Renovating a Gite in Brittany

I've made a good start on the insulation. I really hope this stuff works because every morning this week it's been at least -3^oC and not got much warmer during the day. A bucket or water in the house had even frozen over. Brrr.

The insulation was fairly easy to put up providing you have a reliable staple gun. The cheap stapler I originally bought ended up in the bin. It's a real pain balanced up on a platform in the rafters with one had free and then the staple gun jams or mis-fires. New staple gun in hand and things were a lot easier. The insulation is fixed to the rafters, which leaves an air gap between the tiles and the insulation. Around each of the A-frames and purlins I've put metal tracks to take the supports for the plasterboard.

I quite liked this insulation compared to rockwool, even though it's more expensive, there none of the horrible dust and fibres and it's much thinner so more of the old carpentry gets exposed.

One side upstairs complete, now on to the other.

The septic tanks and all the various bits of pipework outside etc. have been backfilled and the ground levelled out.

Last week we started work upstairs cleaning and treating the beams and floorboards. All the beams, a-frames, purlins etc. were dusted and swept through to remove any loose muck and dust, then all the exposed timberwork was washed and cleaned with water and sponges to remove any dirt. All the timber was then spayed with a couple of coats of multi-purpose woodworm/beetle treatment. There was a little infestation in places but nothing too much to worry about. It's worth doing as a preventative measure and it helped to bring the wood, which is going to be exposed, back to 'life'.

I've bought loads of insulation to start lining the roofspace. In the past I've just used 100mm or 200mm thick glasswool or rockwool behind the plasterboard, however this time I'm leaving both the purlins and the A-frames exposed and there isn't the room for thick insulation. It's a bit more expensive (about 2 to 3 times more) but I've got a multi-layer thin reflective insulation. In my case it's got 14 layers of insulation, silver reflective sheets and other stuff. It's only about 25mm thick but has the same R-value (insulation) as 200mm glasswool. It's easy to install via a staple gun to the rafters and doesn't have all that horrible dust and fibres of traditional insulation. It is necessary to leave a 2cm air gap between the roof tiles on one side of the insulation and 2cm on the other between the plasterboard.

It all looks very space-age and shiny. I'll have to see how it works out.

brittany renovation

The guy came to inspect the septic tanks this morning. He was pretty thorough, checking the depth of sand and gravel in the filter beds, various levels of pipework, the levels for the septic tanks, the pumping stations, ventilation out to the roof, etc. Everything passed although he did recommend a grill on the outflow pipe in the gulley to prevent vermin coming up the pipe.

Once he had left the guys starting backfilling everything and leveling out the garden. It rained really heavily all weekend so the ground was very wet which didn't make it that easy, but even though they haven't quite finished it's starting to return to normality. Hopefully they should be finished by lunchtime tomorrow.

No grass left but at least I've got a nice blank canvas for new garden design.

As promised some photos of the septic tanks and filter beds.

Everything has gone really well and both sand filter beds (bac-a-sable) are now complete with the guys just finishing the outflow pipe from the two filter beds out to the gulley in the lane.

The only slight delay was the suspected presence of an underground PTT cable in the garden. My neighbour mentioned it and gave me a copy of the plan showing the 'approximate' position of the cable. It was a very old hand drawn plan. The guys from the digger company also had a plan from the PTT which was slightly different! No problem, they say, the boss is coming to find the cable. I expected someone to arrive with a metal detector, ground radar or something, but he turned up with a couple of rusty bent welding rods. A bit of divining and some comical and sceptical remarks from me and the 'known' position of the cable was marked out and everything positioned to avoid the cable.

Well as it turned out, the diviner was just about bang on and as you can see the cable was uncovered without plunging Northern Brittany into silence. Apparently it's a fairly major national trunk cable.

Once the authority's inspector has been and checked everything conforms it will all be backfilled, covered over and the garden should be ready for planting. It's certainly going to need some work as it's a very muddy mess at the moment.

