22.01.2025 Progress at last!

 ~o~

  Wednesday 22nd 33F/1C. Another cold, grey day. With temperatures  just above freezing. Rain tonight. Turin to talk of snow and icy roads tomorrow.

 Up at 6am. The room temperature is 61F/16C. I had better light the stove. I was awake in the night again. Obsessing over the washing machine drainage. Endlessly rehearsing what to do and how to do it. What to say to the drainage contractor who is coming today. 

 I'll see if he will let me carry out the excavation for a drainpipe surfacing in the kitchen. To avoid the time consuming [and therefore very expensive] work involved. I now have the tools to chain drill a ring in the floor. Then break it up with a selection of SDS+ hammer drill chisels into a tubular hole. It all depends on the depth of the concrete and any harder stones in the path of my long drills. More a matter of patience than skill.

 7.30 Another week's tablets sorted into the daily dispenser. Time for a shower. Physio class after lunch.

 9.00 The drainage contractors have arrived and intend to expose the relevant drain pipe in the ground. 

 9.45 A nice couple of young chaps. An excellent machine operator. Careful, precise and respectful of customer's property. A master of the rotating and hands free bucket changer.

 I am to make a hole in the kitchen floor. To match the length of 110mm pipe they gave me. I'll make a ring of holes and deepen them. Then expand each hole with a larger bit. Until they join up and the core can be removed. 

11.30 Stopped for a rest and belated morning coffee. Drilling the ceramic tile was fraught with problems. The drill point skated over the hard surface before rapidly burying itself. Often where not wanted. I went back to the hand drill with a small masonry bit but it didn't help. There is a big step between first contact and heavy duty, hammer drilling. I should have removed the ceramic tile first. It disintegrated anyway as I kept drilling with ever larger and longer masonry bits. 

 Removal of the core was fairly effortless once it was free. I broke it up with a chisel bit. There followed much clearing of the hole up to my elbow and beyond. Pebble sized gravel and sand. Some of the polystyrene insulation I laid under the floor heating pipes. Which, as expected, didn't show up in the hole.

 I need to be at least 80cm down from my earlier hole in the outside wall. Which I am using as my reference. If I am to have any chance of breaking through to the great outdoors. I tried hammering a piece of angle iron into the bottom of the hole. At increasing angles but something is stopping it. Probably the mess of cinder blocks and cement only pretending to be a foundation.  

 The drainage chaps undermined the wall for me but not quite deep enough. It is hard, sticky clay under the house. The young men made it look so easy. As they dug ever deeper. I don't have the strength any more. Perhaps I should try the big hammer drill with a wide spade bit? 

 12.15. I finally broke through to daylight with the angle iron in the bottom of the hole. The 110mm test pipe was 1.2m long. It was only just visible from outside. The drainage contractor suggested be will come back tomorrow or Friday. To make the connection with the existing pipe in the ground. I sealed the open pipe against wildlife and wind.

 Great progress! Far better than I had dared to hope. The big hammer drill made it easily possible. I would still be struggling with the normal hammer drill. The difference in sheer power is night and day! 

12.55  I should be leaving for physio! I am all dusty. Had to change all my clothes. No lunch.

 More district heating, pipe installation detours. I was five minutes late. Not feeling so active today. Went shopping afterwards. 

 Dinner was sausage, mushrooms and boiled potatoes.

 

  ~o~