So, solar water heating, eh?

At last the solar heating system is up and working.



When I filled the system (initially with water) there was a substantial leak at the bottom right hand corner. I'd forgotten to tighten a compression joint. And a small leak (which I found later when the system pressurised) at the top where another compression fitting needed a bit more brute force. Otherwise totally uneventful.

Filling with antifreeze took a while. I didn't want to try pumping in 40 litres of fluid - too much like hard work. Luckily the tops of the panels are just a little lower than the ceiling in the boiler room, so I rigged up a large bucket and hose into the pump station, and balanced it on a stepladder on top of the boiler. Gravity did the rest, slowly it's true. I opened a valve at the bottom in the "return" pipe in the garden shed to allow the antifreeze to push out the water in the pipes: when the water started coming out pink I closed the valve. The panels then filled and started pushing the water in the "flow" pipe back up to boiler room. Eventually - much more slowly as it's uphill - the water coming out the end of the drain on the pump station gave way to antifreeze, and Voila! - filled. I then pressurised the system using a garden sprayer pump and a bit more antifreeze. The pressure went up and down a bit, I suspect as air gradually vented through the (three) automatic valves.

But then I was able to plug in the controller and to my surprise it all started working. Good and hot too. For the first time we have a hot cylinder completely full with hot water - the boiler can only heat the top third of it.

As it's good sunny weather I've told the boiler to stop trying to heat the water. It's still doing the radiators....

Getting warmer

After quite a long time working on the solar heating, I finally got the panels mounted on the roof of the garden shed, and connected up to the pipework. It took all day, and the sun was just starting to set when I took the picture:



It had been a sunny day and the copper pipes at the top of the panels got too hot to touch, even with the white plastic film reflecting most of the heat. The small amount of steam that came out suggested that the manufacturer had tested them with water for leaks. A couple of the the connector pipes were damaged in transit (thanks, TNT) and I am concerned that they will leak tomorrow when I finally fill the system up and get it under pressure. I can only hope that a thick winding of PTFE tape will block the gaps.

The temperature sensor isn't yet in place, so I'll have something to do (splicing and soldering) while the system is filling up. The first fill will just be water as I am not sure whether I have enough of the special anti-freeze to be able to waste a litre or two. I think I have worked out a way to flush the water out when the antifreeze finally goes in. But we'll see.

November snow in France too

While the UK is getting a good early snowfall, Lessal is getting its share too, and as a result I am not too keen to start work outside on the building for the solar panels (the "salle technique" as the pool man described it):



Before the snow started I had cut some bamboos in Tony & Anne's garden, and brought them back here, fairly slowly ...



... and then using cable ties (what did we do before - use string?) made a triumphal arch for the balcony so we could feed the birds in winter, but without feeding the birds to the cats. The birds have been getting through at least a large bag of seeds a week, 5kg I think. I have had to refill the feeders every day.



Most of the birds are great tits, but we get the occasional nuthatch (sometimes two at a time), blue tits, and just one goldfinch (so far). The sparrows, chaffinches and blue tits seem to prefer to feed on the ground either on or under the balcony where the seeds fall. The great tits are very messy eaters, and throw out as much grain as they eat.

I have had the time to finish the electrical work that is part of the solar installation.



The cable going down to the building in the garden - the blue one on the left - isn't yet connected, as at the other end it is just bare wires. Eventually it will give me a useful plug point at the end of the garden, and a light in the "salle technique" for days when one wishes to swim in the dark.

Indoor plumbing

I've been working on and off at the plumbing for the solar panels. It's taken a while. Traditionally the plumber turns up but has forgotten his tools. In my case I was permanently short of a crucial and hard-to-find fitting. The local plumbers' merchants don't sell 22mm compression fittings, so these had to be mail order, while the 22mm solder ring elbows that I wanted aren't sold at all in France, and Janey kindly sent me some from England.

This shows the "pump station", which was fairly easy to instal. The pump and other components come pre-assembled, so it was just a matter of getting the pipes to enter and leave at the right places. The green garden hoses are temporary, for pressure-testing the loop. Later I'll be using them to fill it with anti-freeze, but not, of course, before the solar panels go up in the garden....



The balloon-shaped object is an expansion vessel, which enables the liquid in the - sealed - solar circuit to heat up and expand without bursting. It contains a large tough rubber bladder, which I have pre-pressurised to 2.5bar (with a car tyre pump). As the fluid expands, the bladder gets squeezed giving a bit more room for the fluid. There will be another one of these at the other end of the circuit, as I am not entirely sure that 18 litres is enough for the long loop of pipe.

