It was time to start digging around three sides of the house to install a concrete 'pavement' - laid in order for rain to run away from the house and so the foundations would stay dryer. This will help the soil around the foundations from going through the usual cycles of wet in winter and bone dry in summer.
Our gravel had been originally laid over a liner, but a fair amount of 'soil' had built up over the years. Luckily everything was dry so there was no mud involved, just dust!
Preparing for the concrete to be poured - I found it fascinating all the layers here, geotextile then gravel, then clear plastic, then reinforcing steel. Only a ditch on the outside would have concrete to the full depth to reinforce the concrete path.
More fun and games was all this cutting into the walls where any cracks had been (though we don't recall seeing cracks in half of these places! Guess the experts see things that we ordinary folk don't).
Out the front. The path got a bit destroyed in a few places from the digger but the workmen said they would repair it.
On the right is a great big skip for all the dug out soil - it's the kind that is winched up onto a truck bed. I think we had three skips here in all. By the way Mary Moho went to spent several weeks on the forecourt of the repair garage in the village (where she is known) and we paid them a small amount for being so kind.
Round the back of the house ready for the concrete.
When the garage side was started an old septic tank was found!
All they could do was fill it in and take out any unnecessary pipework - luckily way too much gravel had been delivered for the pavement preparations so they filled it in with that.
Some of my crazy paving path looking a bit worse for wear!
The concrete arrives! We had to go out for a few hours which was annoying.
Round the back of the house.
When we came home the back and front had been finished but they were ready to lay the concrete on the garage side, so I got to watch that.
Dust! This is from cutting out the cracks in the facade with (I think) an angle grinder - it made a tremendous amount of dust. They cleaned it up afterwards. (I'm annoyed that both lavenders from the original front bed that were dug up and repotted died on me - that's one bottom left).
Scaffolding goes up to deal with the higher up cracks, over nice dry concrete. The guys shovelled gravel back in place in the front and the back, leaving only the garage side for us to do (very nice of them as that was not part of their job).
To be continued....
Our house is built on clay, and after a very dry summer in 2022 a large crack appeared on the garage facade. There are other cracks on the facade that have been repaired by previous owners and a few smaller fresh ones appeared too. Also, our bedroom on that side of the house has cracks which widened every summer and closed up in winter when the ground was wet. Long story short our insurance covered the repairs which are due to clay soil drying out during the drought, causing the foundations to move. It's not unusual and is only likely to get worse with climate change to houses built on clay soil.
1. The foundations are injected with resin.
The first lot of work involved drilling into the foundations through the inside of the basement, next to the retaining walls. Then resin is injected in to strengthen the foundations.
Before this happened, we had to empty the garage, workroom and downstairs bedroom, at our expense. So a local removal company came and packed up and took everything away to store for us.
Above and below - the holes being drilled were up to about 5 foot long, the length of the copper rods. You can see the size of the drill bits below!
The covered over area outside the bedroom and workroom. The hose is for the resin injecting. The guys had their own generator as the resin is injected under high pressure into the copper rods, each of which is cut to a different depth, so that there are different depths of resin. You can see the metal rods sticking out of the holes and excess resin around them which was trimmed off afterwards, plus the rods are removed at ground level.
There then followed a gap in time as there was a mix up over the date for the tilers to commence - all the fault of one lot not talking to the next lot in the order of works to be done (all three businesses involved in the different stages were all under the same parent company). The first lot of guys left everything really clean, including the already filthy garage tiles - which were about to be removed, so they really didn't need to wash them - but I was really impressed!
2. The tilers commence
All these rooms had to be retiled as the drilling had to happen indoors, through the existing flooring. When I was first told what would happen I freaked thinking about what state my guest room floor would be in afterwards!! Then I breathed a big sigh of relief when they said they would retile the floors!
Tiles removed from the spare bedroom above (only to find some old tiles beneath) and garage below.
Self-levelling cement was laid in all rooms before tiling could start.
Looking through to our workroom from the garage.
Our tiles arrive! And that is a serious bit of kit, having a crane on the back of the truck. So handy.
Eeks!
It's an ever expanding crane! The good thing is that we got several brand new pallets to keep, whose wood will come in handy. (I'm planning a few little veggie beds for next year.... watch this space 😀).
Garage tiles are a mottled brown/grey colour - far more sensible for a garage floor which will get dirty with a car coming inside.
Outside the spare bedroom - the tiles are a beigey/grey mottled colour.
The guys did such a good job, love how they have done this step here.
We paid extra to have the tiles laid on the diagonal in the bedroom, as the old tiles were staying in the bathroom and were a slightly different size. This way where they meet it looks neat.
Not the bathroom! The entrance to the bedroom from the basement hallway.
I asked for tiled skirting too, as it's much nicer than the boring cheap white wooden skirting that was already there. (I'm going to repaint after Christmas - I hadn't realised how grubby the walls were without furniture in the room, and I did wash off any dirt from the foundation works).
3. Outdoor work commences
Onto stage three. First of all the rootballs of all those shrubs had to come out.
The big one was the bay tree. (It's sitting in front of a Tamarisk tree).
The grass got a bit scuffed up (it got worse!).
To be continued... 😀
Whilst the Doñana National Park covers a huge area, you can only access a few sites on the periphery. The only way into the park itself is to book onto a 4-wheel drive tour which is not ideal for birders, as it is a tour giving a general overview of the wetland. They do search for Lynx and the Spanish Imperial Eagles during the tours, but the likelihood of seeing either is quite remote. So given the price of these tours and the general lack of water (even if there was lots more water deeper into the park) we decided to give the tour a miss.
So, we revisited some of the sites that we went to in October 23 which were all dry at that time. The first site had water in the lagoon though!
White Storks (Ciconia ciconia) nesting on an electricity pylon!
The view from one of the hides.
Zooming in on the island you can see a White Stork on the left, some Glossy Ibis (Plegadis falcinellus) in the centre and the ducks on the right are Common Pochards (Aythya ferina). Click on the photo to see larger and more clearly.
But that was it as far as birds were concerned, so a bit disappointing. We then followed the board walk to the scrubland area.
Whilst the vegetation looks quite dry here there were still some wildflowers here and there. Below the purple/pink flower is Lusitanian bellflower (Campanula lusitanica) though I'm not sure what the white daisy like flower is.
This is European Umbrella Milkwort (Tolpis barbata).
There's a translation in English if you open up the photo. It describes the scrubland area and the plants which grow there.
There were still some shrubs and flowers in bloom - this is a yellow Rockrose (Cistus halimifolius).
This shows what the soil looks like - more sand than anything else. Still, there were little bursts of colour here and there - the blue plant I think is Jasione montana (which doesn't only grow in mountains!) and what looks like tiny Pinks of some sort. In the foreground is a French Lavender (Lavandula stoechas) which had just about finished flowering.
We then went on to another site but this one was completely dry, so we didn't spend a lot of time there as looking out of a hide at an area that had once been a lagoon is a bit boring!
On top of this building at the entrance to the site was a White Stork nest.
There were four youngsters in the nest - must have been getting a bit crowded as they were getting quite big and stretching their wings! These two are Keith's photos taken with his long lens.
Mum was having a bad hair day!
More wildflowers - top left: Spanish Iris (Iris xiphium), top right: Flax-leaved Blue Pimpernel (Lysimachia monelli)
Bottom: Rough-Flowered Catchfly (Silene scabriflora).
Despite there being a bit of water in some of the lagoons it was really disappointing again - given how hyped up the Doñana wetland has been over the years to find it so dried up now is such a terrible shame. I don't think we will be back.