Hole for first septic tank	Tank lowered into place
Pipework connected and pump (green top) fitted	Gravel delivery rescued from mud
Hole for sand filter	Plastic liner, gravel and pipework
Filling with sand	Completed filter with input pipework and gravel
Filter bed outflow pipe	Buried national PTT cable

brittany renovation

The digger men turned up this morning to start installing the two septic tanks and filter beds. The bad news is I took loads of photos but left the camera behind at work. I'll update tomorrow with photos. Pictures speak a thousand words.

After a some minor discussion and planning about placement the guys got straight on with the job digging two very large deep holes for each tank at the front of each house. Each tank is 3000 litres, that's 3 cubic meters, so lots of spoil. Most of the spoil was clay.

The only hiccup during the day was that the lorry delivering gravel for the filter beds got stuck driving across the garden. The digger soon managed to pull him clear. I suspect it's quite a regular occurrence as they were not fazed at all and just hooked up a chain to pull him free. I also lost a couple of concrete gate posts and a garden wall which got pulled out by the digger to give the lorry access. I was going to pull them out and remove the wall for a better view anyway, so they saved me a huge job.

By the end of the day both tanks were buried, two thirds filled with water, and all the soil and ventilation pipes connected up. Interestingly they are not allowed to use 90 degree bends and have to layout the pipework to avoid sharp turns. I guess it's to avoid blockages.

brittany renovation

Been a bit slow blogging the concrete floor day. After the last week or so of hectic digging and preparation for the 'big' day I've been mostly sleeping and relaxing. Anyway,

The concrete mixer lorry turned up on Thursday as arranged at 8:30 with 6 cubic meters of concrete for the two rooms. The day before several wooden battens at the correct level were placed across the floors. Each 6m batten was supported every meter or so with small piles of mortar to stop them flexing when a straight edge was drawn/shuffled across the top.

There was a slight delay unloading the concrete because I had ordered the conveyor belt attached to the lorry so the concrete didn't need to be wheelbarrowed in. The driver said he didn't have enough room to extend the conveyor and so a few phone calls had to be made to the supplier to arrange a rebate for the conveyor before he would start unloading. After that was sorted we had to use wheelbarrows to unload but as it turned out it wasn't too bad, just a little frenetic as the concrete really rushes down the chute.

Once all the load was in it was relatively easy to shuffle the straight edge left and right across the top of the battens to level the concrete off and pull the excess back to the doorways. By the time we had finished there was only about 5 wheelbarrows too much. Better than being short.

Once we had finished the surface was fairly flat but had a few ripples in it. With hindsight we should have gone back and repeated the process but quite a bit of water rises to the surface as you 'work' the concrete and it was difficult to keep the liquid 'tide' at bay. I'd also been advised that it was possible to come back just as the concrete is setting and use a float to go over the surface and smooth out any ripples and lumps. By the end of Thursday, coming back later with a float seemed like a great proposition.

Having taken a bucket of concrete home to test how cured it was (I didn't fancy driving back at midnight to find it too hard/soft) I went back the following morning float in hand. It turned out that my bucket set slower than the floor and I was a few hours too late. The ripples aren't too back and I reckon I should be able to tile over it, but it wasn't as flat as I hoped. The moral being, don't put off 'til tomorrow what you can do today.

For all the work and deliveries I've had up to now, I have only ever paid a deposit then the balance on delivery or completion. It's standard advice. However, the concrete supplier insisted on full payment up front or no delivery. I should have gone somewhere else, but didn't. So the cockup with the conveyor ended up costing me an 'admin' fee for a rebate on the unused conveyor. I wish they had mentioned that they needed 20m of clear space before I ordered the belt.

Even with the minor hiccups the good news is the floors are in and curing over the weekend. All the pipework is in place for the septic tank guys on Monday and it feels like a real milestone on the project.