Torrential rain and gales: it must be time to start building the house…

Posted on November 28, 2015 by nager

Another from the archive waiting to be posted:

13 February 2015

Yes it’s a great week to start building a house. Here is the image from the traffic camera at the head of Glencoe the morning after I arrived up at Cuil Bay on Sunday night. And all day Monday there was lashing rain, sleet, hail and winds at gale force.

Yesterday, the day that the worst weather hit, was the day scheduled for the arrival of the frame so I had rented a cottage in the area, gathered a few friends and relatives together and we planned to watch the frame going up. But it didn’t happen.

At the very last minute the frame company said they couldn’t deliver to the schedule we’ve been working to since October. I called on the Wednesday to check all was OK for delivery Monday and it wasn’t. It was delayed. I couldn’t get a sensible schedule out of anyone and all seemed utter chaos in the office.

–
‘I can’t give you a date until I have the drawings on my desk’
‘When will you have the drawings on your desk?’ said I.
‘No idea- ask technical’
‘Can you walk down the corridor to ask technical?’
‘No’

.
I called technical
‘They have the drawings’, they said.
‘They don’t think they have the drawings’
‘They do’
‘Can you walk down the corridor and tell them they have the drawings?’
‘No’

.
In the end I needed to write to the Managing Director to sort it out (he was adept at avoiding my calls) And got a revised date a week delayed.

Here is my letter.

I might have been raging last week, while sorting out the mess, but now it seems like a relief. At least I had a few days to rearrange the contractors, scaffolding, and crane. Not a simple process but I am now getting used to it….

But I still had a wee cottage in beautiful Duror booked, which I couldn’t cancell, and the time off work. This would be my chance to escape the chaos of home and work and spend a bit of time by myself organising house stuff without the thousands of distractions. A house-organising retreat. Me, my laptop and a cup of coffee.

The cottage was a converted barn on a farm with three immense shire horses who spent the time I was there sheltering from the horrific conditions in the barn opposite. I looked out of the window at the horses but I didn’t go out. Not for the entire day.

I’d packed very simple food, my laptop and piles of house paperwork. I spent the day arranging and organising things related to the house – bills, plans, quotes. When I called home from the stillness of the cottage the chaos of home was a bit of a shock. Perhaps I should do this more often.

I met with Stuart the local Appin builder who had so efficiently and competently delivered the foundations and ground works to the stage of being ready for the frame. Nothing is a crisis to Stuart. Practically everything is a crisis to me. He arrived at the cottage in the torrential downpour from working on a site just down the road in Duror which was an epic mud bath- it looks like the builders will need sub-Aqua kit to lay the strip foundations.

We chatted over an earl grey (‘no biscuit thanks’) as I tried to pursued him (again) to take on the next bit of work. We talked over the various bits of the work (me not knowing anything and fearing seeming even more ignorant than I actually am) with me saying all sorts of embarrassingly naive things and him nodding and saying ‘yes ahuh’.

But he was, as ever, unmovable on the issue of building my house.
.

Over that three day period of thrashing rain and gales I ventured out only to visit the electrician and the renewables compan, oh and I did visit the plot and saw the concrete slab and finished buried pipe work. But mainly I spent the two days retreating in my little cottage. It’s something I really think I should do more of.

Monumental Scotframe scheduling disaster

Posted on November 28, 2015 by nager

Post from way back in February. Now the Scotframe Part of the build is out of the way.

From end February 2015

Scheduling has been a bit of a challenge during the build. I feel a sense of physical pain when I think of all the phone calls with Scotframe’s scheduling guy about some issue or other. The worst was calling him 10 days ahead of the due date for the kit delivery and erection to be told it wasn’t going to happen.

Apparently they were running behind, and no they couldn’t give me a revised date, and no they hadn’t thought to contact me as soon as they knew. I had booked crane and contractor and scaffolding, and even more critically, time off work, which I need to do months ahead as my diary is so busy, and I had even booked a tiny little cottage to stay in for a few nights.

The full story is here:

In short I had been advised by two people in two separate departments of Scotfame that the only way to sort the problems were to speak to the Managing Director.

I ended up following their advice and contacting Cecil Irwin, Managing Director, by phone and by email (see letter below). A date for delivery was pretty rapidly provided. It was rescheduled to be one week from the original planned date.

Small victories… but I didn’t have the time off work.

