L
LKSF
Pennine Hillbilly
Yes but do you have a shrew in your living room?
I was passing the JCB 803 when I noticed a Wren inside the cab, it had gone through the gap between the front screens and couldn't find it's way back out.
Sorting out the drainage in the lower field and other gubbins. An apprentice digger driver writes.
Yes but do you have a shrew in your living room?
I was passing the JCB 803 when I noticed a Wren inside the cab, it had gone through the gap between the front screens and couldn't find it's way back out.
L
LKSF
Pennine Hillbilly
Some borehole pipe pics, Not mine even though it looks very similar around the outside:
But why do it with steel? I can't see these jobs predating plastic pipe.
But why do it with steel? I can't see these jobs predating plastic pipe.
V8Druid
do it as well as you can,but learn to do it better
frequently .... when squeak brings one in live and I have to try and catch the bugger .... together with varying sizes of mice and rabbitsYes but do you have a shrew in your living room?
View attachment 36152
I was passing the JCB 803 when I noticed a Wren inside the cab, it had gone through the gap between the front screens and couldn't find it's way back out.
Gecko
Well-known member
Oh hell yes!
My pump hangs on the poly with the stainless 3mm (7x19) able to catch it if anything fails.
Gecko
Well-known member
May not be yours, but looks like it was put in by the same twat!
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L
LKSF
Pennine Hillbilly
Ours is too old for that malarkey, watching Springwatch is more a thing now.
Cat, as my Dad used to say, you make a better door than a window.
V8Druid
do it as well as you can,but learn to do it better
and damn me was moving some bulk bags today and had to put one back when Pam found a nest in the one fork lift sleeve ... job for again -- again
V8Druid
do it as well as you can,but learn to do it better
many many years ago, had three workshop kittens that went home, poorly ... used to sit, side by side, glued to the screen -- watching the snooker, all three heads moving in unison following the balls
L
LKSF
Pennine Hillbilly
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
View attachment 36147
Methane tank on the top of the wagon...fancy turning up to Tesco's in that..
Inflatable rings for storing the methane.
View attachment 36148
View attachment 36149
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
I think these old drains need a lot of fall and water washing through them now and again to keep them clear. We have some here which don't have much fall and are solid too.
JP, the God of hot composting
He's been mentioned before in this thread. I've just picked up a van full of mulch for free and am hoping it'll keep until Winter when i'll mix it with hoss muck and see if I can get a Winter heat source going for the Polytunnel.The hard part is getting your ingredients cheap or for free and processing it, otherwise is cheaper/easier to flick a switch, but yes the balance is being swung the other way.
Especially when you have an old house to heat
Log burner is still lit on an evening here atm until we get some better insulation.
V8Druid
do it as well as you can,but learn to do it better
can't believe the number of times our heating has kicked in the last couple of weeks either ... we're 'sposed to be heading into summer FFS
Log burner is still lit on an evening here atm until we get some better insulation.
.... even considered lighting our Morso one evening last week -outside temp. was below 10C
L
LKSF
Pennine Hillbilly
I
Just looking at the the thermometer, it's 8'c out there and a bit breezy, it was down to 6 last week. It's ok at the start of the evening, but gradually drops from 20, 19.18.17 and well then it's a bit chilly.
It does warm up nicely during the day though.
I'm glad you wrote because I tend to get a bit cocooned here a bit and lose track of the rest of the country. Then you wonder 'Is it just us?' Or is it cold everywhere else.....can't believe the number of times our heating has kicked in the last couple of weeks either ... we're 'sposed to be heading into summer FFS
Just looking at the the thermometer, it's 8'c out there and a bit breezy, it was down to 6 last week. It's ok at the start of the evening, but gradually drops from 20, 19.18.17 and well then it's a bit chilly.
It does warm up nicely during the day though.
