July came and went, and I didn't get a lot of time for anything RE.
The reason was that I've doing a few house repairs. My house was built around 1910, and in those days the clothes were washed in a 'copper'. This as the name suggests was a copper tub set in the corner of the kitchen in which the laundry was washed at a high temperature by lighting a fire underneath and pummeling with what looked like a small stool on a stick (a dolly). How times have progressed, we now have washing machines and MRSA.
Anyway, this wash-tub required it's own chimney (flue as you say that side of the pond?) and this has been stuck on one corner of my house ever since even though the tub went about 60+ years ago. The construction of it, and how it went through the roof meant that rain was getting in,so it had to come down.
I borrowed some scaffolding and put it up, there followed about 10 days of rain. When this stopped, up I went and took the chimney down to below roof level. This house is roofed with slate, and these needed replacing. Slates aren't as forgiving as shingles, they're heavy, fragile (you can walk on them) and exacting to put on.
But I managed it in the end and now have a waterproof roof. Part of the flue still exists, it runs through a corner of the house on the first floor and it looks like an excelent duct to take something up through the house to loft level; water pipes, cables, air-heating pipes etc, so I left it open at the top for future projects.
Another job while I was up there was to seal a 'valley' between two sections of roof by painting it with some modern expensive stuff where the lead has deteriorated, so hopefully I'm now secure and dry for the winter.
Tomorrow I go on my hols for two weeks in sunny Spain, sun, sea, sangria and more sun. ;-) If you're in the area of Estepona on the south coast and see a skinny, bald bloke under a large kite, that will be me.
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