Students returned to swarm around the campus despite the vanishingly small number of face-to-face lectures taking place. Rather than risk the hordes clogging the pavements and tow paths, I ran home via my old, work-to-Harborne paths (that’s part of Harborne Hall in the photo).
Thereafter, the route was dictated by the sun and I found myself in new streets and estates.
National lock down looms. Two days or two weeks. But, soon.
A short, black gent about my age and wearing a tour t-shirt of an obscure psychedelic band from the early 70’s paced slowly and somewhat aimlessly a few pool cue lengths from the snooker table at the Farcroft. Mental patient, I thought, as I got a beer then tried not to bump into him on my way to a table. The pair shooting when I came in eventually potted the last ball and he sped over to rack things for his go.
I looked up a couple minutes later and the billiards table was half empty. Our hero sank the ball he was shooting at, shifted slightly as the cue ball rolled to a halt near him and, almost without looking, he banked off three cushions to lightly tap his remaining red ball into a pocket from behind the yellow ones blockading it from a direct shot. Hustler, I reckon, because after easily potting the black ball and starting the next rack I caught his eye just before he sloppily missed two easy shots — the only time this happened in front of me.
“Move away from the bar,” she instructed the leaner as I entered. He dutifully made room for me and she confirmed with me that I had used the hand sanitiser at the entrance before taking my contact details and order.
Once served, though, and at my seat listening to the craik and the jukebox and just sitting comfortably in a sunny window late on an early Autumn afternoon with a cold pint of ale … nostalgia for a time probably already in the past but preserved perfectly here at the Black Eagle.
New graffiti on the canals seem to have a COVID-19 angle. Or, maybe it’s just me…I haven’t really acknowledged how deaf I am but I have been having trouble ‘hearing’ people when I can’t see their mouths. “Mime” is a partial solution and if you can’t talk with your eyes or use your charades skills anymore effectively than the squid creatures, then take off the mask and we’ll stand a couple of metres apart.
I can go off route to add a pub, but I had already done two commute runs this week and decided to make the run from work end up in sight of a tram stop (something I would be doing more of were I not avoiding the inoculation cans on rails as much as possible). This time, the Jewellers Arms was on the hook.
It’s a really nice gaff inside but the weather out was glorious and the neighbourhood one of the more interesting to people watch in (most shops around here really are jewellery related) so I sat out and watched the artisans and lucky denizens of the buurt go about their afternoon. Lovely.
Like the run home last night, the run into work was relentless hard labour. I avoided the canals staying north of the tow paths a few hundred metres and found loads of industrial architectural treasures. Good start to the day, that.
Cloudless skies and 27°C. Exhaustion from the holiday project. And, Henry Mancini earworms induced by a graffito I haven’t noticed before:
We left the dining room project last weekend with almost everything shoved in other rooms, the original tiles stacked on a pallet, and the rammed earth subfloor covered with geotextile so the bottoms of our feet sould stay clean. Wednesday, we started digging.
First, we needed to know how much to dig. I wanted to string some taut cord to act as a datum from which we could measure the depth anywhere in the project. I asked the DIY store guy for some string to do this and he started pulling out a length from a dispenser. “No, more like the cord you use when you want bricks to follow a line.”
“Oh,” he said, “you want brick line.” Whatever, I thought, but the package actually says, “Brick Line.” I’ll never fully understand the English language.
We knew there was a gas line and a supply and return line for the central heating. We also knew approximately where it was but opted to use a small gardening spade to uncover around it as if we were on an archaeological dig. In fact, that’s exactly what it was but save for a few nails no treasure was uncovered.
The concrete screed laid over the former veranda had to go, as well. Not only was it going to be impervious to vapour on its own but it was lined beneath with a thick, plastic sheet. This almost certainly explains the damp problem over by the doorway where the screed ends and the first path for ground moisture to exit the covering begins. But, we couldn’t take out all of it due to the aforementioned gas line being embedded in the screed, as well. The hammer drill got as close as I felt comfortable, though, and the improvement to damp control should still be immense (6½ of those 7 square metres are now, once again, breathable).
