Laying the mains electricity cable

And now.... to try and connect the main services to the new house. The house is 60 metres from the roadside and, therefore, the 60 metres from the new electricity meter...a very long trench to dig! To begin with, we dug by hand (with a shovel!) around the areas we knew there maybe existing service pipes and cables. Giving that up as a bad idea, we borrowed a mini digger from a good friend and started to seriously dig. A very big mess we have made which hasn't been helped by heavy rain and clay soil.

The trench has to be 60 cm deep where laid under garden and 80 cm deep under pathways and 50 cm wide. 60 metres of 2 x 35mm2 cable is very, very heavy and trying to pull this through the conduit was a nightmare not to mention extremely tiring. The conduit was laid in a bed of sand and covered with warning tape (for the next time we dig up the courtyard...that will not be anytime soon!!!!). The most frustrating part was trying to refill the trenches, the soil that had been excavated was very rocky and nicely glued together with soaking wet clay soil. We couldn't get the digger to move it without making even more mess so we elected to move it by hand.....

So the electricity cable in now in place and we have started on the trenches for the water and drains. After that it will be digging the drains to evacuate the water from the gutters into the field. We can't wait until we can start putting some things back together, at the moment, it feels as if we are just tearing everything up!

The Roof is on!

The roof is on!!!

Having battled the elements (not to mention fitting vents and velux windows) we now have a roof over our heads!

We bought 5400 slates and have 40 spare so not bad estimating. The zinc "Nantaise" gutters were very expensive but we think worth the expense and are guaranteed for 30 years so will probably outlive us!

We now leave the house for the next project which is digging up the courtyard to lay the trench for the mains electrcity. We are able to lay it at a depth of 50 cm so not too bad but the courtyard is compacted to a concrete state after years of heavy agricultural machinery using it.

The biggest obstacle with the trench is that it will need to pass two mains water pipes, at least one drainage pipe, and another mains electric cable. We hoped we would be able to dig it by hand to help us avoid tearing up the existing networrk but after two solid days of digging we only managed 5 or 6 metres and with a trench of 60 metres to dig and needing to keep our back muscles intact we have decided to borrow a friend's digger. We will have to use the digger very carefully to avoid any mishaps...watch this space!!!