Property – Page 4 – Our Journey to Scotland

Sizing Water Consumption and Storage Tanks

With the nearest water connection more than 500m away and crossing a main road plus multiple neighbours’ grounds, we decided to go for a rainwater collection and filtration solution.

So be prepared for a lot of numbers in this post.

In order to size such a system, I first tried to find out the demand of (drinking) water we would have on our plot.

According to a publication of the german Umweltbundesamt every person in Germany used 123l of drinking water per day.

This breaks down to the following parts as seen in the following picture:

I adjusted the numbers slightly to what I would expect in our environment (for example, as we are using a composting toilet we need nearly no water for the toilet, but I left in the 9% for small enterprises). Percentages in green are estimated less than the provided statistics and percentages in red estimated higher than the statistics:

This gives us a distribution like this:

Estimated Water Consumption Distribution (65l)

I then calculated the demand for 2 people of several periods of time:

So I came to the conclusion that our 2 people household would roughly need 50’000l of drinking water per year and that with a standard 1000l IBC we could last approximately 7 days (which I the amount of water we can easily carry in one go with the TeleHandler).

I then went on to the SEPA web site to find information about rainfall data in the area where we are. Unfortunately, the nearest data points on their map are either Halkirk near Thurso or Kilphedir near Helmsdale.

Image from: SEPA Rainfall data for Scotland

Among the various statistics they provide they list the actual rainfall in mm/cm2 for the last 12 months:

SEPA web site Rainfall data for Scotland

I projected the numbers from this chart to the size of the roof of our barn (roughly 310m2) that would act as our water collection surface:

So even during the last driest months in the last year (June: 8’520l and March: 6’240l), we expect still be more than enough rain (> 4’000l) to supply us with water.

And now to the sizing: As I do not want to empty the tanks completely (there is always some sediment or dirt at the bottom of the tank), I want to be able to leave approx 20cm water level in the tanks.

I looked at the dimensions of water tanks from different suppliers and found these dimensions for the sizes of 5’600l, 7’200l, 10’000l:

So even with a 5’600l tank I could “survive” for a whole month and still had left 20% for increased demand while always leaving 20cm of the water in the tank. And with a lifting capacity of at least 1’250kg we can still move around such a tank if required.

So my sizing conclusion would be to get two of these 5’600l tanks (so one tank could always go into maintenance or act as a backup) and and have two 1’000l IBC tanks for emergency water transport.

Depending on the water tanks and its certification this would cost approx 2’500,00 GBP (without delivery fees or hoses and the like).

Did I miss or forget something? What do you think?

ps – below you find the podcast version of this blog post:

Swift Sprite Major 4 EB off-road edition

We decided to get ourselves a caravan as a shelter on our plot as long as we do not have anything else to hide in. And yesterday, it arrived.

We decided for a Swift Sprite Major 4 EB, which is a caravan with a separate bedroom, living/cooking area and a toilet and shower in the middle of the caravan.

However with a total length of approx 7.5m and only a single axle, it only has limited ground clearance (with limited meaning really limited).

Sneak preview: we made the 450m in roughly 4 hours whiche equates to an astonishing 0.1125 kilometer per hour. In the image above you see the route we took.

Due to heavy rains in the last couple of days, the whole track was pretty soaked, so we had to use the TeleHandler to pull the caravan. However, the 50mm ball -hitch on the Tele was way to high for the caravan (ca 65cm above the ground), so the effective ground clearance of the caravan was even less (actually less than 10 cm).

I really did not find to take many pictures and videos (too occupied with the whole operation). But you might get at least some impressions of the undertaking.

After the fence we have to turn left onto the ramp

Not only steep downwards but also steep sidways

Though we used plywood at the bottom the caravan still got some scratches at the rear. But still in one piece.

We will probably wait, before we move it next time …

Updates on the plot

It has been a while since I last wrote about what has been going on the plot. And actually, something has happened.

Still with Toyota, trailer and telehandler

Let me briefly explain where we currently stand and maybe I find time to to dive in to details in additional posts.

So what happened?

We got our Telehandler, the JCB 531-70; so we are now able to do some heavy lifting and more …
Quick note: And yet with this delivery not everything went smoothly, as the brand new machine was not working completely as expected. But we now have a new local technician from Latheronwheel who is very kind and helpful.
The digger finally got fixed. We now even have a quick-hitch, which seem to be not so “quick” (but that is a different story). We were even able to fix a loose track on the excavator. It is easy once you know …
We also now have a 3.5t 13ft tipping-trailer with which we are able to bring more stuff to the plot (such as concrete, gravel – more on this later).
We fixed more parts of our track to the plot (by adding stones to the ground and putting gravel on top of it). This is only a temporary fix, as the ground is still way to weak to hold the weight of the 7t Telehandler or a fully loaded trailer.
We even now a diesel tank from which we can fuel our vehicles and machinery. And refilling it on the main road is as easy as lifting it with the forks of the Telehandler.
Electricity is now much easier as we can run on a generator as long as we have not finished the turibine/battery set up. As the generator runs on diesel we can refill it from the same diesel tank as everything else.
We discovered a quarry on our plot (which has not been used for probably more than 100 years. I have 2 raw short video sequences (no voice, just walking aroung) that are linked below to get a first impression. As you can see, we had to cut through a lot of gorse to actually get there. The only reason I found out that there is a quarry was, that I saw it on some older maps from the scottish national library archive. There is still some work to get done to easily access the quarry or to get some stones from it. But the good news is, that we now would not have to transport that much amount of stones from a different quarry further away.
We actually started with our shed; i.e. we did the foundation by pouring concrete for 12 pads and nearly finished the floor insulation. That actually means that the wood *finally* arrived (more than 3 months). Next time I buy the wood somewhere else and not at the Sutherland woodyard in Wick (and yes, I would link a website if they had one).
Planning permission for entrance from the A99 and the barn is still under consideration (*everything* in the Highlands justs takes looonger).
I got myself a pocket calculator Construction Master Pro Trig from “Calculated Industries” to at as a babel fish between the “imperial” surrounding and my “metric” mind. Now I know that 2″ 7/8 are roughly 73mm – so good!
We cut away even more gorse (and still have to wait until autumn to be able to burn it).
I finally admitted to myself that I will have to do a monthly trip to Inverness to be able to buy the stuff I need (the cowboys riding to the city). And here the trailer really comes in handy!
Side note: and it was actually in Inverness where I got the scaffolding poles for the turbine. No way for me to get them in Wick.
We did some sheep shearing support – first step in becoming real crofters …

