Posted by Mark on Tuesday, 11 August 2015
Work progresses. The foundations are now dug and today the work started on digging the large hole for the sewerage plant that we decided to fit to upgrade the ancient stone built cess pit. Several very substantial stones came out of the hole, these probably being the foundation stones for the Old mill that was on the site. About a metre down they hit the bed rock, a bit shallower than they hoped but an expected problem in Orkney, so now they will have to dig through that. My suggestion of doing this the Neolithic way with antler pick axes met with little enthusiasm!
Once the hole has been dug a concrete base some metre thick will be poured in and then the container lowered in and connected to the reed bed which also needs to be installed. It looks quite a job to me but the guys seem to be quite happy about the way it is going and the sun is shining which always helps things seem better.
The internal door frames are being fitted today by Graham so things are progressing inside as well. My task to be done before Friday is to sort out a network cable to run the length of the house because the Internet Satellite dish is being moved then so that the extension walls can be built but as we still have the office in the same place at what will be the other end of the house to the new dish location. Sorting out the logistics of all this work is a fun task and the builders are very accommodating working around us on site.
As I was typing this up the lorry from Jewsons arrived on site with our sewage unit on board, boy is that a big object, it will hold a lot of c**p ! The unit is a Klargester with a reed bed output, should you want to take a look at such things the link is here http://www.kingspanenviro.com/details/Biodisc-domestic and http://www.kingspanenviro.com/details/reed-bed
The theory is that the water coming out from such a system is drinkable, not something that we will be trying but certainly it will clean enough to be fed into the loch.
More fun and games tomorrow!