This shows the new piping where it enters the hot-water cylinder. At the top there's a small bronze-coloured cylinder sitting on the pipe: that's an automatic air vent. At the bottom the larger silver cylinder is another type of air collector, designed to get the micro-bubbles out (it says here). I probably don't need both of them, but they make filling the system simpler.



The entry and exit from the cylinder are one inch BSP threaded connections, made with bosswhite and hemp. The bottom one is a special elbow (which had been safely stored in the top of the cylinder by the professional plumber who installed it - it took several weeks before we found it) with a pocket to take a temperature probe.

I tested the system by connecting it up the mains and sealing it off at mains pressure, 2.5 bar. As there were 22 compression joints, 18 soldered joints, and ten metal threaded joints there was plenty of scope for leaks. But to my surprise the only leaks were in the compression fittings: four of them dripped a little. I took these apart and put a little PTFE tape round the olive. This has certainly cured three of them, and I'll check the fourth later though it may need another go.

And we've also made a little progress towards getting the "salle technique" looking more respectable: the local builder came and put a first coat of render on it:



They say they'll be back to put the finishing coat on when the weather improves, perhaps not in the immediate future (it's snowing right now). In the meantime we have their large concrete mixer sitting outside our front door as a promise that they won't forget us.

back in the holes

It was surprisingly hard work backfilling the short remaining trenches: too many rocks in the earth to make putting the spade in easy. The digger couldn't do it as he'd gone home before the chap from the pool company could put his hoses and wires in. So it was a bit of vigorous excercise with a shovel - the one leaning up against the pile of earth in the middle of this picture:



As I also put in four or five cubic meters of sand - black sand, visible on the left of the site, where the pool pump etc used to be, and apparently it's volcanic in origin - I'd hoped to have a bit of earth left over to level off other areas of the garden here. But after building up the stone wall just by the "salle technique" and infilling behind it, there was only a little. I think the man with the digger may have slightly raised the level of the track on the right, and this accounts for some of the missing earth. The rest was probably the hole where the pump and filter used to be.

After it was done I tried to clean the surface of the grass as much as possible with a rake, in the hope that the grass would grow again. here is what it looks like today:



I put some grass seed down too, despite the late time of year. Maybe it will grow: it's quite mild right now and there's occasional sunshine too.

The buried pipes were manhandled quite a bit, and it took a good deal of heaving on a rope to pull them through the conduit. So I was worried that we might have pulled a joint loose, buried somewhere I wouldn't be able to find it. So this morning I pressure tested the buried pipes - using this:



I pumped the pipes up to 2.5 bar - quite enough just using a car footpump - and the pressure has stayed nicely at that level for the last few hours, so I am optimistic that it's all in good health. The brush and jamjar contain washing-up liquid to detect leaks in the test equipment - and there were none there either.

The picture also shows the conduit emerging from the wall of the boiler room with armaflex pipes and an electrical cable, and the yet-to-be-installed pump station which will eventually circulate the solar fluid. One other job yet to be done will be to install a power supply.

It wasn't all digging:



This fine Harris hawk (called "Flossie") belongs to the visitors staying in our gite, who are in the process of moving house from Brittany to Maurs.

The big digger

It's been a busy weekend.

I spent a day or two preparing the armaflex pipes and getting them into the conduit. As the pipe lengths weren't as long as we needed, there are two joins inside the conduit. I made the joints - first attempts with corrugated stainless pipe - then pressure tested them with a footpump up to 3bar. They didn't leak. My first attempt at insulating the joins proved to be too fat for the conduit. I should have known that 110mm conduit has the outside diameter of 110mm: inside it's more like 95mm.

Eventually we (Paul and I) succeeded in pulling the armaflex through the conduit. This was where we'd got by Thursday lunchtime:



We then spent Thursday afternoon digging a hole in the ground at the end of the barn, and then knocking a hole through from the boiler room to the hole. This took time, but luckily the wall was reasonably solid, and held together well even with a hole in it. The first spadeful disturbed a fire salamander, a handsome creature:



We found him a new hole to retreat to. And then Paul went and washed his hands: these animals secrete quite an unpleasant poison as a defense mechanism. But they do a lot of good in the garden, eating all kinds of invertebrates (and some smaller rodents too).

