Toomanyprojects' workshop / garden / *Insert other* projects

Will do, quite looking forward to having a play.

So by the end of day 2, thanks to the efforts of the fencing crew, we had a framework.


The bad news... the rest was down to us

Out with the spirit level and paslode then and time to make some noise :B


With plenty of featheredge to fit!


Once we got into a bit of a rhythm it wasn't too bad and we soon made good progress


and by late morning we were done, which just left the small matter of this lot to clear


15 bags of leylandii and laurel, horrible stuff 

I managed to get 2 at a time in the back of the discovery and even managed to squeeze in 3 one trip, suffice to say I was on first name terms with the guys at the local recycling centre afterwards, my back told me about it the next day too 

This past weekend brought the start of phase II, well once I'd been out for an interesting dog walk. I decided to go exploring and found the limits of that particular area of forest


More on phase II bits shortly as I did also squeeze in some car time...

Are you in competition with my new patio   Fun & games here too my builder called today his next job cancelled at short notice so can you just move your motors off the drive Chris - there's a skip arriving on Monday morning and we'll be starting a month early on your place 

So a delivery of the good stuff; 22mm sandstone 600x900 slabs, 72 of the b*stard things


Plus four tonnes of sand, cement and timber... which still wasn't adequate. More on that in a bit.

As soon as half term arrived, so did the laying cavalry in the form of my brother-in-law, nephew and sister-in-law and we were set. Even the weather was kind


My office for the following three days therefore mostly looked like this:


Slowly things took shape


Quality control even seemed to approve.



but is wasn't long before we'd run out of supplies... so I hitched up the car trailer and went shopping... again.


and eventually it started to resemble something that looked like a patio


Following a slight diversion to Shropshire for the day (more elsewhere as to why), I received a phone call that said I needed to go shopping again on my way back...


With the grouting then done, it was on to phase III... or was that IV?!? Anyway the nephew got let loose with my chop saw and we got busy with some oak posts and the rest of the timber



Again it slowly took shape


and we just about had things in place for the birthday 'practice run'


Few things to finish off, including the roof of the Pergola. Overall though I'm super happy with the transformation... more importantly so is SWMBO - phew!

Back to the metal stuff soon, well, pending a few other distractions...

I got a call recently which sort of went as follows...

"You know you were talking about putting solar on one of your buildings... are you still thinking about it?"

"Yes, still on the to-do list, why's that?"

"There is a system for sale locally at considerably less than original cost and it's less than a year old, the catch is you need to remove it from the static caravan it's on..."  "oh and it needs to be sooner rather than later"

"Early alarm for me this Saturday then!"

... and that's why I found myself heading down to the south coast for an 8am rendezvous at a static van site last weekend... 


The story is that seemingly some of the vans are condemned and are to make way for some luxury cabins instead, the system just so happened to be on one of the earmarked vans for 'recycling'.

So here's the kit I came to get


the added bonus being that I wasn't told that a battery was part of the deal - result!


All connections looked simple enough to remove


The fun bit was going to be pulling the various bits of wiring routed around and under the van to the main consumer unit and the panels themselves. Speaking of which...


They were a little bit bigger than I had initially thought, getting them in the car was therefore going to be bit tight, that said I had prepared to a degree in the choice of vehicle, more on that in a bit.

On with the dismantling then


We picked the wrong weekend for the wind and rain, especially given the location and what was happening (or not happening) at the Goodwood Festival of Speed along the coast, luckily the roof team did a sterling job and were only nearly blown off the roof twice


While they were leaning 45 degrees into the wind and holding a socket, I cracked on with the last wiring related job, removing the cables from the consumer unit


Time then to load it all into the car


Those of you familiar with the fleet will see I chose Thunderbird 2 for this particular exercise, namely as it's a lot more practical in terms of the rear space and boot aperture than the later D5. Good job I did too as the panels were actually wider than the opening and had to go in at an angle before I could lay them flat


All is now safely stored until such a time that I can work out positioning and then the subsequent running of cables etc. For the official bits and hooking it in to the grid etc. I need to bribe my tame electrician to come visit with the promise of copious amounts of beer amongst other things... and if he's reading this - only when the diary allows of course 

I may not be convinced on an electric car for supposed 'carbon neutral' motoring, but using green electricity for the repair of classic cars I can get on board with. Given we are also quite electric heavy here for household bits such as cooking, hot water etc. it shouldn't be a bad addition to Toomanyprojects Towers.

