Fibre Broadband Coming

 Here's an absolute hero earning his money at height in a howling gale and pouring rain.  He is doing the first stage of installing the fibre cable to connect us to the 21st century.  The actual hook-up happens next Tuesday with a new fibre router.   We need to see how it goes before we decide whether to disconnect from landline telephone.

UPDATE  The fibre broadband was finally installed yesterday.  Early impression is of a vast improvement.  210 mbps download speed and 103 mbps upload.  I did not appreciate that the fibre cable is just one single glass core along which everything goes both ways.  The fibre router has the same connections as had the old router.  Simply switching the connections from old to new box of tricks seems to have worked fine.  Because of the size of the place we have two wi-fi repeaters, each with its own hard wire connection to the router.  These seem to work too.

Wonderful New Picture of Settle Station

It is Monday morning and the coming week is forecast to be 'Autumnal' in feel.  How delightful therefore for this picture by Chris Eccleston to appear on Facebook today.

That prominent building in the middle somehow looks familiar.

Chris Eccleston has been kind enough to send me a high resolution version of the picture.  He asks if that is me and Pat sitting out in the sunshine on the deck.  Indeed it is!

Bye-Bye MX 5

 We are at long last a one-car couple.   Our beloved Mazda MX 5 has been sold.  Here is its rain-soaked departure:

Shadows

 I am a Facebook follower of some of those daft but ordinary worldwide groups, dedicated  to ordinariness.  Perhaps you are too?  Examples are "The Dull Mens Club", "Pointless Gates. Silly Signs and Other Associated Infrastructure" and inevitably,  "The British Water Tower Appreciation Society".

Thankfully for our sanity, there is a streak of childish silliness in all of us.  It is healthy and sometimes entertaining.  Formalising this on Facebook and elsewhere sharpens our wits and keeps us on the look-out for ordinary things that are, quite literally, extra-ordinary.  Nowadays we have in our pockets, the means to record those things when they occur, perhaps momentarily.  The trick then is to act fast and capture it.

Below is the sort of thing I mean - an instant in time when things all line up, perhaps never to be repeated.  My summertime morning routine, weather permitting, is to sit on one of our rooftop sundecks and attempt to do the Daily Telegraph cryptic crossword.  Good for the heart, soul and diminishing brain.  Yesterday was one such occasion.   I looked up from my crossword to see the shadow of the chain link fence which borders the deck had aligned perfectly with the vertical post from which one end is suspended.  But not for long so out with the iPhone and 'click'!  Unseen at the time but there in the station drive in the picture was the shadow of the Midland Railway water crane (the white thing to the left of the chain) as a bonus.

(The rusty cast iron pipe in the foreground is a section of the miles-long pipe which once brought the water supply to the tank from far off Langcliffe, via the railway line)

View From The Top

To relieve the monotony of roof leaks and mouldy walls I thought I would post this view from the top of the tower looking north east a week ago.  The magnificent Yorkshire Dales with sunshine and church bells.

Click on the pic. to see it without all the Blog gubbins on the right.

In the evening this is the same view:

And the Water Battle Continues

The almost undoubted main water problem is that wretched gap between the cast iron tank and the wall below.   Continual efforts to seal it are frustrated by the expansion and contraction of the iron tank which exceeds that of the stone, leading to cracks in the seal like this one:

I discovered a bitumen based sealant which can be painted into and over such cracks.  The clever bit is minute fibres suspended in the bitumen which add strength.   Not only that the job can be done from the very top rim of the tank using a six foot paintbrush of my design.  This means there is no need to scaffold the tower to enable safe access.  Should cracks recur the job can be done again.

Not only do the fibres give strength, they grip onto the inverted paintbrush avoiding drips.

And this is how that section looks after three coats of the reinforced bitumen seal.  Not pretty but it's invisible from all normal viewpoints.  Not bad considering it was done from the thin dry end of a six foot long paintbrush.  Just need some rain now.

The Battle With Water

Ironic I suppose that we should be troubled by water getting into our water tower.  The problem is that rain, especially when wind-blown, runs down the windward walls of the massive tank in volume and at pressure.   The slightest weakness in what should be a rainproof seal between the cast iron of the tank and the stone supporting walls finds its way through causing dampness and eventually black mould within.  Eventually, following the sort of prolonged and intense rain we have had so far this year floods the space between the fibreglass roof inside the tank and any holes in the tank itself.

There were only three deliberate holes in the base of the tank - 1. the water inlet pipe, 2. the outlet pipe and 3. the overflow pipe.  Pipes 1 and 3 are very definitely dry nowadays.  Pipe 2 carries all the rainwater from the roof to our underground rainwater harvesting system.  The fibreglass roof necessarily drains into that huge downpipe via a vulnerable outlet.  We think that needs exposing, enlarging and making good.  That is in hand when roofer Darren Philips can fit us in.  It that does not improve matters, the existing fibreglass roof will be replaced with a rubber roof laid above it.

There is also a fourth hole in the base of the tank - the massive hole through which the stairs and the lift shaft pass.   The removal of five entire tank base plates, each 4 feet square, creates a mighty big hole for any incoming rain to eventually pass.  That is what has been happening for some months now, damaging the parts of the floor below, the lift and its electronics and the tank walls themselves, especially at the south end, evidenced by ever worsening black mould.   Our building insurance covers the inside damage but of course it is up to us to keep the roof itself fit for purpose.

This week was to be the week to begin dealing with the unsightly and unhealthy black mould.  Se found a firm called The Mould Team who agreed to deal with the matter, having seen photographs of the extent and height (about 10 metres).  They attended on the dot on Monday 29th July but would do nothing unless we provided scaffolding access which they specified.  Disappointing but unsurprising so we set about finding a local scaffolder who could quickly provide access.  We struck gold with scaffolder Aide who scaffolded it the very next day.   At the very time the scaffolding was going up The Mould Team emailed to say they could no longer do the job as their men were not willing to work that high - scaffolding of not.

That left us in quite a fix - scaffolded but nobody to actually to climb it and deal with the problems -

A bit of Googling found us PureMaintenanceUK, mould eradication specialists we had found before but rejected as they insisted on using 'dry fog' to get rid of residual spores in the air - a tough and expensive call for a huge water tower.  Still, I explained our predicament and they responded straight away without the dry fog extra.

Long story short - scaffolded on Wednesday and job done by PureMaintenanceUK on Friday!!  The de-moulded but still rusty water stained walls will be painted with fungicidal paint before the scaffolding is removed.