Renovating an old farmhouse and living on the Pennines
Discussion
Once you've fixed the damp problem you should find the house feels no where near as cold in the winter.
I've owned 2 houses with solid stone walls, one with damp was horrendously cold in the winter I swear it was colder in the house than it was outside some winter days.
My current house with no damp is very comfortable in the winter and requires minimal heating, the stone walls just seem to maintain an ambient temperature all year round.
I've owned 2 houses with solid stone walls, one with damp was horrendously cold in the winter I swear it was colder in the house than it was outside some winter days.
My current house with no damp is very comfortable in the winter and requires minimal heating, the stone walls just seem to maintain an ambient temperature all year round.
Thanks again for your replies.
Despite being quite high up you can't see the sea from the Pennines
Inabox, I will PM you, it would be great to chat some more.
I do still have some cars and they will be coming across, i've measured the double garage and should get three in if I can shove one sideways and maybe climb out the boot. Then other stuff will go in front of them. Right now it's just a case of getting everything across and storing it then starting the work on the house and creating more space.
The cars maybe needed to create more funds as we go on so I need to look after them.
The land is rented off to a sheep farmer, they use some of their subsidy to fund it and look after it. They are slowly working to reduce the moorland reeds and repair* the walls when they fail. They put a selective weedkiller on the reeds, then run the topper over them (farming word for lawnmower
) when they've died to make it more useful.
I'm aware of being sensitive to the environment and wasn't entirely sure about changing the land. However there is plenty of this type already surrounding us and actually we are in fact restoring it back to what it once was. Many years ago it was farming grassland, but like everything else here it's not been looked after and has become over run.
These guys need somewhere to live too:
We'll talk about water later too as it's a surprisingly big subject here, but the fields were drained by 'soughs'. These were drainage ditches formed by two stone slabs pointing up, one on top capping them off and one as a base. They are somewhat self cleaning because when it get serious rain through it it cleans the base out of soil, silt etc.
Not only have they suffered from lack of maintenance, but also collapsed from the use of heavy farm equipment running over the top of them.
It'll be a long time before i'm involved in draining the land again, but do plan on doing it one day. I'm also going to plant some trees, maybe this Winter as it's the best time to plant them.
Sadly I won't be around to enjoy the splendour of a mature tree, but future owners will. It's about making a difference and leaving my mark - in a good way.
From the beer and view thread:
Eventually the house will be worth a lot more than what we paid for it, it'll then pay for us in an old peoples home or mental hospital
Despite being quite high up you can't see the sea from the Pennines
Inabox, I will PM you, it would be great to chat some more.
I do still have some cars and they will be coming across, i've measured the double garage and should get three in if I can shove one sideways and maybe climb out the boot. Then other stuff will go in front of them. Right now it's just a case of getting everything across and storing it then starting the work on the house and creating more space.
The cars maybe needed to create more funds as we go on so I need to look after them.
The land is rented off to a sheep farmer, they use some of their subsidy to fund it and look after it. They are slowly working to reduce the moorland reeds and repair* the walls when they fail. They put a selective weedkiller on the reeds, then run the topper over them (farming word for lawnmower
) when they've died to make it more useful.I'm aware of being sensitive to the environment and wasn't entirely sure about changing the land. However there is plenty of this type already surrounding us and actually we are in fact restoring it back to what it once was. Many years ago it was farming grassland, but like everything else here it's not been looked after and has become over run.
These guys need somewhere to live too:
- Sadly 'repair' means putting posts up over a fallen drystone wall and stringing wire mesh across. Hopefully one day i'll get into drystone walling and do it properly, there is plenty to go at.
We'll talk about water later too as it's a surprisingly big subject here, but the fields were drained by 'soughs'. These were drainage ditches formed by two stone slabs pointing up, one on top capping them off and one as a base. They are somewhat self cleaning because when it get serious rain through it it cleans the base out of soil, silt etc.
Not only have they suffered from lack of maintenance, but also collapsed from the use of heavy farm equipment running over the top of them.
It'll be a long time before i'm involved in draining the land again, but do plan on doing it one day. I'm also going to plant some trees, maybe this Winter as it's the best time to plant them.
Sadly I won't be around to enjoy the splendour of a mature tree, but future owners will. It's about making a difference and leaving my mark - in a good way.
From the beer and view thread:
Eventually the house will be worth a lot more than what we paid for it, it'll then pay for us in an old peoples home or mental hospital
Edited by Evoluzione on Wednesday 20th October 20:45
Evoluzione said:
Thanks again for your replies.
