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The stream behind our garden overflowed and brought waves of mud through the Green Bug workshop overnight. We abandoned the clean-up after a few hours after seeing it was coming again and diverted the stream away onto the drive, laid sandbags (left overs from previous building jobs - thankfully) and dug channels .
However, the main pipe carrying the stream water blocked completely on the second day and nothing could clear it. We tried rodding, digging out, I went in the water 3 times trying to pull out what I could find with my hands. A kind farmer neighbour dug out part of the bank with his JCB so we have a new overground stream for now. It's just running clear of the workshop door and back into the stream again.
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The "Tim" greenhouse is 4m long by 2.5m wide with a porch which extends out by 1m. The porch isn't quite as wide as the rest of the building which brings the ridge down just a little - adding a little extra interest to the front.  I've built quite a few of these now - the first was for Tim who lives in Southampton.  This feels like a great spot for the greenhouse, virtually filing this corner of the garden - the only downside is this deep concrete path laid right through the middle of it. Rather than excavate all this and skip it I'll work around it. The path is deep enough to work as a foundation where the wall meets it but I've got to make sure my wall levels and flooring eventually meet the same height (thankfully the path is level).
 Even after digging out the interior the ground was pretty loose. You can see how messy it is outside the greenhouse. So I fetched a load more material from the building merchants and opted for a full dry bed of sharp sand : cement to support the flagged flooring - there's no way that floor will ever move.   Now back to the workshop to finish off building the greenhouse and order up the glass. I'll back here in a couple of weeks or so.
 Since my last update in July I've been working every weekend on an extension to the house - to provide much needed extra facilities - we only have one toilet and a bath so there's always a queue. We can't wait to have a shower again! 
A small job just to finish off this week - adding a brick-sided cold frame to a greenhouse I built last summer. This greenhouse is only down the road from me so it's easy enough to do this as a small job. My customer is really enjoying the greenhouse but thought a cold frame will be a really useful addition. 
These foundations are a bit excessive for such a small wall but why not. I'm matching in with the foundations I laid for the main greenhouse and I can continue the brickwork courses through as well. There are 2 courses of engineering brick and two of the facing bricks. You don't see that much of this brickwork from the outside but it allows a nice deep space inside the cold frame,  I'll build the frame and opening windows now and return to fit those shortly.
My customers were very keen to use local reclaimed bricks for the base so on the first day I travelled to the salvage yard with my customer and we chose the best bricks we could find (after a bit of sifting and sorting through). For the floor we re-used some beautiful old quarry tiles my customer has had for many years - and we had just the right amount for the floor. I laid them on a full 3" bed of dry mixed sharp sand / cement and I'll brush through the joints with kiln dried sand when I come back here in a couple of weeks.    So chuffed to appear in Phao's excellent "blog of two gardens" this week. I built her greenhouse a couple of years ago and she recently came across a photo from that time. She looks very pleased.
  Cheers for this lovely picture sent by Steve on Christmas day morning. Happy Christmas y'all!
My customer had the base built by a local contractor - who also landscaped the whole back garden - so my job was a little easier and quicker, and thankfully everything fitted the base exactly. This greenhouse is built entirely from accoya (50 year guarantee) and painted in the customer's choice of "Bancha" - a new colour from the Farrow and Ball range.   |
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