my mate kicked it around a bit ready for the Wacker later by Dan...

.....and went home leaving him to sort out the compacting, edges and fences etc

 

[V8Druid]

well that's opened that up Dave

 

[Routy56]

.......and no one noticed that I said in the above post:
"Then he had to go back to the office to untie a bust driver who wanted to come over to the dark side "
Of course they don't subject random busty people to bondage until they agree to become lorry drivers
What I meant was that a bus driver was to be interviewed for a lorry driving job

 

[Lancs Lad]

.......and no one noticed that I said in the above post:
"Then he had to go back to the office to untie a bust driver who wanted to come over to the dark side "
Of course they don't subject random busty people to bondage until they agree to become lorry drivers
What I meant was that a bus driver was to be interviewed for a lorry driving job

I just thought it was some east Anglian ritual.

 

[Routy56]

I just thought it was some east Anglian ritual.

Nah - that happens at my Lodge Meetings where I am the grand pooh bar

 

[Routy56]

This week has been a great week with another 'new' general builder customer.
I was recommended to him by my ex-BIL, Dave who is a sparky doing loads of work for him
Christian and his wife Andrea are from near Budapest and have been over here about 10 years.
They have a great customer base with several jobs on the go.....

"Dave, can you just take top the old garage base and pull some trenches for service from the house. Then we need to dig out a base for a 28x10 mobile home"
R - "No problem, but don't forget that any snags will add to the time taken!"

"Can you just dig out that tree stump so we can move the empty skip over?"....
....good job I have a nice Harford and Quick Couplings

"Can you just hang on while the drains are checked."
(I had been pecking over the top of some very old earthenware FW Drains which were blocked )
The nice man from Anglian Water turned up and immediately said that it wasn't the public sewer that was blocked but those belonging to the 'new' householder. I had previously told them this before he turned up and offered to rod them - but WTF do I know
So the nice man rodded THEIR drains and then inspected them with his nice camera gear.
Funny how we all gathered round like excited school children
Drains given the all clear and I suggested that he had done them a favour and should be 'given a drink'
Again this was ignored by the grumpy householder. Thank goodness I was working for Chris the builder

So I quickly filled the first skip with concrete and waited around for another one
Personally I prefer a grab lorry - collects twice as much for a similar price.
AND I let them all know it but WTF do I know

Every cloud has a silver lining - this is Andrea my new girlfriend.
And yes she is a builder on this job and got stuck in with everything.
She did most of the formwork for the concrete pour and loved using my 'new' Wacker
So nice to have ladies about and she had a happy disposition that cheered us all up

So while we were getting the trenches ready for the services Andrea laid out the mesh and wired it

Then Dave, my ex-BIL turned up just in time to work his art - laying SWA at 500 in the trench.
He always get abuse from me, "What time do you call this you wanker" - he loves the banter

There you go another job jobbed. That Chris giving me a thumbs up as a I loaded up ready to go home (Late again)

It was a pleasure to work with these guys - bit chaotic but we all pulled as team and got it done.
They are actually going to 'hand-ball' the concrete.
I left them thinking about all my mix on site contacts which could have done it quicker and without the back ache

Still they have loads more challenging work for me and my machines on some up market houses nearby - watch this space

 

[V8Druid]

.......and no one noticed that I said in the above post:
"Then he had to go back to the office to untie a bust driver who wanted to come over to the dark side "
Of course they don't subject random busty people to bondage until they agree to become lorry drivers
What I meant was that a bus driver was to be interviewed for a lorry driving job

had noticed and assumed it was a typo ..... bus driver's in for a shock

lovely city Budapest .... spent some time there in '90 with a Hungarian friend

 

[Routy56]

Another busy week (for me anyway)…
Son of a neighbor friend has bought a derelict barn with planning permission for conversion.
It’s less than 2 miles from here. “Dave can you just clear the site ready for the builders?”

Yard out the back full of rubbish topped with weeds - bramble, nettles and stuff.
They have spent 2 weeks trimming it before they called me in…

Nice traditional barn for conversion to 5 bedroom house

Ryan on the dumper shifting vegetation….

Nice pickle of mixed dirt and rubbish for Rod to come in with his grab lorries….

Big bonus was that speaking to my farmer friend who used to own this and carefull digging I ‘found’ the old original farmhouse.
The new owner didn’t even know it was there! Jut a pile of bricks and old timbers.
Big bonus is that the original foundations are still intact under all that stuff.
And we found thousands of old soft red brick made in the field next door - you know the ones with no frog…

….”So give me a call when you’ve had the grab Lorrie’s clear away the rubbish and I’ll do some more clearance for yer”
Think we are going be going back for months to come…

 

[Jimoz]

Think I'd be 're looking at my planning if I found the ruins of a old farmhouse before i do owt else

 

[Routy56]

Think I'd be 're looking at my planning if I found the ruins of a old farmhouse before i do owt else

Apparently it’s been derelict since just after WW2, then it was demolished to make it safe after a fire. The farmer applied but was refused planning. Don’t think that they bothered to go to appeal. So I suggested that they consider doing this OR build a nice cart Lodge or similar. But WTF do I know about such stuff

 

[Routy56]

Another busy few weeks have ticked by with Ryan helping during the summer holidays from 6th form
Sharon joined me by having her 65th birthday a few weeks ago....

