stopping the water coming in

This is turning out to be a busy week, and it’s only Tuesday ! This morning I went ‘along for the ride’ to take the cull ewe/mutton we have been offered to the slaughterhouse.  Having not done this before, I thought this would be a great opportunity to be shown the ropes. Wasn’t that bad an experience.. the animals were handled ok, there wasn’t hoards of snifty farmers grumbling at our antics.. just a regular turnout of trailers of animals to slaughter.  Lots of form filling though, of course…

Came home to find the builders who have been replacing some of our wall hung slates (which would not have been way up our to-do list if it were not for the fear of decapitating some passer by next time there was a storm with flying slates) have returned and now started replacing the gutters.  I guess this is something we could have done ourselves, but we both really dislike heights (well not so much the height as the fall off of it).

The new gutters are part of our initiative to ’stop water coming in the house’. It’s the first rule of tackling damp problems.. stop rain coming in! - Have already dealt with the dodgy flashings on chimney, but a new damp patch (well it’s been there a long while but the wall paper was obviously fairly new.. so it took a while to show..) at the front of the house was caused by ill fitting gutters of many different makes pouring water directly onto our stone work. At the back of the house half a roof’s worth of rain empties neatly onto the side of our house.. roughly in the same place as the kitchen wall has hand sized bubbles in the plaster. Hopefully the gutter modifications will make it just a tad drier in here.

While the builders were doing that, the man from the water board arrived to assess whether we can go on a water meter. We can  - yay.  We are already saving rain water in a series of water butts.. including the 400 gallon ex-juice container, and are not big on wasting water; all our gardening needs are being met by collected water.  I am fairly convinced our water bills will take a massive dive once the meter is installed.  It will also help focus the mind on not being wasteful too, which is good for our pocket and the environment.