To: Cecil Irwin

Date: 13 February 2015

Subject: Urgent for Cecil Irwin: Response Needed Today

Dr Mr Irwin

I am writing in some urgency to obtain a date for delivery of my house. I have scaffolding coming in on Monday and so I need to know today at the very latest, a delivery date for the kit so that I know when to arrange the scaffolders to come. I had been advised by two separate members of your staff that you were the only person who could help me with my query but you did not return my calls yesterday.

What I have experienced the past couple of days I think throws up some serious problems in your company and I would like a response to this as well, although appreciate you will need longer than today to get back on this issue.

I have been working to a date of 23 February since October when we set the date and, as you will know, building a house involves a lot of other factors to be arranged. I have paid you around 90% of the total costs already. I have scaffolding coming in on Monday and a crane arranged for 23rd February. I have also booked four days off work and a cottage to stay in during the erection.

I called on Tuesday to check that everything was going to plan and was told that, not only was it not going to be ready for 23rd. There was no way that I could be given a date for the delivery of my kit. This is really not acceptable 10 days before a kit arrives that was booked in so many months ago.

I asked what was going on and apparently X can’t give me a date until he has the drawings on his table. I asked him to find out when the drawings would be on his table from the appropriate colleagues but he said that he couldn’t find out and that the only thing I could do to find out when my kit would be ready was to call the Managing Director, yourself.

I found this extremely odd, as you can imagine, and concerning as it suggested a disfunctionality to the way that your company is managing relationships between departments.

I called Y who had been dealing with me over the steel beams and asked if and when the drawings would be ready. He also suggested that you would be the person to speak to. I tried Z, who I have also had dealings with over engineering and technical matters who told me the floor and roof drawings were already with X and they were waiting on the walls. He couldn’t tell me any more than that.

All this was happening on Tuesday. Only 10 days before I had been told my kit would be ready.

My architects and I have already had to wrestle figures out of the technical department three times in the process of this build.

Firstly – back in September – We had to put the foundation build on hold for some considerable time while awaiting the layout for the foundation walls and we ended up having to wait weeks for this to be done.

Secondly getting the information for building control was painfully slow. In the end it was good that we had to put back the erection from late September to February due to there being a BT line in the way as we didn’t actually manage to get the right information from your engineers for building control until January 12th. Fortunately all the other documents were already with building control and once they had this final bit of information they could issue the warrant.

Again this week there appear to be even more last minute issues that weren’t done or flagged up at either of the first two stages and that mean the build is having to be put back.

Over the period of dealing with you, my architects and I have been dealing with at least 6 different people within your company and with your engineers direct. This creates issues of communication within your own company as no one person in Scotframe appears to know what is going on and have the overview. You don’t prioritisie effectively – I was being asked about the colour of the front door back in August and the windows were ordered up in late summer, months and months before we could have started the build because we didn’t have the appropriate plan for the foundations from you nor any of the information we needed for building control (as I said, this eventually arrived in January). Ordering the windows so ludicrously far in advance has caused you problems of storage and at one point X was trying to get me to store them onsite – which was totally impossible.

My immediate issue is needing a firm delivery date today. But I would also like to let you know that due to their experiences with Scotframe, our architects have already warned one client keen to use your system away from Scotframe.

I would like to know what you are planning to do to ameliorate the evident issues I have experienced. When I called the crane company to reschedule they said that Scotframe is always late and cause a lot of problems for clients so I think you need to do something to change the way people experience your level of service in the ground.

However right now I need a delivery date so that I can shift all of the organisation I have put in place. So please get back to me with this today. I am interviewing candidates for a job all day today but can check emails and will return a call when I get a break.

Yours

The agonies and the ecstasies

Posted on March 16, 2015 by nager

I’m bathed in a warm glow of light. The sky is more blue, the birds more eloquent. There is an ecstatic quality to the everyday, it’s all swimming in a haze of benign joy. It’s like I’m a little bit in love but not quite sure why and with whom.

I’m on cloud nine (or is it cloud cuckoo land?) The house is starting to come together.

I’ve been like this for a few days. It’s quite nice really. I’ve got other things to do – work, family, other busyness. But when I have a few moments spare I retreat back to this happy golden and sun-shining place.

It’s actually rather a novelty, given the stress and woe of the project recently. But, thinking philosophically, I recon you just cannot have the ecstatic highs without the miserable barrel-bottom-scraping lows.