The dig finally complete after two, long days, we relaid the geotextile and covered it with a layer of perlite a few centimeters thick them covered THAT with another layer of geotextile. This acts as an insulating layer that is one improvement over the original rammed-earth-only version of the subfloor.
Next in, the heating pipes. We laid out everything roughly where we needed it and a few extra lengths to be sure. I cut the supply and return lines to steer them down into the hole and away from the gas line but once I started connecting it back up was interrogated by the spouse: “Are you sure soldering that close to a gas line is okay?” I assured her the gas was inside the pipe, then continued to fit the plumbing.
It is a tradition to place items in a big building project to mark that you were there. I thought that it was probably not enough just burying all these other pipes, so I also packed up this one (next photo), put it and a lighter in the baggie along with my receipt from the builders’ supply yard and a 2020 coin, and wrote on the back of the receipt
No stems, no seeds
That you don’t need.
Acapulco Gold is…
One bad ass weed.
Future home owners doing some renovation may well find this and try to date the artefact either from the receipt (2020) or the jingle (early 1970s). Knowing it is there makes me smile.
It was nearly 10 pm when we finally repressurised the central heating to check for leaks, finding two — one at a capped stub almost inpossible to reach, the other on the 22mm supply pipe which was now wet again and would be impossible to solder. I scrambled around the tools and eventually found several compression tees that reduce from 22 to 15mm; capping two short 15mm pieces to fit there, we now had unions to repair the leaky section with a new splice.
The second leak test at 1am went better and we were able to shower up an hour later. Long day.
Friday, we started pouring and continued for the next three days one mixer load at a time. The aggregate was a mix of perlite and sharp sand and the consistency was probably too soupy for structural use but not so much that it acted like self levelling compound. This was Jackie’s introduction to the world of the mud monkey, so I gave her tasks like poking the mud with a rod to get it to spread (which concept evaded her…l’et it spread where the vibes take it, not where you think it needs to go,’ etc).
The next photo shows some of the first day’s pour. We had to put in some bridges to get over the slow setting mud.
The one injury from this effort was due to stupidity on my part. Cleaning the pipes for soldering with steel wool left me with microscopic cuts and small embedded steel fibres in my fingers. I didn’t even know these were there but the lime in the crete sure did reacting slowly but violently with meat and metal to leave my hands pitted with abscessed wounds. I once had a cut cauterised in the field which was painful enough on its own but then the open bit became a 3rd degree burn instead of the flowing gash; the pain lasted days, very similar to the 18 smaller pleasure points mapped all over my hands. Good stuff.
For now, we have combined the two rooms to a nearly open plan, bought back more space with the removal of two radiators (both of them modern and quite ugly models), and restored and improved on the original damp-handling capacity of the house.
Limecrete doesn’t cure the same as regular concrete. Instead of fixing CO2 from the air, the crystal lattice forms mostly with water. If it dries out, it will never really achieve its full strength so for the next week or so we have to drag the garden hose in and wet the surface thoroughly twice a day. And, we can’t use the underfloor heating for 3 weeks (some say 4). Let’s hope for a warm early Autumn.
Next up: re-tiling.
Day 2 of the great, open plan, historic preservation, breathable limecrete subfloor pour would have been exhausting if Day 1 and the two 16-hour days of excavation preceding that had not already taken everything out of us. Fortunately, the Soviet era beer, Zhigulevskoye, inspired me to work even harder — Comrade Stalin would be pleased with our productivity.
I saw the can and thought, “Let the goat in!” I hadn’t checked the baseball standings since the abbreviated season began and, once home, was pleased to see both the Cubs and White Sox at the tops of their respective divisions holding the prospect of a World Series on the El. Delicious.
Speaking of, Kozel Světlý is a delicious Czech lager.
Endless British Pub Crawl (Part 3) 