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8th to 15th February 2004

Started the week clearing out cavities and back filling the walls with clean stone.  Thought I was getting ahead of myself and saving time....until ... a 9 metre section of wall, 8 courses high, collapsed under the weight - fortunately noone was close (other than myself) and there were no injuries other than my pride.

The next couple of days were spent clearing up and rebuilding what we had already done.  During this we also discovered another wall had bowed by 6mm in the centre so there was a paniced shovelling of stone from behind the wall to remove the pressure - with Friday the 13th arriving this seemed like the only sensible course of action!

Having got back to where we started and made a solemn vow never to be so stupid again we started doing something new.  The back wall of the house was laid to 11 courses - the point at which the ground floor beams will rest and we started positioning reinforcement mesh in the walls.  Whilst preparing the mesh in the walls we also started laying a fillet of waterproofing concentrate along the house walls to ensure a sound waterproof joint.

After a disasterous start we ended the week actually feeling fairly good and getting very close to the point at which we will start pouring concrete into the cavities.  We will be leaving the walls for a week to cure (one of the labourers is already calling me Mr Wolf as in the 3 little pigs and I don't want to give him any more ammunition by collapsing the walls by filling them with concrete too soon!) and then pumping the concrete into the wall 3 courses at a time...... let's hope no more stupid errors.