Renovating an old farmhouse and living on the Pennines

[The Mad Monk]

Mark Benson said:

As it looks like a sedimentary rock, I suspect you could split it along the grain with a cold chisel (and a bit of patience) - try on a sample first though....

EDIT: Piece of cake https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmqzreTMe7I

Edited by Mark Benson on Thursday 20th January 15:09

Would you ask him to hold his phone in landscape mode, not portrait, please?

[monkfish1]

Evoluzione said:

monkfish1 said:

Out of interest, what sort of level above sea level are you?

We're at 327 m. (1073 ft).

Thanks

[Evoluzione]

monkfish1 said:

Evoluzione said:

monkfish1 said:

Out of interest, what sort of level above sea level are you?

We're at 327 m. (1073 ft).

Thanks

Why?

[paulrockliffe]

Evoluzione said:

monkfish1 said:

Evoluzione said:

monkfish1 said:

Out of interest, what sort of level above sea level are you?

We're at 327 m. (1073 ft).

Thanks

Why?

Probably interested to know that you get such geology so high up. 1000ft up and it was once the bottom.

For your sign thing, could you put the rock in place, tilt it how you want it, support it with some steel, then make some sort of cast-in-situ concrete base to fix it permanently?

[monkfish1]

Evoluzione said:

monkfish1 said:

Evoluzione said:

monkfish1 said:

Out of interest, what sort of level above sea level are you?

We're at 327 m. (1073 ft).

Thanks

Why?

Looking at a property. Its at 900ft. Just trying to get a feel on what the means weatherwise. Not in the pennines though.............

[Evoluzione]

paulrockliffe said:

Evoluzione said:

monkfish1 said:

Evoluzione said:

monkfish1 said:

Out of interest, what sort of level above sea level are you?

We're at 327 m. (1073 ft).

Thanks

Why?

Probably interested to know that you get such geology so high up. 1000ft up and it was once the bottom.

I found this conversation about it here: https://www.mindat.org/mesg-407177.html
Which (if it's correct) explains a lot and it does fit in with the situation here. It was near where the spring water flows, so it's possible that is what caused it to develop like that.

[silentbrown]

paulrockliffe said:

Probably interested to know that you get such geology so high up. 1000ft up and it was once the bottom.

Well, there are marine fossils at the top of Yr Wyddfa... 3000+ ft.

Adiabatic Lapse rate means you're a couple of degrees C cooler at 1000ft than at sea-level, but I'd worry more about how protected you are from wind. and how far from gritted roads.

Mexico City is at 7000ft, so elevation isn't everything!

[Andeh1]

Loving the thread! Keep the updates coming.

[dhutch]

paulrockliffe said:

For your sign thing, could you put the rock in place, tilt it how you want it, support it with some steel, then make some sort of cast-in-situ concrete base to fix it permanently?

We got a custom stone name sign made up by a local stone mason.

Drove around the area taking photos of a few we liked, found some equiv looking fonts and laid it out on powerpoint, printed 1:1 to confirm, and then he just went away and made it for us. Hand chiselled, v-bottomed profile to the letters, sandstone.

Price was similar to that from 'grave stone' places which use CNC water jet cutters that give a square sided cut and a 'perfect' cut which doesnt always fit the way something hand cut does.

Then spent about and hour and a half, three times, carefully painting the letters in white.

Very happy with it.

[Evoluzione]

dhutch said:

Stuff.

Your questions were answered back there btw.

---

Is it a plane? Is it a helicopter? Neither or both...

As mentioned before I think the RAF come over here now and again on training. It was dark the other week and when it's dark here it really is black. At the moment that is our security, i'm thinking that if anyone wants to try and break in and they can't see they won't bother. Yeah I know, torches and stuff, but I don't think your average real life burglar carries a torch, nor want to try and jemmy a door holding a mobile. No matter what security measures you come up with someone will say it won't work because of xyz etc.
Anyway, I could hear something coming over and it was almost completely unlit, all I knew was it sounded weird. It came right over us very close and the only thing I could see was two tiny little green lights, nothing else whatsoever, all very eerie.
K looked it up on an app and it turned out to be a Boeing Osprey:












It went further up North to a mystery location before coming back again later, 2 nights on the trot.