So then we had a little hole .......



.... and we just had to wait for the man with the digger. He arrived with an enormous lorry and the digger on a trailer behind it. The digger turned out to be slightly to wide to get along the lane where it is narrowest (near our hole) so his first job was to carve away part of the bank. But once through it didn't take long before he was working his way back down the hill - and cutting through some satisfactorily solid bits of rock just by the corner of the barn, which makes me think we don't have to worry much about the barn's foundations.



As he couldn't leave while the trench was open, we put the conduit in, and he filled it back up (working well after dark - he finished about 8pm).

Next day the lane looked like this (muddy):



And the back garden looked a bit like the western front - Nicolas who is reconnecting the pool pipes to the new shed couldn't finish in the dark, so that his trench has been left open. The remains of the old buried housing for the pump and filter are just to the right of the new shed (elevated by Paul to a "salle technique"): there wasn't much left intact after the digger ripped it out of the ground. We'll have to put up with these piles of mud and rocks for a day or two, but hopefully it'll all be done very soon.



We also finished off the roof on the shed: it has the ridge on, and is sheeted up at the back too. Next job: install the solar panels. Though I might just pressure test the piping again. It would be a disappointment if it turned out that heaving the pipes through the conduit had sprung the joins open. And digging it all up again would be rather tricky.

raising the roof

I collected the roofing panels this morning, ten days later than promised, and this afternoon we started putting them on - two complete novices, Mikey and I, but it didn't seem to be too hard.



You can see that we have an over-long panel, the one on the right. We have one left over that is the right size, so we'll probably swap them rather than try to cut the one already fixed. The colour looks slightly different too, but that will hardly matter as almost the whole of the roof will be covered by the solar panels.



Mikey was invaluable: I couldn't have got them fixed by myself. The other parts of the roof (edge-pieces, and the ridge) should be a lot easier, though if Mikey is still here I'll try to rope him in again. The edge pieces will give us the extra couple of centimeters we need - had I known the size of the roof panels, I'd have made the roof to fit them, rather than just a bit too wide. I'd also have spaced the rafters differently. Virtually all of the coachbolts project on the inside (as they miss the rafters) and will need to be cut off with a grinder before I stab one through my head.

You can see that we were working until quite late ....



but it was surprising how quickly we got this main part of the work finished. I have to work out later how to get to the upper part of the roof to put in the final bolts. It can be done from a ladder on the right, but on the left the slope drops away too much.



The roof has been uncovered just a bit too long - the roofing felt isn't designed to be left exposed to sunlight, and it is already showing some signs of crumbling.

I don't imagine that professional roofers use clamps to hold the panels in place while putting the coachbolts in, but we found that it works, and really that's all that matters. And although we have a slight tilt by the time we got to the final panel, it's so little that they will pass pretty well for vertical.

Treating myself .....

and occasionally the woodwork, with a coat of linseed oil.

The internet reveals a large number of available wood treatments, at various prices. At the top end of the market and if you are looking for something "natural", you'll find a number of enthusiasts for "Danish Oil". Looking further, it turns out that the manufacturers of Danish Oil never tell you the precise mix of ingredients. Those that say what it contains sometimes admit that it is (mostly) linseed oil. If it also has tung oil in it (and that appears to be expensive) you can be fairly sure it doesn't have much. So I've been using a simple mix suggested by the local carpenter: 2/3rds linseed oil, 1/3 turps, and a small spoonful of a drying agent. The turps makes it penetrate better, and the drying agent .... er ... helps it dry. I have trademarked this subtle blend of a natural oils and rare gums as "Denish Oil", and its main users find that it really is very effective. And compared with most "Danish" oils, it's dirt cheap, which really clinches it.

Here's the bedroom door, after treatment:



It has brought out the grain very nicely. The one curious effect is that it leaves newly planed wood almost its original colour, but if applied to wood that has been exposed to the air for a few years the final colour is very dark. In the case of old oak, almost black.

I've also been oiling the staircase: it has a wonderful shiny polished surface now. I am not sure if this a good idea. If it isn't I'll let you know.

At work outside

Each door seems to take about three days to do (not full days, obviously, there's a boredom factor to be worked in somewhere), and I've just done day 2 of the final door. I set up what I hope will be a temporary workshop in the hangar. Originally this was an open-sided barn used for carts and other agricultural machinery - now it's the garage for the cars and where I keep the old timber.

