Waiting...

Not much action on the barn, well in fact nothing since the dalle was laid. The foreman came Wednesday night to let us know that the delay was due to the wait for the granite corner stones and lintels for the new doors and windows. A lorry load of materials (parpaing, sable & ciment) arrived this morning and we are expecting the workers to start Tuesday building a internal wall to separate the two gites. This week is half term and Monday is a holiday (Toussaint). That's the plan anyway.

 3:20:56 PM   Waiting...   

Concrete floor laid

The concrete arrived today after lunch. The workers did a quick bit of preparation work, shuttering for the doors and finish tacking up the DPC to the wall, before starting to pour. I was quite relieved because mine and Ian's electrical work got a thumbs up.

It was fascinating watching them all work as a team. The concrete mixer driver (CMD) in the grey overalls had a small box which radio controlled the conveyor belt. It was unfolded from alongside the lorry to stretch into the barn opening, twisting and bending as it went, all remotely controlled, until it was fully extented and the conveyor belt was taught. His box also controlled the speed of delivery of the concrete.

The two guys in the stripey top and blue overalls raked and levelled whilst the third chap holding the delivery tube moved the concrete around the floor. The CMD manipulated the arm to follow his movements.

It was quite a joy to watch, real teamwork. There was no shouting, or calling left a bit, right a bit, they all just worked together sliently and efficiently as a team. Real professionals. I suspect this is a spinoff of the French system of having lots of separate 'expert' trades. There are not jack-of-all-trade builders over here, just artisans that stick to a specific job, and do it very well.

In order to get the whole floor flat and level they used a laser level. The leveller was a rotating laser beam that cast an invisible horizontal disc within the barn. Attached to a tee stick (the cross of the tee at the bottom) was the laser receiver that beeped when aligned. When the bottom of the tee was touching the concrete and it beeped, the operator smoothed out a small patch of concrete with a trowel and drew a circle around it. This marked a point. As they worked serveral points were marked about 3m or 4m apart and then they just joined up the known level points with a 3m straight edge. No little sticks pointing out the ground, or bits of string, just a laser. Dead clever and very fast. It also helped that the concrete was poured to almost the perfect level to start with so they did have tons of it to move about.

Anyway, if your still with me, the floor took two mixer loads (30 tonnes?) and was finished before tea time. Now we move onto windows and door openings.

 9:28:07 PM   Concrete floor laid   

First fit electrics

Hopefully we are now ready for the concrete to arrive on Monday for the floor. The builders have covered all the hardcore, waste pipes, conduits and sand with a plastic membrane as a damp proof course, then two layers of polystyrene and finally a heavy duty wire mesh. Since they left Caroline and I have fed the water pipes through the three pieces of blue conduit buried in the floor. It sounds easy, but even with the supplied string to pull it through it is tough going. Any bends or kinks really build up the friction, and after about 10m of pushing and pulling you think you're never going to make it and you've got you're fingers crossed that the string doesn't break or come untied.

We had the same situation with the big fat electricity supply cable, but by now we were getting the hang of it. Even on short runs with two people it's not that easy. I think for the 30m run from the distribution board to the gites I might pre-load the conduit laying straight and flat on the ground before burying it in the the trench.

Before pouring the concrete floor I have had to place all the electricity cables I need on the wire mesh. All the cables run within flexible plastic gaine (conduit between 16mm and 25mm diameter depending on the number and size of wires) and are tied to the wire mesh and fixed to the walls in the appropriate positions for sockets, light switches etc. I've had to do alot of reading and research to understand the French regulations in NF C 15-100. Distribution uses a radial system, rather than a ring main like in the UK. Everything runs off a separate spur, each with a disjoncteur (circuit breaker) from the fuse box. Various spurs are then grouped together and further protected via an interrupteur differential (RCD) of various types and sensitivities depending on the destination (kitchen, bathroom, etc.) So you end up with lots and lots of wires spreading out from the fuse box. So far I've used about 250m of cabling just to provide the power supplies (and a couple of lights) for both gites downstairs. They each have their own fuse boxes, so everything is duplicated both sides. I'm glad my friend Ian came over this morning for moral support and to help tie in the last of the cables.

If you really want to know more about French electrics then try this book, L'installation électrique, it's my bible at the moment.

The last thing to worry about was the walk-in shower in the downstairs bedroom. The intention is to have a 'wet room' style shower without a shower tray to give access to people in wheelchairs. It adds extra complication because all the drainage and waste traps for the shower need to be below the floor level buried in the concrete and the floor tiles will need to slope slighty towards the plug hole. If I just leave the whole floor be level I'll never get a fall on the floor. I've no idea if I've done the right thing, but Ian and I knocked up some shuttering 1m by 1m square and placed it over the shower drain. The resulting hole can always be filled later, but I'm sure the builders will have a bit of a laugh on Monday morning.

