On May 8th 2007 the first workmen arrived, Tony the leader we know by name already, he is the "sort of son-in-law" of the couple who live next door. The other two we know by sight and I am sure that by the end of the week we will not only know their names but how many sugars that they have in their tea. We had two workmen all day, one operating the digger and one wheel barrowing the spoil away - some of it on boards resting on our lawn, and some of it in great piles just up through the gate. It is hard wet work and I don't envy them the job. Because of the house layout they have to wheel it the entire length of the house, then up a plank of wood resting over a set of stone steps, up the slope of the drive and then through the gates onto the moor. Hilary and I will then have the task at weekends of disposing of some of the spoil onto our dirt track road. Of course it rained for most of the day and the weather forecast is for rain until the weekend.
Tony and I had our first skirmish over how much it will all cost and we eventually decided not to have a fixed price job but to pay them every two weeks for hours worked plus materials. Only time will tell if this is a good choice. Our second skirmish with Tony was over the changes we have already made from the architect's plans, but we think that we have a better layout for our bathroom now while Tony thinks that we may not get it past "Elf 'n Safety" on the grounds of disabled access. Considering that your can't get a wheelchair through any of the doors (they didn't consider that in 1932) we don't see a problem. Our final skirmish was on the type of central heating that I would like which is very similar to that used in the USA with hot water at the same pressure as the cold water. Our antiquated UK system, not used anywhere else in the world from what I can tell, is to have a very large open tank as high up in the roof space as possible which is fed into another tank that is heated. The result is hot water pressure that is determined by the difference in height between the cold and hot water tanks and that by my standards is a dribble! I have found a tank system that theoretically gets us pressurised cold water and is simple to install. The trouble is that there are not many similar systems around and Tony has certainly never seen one, it looks as if I will be teaching him how to do his job. Nice!
Tony and I had our first skirmish over how much it will all cost and we eventually decided not to have a fixed price job but to pay them every two weeks for hours worked plus materials. Only time will tell if this is a good choice. Our second skirmish with Tony was over the changes we have already made from the architect's plans, but we think that we have a better layout for our bathroom now while Tony thinks that we may not get it past "Elf 'n Safety" on the grounds of disabled access. Considering that your can't get a wheelchair through any of the doors (they didn't consider that in 1932) we don't see a problem. Our final skirmish was on the type of central heating that I would like which is very similar to that used in the USA with hot water at the same pressure as the cold water. Our antiquated UK system, not used anywhere else in the world from what I can tell, is to have a very large open tank as high up in the roof space as possible which is fed into another tank that is heated. The result is hot water pressure that is determined by the difference in height between the cold and hot water tanks and that by my standards is a dribble! I have found a tank system that theoretically gets us pressurised cold water and is simple to install. The trouble is that there are not many similar systems around and Tony has certainly never seen one, it looks as if I will be teaching him how to do his job. Nice!
This entry was posted
on Wednesday 9 May 2007
at 09:55
. You can follow any responses to this entry through the
comments feed
.