Out in the field late afternoon I was treated to the sight of the barn owl coming out early and our Kes having a battle in the sky, Kes won, the Owl went back to it's house to wait for nightfall when Kes would be roosting. If you've been following closely you'll remember the owl really does have a house!
One of my neighbours says the Kestrel sits on his Easterly facing window cill sheltering from the storms.
I've never seen a red Kite here, but one flew over recently. I think they travel quite far looking for food and as per usual the crows went up like a pair of WW2 Spitfires to fend it off a Heinkel.

The digger had a very rusty roof. I had some epoxy paint to cure that and some fibreglass to cover it so I made use of the dry weather we've been having lately. I made a template from some Trespa I had kicking around for the sunroof, you need something the fibreglass won't stick to like plastic, even so I wrapped the edges with box tape and made up some basic framework to hold it in place whilst I 'glassed it up to form a flange for the rubber seal.







The one thing I didn't have was some topcoat, it's important to know the difference between topcoat (or flowcoat) and gelcoat when you're 'glassing. Topcoat is what they use for fibreglass roofs and is always grey - a bit like a JCB digger roof. It's been a bit windy all over the North and Scotland lately, so haven't put it on yet. It has rained too and the cab is dry - no more puddles on the seat.

Whilst it was dry, it was also a bit cold, the roof froze over after some of the stages which probably didn't do it a lot of good, but whatever, it's a roof on an old digger. As long as it keeps the rain of it'll be ok.

I've also realised the whole front upper window and frame slides up until its sits right out of the way under the roof which is handy.



It uses a very, very crude method of square tube sliding in a track and also looked like it had been roughly bashed about by someone and was locked in place. I set to and equally roughly bashed it back, the frame lifted up as it should and promptly fell out on my head
A couple of bolts were found in my bolt bucket which stopped the track from spreading, it coming out and I set off out to dig some holes somewhere. When closed the thing rattles loudly like an old machine gun, now I know why some eejit hammered it closed. I cut a wooden wedge and shoved it in, no rattles and when it's open the wedge keeps it there too. I know from my Automotive background that 3 cyl engines are very unbalanced and vibrate a lot.
I eased the binding door, greased the hinges and put a piece of Polycarb in the bottom where the glass was missing, that rewarded me by rattling too and flapping open occasionally.

If you look at this early pic you can see a high point under the tow hitch:



The whole yard has been dictated by this piece of stone just peeping out of the ground. You drive uphill into the yard to this point and downhill everywhere else. Downhill to the house, the field beyond and to the paddock.
I'm thinking that we will take that rickety stone wall down to extend the garden and view a bit further on before it drops down a steep slope, maybe put a Summer house on the edge so we can sit and admire the views from there. The house is set too far back for this to be available from the ground floor.
This chunk of stone says 'Leave me alone and do something else' because many before you have fallen at this hurdle. The man with the newly acquired digger however is oblivious to this nonsense. He is God in his JCB so off we went on a mission. Some hours later (after digging through the backfill spoil of bricks and concrete blocks of others) this was exposed:



And that was just the tip of the iceberg as it goes down much further than that.
It's the size of a small car, but with the weight of a truck. The big guns were called into play and I set to like a rabid man on Speed cutting a lawn with a pair of scissors. I chipped and chiselled, I clawed with the bucket and broke it down over a period of days. The bits that came off that were too big to lift I rolled and dragged them out of the battle site.

Here you can see how to do it properly, go in with the road hammer until it starts to crack:



Then bray some chisels in until it lets go. You can hear it cracking like a piece of ice as it gives way, it's surprisingly flexible and will open quite wide at the face whilst at the bottom it's still un split.



Then I go in with the bucket:






I then get them half on the dozer blade and half under the bucket and drag them away. I hope there are no plant operators or mechanics reading this bit. Move along now, there is nothing to see here
I must have pulled out about a thousand pounds worth of stone and have now got a decent sized hole to get rid of some unwanted hardcore.

Some close up shots for the geologists:



It looks like sand sculpted by waves to me. It was a long time since I went to school, but IIRC when the ice age thawed glaciers slid down the hills, scarring them and bringing rocks like these with them, which is why it was marooned there at a strange angle on some stones, soil and clay. It feels a bit odd to be the one disturbing it and splitting it open after thousands of years, but it'll be put to good use. I want others to be able to enjoy this place after we've gone.








I often start these posts with a couple of points I want to share, but once I start I remember all kinds of things. I hope it remains interesting in a mild kind of way, a bit like (but not as good as) Mortimer & Whitehouse fishing or James May taking something apart and reassembling it perhaps.