 8:21:02 PM   First fit electrics   

New Bobcat

This morning at 07:30 a new bigger bobcat arrived, but strangely they left the old one stranded in the herrison.

Just after 08:30 the workers arrived and within a few minutes, another broken bobcat ! By the end of the week we should have a fine collection of plant, enough for a bit of digger dancing.

A bit more wheelbarrowing and a phone call, and everything is back on track. The pickup is loaded with underfloor insulation, various coloured gaine (conduit) for water, electricity and telephone to run under the floor along with a bunch of waste piping from yesterday. We spoke to the foreman and showed him the new positions of the toilets etc, which is fairly critical to the positioning of the waste pipes. It didn't feel that mentioning the changes once the floor was laid was a very good idea.

 9:39:12 AM   New Bobcat   

Floor base

The building action started again after lunch today with the arrival of the workmen, three huge lorry loads of herrison (hardcore for the base of the floor) and a bobcat on a low loader. Once they get going, they really get moving. The first lorry load was dumped in the barn, with the other two by the side. The bobcat driver was buzzing around at top speed until, CLANG, the bobcat broke.

The repair guy arrived but failed to fix it. So they resorted to wheelbarrows. Not for long. It's hard work shifting 30 tonnes by hand.

 8:36:45 PM   Floor base   

dig dig dig ... dig the whole day through

I spoke too soon about the 'lean-to'. It looks like it has had it's chips. When the digger man (I must ask him his name) and the foreman where talking yesterday about the excavation I thought I heard DM say that the lean-to was shaking and cracking whilst he was breaking up the floor, but my French wasn't good enough to be sure. Well today Caroline asked and yes, the lean-to is not fairing terribly well. On Monday we have a meeting with the grand foreman and will decide on wether to demolish and rebuild, or patch and continue. I suspect demolish.

We've always been told you get suprises and nothing is straightforward with groundworks.

I was just about to post (it's 20:15) and DM has returned with lorry and is currently digging in the dark!

 8:21:23 PM   dig dig dig ... dig the whole day through   

Still digging

Digger man didn't turn up yesterday. Today he needed to excavate in the 'lean-to' where the rising mail and water meter are located. Up until now we had the main water pipe to the house and gites strung across the floor and he was digging round it. Not possible today, so I had to disconnect the pipework at the meter. Whilst my pipework was dangling freely I decided to dig around the water pipe where exited through the barn wall. At the moment there is a joint inside the barn, which if left would be under the floor inside the new gites. Not a very good idea. So I've dug an 'inspection hatch' just outside, inserted some conduit in the wall, and pulled the pipe through to make the joint outside.

At the end of the day the foreman arrived with his laser level to check the depth of the excavation. In order to get the floor as low as we wanted it would have meant excavating under the foundations of the 'lean to'. The main barn was OK, just the side building had shallow foundations. The digger man had removed about half-a-meter of spoil throughout, and stopped because of the problem. The easiest, and cheapest, solution was to stop where we were, 20cm short of the proposed level. Our main ground floor was going to be slightly higher, meaning a step outside, but the on the plus side the staircases would be shorter and cheaper.

You can see in the photo our water pipe reconnected at the end of the day. The pipe exits the barn just in front of the digger bucket with the rising main behind the camera in the lean-to. Hopefully after the excavation it's not leaning any further than it should.

 7:08:05 PM   Still digging   

Floor removal

The demolition of the floor started a pace this morning.

As a nice suprise for the digger man, we seem to have two concrete floors in the barn. It looks like it was previously a cow shed with a flat floor and troughs (mangers?) round the edge for feeding. There are series of rings set into the wall to which the cows must have been tethered. At some time a new floor was laid on top with two gulleys running down the middle of the floor. We suspect it was for veal production, because the newer addition of the 'lean-to' had a hot water cylinder and some sort of drainage to possibly prepare the warm milk feed for the veal.

He's shifted about 5 lorry loads of rubble and there is a fair bit still to do.

 5:18:22 PM   Floor removal   

The renovations have started

The builders arrived today. Well, not so much a builder more a demolition man. The first job is to break up the existing floor of the barn and then the macons will come and create a new lower and flat floor for improved access. Building on the current floor would make the front doors too high.

The lorry arrived at 18:30 and within a few minutes of unloading the mini-digger we had no water in the house. Fearing the worst we expected a very wet mini-digger driver, but it turns out he had spotted the fact that the rising main was in the barn and turned off the stopcock just in case he fractured the pipe. He didn't know that the supply for all the gites and our house comes from the one meter, currently located in the danger zone.

I think I might go and buy 50m of water pipe + connectors tomorrow just in case.

 8:17:05 PM   The renovations have started