19 - The Plumbing

I don’t think mere words, no matter how eloquent or precise, could adequately convey the experience of getting all of the plumbing done for the house. I can only write about it now, so late in the game, because it is almost finally finished. Much of the time was burnt up in the search for a plumber that would take on the job after reading the waste treatment report outlining the intricacies involved with the grey water. For those new to my ramblings, the house’s waste system will consist of a dry composting toilet and a simple septic system for grey water. Only due to the unholy matrimony between our house site and council requirements, we could not have the septic leech field trench business near the house as it would have been too close to gullies (watercourses). There was one spot but upon closer investigation following a heap of rain we discovered it contained a spring. The alternative we decided upon was to have the water leave the septic tank via a sump pump and travel some 130 meters down a hill and up again to be connected to our existing trench that is attached to the septic that is attached to the shed that is what we now live in. This alternative suits us better in the end as we do not have to accommodate a large leech field near the house where we want to plant things and we don’t need to pay for new trenches and stuff to be dug.

So the details of all this were laid out in a rather wordy, numbery, and somewhat costly, report. We then gave this report to three different fairly local plumbers for quoting. Here’s where time started to slip away, slowly at first and then steadily increasing in both speed and intensity, much like an animated snowball. We didn’t think about this quoting process much before adhering to it as a logical course of action for people outside of town with a big job to pursue. Preparing a complex quote can be a lot of work for a busy plumber, and then there is no guarantee that their will be any money in it for them at the end. There are all sorts of bits and pieces to price. Many short weeks, awkward phone calls and empty promises went by and still no quote came in. We finally found out from one plumber that while he was pricing up some of the materials in a shop another plumber had a copy of our report and was doing the same. The second plumber said he was given the job from one of the other plumbers we had asked because he was too busy to take it on. Anyway it all ended in plumber distrust. The ones that were too busy were too busy and the one that would have done the job was put off after discovering that we had apparently asked every Tom, Dick and Harry with a pocket full of thread tape to submit a quote. This process of hearing nothing back went on for a few months. We were torn between demanding a response and potentially putting plumbers off by such a demand. In hindsight we should not have insisted on quotes for the septic system. The “I know a good plumber” in small towns is as good as a quote. We should have showed faith in any locally referred plumber who expressed an interest in taking on the job.

In the end we pursued a referral from our neighbour who knew a plumber through family links living on the Gold Coast, an hour’s drive away. He came in and had a look and said, despite not having done many septic hookups before he would take on the job. After seemingly offending the local plumbers we signed up our Gold Coast saviour. To help him out I started to source some of the materials he would need for the grey water system.

This decision sparked the second stage of snowballing time loss. It turns out this plumber was also rather busy and managed to spread the plumbing of the house, including the septic, over 3 months. There was about 8-9 days work in it. I guess in many regards this did not matter too much as we still had many little things to complete before we can move in. However, our anxiety grew as the time passed for we had a huge tank to fill and our rainy season was fast approaching without down, or storm, water pipes to welcome it. I am happy to say that the entire plumbing job is now almost finally finished as I write these words. There are just some fit off jobs to do after we make a kitchen and sort the bathroom out. We have a temporary hook up for the bathroom basin and the shower. I will discuss these with lashings of detail in a future post.

A Few Words on the Waste Treatment System
This is all completed now but not before a couple of minor complications. The first was the confusion over the tanks for the grey water system. The report stated that we needed two tanks that were both at least 1800 L. One was for the waste water to go into and then overflow into the second that will house a sump pump. At certain fullness the pump would come alive and pump water to the trenches I mentioned earlier. For our particular site these tanks needed to be plastic. I could only find a 1600L or a 3000L tank. I almost begged and pleaded with the consultant who wrote the report to allow me to use the 1600L size tank. “What’s 200 litres between friends?” I asked. He wouldn’t budge. His reasoning was that he had to allow a capacity determined by our potential household number of people, in case of pump failure. So if the pump breaks down we would have a few days to organise for it to be replaced before the second tank overflowed. Fair enough but we don’t use much water. I suspected that his figures were probably based on well washed folk on town water before restrictions. Anyway I was left with no choice but to buy two 3000L septic tanks. While we were over capitalising I figured I may as well get a baffle put in one, so I did. And remember all this was only for grey water. There will be no black water in the system because of the composting toilet. One consolation though is that if we ever sell the house and for some crazy reason the new owner does not want to use the composting toilet, then they will have the capacity to tackle their poo with a flush toilet and a septic tank system – boring.

