Basecamp building

Muddy mayhem

Confronted by the morning’s muddy mayhem where a floor should be, I can’t help but question some of my life choices. The chaos of reality can be messy.

The vision in my head driving the project is my only compass at the moment, however quirky and nonsensical that vision might prove to be.

Things are rapidly changing right now. When you’re walking a tightrope, it’s probably best not to look down, keep your eyes focused straight ahead…

Wise warnings

Working with the weather is par for the course in the Outer Hebrides. Today was going to be no exception.

Unfortunately, tonight there was a storm warning, with strong winds expected to exceed 70mph. Not an ideal time to have a gaping hole in the side of the building, really.

Winds here are notoriously strong. Heeding local expertise and knowledge, the last thing I wanted was for storm gusts to get under the roof and lift it clean off!

It will be a time to batten down the hatches tonight. The temporary hoarding I was currently using to cover the hole would not suffice. I needed a much stronger option to try to cover the gaping hole in the wall.

This was something for me to sort whilst the diggers got on with clearing out and preparing the ground for the new floor build ahead.

Primed and ready

Having already made one ginormous hole in the ground, it was time to start filling it back up. Seems a bit ironic in many ways. However, this will be a case of building back better. This is where construction work can actually begin.

I’m replacing the old, failed suspended timber construction with an all-new, insulated, reinforced concrete floor. This will make a significant difference to the building’s overall thermal performance and efficiency.

Whilst an actual floor has the added benefits of being less muddy and wet, it will, however, potentially require cleaning; there’s always a catch!

The floor construction is a bit like making a cake with multiple layers. With the base established, it was time to begin adding the main ingredients.

First up, we needed some hardcore. A lot of hardcore. Like 30+ tonnes of the stuff! Once the truck had delivered and dumped it on site, it all then needed to be spread out inside the building to gradually start filling up the void.

Mechanical teamwork

The bigger digger kept bringing in loads of hardcore for the mini digger to then spread out and level across the base of the building.

Levels were carefully monitored as more and more hardcore was brought in. Remember the vital final finished floor datum? This cannot be exceeded.

Factored into these calculations, you had to allow for the different layers that are to be added on top of the hardcore: insulation, reinforement and concrete.

The hardcore helps provide a firm, level base for the subsequent reinforced concrete slab that will be poured on top. It also aids subsurface water drainage, preventing water from pooling under the concrete.

This hardcore layer then gets compacted with the mini digger rumbling back and forth over the surface.

It wasn’t long before you could see how quickly it had begun to dry out the sub-ground conditions through its changing colour as it gradually dried things out.

Overground underground

The building will need to be fully rewired as part of the renovation. As part of this aspect, now was the ideal opportunity to re-route how the mains electricity cable entered the building.

The existing cable is run through the air from a telegraph pole in the croft behind the building. Unfortunately, it enters the building 2.800m above the floor level.

Apart from being very awkward and unsightly, the new mezzanine level would cut straight across it. Not exactly ideal.

I contacted the electricity company to discuss options for relocating its entrance to the building. If I got a trench dug and ran a conduit from the pole to the building, they would run a new power supply into the building for me.

This required a hole to be made through/under the wall to run some electrical ducting through. Initially, a shorter temporary length was used just to preserve this new opening as all the new hardcore went in.

The trench to the pole will get done later, whilst the diggers are on site. Ultimately, this will allow the electric supply cable to be brought in at ground level. Ideal for me, and less maintenance for them – a win win situataion.

Stormy sleep

Whilst the groundworks were underway, I utilised some of the old floor joists I’d previously removed to fashion a make-shift storm door hoarding. Hopefully, this, plus a ratchet strap to keep it tight against the wall, should do the trick.

Now just got to hope that the roof is still on the building in the morning, and not blown off somewhere into the North Atlantic Ocean!

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Rest assured, there’s absolutely no AI-generated churn here; it’s just my own quirky outworking of ideas and dreams, as I look to renovate a derelict Small Mission Hall in the Outer Hebrides.