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.