Spraying the upstairs

We have finished grinding the beams and then hoovering them. Doug did that while I did other useful things like move the sheep fencing. I feel pathetic, but I am not great up a ladder or on scaffold. At some point I will have to manage it as insulation and plasterboard is a two person (at least!) job.

Usually cleaning the chickens feels like the 'short straw' job, but I did this and some more fencing while Doug sprayed the rafters with Xylothene (it is what everyone seems to use in France for woodworm and the more damaging Capricorn beetle) and in this case I felt I was the lucky one!

All cleaned up

Ready to start spraying

There was a slight setback that the water ran out when Doug had just finished spraying and wanted to decontaminate. Usually it is fine but we are adding a new drinker (an old bath) for the cows and sheep in a higher up field which we fill with a very long hose and use the pump to get the water up there. I tried to fix a leak and the water ran out in the time it took me to run up to the bath and back down again to turn it off. It is awesome we have the level detector now to stop us running the pump dry, but annoying how long it takes to switch the water back on.

The next stage is to move all the boxes that are in the main part of the house in to this room so we can start cleaning and spraying the rafters there. We decided against insulating this room now, partially because there is some work needed to improve some of the supports of the ridge pole which we want the roofer to look at (when he makes it up here!) and partially because we feel we will get more benefit from moving on to getting some insulation on the roof above where we are living.

There is also quite a lot of rubble and rubbish to be removed too. Some was there when we moved in and some comes from bits we have demolished up there.