Despite being quite high up you can't see the sea from the Pennines
Looks amazing! What altitude are you at there?Despite being quite high up you can't see the sea from the Pennines
You'd be surprised how quickly trees and scrub can grow/recolonize once the woolly maggots are kept away. Even 6 years can make a huge difference.
https://twitter.com/Chad_C_Mulligan/status/1310495...
silentbrown said:
Evoluzione said:
Thanks again for your replies.
Despite being quite high up you can't see the sea from the Pennines
Looks amazing! What altitude are you at there?Despite being quite high up you can't see the sea from the Pennines
You'd be surprised how quickly trees and scrub can grow/recolonize once the woolly maggots are kept away. Even 6 years can make a huge difference.
https://twitter.com/Chad_C_Mulligan/status/1310495...
Evoluzione said:
We'll talk about water later too as it's a surprisingly big subject here, but the fields were drained by 'sophs'. These were drainage ditches formed by two stone slabs pointing up and one on top capping them off. Not only have they suffered from lack of maintenance, but also collapsed from the use of heavy farm equipment running over the top of them.
It'll be a long time before i'm involved in draining the land again, but do plan on doing it one day. I'm also going to plant some trees, maybe this Winter as it's the best time to plant them.
Sadly I won't be around to enjoy the splendour of a mature tree, but future owners will. It's about making a difference and leaving my mark - in a good way.
By blocking the drainage and not planting trees, you'd quite possibly be restoring an old peat bog, which is a huge carbon sink. It might be worth getting some ground cores taken to confirm, because it wouldn't be immediately obvious from the surface if the land is artificially drained.It'll be a long time before i'm involved in draining the land again, but do plan on doing it one day. I'm also going to plant some trees, maybe this Winter as it's the best time to plant them.
Sadly I won't be around to enjoy the splendour of a mature tree, but future owners will. It's about making a difference and leaving my mark - in a good way.
There's a few pest bog restoration projects nationally that have identified that restoring the peat bog is more beneficial than planting trees.
silentbrown said:
Looks amazing! What altitude are you at there?
You'd be surprised how quickly trees and scrub can grow/recolonize once the woolly maggots are kept away. Even 6 years can make a huge difference.
https://twitter.com/Chad_C_Mulligan/status/1310495...
We're halfway down a hill at about 330m, but can see a big hill in the distance which is over 550 though.You'd be surprised how quickly trees and scrub can grow/recolonize once the woolly maggots are kept away. Even 6 years can make a huge difference.
https://twitter.com/Chad_C_Mulligan/status/1310495...
Looking across the valley to the other side last week the tops were just about lost in low cloud:
skeeterm5 said:
The walls look amazing after the blasting. What did you do with the mess that is made?
They clear up the bulk of it and take it away. I have however asked them if I could keep a lot of it and of course they thought that was great! I have my own blasting equipment so it'll come in useful another day.That said I think we'll be finding bits of it everywhere for a long time to come.
Evanivitch said:
Evoluzione said:
We'll talk about water later too as it's a surprisingly big subject here, but the fields were drained by 'sophs'. These were drainage ditches formed by two stone slabs pointing up and one on top capping them off. Not only have they suffered from lack of maintenance, but also collapsed from the use of heavy farm equipment running over the top of them.
It'll be a long time before i'm involved in draining the land again, but do plan on doing it one day. I'm also going to plant some trees, maybe this Winter as it's the best time to plant them.
Sadly I won't be around to enjoy the splendour of a mature tree, but future owners will. It's about making a difference and leaving my mark - in a good way.
By blocking the drainage and not planting trees, you'd quite possibly be restoring an old peat bog, which is a huge carbon sink. It might be worth getting some ground cores taken to confirm, because it wouldn't be immediately obvious from the surface if the land is artificially drained.It'll be a long time before i'm involved in draining the land again, but do plan on doing it one day. I'm also going to plant some trees, maybe this Winter as it's the best time to plant them.
Sadly I won't be around to enjoy the splendour of a mature tree, but future owners will. It's about making a difference and leaving my mark - in a good way.
There's a few pest bog restoration projects nationally that have identified that restoring the peat bog is more beneficial than planting trees.
Water.
Or rather, water management, a surprisingly big topic here.
Until recent years the supply to the house used to come from the black tanks up there on the hill right in the centre:
We have some written notes from one of the previous owners, it advises to leave the taps running when it drops way below zero to stop them from freezing solid.
It's a real shonky set up! Two pieces of rusty iron balanced precariously on some loosely badly stacked stone. The rear steel has collapsed in the centre so now makes a V shape. I have no idea why they didn't cut a solid 'shelf' out of the hillside and just sit them there.
