'Twas on a Tuesday evening when the gas man came to call.....

Our own little bit of trench warfare

After an entirely fruitless business trip to Reading on Tuesday I received a call when I was about ½ mile from Brookvale. “You’d better get to site quick then” said Roy the project manager after I explained how close I was. As I rounded the corner to the drive I could see two men and an idle digger peering at a bright yellow pipe with an 18 inch piece missing. The smell of gas was inescapable. Yes – we had found an unknown gas supply that did not appear on any plans held by the gas infrastructure companies. Gary the digger driver taped up the live end of the broken pipe and waited for the emergency gas man to do his stuff. No more digging that day! Just for good measure, one of the neighbours suggested that there were more service pipes further down the drive and directly in our proposed line. Two more days of digging for about 90 metres have failed to find these fortunately, and the trench has now arrived near the house. Its amazing how this has happened when the depth that the gas pipe should be laid is proscribed, and the material in which it must be laid. The pipe that was broken was no more than 8-9 inches in the ground when it should have been 24". The fact that its presence was unknown was even more surprising. Still, its all in a report that Roy was obliged to fill out although I suspect that absolutely nothing will happen as a result.

To our surprise, Murphy & Sons, the company who will connect the gas service, appeared on Thursday and are happy to put the gas pipe in the trench temporarily. However, we have to put the water pipe in first and cover it, but then we can then simply relay the gas pipe at the required depth once the water pipe has been approved by Anglia Water. The live gas feed will be connected at a later stage. Then all we need is EDF, or as my colleague calls them, Extremely Dear Fuel. EDF inevitably have procedures - each with their own timescales. The words “quick” and “soon” do not appear in their vocabulary, whilst terms like 30, 60 and 90 days seem to appear for the most trivial of activities! I suppose we could always build a water-powered generator once we get water to site. Would that be a “green” initiative? Probably not. At least we have the petrol generator.

All the pipes that will take water from the roof to the rainwater harvesting system have now been finished and Gary McGutter is due any day now with his natty one-piece guttering system. Progress has been made inside too with Adrian (sparks) finishing off all the first fix. Bob the chippy has built the framework for the stud partitions for the shower room/utility room and en-suite bathroom. Bob has also been busy putting in the insulation in between the roof timbers. Roy reckons that we won’t need heating, and possibly even no clothes with all the insulation being fitted. I think it unlikely that any form of naturism will be the norm if it does get too hot in the England household – not sure the world is ready for that.

I am looking forward to the windows arriving – apparently due early next week. That will make a difference.

We've got two days off this weekend as we’re off to visit someone else’s building work – Jan’s cousin Carol and husband Paul in Kent who have recently finished an extension. We can swap experiences perhaps?

The Clifton gassers