It makes it all worth it.

And that’s why I’m going to enjoy it.

Timber kit day 3-4: in which things go pear shaped again ….

Posted on March 8, 2015 by nager

Heavy rain and strong winds were forecast again for Thursday and, as I sat in my Glasgow office, I looked out at the trees bending in the wind and heard the whistling through the telegraph wires, I thought of the guys up at Cuil Bay. The weather up there was worse – really horrific. Rosco and the team managed to get another layer of panels and roof beams up in a lull in the gales in the middle of the day, but things weren’t looking good.

I was feel a little miserable until I received a couple of photos from my neighbour showing how much they had managed to achieve. Wow. Look at this – and with that weather too!

On Friday things deteriorated further. The team heroically tried to get on the roof panels and managed four, but it was far too dangerous and they had to stop. The rain was torrential. They sent the crane home at 2pm as the wind picked up even further.

So we needed a crane for Monday. I already knew that the Oban company we had been using had the crane booked out all the following week, and the Fort William company was booked out the whole month building a school so I was at a bit of a loss. Dumbarton?

James from the company erecting the kit suggested I contact a company in Lochgilphead. They didn’t exist on the web, but he gave me ‘Harry the Crane’s’ number (as it came across from his contacts list).

Yes he could do it. (hooray!)

But could he be there at 8am?

‘That’s fine, we’ll just set off at 5am.

And No he couldn’t get directions to the plot by email.

‘I don’t ever go near a computer. Do you know how old I am?’

I checked the weather forecast. High winds all weekend and into Monday. A lull on Tuesday and then a full gale by Wednesday. Tuesday is the day! I confirmed the booking.

In the meantime my house is sitting utterly exposed to the elements and lacking a roof in torrential rain and high winds. Gusts of 99km/h forecast for Monday afternoon. I hope the house is still there when I get to the plot at 8am on Tuesday.

The Timber kit arrives

Posted on March 6, 2015 by nager

Right. I totally owe you a nice, positive blog like I usually do with a story and a happy ending….

Well I can manage something but perhaps not the happy ending just yet.

So far the story of the past week has all the elements of a ripping yarn: woes and despair, stratospheric highs, hope, tension and jeopardy, heroes, and some extreme snow sports.

This story starts in the snows of Rannoch moor as, yet again, I take the high road to cuil bay in yet another blizzard. This time it was – at last- to actually be there for the frame going up. All set. 730am Tuesday morning crane arrives, 8am frame arrives. Friday morning – house. Just. Like. That.

The phone call came at 430pm from the crane company. They had done their very first rece to the site at 420pm the evening before the 730am start and didn’t like the base to sit the crane on. Days of rain had made the ground sodden and the areas prepared for the crane had gone all wobbly- like a jelly. He wasn’t going to set up.

I sat on the Moor and made phone calls. To the company putting the frame up, to the kit manufacturer to try to stop the transport of the kit – too late it had already left – to Ronnie the digger driver. Trying to pursued the crane company that all could be well with some steel plates. Trying to work out what to do. The snow got worse and after an hour I had to leave the land of reliable reception before I was snowed in there of the night.

Things seemed bleak. I popped into the coop and bought a bottle of single malt, and a few bottles of wine.

Yes I know – a bit much just for me, even after the day I’d had. In fact I was stocking up – If this house actually happened, some people were going to deserve some presents. I’d also baked a whole tin of cakes to butter up the builders. But I do admit to sneaking one for me in that lay-by on Ranch Moor (desperate measures…)

I still didn’t really know what was going to happen until 7pm when our first hero of the story, Ronnie the digger driver, called me in a miraculous moment of telephone reception and said that his boys would get stone from the quarry at 6am and he’d be on site at 7am to dig the holes so the crane could get in for 8am. It actually took me a while to realise that this is what he was saying as I can only understand every second word these construction-industry types say as there seem to be hundreds of technical terms for what is essentially bits of rock of different sizes. When I worked out what was happening I went all weepy and made a rash decision of who would be getting the whisky.

Dawn broke hopefully; calm and cold. No snow thankfully and the sun was even trying to come out when I arrived at the site at 730am.