So Sharon just wanted the family over for a birthday cream tea and swim etc.....

Bought her a Reebok treadmill which so far she uses every day for 30 mins

Even Ryan got her a card....

The grandchildren had a dip in the old pool....

Then the bubbly came out - oh dear

 

[Routy56]

So we started the 'big dig' on a swimming pool last week. One of those large preformed fibre glass jobbies.
Asked my BIL Richard and Tony to take the lead on this 'cos he will be there for weeks afterwards doing the groundworks and making it look nice
Hole size - 9.2m x 4.7m x 1.9m deep
Me and Ryan was in support for 3 days taking out and away the 152 tons of excavated mater - aka dirt

Richard breaking ground in the hired in Kubota - he usually breaks wind

Tony on the hired in dumper - he knocks not to sit down whilst being loaded

Ryan on my TopCon Laser showing Chris (the customer) his skills

Tip site for spoil - friendly land owner wanted a low spot raising. My mate Alan ( a local retired builder) supervising the tipping. The old digger used to 'spread it' about a bit. Turn around was about 10 mins to the site about 500m away.

Had to take my turn in the seat of the hired machine. Not as nice as my old Neuson. There again it's what you know that counts. My machine didn't have the reach for this job. But even the U27-4 struggled. Concerns were that a larger machine would have given us problems with access etc.
The ground water - about 200-300mm overnight was dealt with quickly using a small 2 stoke pump.

Last bit being spooned away. That White quick hitch is crap - very loose for only 600 odd hours of use

Your truly showing the wankers how to use a shovel. Why is it that the oldest guy on site has to take the lead on this stuff

Ryan learning new skills....

......and how to apply the KY Jelly before slipping it in

Slotted pipe groundwater drain manifold installed and wrapped up nicely before covering in stone.
We had a real problem getting 'just in time' delivery of stone......

But I saved the day by phoning Rod my SIL who is now Transport Manager for the guys. Told him that we wanted a load of stone to be grabbed off on site by the afternoon. Scottie rocked up and saved the day

We did a 'site visit' after the boys had done the concrete over the drainage stone etc.
They used a mix on site service into a concrete pump - all supplied by Pomphrett Concrete Pumping Limited
Nice level slab looking spot on ready for the pool to be delivered later this week

To be continued........

 

[Routy56]

.......so the pool project was continued with and without my help in the late summer

Sandy bottom

Delivered on a nice wagon with a nice Hiab....

And dropped over the house onto the patio....

Then the wagon was backed into a very tight back passage to comet the lift into our nice big whole

Water added before backfilling with dry lean ....

Now the boys are doing their groundwork stuff......

Changing Room and Plant Room erected when I last called in a few weeks ago.
It now has to be commissioned with an ASHP and usual pool stuff......
......then Chris will be taking delivery of a rather large sliding back enclosure jobbie

 

[Routy56]

So a few weeks ago I went back to doing some stuff for Chris and his lovely girlfriend Andrea......

They are doing a refurbishment of a rather nice detached house in Lexden - which is the posh area of Colchester.
"Dave, can you just dig some trenches for a new water main, electric cables and drains (sewer) for the new annexe"

Never simple is it. Had to rip up the old patio and back lawn first!

Then we had to stick in a new IC for careful connection to the existing 1950 sewer over 1.5m deep.....

Then before I packed up, "Can you just pull out the trees at the front and stick a trench in for the water".....

Neighbour came out - "Our phone and internet has stopped working!"
Fcuk - PO Telephones had decades ago stuck in their cables to the neighbours house by tucking them in the corner of the flower bed about 6" below the surface. This is NOT where the trench had to go BUT the tree roots were completely wrapped around them as I tugged the stump over
Still, details were supplied to the neighbour and duly reported to Openreach.....

Then just few feet further on this popped out the ground. Apparently installed by Virgin media but never connected back the day.
How I hate pulling unexpected stuff out of the ground on a Friday afternoon.

Still they have more work for me soon and pay up very quickly - happy days

 

[Monkeybusiness]

Thank the Lord, I thought you had died!

 

[Bri963]

I wa starting to worry as well. You get some interesting little jobs, and tidy work. How come you were on a hire machine rather than the helicopter?

 

[TiltyShaun]

I wa starting to worry as well. You get some interesting little jobs, and tidy work. How come you were on a hire machine rather than the helicopter?

He did say if you read…..lack of reach!!

 

[Routy56]

Thank the Lord, I thought you had died!

At least someone cares about me
Nah been soooooo busy with work life balance - holidays, family and still going out to play a few days a week
Perhaps I'll try and find more time to post more stuff on the old blog