June, already, are you sure? This year is running away from us and there is
still so much that needs to be done to get to where we want to be by the end
of the year.
Our lovely sunny winter days are such a delight. Well they would have been
if it was not for a week of gloomy wet cloudy cold days that we have just
endured. The whole of SA has been under a blanket of gloom. Thankfully we
have been lucky and the dreadful rains and cold that have engulfed much of
the country stayed away from us. We were just beset with good old English
drizzle! There is light at the end of the tunnel though, or sun at the end
of the clouds, with the forecast of sunny and dry weather for the coming
days and weeks. This is all good news for us. Phase 2 of the build started
this week and rain is not something that we really wanted to get thrown into
the mix.
I am really looking forward to the new build in one way, watching it all
happen. Having not seen a build from the first shovel to the last lick of
paint before this will be an enlightening experience, hopefully in a good
way! With just a single week under the belt our property looks like the
early days of the Somme. Should anyone choose to invade we have a great
trench system to hanker down in and repel from! The downside of having
trenches is the piles of earth that are now mounting up with no home for
them to go to. With the threat of rain and a muddy mess avoided for the
moment we need to make sure that a mud bath is not forthcoming and get on
top of managing the piles of earth and where they end up. Quite a bit will
probably be reused in the build once the foundations are down to level and
get compressed before the concrete slabs get laid. With some sunshine and
dry weather for a while the probability of a mud disaster fades but close
behind is the prospect of a desert like dust bowl. You can't win. As to how
things progress we shall see. The guys at the frontline work wonders with
just a pick and spade. I joined the troops and did my bit with pick and
spade, 'the crazy white guy', trying to locate the old mains water feed from
next door. It still seems to be connected and runs right through the
foundations for the main bedroom. My job, dig a trench and located the pipe
away from the build so that I can cut and cap it off. We did consider
plumbing it in to our house again and get free water, but that seemed a tad
dishonest! A few exploratory trenches later, success. Just need to pop to
the shops for the right bits and hope it doesn't pop and create a natural
spring in the garden.
As far as the 'finished' living quarters go, we have had some closure at
last. After many a visit to assess the situation our third set of glass for
the 11 sunroom doors arrived and was fitted. Hooray. There is the odd tiny
defect in the glass but on the whole we are happy with them at last, we try
not to look too closely. Even if we weren't happy I don't think we could
cope with any more messing around. Our Telkom line is still a bit of a pain.
We returned our original handset and got a new one which seems to have
sorted some of the 'noisy line' issues, although we still have times when
the line is just dead. The funny thing is though if we call it from the
mobile it rings and is alive again. The line has been checked more times
than should be necessary and never a fault found. It seems to have been ok
for a few days now so fingers crossed!
Our trusty Rayburn has been chugging away well. I am slowly getting to grips
with my 'steam engine' as Sue calls it. Certainly smells like one sometimes!
Anthracite can smell quite acrid when burning, a necessary evil. Wood is
still an option but we have nowhere to store a huge stack at the moment and
as the firebox is quite small burning wood would involve a fair bit of
cutting and chopping to get it to fit, not to mention constant attention
when burning to keep it going. There again I am always sticking my nose in
the firebox to make sure my baby doesn't go out. I definitely takes the
chill out of the air in here on a cold icy night. It may not get to tropical
proportions but every little helps. As to when mid-winter hits, we shall
see. It seems to chew fuel quite quickly but we are getting better at
running it at 'idle' until we need major heat to cook in the evening. Is
solar heated hot water the answer to all our problems? We are not sure yet,
but Rayburn hot water is increasingly receding as an option. Solar seems
like a nice 'green' idea, but 'green' means 'expensive'. Our electricity
bill is not huge by any means as we are both fairly cheap to keep, but once
we get a bath installed Sue's demands on hat water will exponentially
increase! With bright sunshine 90% of the time in winter solar would be a
great option, but the payback time may be at least 5 years with the amount
we use. For a family of 4+ it's a no brainer. So you never know, next blog,
solar may be our new baby.
The local municipality have been very busy as of late 'improving' the
residential roads. They are dirt roads and ours in particular takes quite a
beating. So over the last few weeks they have been grading, rolling,
grading, watering, and introducing new material. It took over a week for the
trucks to dump big piles of rock every ten meters along the road. The rock
turned out to be slate, hmm. Now with it all graded into the road surface it
seems to have largely been ground to dust and what was a dry, rocky, but
lumpy road is now after a bit of drizzle a muddy mess. Congrats! As to what
it will be like in the rainy season, just glad we have Mufasa to get us out
of here! Lesser mortals with little cars will have such fun! I avoid it like
the plague on my bike, although I have braved it a couple of times, yuck.
I will open up a new photo album for the new build 'Phase 2 Construction'
and get my bum into gear to load photos as it happens, some new shots of the
finished house will pop up soon too as well as some local area shots. Yes I
do remember how my camera works if you were wondering! My main photo project
will be a 'Year in Underberg' soon to start come mid-winter, interesting for
us if no one else!