The septics with the drain from the house feeding into them

The trench containing the polypipe on its way to our current residence - the shed

I did get to stray from the report a little which granted me the rebellious fix I was looking for earlier. It suggested using 32mm pipe to carry the water to the trench. Considering the friction loss one gets when pumping up hill over a certain distance the man who sold me the sump and I thought 40 mm would be better. So this is what we used. Ahhhh. Also the report stated that this poly pipe should feed into the end of the existing slotted 90mm pipe running through the trench and be drilled with 5mm holes and capped off. It didn’t say how far up the slotted pipe the poly pipe should go. In the end I thought it best to run in just over half way, which is where the shed septic tank tees into it. My neighbour thought it best not to cap the poly pipe completely in case of blockages in the 5mm holes. Fair enough. But then I noticed during one of many test runs that there wasn’t enough resistance to push much water out of these holes. My solution was to reduce the outlet down to a quarter of its size. This gave more resistance and hence flow to the holes and was still large enough to dodge the likelihood of blockages. Sorry for all the details, done now though. The reason I took on this job was because the plumber had left it for ages and the exposed end of the septic pipe, plus the last few metres of open trench were getting all grassed over and annoying.

The Tank Hook Up
Our plumber saw fit to leave the hooking up of the water tank to the house gutters until last. When this was suggested before he began work I was cool with it, however, after the work started and the time between his visits spilled over from clocks to calendars to seasons, we were getting anxious. We already had to buy one load of water to stabilise the tank and help test the other plumbing work. Despite the gutting effect this had on the old wallet, it barely made a dent in the tank’s capacity. We did not want to do this again in a hurry. Turns out we didn’t have to. The plumber returned for 2 and half days work in fairly quick succession, well, quick when considering the pace he had already set for himself. The storm water hook up is now finished and as I type, no, madly tap at the keyboard with two fingers as if my hands have been replaced by woodpeckers, the tank is full. It has only been a few weeks. What joy. Thank you rain. It does not take much to fill a tank when all the down pipes are hooked up to it. In this case about 135mm.

All Up
The bill for the plumbing came in at rather full figured. After considering the things I bought such as the storm water pipe, the septic tanks, the sump pump, the pressure pump and the 140 metres of pressure pipe along with the excavation work to bury the septics, running the drain in and burying the pipe up the hill, the total cost for the plumbing was about $13 660. I am very happy with the work, I like to admire it.

18 - The Back Stairs

One of the main things required for a recently moved house that has landed on high stumps is a set of stairs. We needed them to travel from the back deck down to the ground in the direction of the future kitchen gardens. This is required for many reasons but the most important being to facilitate those last minute dashes in the dark to collect parsley, basil, coriander, thyme, curry tree leaves or some other crucial addition to an already cooking meal. In keeping with the style of the house we wanted these back stairs to be made from wood. With everything else going on we hadn’t given a high priority to stairs until we got a phone call from one of the carpenters we tried to entice out here to work on the roof and the front verandah all those months ago. He fixed up a moved house down the road and so we were keen to have him look in on our little adventure, but alas, he was way too busy. His phone call, expressing his sort of availability had us scrambling for something for him to do, as most things were done and mostly by us. Then it hit us - stairs. We can’t build wooden stairs. They need to be straight and square and safe, all the things that my style of work doesn’t do well.

So stairs it was. He came along and asked us what we wanted. We went with elaborate. Rather than having the stairs running straight down from a platform attached to the deck we preferred them coming down from the deck and then hitting an independent platform and doing a right angle down to the ground. A little pricier this way but who’s counting? Oh the side of this blog has a running budget so I guess this blog is counting. Anyway, figure of speeches aside, we thought it would look and feel and work better so that is what we went with. The carpenter squeezed the job in over a few weeks, I think it took about 4 days work in the end. We love the result. We will paint them in the next few days. I think the pictures say a lot so I’ll stop writing except for the cost, which came in at around $5500. For the joy they are bound to bring I consider this very worth it.

17 - The Catch Up

Alright time for a catch up. I have been awfully slack with updating this blog. There are a few reasons for this the main one is of course that I have been up to my eyes in house related activities for the last few months. Every weekend is filled up by filling the gaps left by dwindling finances and busy trades people on other jobs. We have been doing all sorts of things we would have previously preferred other more seemingly skilled people to tackle. Here is an update post or two or three that will hopefully and adequately bring my very patient, yet no doubt dwindling, audience up to speed with the goings on of the last 2 months or so.