V8Druid
do it as well as you can,but learn to do it better
we're the same ... the world goes on around us - sort of thing ... only venture out when we have to get supplies
it's been unseasonably cold really ... had a few nice days in April, much the same as last year and the year before, then went cold again and it's always breezy here, just below the ridge, where we are which keeps the thermometer down ... had 40-50 MPH winds earlier in the week, for a couple of days ....felt more like Oct/Nov., than May .. weather/seasons have gone to hell .... can see your breath outside this evening and been sweating half the day Pam's son, wife and 3 kids're in Croatia ATM on an 8 week jolly around Europe in their Tranny camper... have seen 40+C the last week ..... continental effect be ****ed
... 's the trouble with living on a cold little rock between the edge of the Atlantic and north sea .... if we were only a thousand miles further south it'd help
L
LKSF
Pennine Hillbilly
The soil here is crap, it's clay lower down or stony near the house. I got some bloke to deliver what he said was 12 tons of good quality soil. It was full of clay and has spawned plenty of weeds, bit it was cheap so I can't complain. At least it's something to work with.
So we watched The Don:
He knows his stuff and apparently clay soil is packed with nutrients and just needs a bit of conditioning with manure, compost and suchlike.
So I got the previously mentioned old sleepers and cobbled them together with some steel spikes in the ground.
I must apologise for the lack of proper plant action here, the metal yellow type that is, but rest assured, diggers and dumpers were involved. Dave and Benford were very helpful.
Monty didn't say do that did he?
Bugger off, I think you'll find he did. He uses a plank and everything you know.
It all looks a bit bleak, but there are plants in there!
Then these arrived:
A quarter of the plants went in 12 hrs, a fence went up:
A gap in the fence was found and another quarter went, mainly beans, mmmm, we like beans.
Much as I love wildlife, mans gotta live so the Airarms S400 was brought out and two critters were despatched, a third remains at large....
I think I need a firearms licence and something more powerful, but we'll see.
So we watched The Don:
He knows his stuff and apparently clay soil is packed with nutrients and just needs a bit of conditioning with manure, compost and suchlike.
So I got the previously mentioned old sleepers and cobbled them together with some steel spikes in the ground.
I must apologise for the lack of proper plant action here, the metal yellow type that is, but rest assured, diggers and dumpers were involved. Dave and Benford were very helpful.
Monty didn't say do that did he?
Bugger off, I think you'll find he did. He uses a plank and everything you know.
It all looks a bit bleak, but there are plants in there!
Then these arrived:
A quarter of the plants went in 12 hrs, a fence went up:
A gap in the fence was found and another quarter went, mainly beans, mmmm, we like beans.
Much as I love wildlife, mans gotta live so the Airarms S400 was brought out and two critters were despatched, a third remains at large....
I think I need a firearms licence and something more powerful, but we'll see.
L
LKSF
Pennine Hillbilly
I couldn't fit any plant in the Polytunnel so had to resort to a barra
Lined with cardboard:
The bed runs East - West so South is to the right. This means from the left we have Toms with lettuce in between as they don't mind dappled light. Then more toms, beans and Strawbs at the front.
No rabbits here, no cold wind and a bit of sun so everything is doing well
A few weeks later our first small bowl:
Everything else is coming on well in there too:
Just a slug or two I can't find, it isn't tempted by our cheap supermarket lager either the b*****d.
Lined with cardboard:
The bed runs East - West so South is to the right. This means from the left we have Toms with lettuce in between as they don't mind dappled light. Then more toms, beans and Strawbs at the front.
No rabbits here, no cold wind and a bit of sun so everything is doing well
A few weeks later our first small bowl:
Everything else is coming on well in there too:
Just a slug or two I can't find, it isn't tempted by our cheap supermarket lager either the b*****d.
V8Druid
do it as well as you can,but learn to do it better
you're into the cardboard layer then ... Pam watched some prog extolling the virtues of cardboard and no dig. She is planning on doing a few beds to try next year ... your strawbs are doing well if that's this years ... ours are all still green and growing well ... the bloody squirrels usually get 90% of ours .. might have to despatch a couple this year as we just can't keep 'em out ... was going to make an armoured cage for them, but not gotten around to it .... yet.
loadsa bunnies here too, but they never seem to bother us
L
LKSF
Pennine Hillbilly
you're into the cardboard layer then ... Pam watched some prog extolling the virtues of cardboard and no dig. She is planning on doing a few beds to try next year ... your strawbs are doing well if that's this years ... ours are all still green and growing well ... the bloody squirrels usually get 90% of ours .. might have to despatch a couple this year as we just can't keep 'em out ... was going to make an armoured cage for them, but not gotten around to it .... yet.
loadsa bunnies here too, but they never seem to bother us
Nothing gets wasted here
It's a good component of compost too, I know you have a lot of grass so you can throw all your cardboard in with that and it'll help. It vanishes surprisingly quickly, maybe a month after being buried and it's gone without a trace.