Edited by Evoluzione on Tuesday 8th February 15:09

[Backtothenorth]

EV your thread is fascinating, it is the first thing that I look at on PH.in terms of updates. I am going to be boring you all rigid once I finally get to my new house in Cumbria !

[gareth h]

Strange looking aircraft the Osprey, we used to get them over Salisbury plain from time to time.

[CharlesdeGaulle]

gareth h said:

Strange looking aircraft the Osprey, we used to get them over Salisbury plain from time to time.

For quite a large aircraft, they're surprisingly small inside. Cool things though.

[silentbrown]

CharlesdeGaulle said:

gareth h said:

Strange looking aircraft the Osprey, we used to get them over Salisbury plain from time to time.

For quite a large aircraft, they're surprisingly small inside. Cool things though.

There were a couple of them at Shobdon a few years back. I suspect the mob at Credenhill wanted to kick the tyres...

[Steve_W]

Nothing useful to add, other than to say how much I enjoy this thread.

Loved the description of the crows rising like Spitfires after the kite. We get that here as they see off the kites & buzzards - tenacious beggars, aren't they?

[Evoluzione]

Steve_W said:

Nothing useful to add, other than to say how much I enjoy this thread.

Loved the description of the crows rising like Spitfires after the kite. We get that here as they see off the kites & buzzards - tenacious beggars, aren't they?

Rock hard are crows, they'll have a go at anything.



It's all a bit grim at the moment, like much of the UK it's been nothing but cold, wet and windy for the last few days. Almost everything I own is wet and it doesn't matter where it's stored either. The constant driving rain forces it's way though the walls and roofs of the barn, garage and house. Driving down the road to the town and it's cascading off the fields above the road and running like a river down it.
Water is running over the top of our fields and actually bubbling up out of them too.
The Polytunnel is holding up well, the greenhouse frame I brought with me not so:



Before:


Now:


Lord knows where the dog went, probably in York somewhere.

I keep having a few hours with the field drainage now and again, I was working away oblivious to my silent, smiling audience until I looked around:



The spring near the house has overcome it's meagre temporary drain off pipes and is coming down the hill, luckily I'd dug a moat at the base as part of my digger learning exercises so it's running around that:





Where I lived before I was classed as motor trade and had many useful contacts, one of which was my MOT guy who i'd known and used for decades. It was a case of rock up when told to, have a chat whilst he had a look at it, pointed out what needed doing and gave me a clean ticket. I then went away and fixed whatever it was when it was convenient, all very easy and amicable.
Not so now. Here Adolf failed it on various items, some serious, some not and I had to roll around outside under the van in a freezing force 10 to fix it.

All the stone is now pulled out of what now looks like a bomb crater:





When we tore out all the stalls and walls from the stables/barn I stacked it all outside on pallets. One of our neighbours has a tractor with forks so is going to pop around later on this week. Hopefully it'll lift all the rubble up and dump it in the hole. It'll settle naturally then eventually we will put some kind of driveway over it. I'm really liking the idea of reclaimed stone sets (cobbles). They'll cope with all the traffic and weather we can throw at them, most of the streets in the towns around here were and still are lined with them.

When it stops raining i've got to measure and draw the area where the new workshop will hopefully be built, then apply for planning. Hopefully (again) i'll have somewhere dry and slightly warmer to work next Winter.

The chap that owns one of the fields bordering ours has got rid of the lad who was renting it off him for sheep and cows, it's now going to be a wood, you can just see the bundles of something (saplings or their plastic covers) dotted around in the field there:



I don't think we'll see large trees there in our lifetime, but someone will one day. With it will come more birds and possibly deer. The latter do live further down the valley, but don't come up here due to the lack of cover.

Some of the bulbs we planted around the place are showing buds now:



So Spring can't be far off.

[skeeterm5]

Loving the thread.

A while back you mentioned getting a 4x4 and I thought it was a great idea. So I have done the same to use as a workhorse around the yard and fields.

When it arrived



I have taken the canopy off which makes it easier to chuck things into it, like a pine tree that fell down in one of the storms.



It is perfect for this type ,of stuff.

Edit - I have not moved to Austrian and have no idea why it is upside down,

Edited by skeeterm5 on Tuesday 22 February 13:30

[IanA2]

Evoluzione said:

Rock hard are crows, they'll have a go at anything.