More soon.

Very much a result compared to the initial outlay.

Believe me, if someone else was involved who has way more wombling tendencies than most folk, it would be already installed here, especially given it was a 'baby' version at 37 ft. Thankfully I was able to dissuade her on this occasion as the transport costs would easily outweigh the worth of the thing.

Another month gone - How is it October?!

So I'd just about finished shaping my wooden sarcophagus in the last update... ok, ok, the partially sunken/raised pond and then typically the weather happened to get in the way, then SL collection, then Goodwood etc. etc. so it was a bit of a sorry mud pit for a while


Once the fun stuff was done though, it was on with collecting the second batch of sleepers and getting them installed, all under the watchful eye of the quality control officer (well behind closed eyelids!)



I figured I'd go for the full belt and braces (see what I've done there ) approach seeing as there would be a fair volume of water pushing out, so not only were the sleepers screwed vertically and horizontally as well as the ties in the corners I also added additional supports diagonally


Next came the 'fun' job of installing the underlay, for this I recruited the person who described it as 'just like icing a cake'... make of that what you will, all under the watchful eye of someone once more 


then the monstrous liner went in, which despite sending measurements the supplying company still sent an oversize version, perhaps better to be safe than sorry and all that


The best way of installing the liner is to partially fill it and let it form to the shape of the pond and fold/tidy as best as you can as it fills


This also meant I had to get my feet wet... (it wasn't warm!)


Slowly and surely things took shape however


While it was slowly filling, I celebrated preemptively with a beer, well you may have heard of 'topping out', this was 'filling in' 


Once filled, I could finally run an extension lead to test the pump and filter. Until this point it was an unknown quantity 'wombled' by the wife from someone looking to get rid


On the face of it, the pump worked well, but there were several seals that were way past their best, and the power for the internal belt drive mesh was unresponsive, a quick look at the in-line pcb revealed the reasons why...


Now look closely again at the above, and you'll see the resistor at the bottom is nowhere near the board having rusted off!, a new one of those on order then!

Thankfully the UV element was working as intended, so other than a good clean we were good to go once the spares arrived. For a brief while this was how things stood.


However not being able to sit still for too long, I decided it was time to finalise the electrickery element and make a mess once more running the armoured cable for both the five-way control panel for the pond as well as power for a socket in the gazebo. Not too many photos at this point as I was head down trying to get it all done in a limited time and make sure I got things correct.


I also decided to add a waterfall/planting area so the pond structure wasn't quite so harsh on the eye... I'm a big fan of project creep (really? I hear you cry), so it soon grew larger than originally proposed . The 'last' pond-related job was to source the decking boards for the capping.


Pretty happy with that. Importantly so was SWMBO.

Lastly and nearly beaten by the light, I made a start on the framing for an opening door on the end of the gazebo so it can be used in the winter as well as shelter the contents - note the jockey wheel which helps take the load off the hinges a little.


and as you will have noted from above, added some lighting which makes it a nice place to be now the evenings are drawing in rapidly.


Nearly there, more soon...

Small win over the weekend, while out for lunch and idling browsing one of the many antique collector venues that are in this part of the world I spotted a metal sign for not much money... "bear wearing helmet" was the description, those who know, will know

Now hung in the workshop

It all looks great, you've certainly achieved a lot this year! Im not sure where my year went!