Busy Half Term & Trying To Get Heating Ready

Autumn has come all of a sudden this year, the leaves seem to have fallen off the trees in the last couple of days. 

I've had a busy half term, working on a job in the local town and trying to mop up a few projects here (sorry no posts). I've still got lots to do before winter properly sets in. With such a busy summer my I've probably only got just enough firewood in store, but as I've been helping my brother some evenings he's promised me that we won't go short as he has about five years worth stored up - a good job because at the moment that's our only source of heat! 

Last year I posted about our boiler and whether we should repair or replace. Luckily it lasted the mild winter out but now I don't really want to risk turning it on again and even if it works I doubt it could heat the house much if it turned cold. The plan now is to fit a new external oil boiler, but I'm going to fit it about 8m from the house and duct all the pipe work in. 

This means lots of digging &lots of muddy mess! 

The new boiler will go down where the wall steps, that way when the patio is built up you should really see it and any noise or smells are away from the house

So hopefully over the next week we're (dad and me) going to dig up the patio (or what's left of it) and run heating pipes to the new boiler site. We're also moving the oil tank and running in new pipe work to that as well. and an armoured electric cable. I'm also going to install a couple of empty ducts so we can pull in extra cables if we need to. I have plans to install a generator down there and put a change over with in the house at some point so having the ability to install extra wires or pipework will be handy. 

Our heating system is just a regular heating system and I've no plans to change that at the moment, this means that pipework in the house stays the same and it also gives us the ability to install solar in the future should we ever want or afford to. 

So hopefully by the middle of this month(ish) we should have some proper central heating installed and hopefully that will be before it gets too cold! Lots to do before I start working full time again next year! 

Outdoor Cooking

I know that this is the wrong time of year to be talking about this, but with the garden wall nearing completion it's made me think about what I can use this area for. 

Ideally I'd love a nice outdoor cooking area which would include a brick BBQ and some worktop area to prepare and keep food. Whilst I have my brick layer coming on odd days I might get him to put a few brick piers up so I can make this and cut some large slat slabs for a worktop. 

I'm also toying with the idea of building a tandoor, which in essence is a rocket stove. I've got an old chimney pot I can use to be the cooking chimney, I'll just need to build a base with some fire bricks to allow a fire under it then the chimney up the middle with a slab around the top. I might even make a metal plate to fit on top of the chimney so it can be used as a hot plate as well. 

The third and final thing I'd like to build is a pizza oven, although I've no plans of doing that now as it's a big project. I've been looking at different designs and can see that you can roughly choose between a brick one or a clay one, although it seems the clay one needs a roof of some description as you need to keep it covered when it's not in use. 

Who has experience of building an outdoor cooking area and what would you recommend I take into account?

Has anyone else reading this built either a tandoor or a pizza oven, and how successful were they? Any good links I might have missed?

Garden Wall Progress

Not a very interesting post I'm afraid but I'd thought I show how the wall is coming on. 

Dill, the brick layer, managed to get here a few days this week so he's managed to get on quite well. I've been trying to make sure he's got the bricks ready where he needs them and everything else is ready for him, this should help keep costs down and make the job a little faster. 

Hopefully this will be another job off the list fairly soon! 

Garden Wall Footings

A few weeks ago dad came over to help me rip down the old wall and put footings in to rebuild it properly. It didn't take much pulling down, we literally just pulled it down by hand. Who ever built this wall one skin thick was a little silly!  

The wall was hiding the neighbours beautiful sheds

Loading the dumper

I think I managed to catch the moment the digger broke perfectly 

Space was tight and worse when wee had to use the bigger digger

We dug out what we could by machine then the rest had to be done by hand.

New footings in

Still need the shuttering to be removed

It was a long day on the Sunday but we managed to get most of the soil out, I then had a few (a lot) hours hand digging as it was all so near to the soil pipe from the house. I had to construct some shutters in a few places before we could concrete on the Wednesday night (the 5th), unfortunately as I was doing this I slipped with the saw and cut into my thumb. 

I needed stitches and I was worried I damaged my tendon so had a little visit to A&E. I helped the nurse hold the wound open and we watch my tendon go back and forth with no visible signs of damage except a slight nic in it, I was lucky. She stitched it up for me and I got back home about 5.30. 

Dad already had a load of concrete mixing so it was a case of wrapping it in some plastic and getting stuck in. Luckily my brother turned up to lend a hand - it was half ten by the time we finished and we were all dead by the end!

I've had most of the bricks come to build the wall and I've moved them with the tractor off the drive. The brick layer, Dill, comes tomorrow so I need to move some bricks today to get ready.

Slowly getting through the jobs!