The horrors of PEAT

So long ago that we can hardly remember it, at the first site visit with Mary, in fact, when we decided on the site, she said, "But if there is peat under there the engineer won't let us build on it." The digger finally went on site last Monday, or perhaps Tuesday, after the spare part from Japan, the lack of which prevented the start on 13 August, had arrived. When we went past on Wednesday, returning from a few days at the Other Place, we stopped off and admired the huge great drive that has now been carved out of the entrance spinney, carefully avoiding the oak, as instructed. There was no one working, though, at 10.30 ish; and there was a rather deep wallow full of water at the meadow end of the track, which ought to have warned us something was up.

Later, when we had turned a telephone on and got a signal, we received a carefully worded message from Mary to say that PEAT had been found and an urgent site meeting was required. And she duly arranged it forthwith; and we turned round just as we were about to get on to the A9, and went back.

Alistair Fraser, the builder, is jolly nice and so is Alex Sutherland the immensely experienced digger man. They both come surrounded by the praises of all the local people we have asked for advice; and they have the sort of self confidence that people get from knowing that they do a thing well. When I arrived (Roy went back to Tomdoun for Mary) they were standing beside a new hole, about 3 metres deep, looking sorrowful. It was beautiful shiny smooth dark brown peat right down to the bottom, and further, for all we knew to the contrary, and ominous little plopping noises from the bottom were not rats but moist morsels dropping off as the water began to run in. It looked rather delicious, like some of the earth in Narnia that the trees ate in The Magician's Nephew. "The whole site wobbles when the digger drives over it." As we saw later. So that was a no-go. An off the top of the head calculation later indicated that the cost of infill alone, were we to try to build on the original site, would amount to £60,000, if it could not be found somewhere on site and had to be bought in.

So we wandered off in the wake of the digger and chewed up a bit of the bog across the little stream. Better, but not good; fill that hole. Up to a pretty little knoll, formerly designated as part of The View From The Sitting Room, where A and A had chewed things up a bit some years ago when wondering whether to buy the site. (Presumably at around the time we actually did buy it.) The digger munched a bit more, found stones, real earth, no rock (which is, rather anti-Biblically, a bad thing, apparently): good stuff. The digger wandered off on its own a bit and found that the underlay of the little knoll is good moraine. So we all admired that hole before it got filled in again.

And lo, it was decided, no fuss, to move the house to the knoll. Mary paced it out, had a short fierce battle on our behalf about keeping the damage to the environment and the destruction of trees to a minimum (it was nice to witness that); various discussions took place about the orientation, the space that will be required for the statutory West Highland straggle of ratty little outhouses; we asked for a costing of the extra expense of another 100 yards or so of access track; Mary said she would clear it all with the planners; and that was that.

We are a little worried at Alex's propensity to see a hillock with trees on it and identify it as a good source of road-making material; and it seems that rather more of the entrance spinney will be devoured in this way than we would like. But what do you do when someone is obviously an expert? We will need gravel. And I THINK it was only a tease when he said that a couple of branches really ought to come off the oak. Mary knows that she is going to have an ongoing battle to make sure that the building site and the access drive are both set into the land rather than being built up. Rather her than us; that is what we pay her for.

All this is Roy's fault. He has been worrying that the bedrock will be too near the surface to bury the sewage treatment plant properly.

Moral: when building in the Highlands, it is as well to have a really large site. Or, alternatively, dig trial pits right at the beginning.

New Site

The trees in the distance will be roughly where the house will now be sited.



More photos from when R&C visited the site on Wednesday.

Digger Works

Aerial Photo

Yellow - road (not brick, just small), white = house (wrong angle - will be angled a bit more to face SW I think), river at the bottom.
Link to original on www.multimap.com

Nearly started

OK Since no one else is posting on here, I will.

Work was due to start on 13 August, but the digger was broken (off to Fort William for TLC). Roy went to meet the builder and digger-driver on site and plodded around in the rain discussing where the access road will go.

Wed 22nd - Contract signed! (yes a bit topsy turvy but it's OK - the work on site still hasn't started).

And the builder has asked Mary to ask Dr D not to contact him directly... oh dear, my parents are the Clients from Hell already and no turf has been turned!