Rabbit protection

The mission today was to patch up the holes in the internal wall and repair the sleeper wall that had been penetrated by vermin (mainly rabbits). The Big Man (James) kindly lent a hand which made things tick along nicely. His uncle is a brickie so while at B&Q gathering supplies he made a quick call to establish the mix ratios required :-)

We started using a good 1:5 mix with a drop of plasticiser, mixing in the wheel barrow (not the cement mixer...) and managed some patching.Tip for all (including those builders on YouTube): use a garden hoe to mix the mortar-mix, it's a revelation. Despite an overly generous use of plasticiser, our mortar mix skills improved well as the day proceeded.

We revealed the extent of the "vent holes" that had been built in to the sleeper wall (why were the facing down slope in to the house?) we decided to mix some gravel in to the mortar to create an aggregate mix, which worked much faster.

Once the internals were done we did some very rough "re-pointing" on the gable walls, with some more tidying up on the external faces of the old vents.

Once James left, Jaimin did some laser levelling of the drain pipes to try and get a feel for what the level of the main soil pipe will have to be. Some working out leads us to the rather depressing statistic that this will be about 380mm lower than the existing pipe... some digging awaits.

Bricking it

The wall that broke when ripping out the bathroom door frame was patched up (badly) and gave Jaimin a new respect for brickies. The cement mixer with "next day delivery" that was ordered on Wednesday failed to materialise so the wheelbarrow and spade were employed. Mixing mortar for the first time ever was not very successful but after a morning of effort the walls seems to be repaired.
Jaimin says that using his hands was apparently a lot easier than using a trowel.

Bricked up

In the afternoon Nick arrived and after trying (with moderate success) to work out the existing fall to the septic tank inlet (it's ~1.5m from the kitchen drain) Nick & Jaimin set about digging a trench above the clay pipe. Unfortunately installing the shower at the "right height" will require a new drain pipe... But this is probably the right thing to do in the log term and should also give us some options to separate rain water from grey water. Blisters abound...