Stu and I proceeded with the site clearance for the extension at Ramsey last week, which involved clearing lots of prickly bushes, and lots of ivy which wraps itself around anything and everything and had to be cleared with the assistance of a chainsaw.  We then got in a petrol shredder to make a very large pile of garden waste into a very small pile of garden waste, including the addition of Stu’s garden pliers which he accidently dropped into the shredder, which proceeded to turn them into 100 bits of garden pliers!

Next on the schedule was to relocate the two existing man holes so they would not be in the way of the new footings.  This involved digging up the area around the chambers and exposing the existing underground soil pipes.  We exposed the first chamber, and there I was gently chipping away some concrete so we could give ourselves some working space with an SDS breaker when all of a sudden I found the mains water pipe and instantly had a 15ft water fountain shooting into the air!  I rushed to the front of the house to locate the mains stop cock to turn off the supply so we could carry out repairs.  But one small problem, no stop cock.  The previous house owner had the drive concreted over and duly concreted over the stop cock, so we had no way of turning the supply off!  I called out the water company, who arrived about 90 minutes later, and it took the engineer a further 45 minutes to locate and find another stop cock to terminate the supply.  As it was late, we made a temporary fix, and then carried out a full repair the following day.  One week in, and we have lost a day already, but hopefully we can make that back next week.