The Roof and Tie-Downs

Following close behind the verandah work was that done with the roof. We finally found someone local who said they would do the elusive ‘tie downs’. These two words had done their best at keeping any excitement on our parts over the whole ‘we have just moved a nice house onto a nice property’ well under control. For months this concept of tie downs and exactly what they meant for us and our house consumed our thoughts and made for confusing and awkward conversations with a collection of carpenters, handymen, relatives and friends. We finally found someone who first knew what needed to be done to improve the wind rating of the roof, second could fit in such a job over a few weekends and third was a really nice person. He and his colleague started work. They discovered that the roof needed more then they first thought. It was old and required more batons and other supporting bits and pieces. Then they discovered that the house movers had not done the best of jobs in placing the roofing iron back on. It was all crooked and the ridge capping did not fit well. The end result was that they stayed for a week and fixed everything roof wise up. They strengthened and straightened the roof, replaced the ridge capping, and patched up the gutters. We were happy with the result and noticed a big difference. The cost was $4400 -hefty but necessary.

Vermin Proofing

Following the roof work the house was left with a number of gaps between the top of the external walls and the roof. There was about a 2 inch gap running along the north side of the house. The rest of the gaps here and there were due to missing or damaged weatherboards from the rough and ready house move. Some of these I located around the house and nailed them back into place. With others I found that I had to buy some replacement weather boards whose profile was similar to those on the house already. Anyway when this job was finally done we could begin on replacing the ceiling and insulating.

The Ceiling and Insulation

Well it looks like we finally found a use for plasterboard – the ceiling. I know, I know, what about my strong feelings? Well a few factors worked in together to enhance plasterboard’s election campaign. Firstly, when painted, it looks like the fibro sheeting that was removed from the ceiling in the first place. I kept all the cover strips that covered the joins in the fibro and we wanted to recreate the exact look. Secondly the plasterboard it is so cheap it hurts not to consider it, considering the diminishing pile of funds we have. We got enough for the entire house, delivered on site, for just under $800. And thirdly it will be quick to put up. Time has become an increasingly important element in this whole house business. The longer it seems to take the less we feel we have to spare.

It is a lot easier to install ceiling insulation as the ceiling goes in. Because of this we had to up our decision making speed on what to use. This was quite a process. We were just going to go with fiberglass bats because of the cost and light weight etc. Then we were turned off fiberglass as we were suspicious of its long term health affects and it’s itchy. Then we thought we’d get wool. Then we noticed that the wool was expensive. Then we also noticed that it had to have a large amount of polyester in it to keep its spring. Then we thought why not cut out the wool and just go with the polyester. Then we did just that. The product we chose was Green Stuf .

Alright back to the ceiling. I employed the services of a local handyman and hired a wind up lifty thing from a building hire place and went to work one weekend. Between the three of us we got the lot up. I’m glad we hired the plasterboard lift we would not have been able to do it otherwise considering the height of the ceilings, the size of the rooms, and the limited number of our limbs. The thing that burnt up the time was that we wanted to cover the joins in the cover strips we kept in the same patterns that were there before. To do this we had to cut every piece of plasterboard that went up, length ways. Now we are left with very little plastering work so I guess it evens out. As this goes to two finger type, we have not yet attempted to attach the recycled cornices or cover strips. More on that as it happens.

Moving and Separating the Toilet and the Bathroom

Before this though, we decided to move the bathroom to where the laundry was on the back deck. We were going to do this in a few years time but with the news of another baby on the way we thought we’d do it now. This will free up a room inside the house for activities such as sewing, office work and things like that. In about 8 years that room will probably become a child’s bedroom.

The laundry was large enough to split into a separate toilet and bathroom. We prefer that in a house. One need not poo where one bathes. Jan built an internal wall and we cut a hole out of the external wall with a circular saw to match a nice narrow secondhand door we purchased for $40. So now we have a bathroom and a toilet opening out onto the deck. It seems rather nice to leave the house momentarily, cross a small part of the deck and enter the bathroom or toilet room. The laundry had been lined in asbestos sheeting that was removed before the move. This made things easier as far as building walls and cutting into other walls goes.

The wall builder

The wall

We decided to line the walls of the bathroom and toilet with VJ paneling. It is about 9mm thick and 1200mm by 2400mm and cost about 55 clams each. We needed nine. The walls were insulated before the paneling went on and the whole thing is being done at the moment on free weekends along with tens of other projects. For these few walls we used fibreglass batts.