In this picture I am using the router. The door planks need to overlap so there aren't any visible cracks through the door, so I put a right-angled notch into the edge, making it L-shaped there. And the next plank has an L the other way up.



What's stacked at the back is (about a quarter of) the original floor of the barn - I'd hoped to be able to re-use some of this wood, but it is in quite poor condition, so it may end up as firewood. But I've used quite a bit of it to make a temporary foor where I'm working - it's reasonably level, unlike the earth floor of the hangar.

The picture below shows how I'm sharing the workshop with the cars. I've clamped down the board which I'm working on by using an ingenious arrangement of flexible boards (cheap cladding) and small clamps like large clothespegs. It isn't possible to use a proper clamp (even if the ones I have were in working order), as they foul the router. They are just a bit too big for it to pass over the top.



Today I got as far as assembling the boards - the edges have to be planed straight by hand, as none of the boards was quite true - and cutting them roughly to length. I will then cut them exactly when the door is finally assembled.

Here's what will shortly be the bathroom door:



The middle cross-piece is sitting loose on top, not yet positioned, but it's clamped together using heavy boards to bring the surfaces as level as possible.

And the last picture shows the cross-piece held firmly in place (but not really clamped) ready for the screws to go in. That was about as far as I got -



I think you can see that these are good oak boards. You can also see the over-sized T-square I bought last week. It helps to get the cross-piece reasonably level before it's screwed on, but as the ends of the boards are not yet level there's no other way to do it. This is the voice of experience - the cross-pieces on the shower room door are visibly not quite level. I call it a program of continuous quality improvement. So by the time I've finished I'll have learnt how to do it properly, by making all the mistakes one by one.

lift the latch .... and come in

This is the beta test version of the latch on the bedroom door - it includes a doorhandle. The other side of the door has the more normal type...



I've not yet filled the screw holes, so there's still a little more work to be done before I start making the last of the interior doors. But after that, it will be time for boiling oil again.

The sunny autumn has finally given way to thunderstorms and a lot of rain. Good thing I'm working indoors.

Him indoors

I did these two doors - not the one in the middle - over the last few days. I haven't yet treated them so at present there's a delicate smell of oak which will shortly be replaced by a strong smell of linseed oil. It's nice to have a door for the shower room - this morning I'd left it open and found inside the shower there was one of the cats with most of a (small) rabbit and a certain amount of blood and fur. Fortunately it all cleaned up nicely. I'm not sure whether to encourage the cat to eat what it has killed in there - better than on the stairs from the point of washing away the bloodstains - or try to persuade it to eat outside.



This is the big door for the bedroom, in place. It's a good fit too, and I didn't need to do a lot of adjusting. Just the same, I had it on and off its hinges at least six times.



This is the view from inside the bedroom, and you'll notice I haven't yet made the catch for the door. Tonight, to keep the cats out, it'll be wedged shut...




This is a close-up of the catch in the shower room. The filled screw holes show up much more with the camera flash than they do in normal lighting - in daylight they hardly show at all.



I've extended the top of the guide by about a centimeter, with the idea of providing something to pull the door with. It would save putting a handle on the inside of the door. In fact the one centimeter extension isn't quite enough, and for the bedroom door I'll make it a little bigger. If we don't like it it will be very easy to cut it off.

Heavy doors

I've been working on the interior doors. I bought a half-cubic meter of seasoned oak planks, mostly just over 2 meters long and between 15 and 30 centimeters wide (but all about 3cm thick). These were from M Clot, who used to run a sawmill in Maurs until a few years ago, and who, having retired, is selling off the old stock. It's good stuff, though there are some woodworm holes.

I'm gradually getting better - or, if not actually better - more systematic at doing the doors. They are a fairly simple pattern, but just the same they are heavy. The biggest one, nearly a meter wide, is not quite too heavy for me to lift, but the combination of weight and size mean that I can't carry it any distance at all. So I've been moving it around on a sack barrow:



It goes without saying that the wooden door won't go through the outside glass door on the barrow: it's too wide, and you can't wheel it in sideways (not by yourself, anyway). So the last bit was dragged along the floor.

It's surprising how often it has to go back to the workshop. I'm not yet good enough to make it fit the aperture first time (though this one came very close), so I make it a little over size, put it in the doorway, and then pencil round it and cut it down to size. Then it has to go back to have the hinges put on in the right places. There's a fair amount of sanding annd planing to fit, too. In this case, as it is so heavy, I've bought bigger hinges, and I just hope the door itself is strong enough to support its own weight. We'll see tomorrow. I'll put some pictures up then showing a bit more detail.

