The Frost Performs Its Secret Ministry

The old windows create some lovely patterns when the frost is setting in. We have only a few left now--the two in the kitchen, the small ones in the living room bay window, and two in the upstairs hall. All the others give a modern view of the world: clear, objective, transparent. This one offers a different view:

Cold Arrives

Last night was the coldest so far this winter: -14.5C. This weekend we received our first snow--and out came the shovels and the snowblower. Pat had mixed so much gravel in the snow that the blower jammed twice. Now it makes a ticking noise, as though an impeller has bent and is hitting the housing. Drat!

Just in Time for Winter

We finally insulated the concrete, clad it with flashing metal, and backfilled using material from the old gravel pile next to the woodshed. We finished up early in November; here it is at the end of the month:

Already the pigeons have left their mark (particularly on the left side). They will have to go. . . .

Dry and Wet

The Crick has been dry for much of the summer. Now, after a week of rain (Sunday, 29 Oct.), it is rushing along furiously. Panama had dried up, then managed a faint trickle in early October; this Saturday it was restored to its normal pretty flow.

Catching Up

It has been a long dry spell, both in posting and in fact: the Crick dried up in May and stayed that way until the heavy rains of the last week. As usual, I can't really account for the time--few deeds of merit come to mind, though we did finally finish a long contemplated task: restoring the bay window foundation. Jo dug in fits and starts throughout the summer. Eventually even Susan and I joined in, and it was more or less ready for the footing stage.

The footing was quite massive, and well strengthened with rebar. I realized that at full depth, the stone foundation no longer matched the outline of the bay window. Several of the short walls disappeared. This was to be a challenge for the rest of the project.

After much muddling, I had the forms in place, bedded on the footing and braced to the house wall. I built a platform for the mixer and dumped mainly into the centre of the bay, moving the mix into the left and right corners. This was pretty hard work, even though we were using the comparatively light 55lb bags of readymix. Jo used the tractor and trailer to ferry the bags over as I needed them. The pace increased as we went along and the sun sank in the West. This was the 22nd of October and the days were already getting shorter.

We brought the concrete up to within a few inches of the top of the stone foundation wall, and urged the mixture into the many large gaps and voids. The wind used to rush through this and up into the living room, making the floor so cold that any water splash from the Christmas tree froze to the floorboards at once. We're hoping this will not only stabilize the foundation at this point but make the house dramatically more weather tight.

 For the most part the pour went smoothly, though one corner did end up angling out considerably more than I had intended. This is not just the perspective: it really did end up pushing out far. Never mind; a blind man would be glad to see it. I was a little hesitant about removing the forms, but in the end it was quite smooth without any great air gaps.





Next, we will pump expanding foam into any remaining gaps in the exposed stone. Then we will cover the whole area with flashing, glue sheets of rigid foundation foam to the concrete, and extend the flashing below the grade--then backfill!

Visitor

After the rains finally came again late in September, I was surprised to find this visitor clamped to the back door. He seems confused, and well he might be. At first, the summer was cold and rainy. Then it went dry and cold, and dry and hot. Not only the Crick but Panama dried up, from June to October, a record stretch. People began speculating about mass die-offs of trees. Then the rains started in the autumn, and soon we had reached something very much like the average rainfall for the period.

Founding Fathers

I've been reading Bill Bryson's book At Home, in which he describes the enormous difficulties of obtaining basic building supplies in North America. Washington actually imported both mortar and building stone from England! Well, this foundation was laid more than a century later, but by the look of it, Howard Elgee still had trouble getting decent materials. The stone is certainly local, and entirely uncut. The "mortar" is more like plaster or roughcast. It can fill in gaps but it has little adherence and no strength. Most of it came away when I hit it with the hose. The concrete will fill in the gaps.