Water trickles or spews (dependent on recent rainfall) from an unmarked (on a map) spring in the side of the hill, all someone has done is put some household downpipe up to it and held it with baling twine. The filter is a tea strainer pushed into the pipe.
It had dropped away and the tanks were dry, I cut a section of the pipe off and tucked it under the trickle, the tanks are now full. For now it just feeds a single hosepipe in the yard which is useful. The containers are settling tanks, much of the sediment falls out of suspension and sits on the bottom. The local water company test it for nasties for free.
In the future I will set it up properly with pipes, drains, sediment sieve/separator etc and have 3 x 1000 ltr IBC tanks up there. You'll see them in some of the pics as I picked them up recently for £15 ea. I'll cut them into the hillside and camouflage them, not only to hide them from view, but also to stop algae from forming and keep them from the sun. I've noticed some or all IBCs are not UV resistant, they get brittle and crack like eggs.
The idea is they will supply water to the workshop, yard and garden. I'm pondering over making or getting a ram pump (look it up, they're very interesting) to get the water higher up the bank to gain more 'head' of pressure for free, but we'll see.
The water supply to the house is now from a borehole in the garage, here I need your advice. It has no filter and the water has a lot of iron in it, you can taste it and it stains everything brown. I'm now living with a ginner
At the moment we've just sent off a sample for analysis, but we're looking at a £1k+ bill to put a filter in and it'll need annual maintenance. Any experiences or advice on that are welcome.
Or rather, water management, a surprisingly big topic here.
Until recent years the supply to the house used to come from the black tanks up there on the hill right in the centre:
We have some written notes from one of the previous owners, it advises to leave the taps running when it drops way below zero to stop them from freezing solid.
It's a real shonky set up! Two pieces of rusty iron balanced precariously on some loosely badly stacked stone. The rear steel has collapsed in the centre so now makes a V shape. I have no idea why they didn't cut a solid 'shelf' out of the hillside and just sit them there.
Water trickles or spews (dependent on recent rainfall) from an unmarked (on a map) spring in the side of the hill, all someone has done is put some household downpipe up to it and held it with baling twine. The filter is a tea strainer pushed into the pipe.
It had dropped away and the tanks were dry, I cut a section of the pipe off and tucked it under the trickle, the tanks are now full. For now it just feeds a single hosepipe in the yard which is useful. The containers are settling tanks, much of the sediment falls out of suspension and sits on the bottom. The local water company test it for nasties for free.
In the future I will set it up properly with pipes, drains, sediment sieve/separator etc and have 3 x 1000 ltr IBC tanks up there. You'll see them in some of the pics as I picked them up recently for £15 ea. I'll cut them into the hillside and camouflage them, not only to hide them from view, but also to stop algae from forming and keep them from the sun. I've noticed some or all IBCs are not UV resistant, they get brittle and crack like eggs.
The idea is they will supply water to the workshop, yard and garden. I'm pondering over making or getting a ram pump (look it up, they're very interesting) to get the water higher up the bank to gain more 'head' of pressure for free, but we'll see.
The water supply to the house is now from a borehole in the garage, here I need your advice. It has no filter and the water has a lot of iron in it, you can taste it and it stains everything brown. I'm now living with a ginner
At the moment we've just sent off a sample for analysis, but we're looking at a £1k+ bill to put a filter in and it'll need annual maintenance. Any experiences or advice on that are welcome.
Evoluzione said:
Water.
Or rather, water management, a surprisingly big topic here.
.................
The water supply to the house is now from a borehole in the garage, here I need your advice. It has no filter and the water has a lot of iron in it, you can taste it and it stains everything brown. I'm now living with a ginner
At the moment we've just sent off a sample for analysis, but we're looking at a £1k+ bill to put a filter in and it'll need annual maintenance. Any experiences or advice on that are welcome.
I am probably writing twaddle, but-Or rather, water management, a surprisingly big topic here.
.................
The water supply to the house is now from a borehole in the garage, here I need your advice. It has no filter and the water has a lot of iron in it, you can taste it and it stains everything brown. I'm now living with a ginner
At the moment we've just sent off a sample for analysis, but we're looking at a £1k+ bill to put a filter in and it'll need annual maintenance. Any experiences or advice on that are welcome.
I should be very careful with the drinking water supply. e.g. Lack of iodine in the water can cause serious medical problems (google Derbyshire neck). Will the local water company do some tests for you?
I wish you well (pun). It sounds a very interesting project.
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