But all was not well.
No crane (it didn’t bother setting off from Oban as they had some snow – they eventually sent it at 8 and it didn’t arrive until 940am, two hours late).
No rock – the guys had been to a couple of quarries that morning and all were snowed in. Ronnie did as best he could with what he had available – steel plates and extra gravel.
And then two articulate lorries arrived at 830am and were all ready to go sitting in a narrow layby on the tiniest single-track road and presumably charging by the hour.
When, eventually, the crane driver arrived, he didn’t like what he saw and refused to set up.
And then the weather took a huge turn for the worse. Gales and horizontal snow.

And so, in the midst of mud, despair and torrential rain, another hero emerged. Rosco (Sunday name Martyn, or so I was told), the Glaswegian in charge of the band of four responsible for getting the frame up went to speak to the crane driver.

I don’t know what he said but it wasn’t long before the crane had found a place to set up to unload (although it wasn’t suitable for the build). Periodically Rosco aimed a bit more pep talk at the crane driver for good measure to keep things going. Rosco’s arctic russian-type furry-ear-flap-hat even managed to rival my knitted moose hat for silliness.
I gave everyone a cake.

Next difficulty was getting the articulated lorries in and out. Three of them.

The first up um-ed and er-erd, sucked in his teeth and wandered about the tiny turning area looking sceptical. At this point the tension got too much and I took myself off to a cafe. But when I returned, after a bit more motivational chat from Rosco the lorry driver had not only made it into position, they had unloaded and he was reversing. The turn they effected in the area he had was phenomenal.

And it was still raining. And blowing. And snowing.

The unload happened slowly, the stacks of panels being deposited in the thick gloopy mud around the plot and all over our next- door neighbour’s drive. Rosco had talked them into letting us put all the roof cassettes, and a load of other stuff on their drive and park our two vans, leaving a postage stamp area for the neighbours car. I went to thank them profusely and gave them a bottle of wine.

I spend the rest of the afternoon while the rain lashed down and the wind blew ‘visiting’, ie keeping the neighbours updated on movements and when the road would likely be blocked. Fortunately this activity kept me out of the rain and due to the friendliness of the neighbours I was furnished with cups of tea and even a soup, oatcakes and cheese meal. The spirits of the amazing chaps on site seemed unsinkable as they toiled tirelessly on.

We had a small triumph at the end of the day when one of Ronnie’s team arrived with a tipper truck full of, what I now know is called, Type 1. and we all waved good bye as I headed back to Glasgow, wet and muddy but with a small glimmer of hope that things would be better on Wednesday.

If you are concerned that no stratospheric highs nor extreme snow sports feature in this blog, you’ll need to tune in to the next installment in which despair turns to ecstatic joy (but don’t get your hopes up, it doesn’t last…)

I NEED a crane

Posted on January 14, 2015 by nager

I’ve never needed a crane before and I don’t think I’ll ever need one again but I need one more than anything else just now.

With this project turning proper self-build with me as defacto project manager (or, as I tend to call it, chaos manger) I have needed to set my hand to such things as getting cranes and scaffolding. I thought this would be utterly straightforward. But I am gradually learning that almost nothing is.

I’ve got a date that the frame arrives. 23 February. 8am. It rolls off the factory floor and off on a huge lorry to Lochaber. I need to have a crane ready and waiting for it at 730am and a full setup of scaffolding built and then, over the next three-four days, the building goes up. Doors, windows and all.

I sought out some names to contact to get them booked in. ‘Be patient with scaffolding guys’ was the advice, ‘they’ve been hit in the head by too many bits of metal’….

Easy peasy. I’ve got two quotes coming from scaffolding companies (or at least I should have a second one coming but their email address is nowhere to be found on the web and the one he gave me over the phone doesn’t work).

Then I called the crane company but all their cranes are booked out for a school build until March. Eeeek. And where are there any other cranes? Oban. Well at least that’s not too far away. What if they are busy? That will be the central belt then. Oh.

I have taken to calling the crane folks on a daily basis -it’s joined the morning routine- kids up, twitter, breakfast with Radio 4, packed lunches, bike lights? Check. Helmet? Check. Ten layers of clothing? Check. Call the crane people? Check.

At least they have me on the radar. But they have only one crane driver and according to an unattributable source ‘a crane out of the Burrell collection’. But let me tell you, a crane out of the Burrell collection is better than no crane at all and I am going to keep on calling.

PostScript: this morning I called and it was all sorted out. A crane and a crane driver £50 an hour is mine from 730am on 23rd February. Phew.

And because I really am more comfortable with birds than machinery here’s a picture of a real crane

craneimage