Autumn progress at Cae Helygen

No update in the last few months but we have made progress-
Electricity supply installed
Bedrooms concrete floor laid
Blockwork walls to make the bedrooms and bathroom
Sewage treatment plant installed
Currently we have installed the crogloft floor beams and are putting the joists in and the roof slates are coming along.......

 Hardcore and sand blinding on the bedrooms floor  with thickening for the blockwork walls. Visqueen next

 Concrete mixer arrived 

 Barrowing the concrete in

 Jonny - Tim and Liz making a proper tamping device

 Liz and Jonny borrowing

 Alan, Jonny Tim, Liz and Chris  a great job thanks 

 The walls in the bedrooms area were not square so it was challenging to work out what to do then Dan came back and blocked up the walls.

 Dan did a great job - I finished off the walls with the raking tool 

Nearly ready for the crogloft steels

 Robyn came back and dug the trench for the electricity supply

 Scottish power came and joined it all up- good job

 We ordered 2 crogloft steels - pretty heavy and used the JCB to move them in through the gable end

 Steve the stone mason and Tim helped to move the steel into place- we bought wheels for the scaffolding which make a huge difference to moving it around

 Robin came back and dug the hole for the Sewage treatment plant  which is a Marsh industries 4-6 person packet treatment plant

 Concreting the base

 In place and inspection chambers being fitted

  Getting the fall right was important across the yard 25mm per metre. it was shallow across the yard so we covered it with mesh and concrete 

Concreting the living room floor

The next job was to concrete the living room floor.
We ordered 20 tons of MOT 1 sub floor and laid it out and whacked it down. We used the laser level to get the levels right.  John and James helped to sort this  out- 100 wheelbarrows of sub base.
We laid the visqueen on a bed of sand and then ordered nearly 5 cubes of concrete to provide a 100mm  floor.
John, Jonny, Jen and me did the job, concrete form Porthmadog concrete. We were probably one person short, but we will managed.  Two barrow wheels got punctures which didn't help!
Tamping was hard work and maybe we needed to think of a better tamping method.
The lorry driver gave us 8/10 which was heartening.

 20 tons of hardcore

 Getting to floor level- hard work

 We used a big plank, level and laser lever then whacked it flat

 Visqueen laid on a bed of sand

 Jen cutting the visqueen

 Concrete arrives

Barrowing, raking and tamping - Jonny the tamper 

John the barrow man 

 

      Another job done

Stone Masons

Steve and Steve the stone masons from Anglesey have started to build the courtyard and built the pillars at the entrance the main room doorway.
They are pretty skilful guys who know how to manhandle and carefully place stone.
A lot of sand and cement was used.

Entrance to barn, gable frame ready to be stone clad

Stone retaining wall being built

The right pillar

This small wall will be topped with slate and used for seating BBQ's etc

Stone wall art

Pillar on the left and digging out the  living room floor

View of the wall through the doorway

Stone Facing the Kitchen

Steve and Steve from Anglesey recommended by our JCB driver Robyn have been stone facing the kitchen using random rubble from our pile of stone.
They are rock artists- very skilful indeed.

 One of the Steve and Steve's

 Wide slate window ledges from Blaenau Ffestiniog

 The sides of the gable frame will have mini buttresses 

 There is a rabbit in this wall can you see it?

 Before and after such a difference