Meanwhile I removed all the floor and wall tiles in the old bathroom, which, turns out, was always a bathroom. This was an awful, awful job. With a demolition mallet in one hand, a crowbar in the other, and asbestos proof mask and suit on, in case the sheeting under the tiles warranted such armoury, I methodically bashed and bashed and peeled and broke my way through. I could hardly move my arms for the next week and, for the first time in my 32 years, felt I was getting old.

16 - The Putting Back Together of the Front Verandah

After too many months of looking across at the house from our shed and seeing the missing part of the front verandah we were more than ready to rectify things. We first thought we would need help in this potentially awkward job so tentatively searched for carpenters and the like to step up. We quickly discovered that it is almost impossible to organise someone to help out with such things. Everyone is so damn busy. After a substantial period of time, characterised by the silent lack of returned phone calls, we again took matters into our own, unskilled, bruised, reluctant yet thrifty, hands. We began to sort through the pile of debris that was once the missing part of the front verandah. Some of the pieces of wood that we now wanted to use were not thought of that way when they were disassembled. As a result they were cut incorrectly and in odd places ensuring that their patching up would provide quite the quandary.

As it turned out this fact was not the only challenge. In my haste to dismantle the verandah, I failed to number any pieces of decking, joist, bearer, roofing iron, fascia and the rest. This would have saved a lot of time in the putting back together stage – a lot of time. Over its lifetime the materials that went together to make the verandah and its associated roof had bonded to become a new single entity that transcended inconsequential sole considerations such as square-ness. Many of the individual pieces of wood were twisted, warped and/or bent. So they sort of had to go back in the same place from which they came. Matching up paint lines and nail holes shed a tiny amount of light on our slow stabs in the dark at working out where everything used to be.

These posts are very heavy

Another issue emerged early on when we found that the bearers did not quite fit as well as they should have on the fresh new stumps that stood there waiting for them. We had to bolt a strong bracket to the top of the stump which increased its footprint on the bearer. This seemed to work rather well at the time. Let’s hope it keeps on working.

Jan's dad and I

Jan’s parents came to stay in their caravan on the property. Her father helped us out with the verandah while her mother took on baby minding duties. The three of us took about five full days to fumble our way through the issue raised above plus many more. Parts of the finished product are not quite square, a fact delaying the reinstallation of the wooden louvres seen above on the title of this blog. We are still thinking things through there. Though, all in all we are thrilled to bits to have finished this rather unique part of the house. And, as suspected it looks wonderful here. One day soon it will provide a nice viewing platform to the kitchen gardens that will sprawl out from the house to the north.

Finally the house is back to the way it was pre move - at least from the outside and from a distance anyway

15 - The Other Progress

Over the last month or so we have been busy with house related things, well as busy as we can be while trying to entertain a 16 month old daughter.

Asbestosy Nail Removal
When the asbestos sheeting ceiling lining was removed by the slap dash asbestos removers they left behind most of the nails that held the stuff up many of which still sporting little chunks of asbestos. Nails were not included in the quote. We missed that upon perusal. So a few weeks ago we suited up in beanies, gloves, spray bottles and asbestos dust masks and removed every single nail. This was a somewhat satisfying 4 hour job, though regrettable considering its very existence was due to our oversight. Oh well. You learn from such things. The nails would have had to come out anyway for the new ceiling lining.

Composting Toilet
Finally after years and years of longing we bought a waterless composting toilet. We decided to go with Nature-Loo because I had heard good things about them. I loved the idea of not using valuable water to flush a toilet, especially when that water is from a tank or dam. I still love the water saving characteristic of composting toilets, however, with the flush toilet in the shed we use dam water from a permanently overflowing spring fed dam. This fact somewhat removed the potency from my toilet water saving needs. Though, of course, it still feels great saving water – no matter what that water’s perceived quality or quantity. In addition to this reasoning there has emerged another. Our current septic system attached to the shed is an older style tank and trench system. It has worked fine for the three years or so we have been here permanently. When discussing waste treatment systems with the relevant consultant designing our new system for the house, we decided to go with a similar system by the house to deal with grey water. Because we were including a composting toilet, we found out that we can minimise our trench space significantly by not using it for black (poo) water. This was good news, especially after discovering that the suggested trench site had a spring under it and would not have worked as a trench site for very long at all. The solution to this was to pump the grey water from tanks attached to the house over to the existing shed trench some 120 meters away. Considering the water is only grey, this existing trench would not even need to be extended. Less money all round. No need for more trenches just a tank or two, 120 metres worth of 1-2 inch polypipe and a sump pump. Oh and a composting toilet.