It's all a bit grim at the moment, like much of the UK it's been nothing but cold, wet and windy for the last few days. Almost everything I own is wet and it doesn't matter where it's stored either. The constant driving rain forces it's way though the walls and roofs of the barn, garage and house. Driving down the road to the town and it's cascading off the fields above the road and running like a river down it.
Water is running over the top of our fields and actually bubbling up out of them too.
The Polytunnel is holding up well, the greenhouse frame I brought with me not so:



Before:


Now:


Lord knows where the dog went, probably in York somewhere.

I keep having a few hours with the field drainage now and again, I was working away oblivious to my silent, smiling audience until I looked around:



The spring near the house has overcome it's meagre temporary drain off pipes and is coming down the hill, luckily I'd dug a moat at the base as part of my digger learning exercises so it's running around that:





Where I lived before I was classed as motor trade and had many useful contacts, one of which was my MOT guy who i'd known and used for decades. It was a case of rock up when told to, have a chat whilst he had a look at it, pointed out what needed doing and gave me a clean ticket. I then went away and fixed whatever it was when it was convenient, all very easy and amicable.
Not so now. Here Adolf failed it on various items, some serious, some not and I had to roll around outside under the van in a freezing force 10 to fix it.

All the stone is now pulled out of what now looks like a bomb crater:





When we tore out all the stalls and walls from the stables/barn I stacked it all outside on pallets. One of our neighbours has a tractor with forks so is going to pop around later on this week. Hopefully it'll lift all the rubble up and dump it in the hole. It'll settle naturally then eventually we will put some kind of driveway over it. I'm really liking the idea of reclaimed stone sets (cobbles). They'll cope with all the traffic and weather we can throw at them, most of the streets in the towns around here were and still are lined with them.

When it stops raining i've got to measure and draw the area where the new workshop will hopefully be built, then apply for planning. Hopefully (again) i'll have somewhere dry and slightly warmer to work next Winter.

The chap that owns one of the fields bordering ours has got rid of the lad who was renting it off him for sheep and cows, it's now going to be a wood, you can just see the bundles of something (saplings or their plastic covers) dotted around in the field there:



I don't think we'll see large trees there in our lifetime, but someone will one day. With it will come more birds and possibly deer. The latter do live further down the valley, but don't come up here due to the lack of cover.

Some of the bulbs we planted around the place are showing buds now:



So Spring can't be far off.

And now Spring is here. Missing your updates.Hope all is good.

[Evoluzione]

IanA2 said:

And now Spring is here. Missing your updates. Hope all is good.

It is thanks I was a bit miserable, nothing much exciting was going on and i've spread myself a bit thinly by posting on other platforms too, each post is tailored to a different audience. This was the PH Feb/March chapter, so we're a bit behind and yes, it's great to see Spring again

More sorting out the drainage in the lower field gubbins and other bits and pieces




People write their best when they are emotionally charged, there isn't much of that going on in a UK Winter!



The birds are coming back, the wavering call of the Curlew is now commonplace as is the almost electronic noise the Lapwings make as they swoop around the moors. The nutters which are the Oystercatchers back too, one of them flies up and down the valley just as it's got dark, calling out all the way. I felt a bit sorry for the male blackbird(s?) that regularly visited the bird table in Winter. Where was the female, was there one? Happily there is and she now visits a few times a week.
A couple of cheeky Pied Wagtails spend most of their days on and around the patio, they're greedy buggers too.

Emotionally deflated I managed to dodge the snow, gales and rain in Feb and did an overhaul and service of the old digger:



As you can see I just drove it onto the patio and cracked on, I love living here
The last of the three storms we had rattled the door on it relentlessly until the latch slipped. The wind then took it and slammed it back multiple times until the upper glass was in a thousand and one pieces. As it's laminated it's still there, but looks even more tatty now. I've since fitted a rubber ball and cup type hold back for it, this works really well, will stop that from happening again and also mean I can pin the door open when working.
It's cost a bit in parts and time to get it working properly, but I'm happy with it's performance now. It leaked diesel and engine oil out before, was also slow on its tracks, but now it's much improved in those departments (it just leaks hydraulic oil now!) so it was down to the problem field to see what a mess I could make down there because when these move in you know you've got issues:



First off I deepened the culvert so it'll take the surface water off much better and also flow when it's at high tide:







I made the rookie mistake of taking the wrong (2' digging) bucket with me rather than the 4' ditching or grading bucket so it wasn't the best or quickest, but it does the job. It's supposed to meander anyhow I'll go down later on in the year when it's drier, make a better job and by then i'll have something to put the stuff into and take it elsewhere.

