Renovating an old farmhouse and living on the Pennines
Discussion
The Mad Monk said:
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.
Our iron filter is self cleaning with a large salt/brine bucket as part of the setup which flushes the filter once a week. Maintenance for that is to keep the salt topped up. I think eventually you have to change out the filter mixture after so many years. Our water is tested once a year by council and been spot on since everything installed.
The Mad Monk said:
I am probably writing twaddle, but-
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.
Apparently it's called Goiter. "Iodine deficiency is the main cause of goiters. Iodine is essential to helping your thyroid produce thyroid hormones. When you don't have enough iodine, the thyroid works extra hard to make thyroid hormone, causing the gland to grow larger." Which shows as swelling around the neck.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.
Something worth looking into for sure, at the moment we're using one of those filter jugs to do it manually, but of course it won't add anything in. The water has gone for one test, we'll get the local authority one done too, it doesn't look like it's been done for a few years.
Like most things round here
megaphone said:
That steep slope could have a thread all of its own there is so much to talk about.It has indeed slipped just there. The previous owner decided to borrow a digger and dig the base away to use it to fill some kind of pond in the paddock. After he'd done and went in for his dinner there was a great WWUUUUMMPPHH as the hill slid down. It's going to get Gabion baskets there as i've got loads of rubble and stone here to fill them. Stone for the seen faces, rubble for the cores and hidden rear.
Behind the garage and all the way up to the house is a retaining wall which is holding it back there. Behind the house still needs work though, some of it is actually resting against the extended part of it, also contributing to the damp too no doubt.
Evanivitch said:
Evoluzione said:
I don't know much about it, but whatever happens I'm not digging it up so everything should be ok right?
If it dries out then it will degrade and release CO2 into the atmosphere. Drying out can be caused by drainage or planting trees.When I say trees I don't mean a forest, someone has already started one on the other side of the stream to us. There will just be a few dotted around. Green credentials aside they are also to break up and soften the scenery and improve it aesthetically.
MagicHat said:
We had similar issues when buying our house, it was fed by a well and failed initial water tests for Iron & manganese. We now have a sediment filter, UV lamp and an iron particle filter (luckily the seller had to put all this in place before house purchase went through but costs sound similar to you). The UV lamp should be changed every 12/18 months, sediment filters are dependent on how clean your water is, we clean ours out every couple months.
Our iron filter is self cleaning with a large salt/brine bucket as part of the setup which flushes the filter once a week. Maintenance for that is to keep the salt topped up. I think eventually you have to change out the filter mixture after so many years. Our water is tested once a year by council and been spot on since everything installed.
That's useful to know, thankyou. Our iron filter is self cleaning with a large salt/brine bucket as part of the setup which flushes the filter once a week. Maintenance for that is to keep the salt topped up. I think eventually you have to change out the filter mixture after so many years. Our water is tested once a year by council and been spot on since everything installed.
We'll run it by some different companies and see what they come up with. There are a few reasonably local as this kind of supply is obviously popular in these areas.
Now CV restrictions are over the exhibitions are back on, we plan on going to one or two home building & renovation types next year. Just need to find out which ones are most suitable for us. It appears that under the same title one goes to different parts of the country, but at every venue it differs in size (I think). The London one is perhaps the biggest, but would prefer to go to the NEC as it's much easier for us.
Evoluzione said:
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.
Thanks That said I think we'll be finding bits of it everywhere for a long time to come.
We are in the throes of completing on a Scottish smallholding and the house is old stone and partially painted so seeing what you have done is a great thought for us.
skeeterm5 said:
Evoluzione said:
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.
Thanks That said I think we'll be finding bits of it everywhere for a long time to come.
We are in the throes of completing on a Scottish smallholding and the house is old stone and partially painted so seeing what you have done is a great thought for us.
Know it will rip into anything near it so remove stuff you don't want damaging, gutter, downpipes, cables, plants etc.
Block up all drains.
Park your cars well away, they won't get directly damaged, just covered in stray grit and dust otherwise.
Remove any assorted brackets and fittings from the wall - no good removing them afterwards and finding a white spot underneath.
Warn your neighbours if you have any close ones.
Accept it's going to look like a warzone and you'll end up doing a lot of cleaning up.
Other more modern specialised methods do exist though and they are tidier and less aggressive. There is DOFF and TORC and others.
Some of the areas here are just painted render, it hasn't bonded well so i'll do them with the power washer and an aggressive blaster nozzle.
I've collected a few restoration techniques and places to go to find more knowledge, if you need any help let me know.
Edited by Evoluzione on Tuesday 24th August 09:27
Evoluzione said:
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.
Not much, other than when in Aus the groundwater was a bit funny and we drank rainwater, collected in 2 big tanks. It then went through 2 filters and a UV filter before being deemed safe to drink. 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.
Over in NZ we drank bore-water which was better than any mineral water you'll ever buy. You could drink that straight out the ground, no filtering, no nothing, although it was filtered to be sure.
Because the water was stored in large quantities, and for longer periods of time, in Aus it was tested every 12 or 24 months to ensure there was nothing nasty in the tank.
In Montenegro, friends' place out there has a big (20,000 litre) tank under the house and collects rainwater too. Similar filtering, 2 mesh and 1 UV. So rainwater is always an alternative which works well elsewhere in the world if you don't like the bore water.
3 days of ear splitting noise, dust and 2 tons of grit were done and the house was looking almost as good as new, as it was 120yrs ago - before people started meddling with it.
So it's cost thousands to mess it up and more thousands to take it all off and start again. Funny old world isn't it.
I was going to say it was 1/2 an inch smaller now, but due to it spreading a bit over the years it isn't.
I washed it down with the hosepipe to get the worst off and it's still a bit damp in the pic. Prior to me giving it a shower it was really damp and cold, even under the late August sun, so much moisture locked in. The lefthand gable was actually coated in some black bitumen coating under all the paint. The guys did well, started at 8ish and worked through till after 5, no breaks. I paid them off with a little extra.
As it dries the colours mellow and it looks even better now, but enough pics of that view for now.
This shows rising damp, it's probably largely caused by the raised patio slabs butted up to the walls and then a fillet of S&C to finish it off
To begin to relieve it we'll start with a French drain around the base of the walls. As said earlier we'll hack off the OPC pointing over the next few months and start to re-point in lime next Spring.
Here is a very good example of how moisture is held in stone when the wrong pointing is applied:
My first thoughts were 'Get that stuff off my house ASAP' and bugger the porch and extension, maybe I should have asked for them blasting too, but we plan to demolish them one day anyhow. I hit the porch with the Karcher and a Dirtblaster nozzle, it took most of the loose paint off, but some still remains. I'll either leave it, or put some beige paint on to see it through until it's end.
Gassing Station | Homes, Gardens and DIY | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff