When we first bought our project home in Ireland, it was pretty much a shell. No bathroom, no running water, no windows, no heating. The chimneys leaked and the field-stone and earth walls were wet through. It was quite daunting. The first thing we needed was to replace the septic tank in the garden, and lay new waste-water pipes. Meanwhile, having lived in New Zealand for a while, and discovered that the composting toilet, which they amusingly call long drops, were neither unhygienic nor smelly, as one might assume, we built our own… This sufficed for nearly three years until our bathroom had been built and was operational. Fine on a nice day, a bit of a marathon when it was wet… which it was, often.

But the view from the dunny was uplifting.

The farmer who sold us the house came in with his son and his little digger, to help out, and we ended up with a big hole for the septic tank, and trenches for the pipework from there to the house. At this stage, we received a lot of generosity from various neighbours, as they realised our enthusiasm was only exceeded by our absolute lack of knowledge.

In a single day we ended up with what would have taken several weeks to achieve using manual labour.

Everything was going swimmingly… Then it rained. And rained and rained, for five months, without letup. Our garden looked like first-world-war trenches. We had to negotiate three planks to get to the dunny, and outside work was on hold pretty much the whole of that time. We did rescue that poor hedgehog and put a canvas over the hole to forestall wildlife tragedies.

At this point we acquired a kitten… and the old dog, Pippin, took him under his wing. They lived in the bus with us. The kitten very soon became a cat, who systematically set about removing the rat population, nearly as big as he was, who had taken possession of this vacant property.

Finally the sun came out and dried up all the rain… At the house, where the extension is planned, the pipes are laid at the right height, in situ, for the sink, loo, and shower.

The pipes going down the garden are laid on a bed of gravel and sand. They have to have a measured slope of 1:12. To get this right, we made a form out of timber, onto which we put a level as we were working. We laid two waste pipes, one for grey (washing) water, and one for black (sewerage), to go into separate compartments in the septic tank. This way, the bacteria that make the septic tank work won’t be compromised by detergents etc.

We built an inspection unit at the join between the pipes from the house and the little building (the tigin) respectively. The pipes for the tigin are laid, awaiting the finances and time to get around to that phase.

Here is a glimpse of the finished extension, with the utility room nearest, the bathroom in the middle, and the kitchen beyond the doorway. When we were laying the waste pipes, living in the bus, this was hard, if not impossible, to envisage!

The septic tank comprises three chambers, in which water flows from one to the next before draining off in a zig-zag down a deep land drain through the garden. The right-hand pipe, which takes the grey water, goes into a fourth chamber, then into the land drain.

In between swimming-pool moments, the concrete blocks are rendered…

The inspection holes are created with blue barrels, which will be replaced by metal hatches, later, and the space is shuttered and made ready for the concrete cap…

Most concrete and render is made on the premises, but we needed a large amount at one time, so ordered it in. The concrete mixer seems huge in the garden, reaching the same height as the roof guttering of the house. This was a milestone, though. A job almost complete!

There was a good yard of concrete still in the mixer, and it had to get used or dumped, so we used it to shore up the back of the pigsty, which the pigs had been undermining in search of yummy worms and grubs. You can see what devastation pigs cause to fields… they plough and flatten it, and destroy all living things, very quickly making the ground ‘pig-sick’. We had to rotate the pigs through different areas to allow the ground to recover, with green manure and grass.

Once the septic tank is capped, we built a wooden fence around it, and started some honeysuckle to grow over the arch. Note how the added sunshine makes everything look nicer…

This is what it looked like a couple of years later.

Sorry if you found this tedious, but I decided to work from the bottom up, so to speak. Toilet humour notwithstanding, the next step was to create the foundations for the lean-to extension… And was I ever looking forward to having a shower and a bathroom! Washing my hair under a cold hosepipe was probably the most profound of the discomforts I experienced in that long three years.