Used an old gate post slab as a bridge for the sheep:



One thing i've noticed about Herdwicks is they're quite quiet sheep compared to the others around here.

I'm hoping now that the surface water has somewhere lower to drain off into and localised flooding will be less, but much of the issue still comes from over the wall which is rented off to a farmer. It's a mess over there with water everywhere due to collapsed soughs and blocked culverts. It then runs under and through the wall wherever it wants to. I've had words and been told it'll be sorted. The stupid thing is because it's left like that it causes the dry stone walls to collapse, when I walk around almost every collapse is by a badly maintained and damaged waterway.



This isn't a great pic, but you can just about see the kink in the wall where it's leaning over dangerously:



The M1 of drainage Soughs wends it's way down the troubled Turf Meadow (all old fields have names). It's taken me a while to plot it's course underground and even then I didn't know where it went part way down. I just knew when it was overloaded it bubbled up and went overland. I realised that the ground there wasn't swollen as such, it had been built by silt swept up by the flood waters.



I put a trench in at 90 degrees to where I expected it to be, I figured i'd destroy anything which was left of it, but I'm on my own and the thing is circa 2ft down under sopping wet clayed soil. This isn't TimeTeam where you've got 50 people scraping away with a trowel for free for 6wks.
If you look carefully up the field you'll see where the ground is dry, this is where the M1 is underneath.



This bright blue/grey stuff in the centre there is Gley which is derived from Russian words for some reason. It's basically clay formed by certain conditions and often found all the way up the Pennines and Scotland. It's a bloody nuisance when you're digging as it and normal clay clog the bucket up:





I've found a cure for this, but haven't made it yet.
As you can see I found the sough, then put the digger astride where I figured it would go and exposed more and more of it. If you can do it this is the best way you see, track backwards digging between the tracks as you go.




As you can see there is broken, collapsed and blocked up parts to it. I'm thinking it's collapsed (heavy tractor?), but the water has carried on flowing. Because it's at a much reduced rate it's dropped it's cargo of silt, rubbish and stones etc making the blockage worse. It was a foot deep with this solid carp for many, many metres. I tried shovelling it out, but as it was compacted so much and full of small and large pebbles it was tough going to remove even a bit. My feet were either side of the sough and the shovel below me meaning I had to use my arthritis riddled carcass to push and lift. I did a few hours, but could barely walk upright when I go home. I took my painkillers, drank some homemade cider and swore at some people on the internet before passing out in my chair.

Unearthed failed attempt 1 (of 2):



Too small and no gravel surround, waste of time and money.

There are some surprisingly bright colours down there, if you look around here you'll see the bright orange which is Iron Ochre:



It's caused by the iron in the ground mixing with bacteria and water to make some horrible drain blocking jelly.



Because of the haphazard way i'd been forced to attack it as I didn't actually know where it was going I was left with a ditch in many varying states. Sometimes I'd gone on one way with the digger only to find the sough went somewhere else!
I'd picked up some old Keruing sleepers for free so took them down and made a bridge for the digger to sit on:



Don't try this at home kids, it's a bit dangerous. I had the throttle set on it's lowest, was leaning as far forward as I could in the cab and using the lightest of touches to control the bucket. It's bloody difficult to be light with a rickety old worn machine and sticky hand controls, there were some heart stopping moments. If you've never operated one of these things you need to know that if you're pulling the bucket towards you and it gets overloaded with weight or snags on a rock it pulls the machine to the bucket instead.
Anyhow apart from splitting one sleeper in half it did the job and with a combination of bucket and shovel work the sough was flowing again.





I put back as many of the capping stones as I could, covered over with soil, trampled it down and got loaded up to go home just as it started spitting. As I write we haven't had much rain, just annoying showers. I'm hoping we'll get something big and that the sough will flow and flush itself through as it should. I'm thinking these things work by having a sh!tload of rainwater put through them at high volume and speed, because the water can't go anywhere else (when it's covered and complete) they clean themselves out, but we'll see. If it does work like that it may mean it'll deposit a load more where I've just cleared it and it's open, then flow over the top.



Coming soon:



Plant auction action

[Steve_W]

Brilliant update - and good to see more old kit making its way to site.

Carry on like this and you'll end up with your own Ewe-tube channel

You'll end up like Marty T in New Zealand if you keep buying old kit - when you get a grader and a couple of dozers you know you've got it bad!