So why am I writing all this? Is everything solved? Far from that.

I am probably more of writing this to remind me that though it seems that nothing really proceeds as planned and barely no progress is visible, some things are still getting done. So there is actually progress (however small it is).

Shedland

Quarry videos

Way from quarry to rabbit run 1/2

Way from quarry to rabbit run 2/2

More roadworks – preparing the path at the old railroad line

Today I started cutting away some gorse to improve the track towards the entrance of the Rabbit Run. Under the gorse a lot of rocks came visible which might become a good foundation for a real path.

Starting track preparation

Roadworks

This week some friends from Switzerland came over and helped me on the plot.

We made some improvements to the entrance of the Rabbit Run and the ramp to the Loch. And we added some trenches and repaired the existing ones. We will see how this works out on the next rain. But until now it is remarkebly dry …

Ramp to the Loch

Roadworks at the entrance of the Rabbit Run

What can happen when you buy a used digger

Things that can happen when you buy used machinery.

Last time I shared the news that we got ourselves a digger. Now after roughly two weeks, I wanted to share a quick update on the good, the bad and the ugly.

So, on the 8th of April we went to the JCB Scot depot in Muir of Ord to pick up our digger. But before we could actually do that, we had to visit the cool guys at Farm & Forestry Equipment in Ardersier to borrow a trailer. When we finally arrived in Muir of Ord, the digger was actually there and the people on site actually sort of knew we were about to collect it. So far so good.

What was not so good, was the “fully serviced” digger appeared as being not so fully serviced. How could I tell with my zero minutes of excavator experience? For example, the hydraulic switches of the boom were not working. Obviously something that can get unnoticed during servicing. But no worries – the mighty on site engineer just hissed “boys” and called in one of his subordinate mechanics.

With a universal screw wrench the problem was immediately fixed and quite as immediately broke again. After some retries I was assured if this *ever* broke again, someone would come up to out place to get this sorted. Great! (sneak preview into the future: as soon as we unloaded the digger the problem resurfaced and has not been properly repaired until now)

After some loading we were good to go and crawled back to Caithness. But not without paying a quick visit to Clynelish in Brora.

We enjoyed the view in the lovely bar/café on the first floor and continued our journey all the way to our plot, where we were warmly welcomed.

So what was next? After unpacking we not only found out that the boom hydraulic switch was again not working (only moving to the left), but also found the bushings being broken when we took off a bucket. To the defense of the “fully serviced supervisor” this can also easily get unnoticed when you are not changing the buckets before handover.

In addition, the as being “new” sold earth drill was apparently not so new, but only a refurbished model (as we could see by some delivery note that someone had forgotten to take away before handing it over to us). But it actually did not matter, as the sockets for the hydraulic were not the same size as the ones on the digger anyway.

Trying to find a positive side: the mechanic would not have to come over to just fix a single problem, but a lot of things. After sales servicing to its excellence?

So I found myself in the position to report my digger “DOA” and was quickly assured that someone would come over to help me on that. Being handed over a mobile phone number I left a message with some clear coordinates where the patient would to be found and waited to the next morning (without any real hope, that actually some would show up).

I was wrong. In the moring I got a call and suprisingly two guys showed up and did their work:

Bushed repaired CHECK
Auxiliary hydraulic valve adjusted ~~CHECK~~_{It was only a temporary fix and the right adapters were missing.}
Hydraulic pedal fixed ~~CHECK~~_{It fell off after a couple of pushes on the pedal again.}

So after the mechanics left, I could at least try with my “new” earth drill. Just to find out, that the hydraulics on the hydraulic hoses of the drill leaked. And I found out, that the hydraulics tank was nearly empty. Also something one normally would not notice when performing some service work before handing it out to a customer.

Side note: in what status would I receive something by that company that was *not new* and *not fully serviced*? This was actually a question I later asked the sales guy. Answer: inconclusive.

But hey, labour seems not be the most expensive part of repair works and therefore I was able to enjoy a vitis of the mechanics on the same day!

To cut a long story short; here is the result as of today:

Hydraulics fixed
Hydraulic oil refilled (free of charge)
Hydraulic pedal still not repaired

And now still waiting for the next visit of the mechanics.

And to wrap up the whole story:

JCB Scot was really helping to get this issue fixed; until now this has all been done under “warranty” of a nine-year-old digger.

So would I ever buy a used machine again (me, who has no clue about construction machinery)? Maybe, but probably only “cheaper” and “smaller” machines.

Would I buy from them again? Probably yes, as they still provide a “good” service overall (and they are the nearest seller from our plot).

Alternate access to the plot

As you might know there are some unresolved issues regarding the access to the plot. So the good news is, yesterday I discovered a new possible path where most of the part would already have some decent road. Problem is: it is over someone else’s plot : -| Have a look at the video below (taken from OSMaps).

Alternate access

The path is using parts of the old railroad track which today is dismantled and only visible in parts.

Category: Property