V8Druid
do it as well as you can,but learn to do it better
Pam's been hoarding any un-printed carboard boxes since she saw it ...... got quite a collection so far and some huge boxes the new patio furniture arrived in have made some contribution to it ...Nothing gets wasted here
It's a good component of compost too, I know you have a lot of grass so you can throw all your cardboard in with that and it'll help. It vanishes surprisingly quickly, maybe a month after being buried and it's gone without a trace.
L
LKSF
Pennine Hillbilly
Today we had guests, rather than let an opportunity go to waste I put the father and son to work whilst the women sat in the house.
I went to the top of the bank behind the house, battered a 5' steel spike in the ground and hung a pulley from it:
Took a brand new 100m coil of rope up and threw it down the hill thinking it would uncoil nicely, did it ****, it tangled itself up all the way down and took me over an hour to sort it out
Phil's a van driver so I figured he'd be best behind the wheel of Terry with the rope tethered round the front.
Sadly we didn't get a pic of the IBC being dragged up there, but it went very smoothly considering.
Great view from up there:
It was forecast to be sunny all day, but was cold and grey until we started working then the sun shone.
Before they left we rigged everything up temporarily so they could see it working. The 12v submersible pump, car battery and solar panel are by the old water tanks to the left, water goes up the yellow pipe to the IBC then back down in the other.
So just the basics for now to see what 2bar water pressure gets me as far as watering plants goes.
Lots and lots of modifying and altering to do. Pipes to be re-routed and hidden, a cover to put over the IBC, hopefully a different source too via the borehole. The one thing that bothers me about that is that the pump won't fit down the bore with the existing pipe still in it, but we'll see...
I went to the top of the bank behind the house, battered a 5' steel spike in the ground and hung a pulley from it:
Took a brand new 100m coil of rope up and threw it down the hill thinking it would uncoil nicely, did it ****, it tangled itself up all the way down and took me over an hour to sort it out
Phil's a van driver so I figured he'd be best behind the wheel of Terry with the rope tethered round the front.
Sadly we didn't get a pic of the IBC being dragged up there, but it went very smoothly considering.
Great view from up there:
It was forecast to be sunny all day, but was cold and grey until we started working then the sun shone.
Before they left we rigged everything up temporarily so they could see it working. The 12v submersible pump, car battery and solar panel are by the old water tanks to the left, water goes up the yellow pipe to the IBC then back down in the other.
So just the basics for now to see what 2bar water pressure gets me as far as watering plants goes.
Lots and lots of modifying and altering to do. Pipes to be re-routed and hidden, a cover to put over the IBC, hopefully a different source too via the borehole. The one thing that bothers me about that is that the pump won't fit down the bore with the existing pipe still in it, but we'll see...
maz
Well-known member
Today we had guests, rather than let an opportunity go to waste I put the father and son to work whilst the women sat in the house.
I went to the top of the bank behind the house, battered a 5' steel spike in the ground and hung a pulley from it:
View attachment 36250
Took a brand new 100m coil of rope up and threw it down the hill thinking it would uncoil nicely, did it ****, it tangled itself up all the way down and took me over an hour to sort it out
Phil's a van driver so I figured he'd be best behind the wheel of Terry with the rope tethered round the front.
Sadly we didn't get a pic of the IBC being dragged up there, but it went very smoothly considering.
View attachment 36252
Great view from up there:
View attachment 36253
It was forecast to be sunny all day, but was cold and grey until we started working then the sun shone.
View attachment 36254
Before they left we rigged everything up temporarily so they could see it working. The 12v submersible pump, car battery and solar panel are by the old water tanks to the left, water goes up the yellow pipe to the IBC then back down in the other.
So just the basics for now to see what 2bar water pressure gets me as far as watering plants goes.
Lots and lots of modifying and altering to do. Pipes to be re-routed and hidden, a cover to put over the IBC, hopefully a different source too via the borehole. The one thing that bothers me about that is that the pump won't fit down the bore with the existing pipe still in it, but we'll see...
You sure thats only 2 bar? Your plants will be hanging on for dear life
JD450A
Feral as Fk 🐾
This thread is brilliant. Far better than that other lunatic with a welder..... It has hills and everything.
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