Garage post script

Now that I've replaced the guttering with lovely new stuff (because the old stuff was all floppy about the joints, having been been brutally abused with a file by whoever put it up) and got rid of the old roof, I'm declaring the garage roof project finished!  It's certainly nice and dry inside so that's a win.

New guttering!

Getting rid of the old roof proved even more expensive that expected, because I didn't see the same chap at the tip, and they basically make up their own interpretation of the rules.  This chap insisted that "£10 per package or sheet" meant "£10 per package; unless it contains more than one sheet, in which case the number of sheets", unlike the first chap who said the only constraint on a £10 package was that you had to be able to get it in the skip yourself.  Anyway, they decided to charge me £65 for 7 1/2 sheets in 4 packages, plus one bag of rubble.  Go figure, as our American cousins might say.

So now all the numbers are in and it looks like this:

actual roof material!	£210.00
tools (bolt cropper)	£9.99
trailer hire	£70.80
plastic film to wrap old roof	£53.75
sealant & foam	£12.63
J-bolts	£22.82
magic paint	£15.99
guttering	£27.11
old roof disposal	£65.00
fuel	£11.90
Total	£499.99

So, under £500 all in. Hoorah! OK, I admit that I estimated the fuel cost. Overall, I think I saved quite a lot of money over getting someone else to do it though.

And I've also got a left-over 5m x 1m piece of roof material to use to make the insulated box for the solar water heating project, which has been collecting scrap materials for several years now, to the quiet despair of the lovely Jackie, who would really prefer NOT to have such stuff (specifically, two used radiators and a double-glazed patio door, and more recently a slightly leaky water butt) littering the estate.

Left over, but still loved

Progress on the project been slightly hampered by the fact that there's really absolutely no point in doing it (see loft hatch automation), since I can't really imagine installing a tank in the loft and integrating it with the multipoint heater we use - not even sure if that's legal, you never know with plumbing these days - but I suppose it could possibly provide a warm paddling pool for Layla.  Or possibly a Legionnaires' disease incubator. Hmmm.

Meanwhile I am running again (when it's not actually raining). Nowadays I have a pair of bluetooth earbuds (super-cheap from 7-day shop) and sporty leggings (£6.99 from Ebay) under the shorts for winter weather.  I still listen to banging psy-trance, but not running in time with it - which seems to work OK, and there's more musical choice if you don't need >160bpm (which is where I run now). My last run was over my new 5km course in 34:47, for what it's worth.

Still waiting for consistently dry weather for some other projects in the pipeline - the van needs some attention, for example.  It currently produces a small cloud of vapour from the back heater vent when it gets hot, which is quite distressing.  Sometime it flashes the thermometer symbol on the dashboard when it isn't hot, and sometimes it doesn't. So, there's a bit of work to be done there...

And there are many, many more tasks in store. I know, you can hardly wait. Me neither!

Welcome to 2018

I don't know about you, but my 2018 seems to have only just got going properly.  I'm STILL coughing like a horse, blowing my nose like a foghorn and generally sounding like a sickly person after what seems like months of on-and-off below-par bodily performance.  As soon as I feel better, I naturally celebrate by slightly excessive (or, when other people's birthday celebrations etc. require it, extremely excessive) drinking and staying up late, and - would you believe it - then I feel worse again afterwards.  This has been going on (and off) for the whole of 2018 (at least it feels like it) so I haven't been reporting much.  Meanwhile the weather has precluded any outdoor activity of note.  Honestly, you wouldn't want to know, for the most part.  I didn't run at all in March, what with the snow, the horsing around, and the foghorn.

However, recently the weather had a little fit of being OK for a day so Leo and I leapt at the chance to rip the garage roof off.  Overnight rain was expected, meaning it had to be weathertight at the end of the day, so I invested in a pair of bolt croppers to save time dismantling the old roof.  Being an inveterate cheapskate, I chose an almost-unfeasibly cheap 18" model from Screwfix at a bargain £9.99.  When I got them home I discovered that actually, although 18" sounds like a lot, it doesn't actually provide enough leverage to get through an 8mm bold.  No problem, I just made them into bigger ones with two pieces of aluminium tube (actually bits of old hang-glider uprights (hang gliding came next after windsurfing in my adventure sports history, in about the 1990s)) cunningly secured internally with a bit of paracord.  This turns out to actually be better than buying longer ones because they work just as well, and they collapse to go in the toolbox.  Here they are, hanging from a wall with one leg extended (a bit like the birthday celebrations actually):

They happily hacked their way through all he old fixings with a very satisfying thunk, as well as providing the warm glow of a special tool constructed.  Here's the garage with the roof off (showing just how little holds the roof up when it's there!) 

And here it is now:

Still a few bits to fix but it's functional.  I used expanding foam to fill the gap up to the concrete beam across the front, with the totally amazingly marvellous Bostik Flexacryl Grey roof repair paint (which is like flexible fibreglass reinforced paint) to make it waterproof; the same paint around the edges where the insulation shows; a couple of bits of shaped plywood to match the doorframe to the roof line, and it's pretty much done.  I still have to replace the guttering, as you can see.  Oh, and get rid of the old roof: 

which is distressingly heavy stuff.  It all need to be packed up in double-wrapped polythene and taped which requires dry weather (which we have) and someone else to help lift the bloody stuff (which I don't).  So the drive is still not fully available for vehicles - bah!

But at least I'm back to running.  Yesterday I crushed my previous PB up the hill with a stonking 19:31 (1:24 quicker than my previous PB) and today I ran 4.1km in 28:52.  Still no prospect of Olympic glory except unless the opposition are required to hop, but I'm feeling quite chipper about it all.  So, roll on 2018!