We were always going to incorporate a composting toilet into whatever waste treatment system we decided upon for the house. In many ways this early decision strongly dictated what we should do for the rest of the waste water system. Deciding to take responsibility for one’s own poo is very liberating. It means that you do not have to pay ongoing costs for some other process to do the job for you. It is crazy when you think about it. Those other processes are things like the Biolytix system which recycles waste water so it can be used again in certain household applications. Sounds like a great idea and of course it is in the dry times many people face now. The problem for me with these is the ongoing regular maintenance costs involved. I won’t wear this. And don’t have to because we will only have grey water to deal with.

For those without town sewage connection and a strong aversion to the idea of a waterless toilet, I guess you need to ask yourself how much this aversion is going to cost me. Maybe try and get over it. Your pocket would surely appreciate it.

Anyway, we bought the Nature Loo ‘Classic 1000’ with two chambers. I will probably install it myself in the coming weeks. Watch this blog for the fun and games that is bound to bring. I will also discuss the grey water system more when it arrives.

Water Tank
As you are well aware by now dear reader, we rely on tank and dam water here on the property. We currently have a 23700 Litre (5000Gal) tank at the moment attached to the shed. It has been great. We decided we would leave this attached and purchase another bigger tank for the house. This is what we did. It is a 34000 Litre (7500Gal) tank and after being delivered and resting on its side for a couple of weeks was moved into place by my neighbour with the diggers.

Tank, baby and I

We placed this monster of a tank on the south east of the house. It is only a metre away and dug into the slope enough so that its inlet is low enough to have down pipes from the gutters run down the house under the floor and across into the tank. Currently we have underground pipes going from the shed and back up into the tank some 15 metres away. I don’t really like this method as the water sits in the pipes underground in between rain and I can never be bothered ‘bleeding’ these pipes as often as I should.

Tank in final resting place

Electricity
This was pretty straight forward and probably does not require a paragraph but seeing as I am in the business of providing paragraphs, here it is. We first thought we would have to run electrical wires overhead from the shed to the house as there is a wet gully between them. Before getting a quote for this, I talked to my neighbour who assured me that it was easier and cheaper to go under the gully. I didn’t think such a thing would be allowed. It is and so that is what we did. The metre box remained on the shed and 130 metres of conduit covered cable was dug some 60 cm underground. Where it crossed the gully floor we had a small spring fed pond dug and crossing made for a nice leisurely path from house to shed. So the electricity is now hooked up. We will wait until the ceiling is in to have lights. This means we can have a crack at putting the missing half of the front deck and its associated roof together.

14 - The Crookedness

Well it has now been a little over three months since the house arrival. The movers had officially finished with the house about four weeks ago. They managed to stretch 5-6 days worth of work over two months. This is not because they work incredibly slow but rather that they are very busy and got tied up with other jobs after the stumpers had finished off here. At the moment the house looks very worse for wear, no make that worse for move. It looked great for wear. Built in 1926 and still looking wonderful, then we came along and roughed it all up by moving it. Sigh. I do remember someone telling us early on that the appearance of a freshly moved house conjures a little nervous shock in the new owners. This has happened with us. The house looks like it was thrown by a tornado. I half expected to see striped stockinged witch legs sticking out from under it, only the whole thing is off the ground on stumps of varying heights and thus the witch would be safe, you get what I mean though.

After the official “we have finished” cry following the day’s work they returned for after the stumpers pulled stumps as it were, the movers left. We thought “great we can start fixing things up”. To our dismay we noticed that the front of the house looked a bit crooked. The two posts holding up the roof of the front verandah, seen under the title atop of this blog, both went left, rhombus style. Jan, my partner now has a name, took photos of the offending crookedness and sent them to the wife of, and admin arm for, the house mover. About a week and half later he came out to have a look. He wasn’t around when his workers ‘finished off’. To our relief he was agreed that it wasn’t acceptable. We were half expecting an answer similar to “Well these things happen when you move a house, luck of the draw really,… good luck with it and good day sir”.

The crooked front end and baby.

He returned the next day and had discovered that the front of the house was twisted slightly in the opposite direction to that of the back. This needed work. Also there were some significant support pieces missing from the roof trusses. He worked on things for a day and now the house looks finished, as far as our contract with him goes. We are happy with the result though a little peeved at the time it took to achieve it. So all up we have waited quite while for the house to be at the stage it is now, which is not as far as I had envisioned before the process started. Nevertheless we have made some progress in other areas which I shall outline very soon.

13 - Stumped

I think it is high time that this blog revealed its title track. Here it is.

After a week or so of the house arriving we hadn’t heard anything from the stumpers who were due to work on the stumps. We started to question the assertion from the house movers that they would let the stumpers know of the house’s new found need for permanent stumps. We contacted the stumpers. They didn’t know of the house’s arrival and made arrangements to come out.

We used the time alone with the house to tie ourselves in knots over all sorts of things which we lacked the practical know how of. One of these was a timing issue with the tie downs. These securely attach the roof to the walls and the walls to the floor and the floor to the stumps. On an old house like ours the tie downs were not done and need to be retrofitted before we can receive final approval. We heard that the roof needed to be removed to do the tie down work so the ideal time would be between the roof being temporarily attached and permanently attached. We took this information under our wing and flew off trying to organise someone to do the work. We found this hard. Carpenters and other home improvements people gave us a range of differing impressions into the extent they understood what tie downs were or if we needed to remove all the weatherboards to have them done. We started to melt down a little. Hearing of our growing anguish a friend’s son said he would look at it. We gave him the engineers report only to have him return it to us a few days later suggesting that he would need to drill rods the height of the house down through the struts in the walls all the way around the house at about fifty centimetre intervals. This couldn’t be right. The engineers had told us that it wouldn’t be too hard. In the end our friend’s son politely turned down the job stating it would take too long and be too expensive. Back to square one.

The head stumper was quite a character. When referring to the house’s pending fate, he exclaimed that he’d “get this bitch up on legs”. Strangely from this we knew we were in good hands. We asked him about tie downs, as we knew he was also an engineer. He was great about it all and immediately allayed our fears. He explained that only the top and bottom two weatherboards will have to be removed and a few extra screws and maybe a little bracing be used to fix the internal studs to various things. He also said he would show anyone we got to do the work exactly what was required and he would sign off on the work done ready for approval. This was great news. Now all we had to do was find someone.

The actual stumping didn’t take very long. All the holes were drilled into the ground on the first day. On the second day the concrete was poured and the stumps hung from the house while the concrete dried around them. The next day the stumps were detached from the house and stood strong in their concrete shoes about 50 cm below the house which was still floating above on the temporary stumps. The house movers returned a few days later and lowered the house down onto the steel stumps and joined the house back together again. About a week or so later the stumpers returned and attached some bracing and securely attached each stump to the house. The house movers still have to come back and finish attaching the roof, tidy up the guttering and eaves and remove the makeshift form work propping up the internal ceiling supports.

12 - The Move - Day 3

The real day 3 was rained out. On the next day, the mover men returned to put the roof up and temporarily tack the tin sheets on. They put them on properly after the house has been lowered down on to the permanent stumps because there is usually a bit of movement in that process.

Just after the roof was finished it poured rain. Here is a picture of the finished for now product taken the next morning.

The house is very high at the moment as there needs to be room underneath for the stumpers to get their hole digger things in. We would like the house to end up nearly a metre lower than it is in this picture. The stumpers are due to come in the next week or so.

11 - The Move - Day 2

On the start of Day 2 the first half waited patiently for its opposite.

The larger second half arrived about 830 am.





Obviously this second piece's placement is a lock trickier than the first. If they go too far down the slope and past the first piece then lots is lost. The truck is way too heavy to move back up the hill at all while the house is still on the back. Fortunately the trailer is amazing. It moves every which way as it lines the pieces up together. This whole process really impressed me. I watched on both days in awe of the speed, skill and ease with which 5 guys worked on the house. I had never seen a house being delivered before and I couldn't believe they got the thing exactly where we wanted it. Unbelievable. .

10 - The Move - Day 1

The movers started to prepare the house on Thursday the 3^rd of April. By the Friday afternoon it was cut in half, roof collapsed, on trailers and ready to travel. It then stayed put like this for the weekend. We traveled up to visit friends and check it out.

Just before 8am the next Monday the first half of the house arrived.




The truck had some difffculty getting back out again. My neighbour had to help with both his tractor and digger. It only just worked.



We got to know the first half overnight.