Getting plastered

In fact, rendered, but almost as messy.

I've had a first ever go at putting a roughcast lime render onto a wall. I rather hope it is a wall no-one will ever look at (and maybe a second coat will even things out a bit). But the render is still there this evening.

Here's how it looks:



It's a purely sand/lime mix, approximately 2:1, and it's mixed reasonably wet. I applied it by flicking it off the trowel, which I know is the approved manner. I have a feeling I should have tried to level the surface at some point before it was completely dry, but I was so pleased seeing it stuck to the wall that I didn't. I couldn't face the prospect of seeing it all slide off. When you flick it on, it's surprising how often successive plops end up in exactly the same place, giving a very amateurish peaks and valleys effect. I hope that with more experience I'll be able to throw it where I want it. Trouble is, if you don't throw it hard enough it falls off (and too hard, it bounces off), and there's a trade-off between speed and accuracy.

I ran out of lime, so tomorrow I'll get some more and try to finish this wall and start the next. I am fairly sure you are supposed to do something clever at the edges, so I'll try to work out what that is before I start next time.

But what the hell, it looks a lot better than concrete blocks!

A hot week's tiling

The tiles on the terrace (over the silo) are finally finished. It was very warm work, but working with cement, with grout, and buckets of water is a very effective exfoliant, so now I have nice clean hands. With nice clean blisters.

It was a good thing that I left the hump untiled until after I'd worked out how to tile it. In the end it only needed four easy cuts to produce a tiled area that is a couple of centimeters higher than the surrounding area. Like this (these are all clickable thumbnails - click on them for high-res pictures):



I was surprised to find that the grouting was such vigorous work, even though I didn't do much at a time. It was quite difficult to leave the grout long enough to dry sufficiently in the gaps between the tiles, but not so long as to be impossible to clean off the surface.



In the background is the man from the supermarket come to fix our 9-week-old washing machine (bearings shot). The grouting took me four days, though of course since it was so hot I wasn't exactly working full-time (though I do remember one evening when I finished at 8pm). In between I was getting the red car imported and legal and insured in France. I had to replace its shock-absorbers which passed an English MOT but failed the French one - where they actually test them. In the UK they just check to see that they are present and not obviously leaking.

But the finished result (of the tiling) does look pretty good (the car still looks shabby but with French number plates):



Of course most things look nice with pots of flowers and sunshine, and what's more the peaches over the terrace are ripe and ready to pick (and not wormy either, unlike the apples). It's possible to see a small puddle in the middle: I flooded it to see where the water stayed. There was a similar puddle before I started tiling, but I tell myself that this one is smaller. In any event the surface is now pretty certainly waterproof. If there's rainwater getting into the silo now it will only be through the walls.

And in the background of all three pictures you can just see the youngest grandson's nappies on the line: he's on his way home today, but right now he's having a swim.

The blockhouse is now nearly done

After two days of very hard work in hot weather, the blockhouse is just about done. After putting up the rafters and nailing on the planking I discovered that a small roof like this is normally held on to the building just by its own weight. So I tied it down by using metal strips, fastened to the rafters at one end and to the concrete belt on top of the wall at the other. Hard work with the masonry drill. I then thought that it might be a good idea to seal up the bottom edge of the roof - to discourage plants from coming in - with a concrete infill. This is it:



The tops of the metal strips just show above the concrete. They aren't really heavy duty angles - I'm using up the hangers for the suspended ceiling, as I had to buy two large boxes of them, and I had most of the second box left over. However the concrete is going to help weight down the roof.

The concrete goes all the way along on top of the wall - I did have to fit wooden strips to stop it falling straight out on the ground, and these too will make the roof a bit more solid. They are fixed securely into the rafters. Here's a general view of the concrete infill:



After that I screwed the missing planks into place - all the rest are nailed but I didn't want to hammer right next to the wet concrete. I didn't think it would harm the mix per se, but that there was a risk that I might dislodge the shuttering which is only wedged in place. So here we are:



Apart from shifting the tools and general builders' mess, there is one more job to do, which is to put a bit of roofing felt over it. In a week or two there will be metal sheeting over it, the final layer below the solar panels (which have still not even been ordered .... )

work in progress

The blockhouse is still as it was - summer visitors, and it's now August, so not a lot gets done. But I have started tiling the silo outside the front door, so here is what progress I've made over three days:







The gap in the tiles is where there was a concrete trapdoor down into the old cistern: that part is now two or three centimeters higher than the surrounding area, so I will have to dissect the tiles to make them sit as flat as possible.

It is possible to lay tiles when it is raining, as it was on Sunday, but it's more difficult. The adhesive doesn't stick to the ground, so when you try to spread it, it slides around in a lump instead. It doesn't wash away though, so the tiles are well stuck down.

belt up

I've finally put the belt (ceinture) up round the top of the block house.

It was an exceptionally hot day when the shuttering went up, and when we poured the concrete. The shuttering contains reinforcing bars (at last, a way to get rid of the extra metals left over from building the barn), and there is also special square reinforcing down the corners to help hold them together. Personally I think cement works pretty well by itself.



Assembling the shuttering took at least as long as mixing the concrete and tipping it in, and although shuttering always looks very Heath Robinson, the finished result is usually surprisingly good:



In the top right hand corner it's just possible to see the reinforcing bars for the corner - they will have to be cut off flush with the surface when the concrete is a little harder. And in the top left hand corner is that useful standby, the scrunched-up cement bag, used to plug a hole where getting a bit of wood in just wasn't possible.

Next, the rafters and boarding it out.

the end is in sight

mine, possibly. But the wall is now almost finished. There's a little more pointing needed on the left, and some repairs to the plinths under the wooden pillars, and some work inside (when I succeed in removing the 200 concrete blocks stored there), but that's just about it.



The two door pillars are the same size, and the plinths they stand on are the same too, and are level with each other. It's odd that it doesn't look like it.

The new wall is definitely an improvement on this:



It's been back-breaking work, so I'm pleased it's about over. And I quite like the result, which - although far from professional - is good enough to pass.

going up

The wall has taken quite a while to get to where it is now, which I imagine has something to do with the extremely hot weather we've been having. The pool has reached 30 degrees, unheated, and that's definitely a sign that it's summer.

It's been a bit of a slog, and some of the stones have been a bit heavier than I can really manage, but it doesn't need much more now. Just that top left hand corner:



It's reassuring to think that now there is something more holding up this edge of the concrete slab - or at least, there will be when the mortar hardens up a bit. Before it was relying on the reinforcing rods in the concrete - inch-thick rods, it's true, but just the same supporting the slab at the edge must be a good idea.

I don't think I've got quite enough of the lime to both finish the top row and do all the repointing, so it'll be another visit to Chausson on Tuesday

A gap in the programme

I've had to hold up the work on the shed, so I thought I'd use some of the sand and rather old cement and lime to deal with a different problem, the hole in the wall:



The wall that was here was knocked down by the previous owner to turn the rainwater cistern into what must have been a rather unsatisfactory garage for cars. When we bought the barn, all it contained was some large timbers and a freezer containing old paint pots. And a lot of spiders. The original foundations of the wall were still there except at the left hand end, where they had been cut through to pass the water and electricity into the barn.



So I mixed some concrete for the new foundations, instructed and assisted by the two older grandchildren:



I cut up one of those old timbers to make a doorway, probably the biggest and heaviest mortice joints I've ever cut, and got started building. The wood has been given a single coat of linseed oil, and it is a very tight fit (sledgehammer) under the concrete slab. I hope it doesn't move, as it won't really be held in by the wall.



Once I started, the weather got hotter and hotter, and today I started early and gave it a break in the middle of the day when it was much too hot. By this afternoon I'd got up to this level, and it is beginning to look like a real wall:



After beginning thinking that 10cm thick concrete blocks would do for the inside wall, I eventually decided that the 20cm ones would require less mortar, and put less stress on my back (all the mortar has been mixed by hand). Occasionally if the stone facing is a particularly large piece, I have to knock a hole in the concrete block to accommodate it. At this stage I am not sure if I actually have enough stone to finish it, but I am hopeful, particularly if I can get a few more of the bigger stones into the wall. The main problem is lifting them, and not dropping them so hard on the wall underneath that it damages what's already been built.

I've been using a lime mortar for the wall, more to use it up as it is getting a little old, but also because it should match the existing mortar. I've left wide gaps for pointing later, and with a bit of luck - although you will be able to see the joins - it should match up reasonably well. The bit on the right is likely to be a better match than the left, where the new wall meets a nicely squared corner of the barn.