I would just like to say

Brown said:

The most obvious example is gateposts. They always go at around the ground level where the microbes and fungi can make a meal of them. The bottoms are three feet down or so, and are often very well preserved, complete with tool marks. Even if they're sitting in the ground water for months at a time. When I put my fancy new gates in on the smallholding I dug up about three or four. Not bad timber either - I've been using it for firewood.

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I have seen adverts for sort of plastic socks that you can secure around wooden posts at the point where the surface of the wood air and earth all join. Cos as you say this is where they give up the ghost.
I have replaced, or paid to have replaced,sooo many posts along our fence line, no matter that the timber was tanalised.

Last time, we had the stumpy concrete posts put in to which the wooden ones are attached above ground. Not pretty but practical.

Brown said:

Here's one I did on a friend's house in mid-Wales a few years ago:
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And from the other side of the building:
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All that shale was very wet, with water in between the layers. You can even see a puddle in the bottom of the trench in the second picture. That was in July, when you'd expect the ground to be less wet. The original ground level corresponded to where the rendering is on the wall. The room inside certainly became a lot more habitable as a result of my efforts. Previously, the sodden rendering, complete with its 'tanking' was bubbling off inside, but with the outside ground reduced to below floor level, things were much better.

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If this was done to our dottir's place she'd have a moat around it!

Stanleysteamer said:

If this was done to our dottir's place she'd have a moat around it!

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So would we, but I did it so that the water could drain away round the side to a lower part of the property. Here's some drain pipes going in the following spring:


Interestingly enough, that picture was nicked off Flickr and used for a number of years on the website of a drainage supplier. I should have made a fuss and demanded royalties. Anyway, job's a good 'un, as everybody seems to say on here.

Brown said:

So would we, but I did it so that the water could drain away round the side to a lower part of the property. Here's some drain pipes going in the following spring:
View attachment 305344

Interestingly enough, that picture was nicked off Flickr and used for a number of years on the website of a drainage supplier. I should have made a fuss and demanded royalties. Anyway, job's a good 'un, as everybody seems to say on here.

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She lives in a place that has NO lower levels!!!

...that just like MacArthur I have returned.
Saw the wife's relatives last night and we had a really good fun time with her cousin and his missus.
The Funeral today was very sad, but with lovely music and dedications.
Her poor uncle (87) is bereft, and quick to hankerchief dabbing. Been together over 60 years the lambies.
Anyway, a sad chore seen through, and the poor lady is at rest.
What've I missed? - Will go look.

derwendolly said:

The weather is brightenig up from the west - well that's what 'they' say, time will reveal all.

Have I missed the recent kitties progress? I hope they are all learning to live together more amicabably.

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Yes & No.
MY cat is getting beaten up by the young 3YO male (who is pretty feral because he has had to fend for himself for months.
The older "fluff-monster" Mitsey is doing fine and settled right in.

Stanleysteamer said:

She lives in a place that has NO lower levels!!!

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There must be some lower ground somewhere. She's not at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, surely.

Stanleysteamer said:

Here in Dorset and in Hants a lot of people have "cob cottages" but so many do not realise that they have to be painted with paint that allows the "cob" to breathe!.

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and not patched and repaired with cement normally lime wash with some eggs

Brown said:

There must be some lower ground somewhere. She's not at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, surely.

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You have got to get it to run away or you will have big problems later on especially the way the weather is more extreme these days

Brown said:

There must be some lower ground somewhere. She's not at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, surely.

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No, it is not 100s of metres below the sea.
But it is off a road called Marsh Lane, near Flood farm, in an area flat as a pancake. First building one the left as you enter it from the road leading to the main road. A bunch of trees cover a lake. Everywhere on her land is at the same height.
The names tell you all you need to know!

Stone56 said:

You have got to get it to run away or you will have big problems later on especially the way the weather is more extreme these days

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Well I don't have to as it isn't my place, but in wet weather it is pretty flipping hard to see where it could run to.
I agree with you that more "modern " weather certainly doesn't help.
I guess the moral of the story is "Don't go to look at chocolate-box-top, thatched cottages, in nice weather, on a summer's day!".
It almost needs to be built in a bund with a pump all ready to go when necessary!

Stanleysteamer said:

Well I don't have to as it isn't my place, but in wet weather it is pretty flipping hard to see where it could run to.
I agree with you that more "modern " weather certainly doesn't help.
I guess the moral of the story is "Don't go to look at chocolate-box-top, thatched cottages, in nice weather, on a summer's day!".
It almost needs to be built in a bund with a pump all ready to go when necessary!

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I'm putting off starting work this evening, and as I'm a nerdy geeky person I looked for nearby weather station data. The nearest that goes as far as the 2020s on the KNMI Climate Explorer is Boscombe Down:

If you know the latitude and longitude of the site you can find weather stations. I can play for hours. It's hard to see a distinctive long term trend in that data. Of course, heavy downpours can be quite localised, but on this measure at least, it doesn't appear that they're ascending the blade of Michael Mann's famous hockey stick graph. Not yet anyway.

DanClarke said:

Yes & No.
MY cat is getting beaten up by the young 3YO male (who is pretty feral because he has had to fend for himself for months.
The older "fluff-monster" Mitsey is doing fine and settled right in.

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Has the youngster been castrated? I think that should lessen his dominance streak, eventually - I think.

Brown said:

Michael Mann's famous hockey stick graph.

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......... and for the ignorant, what's that?

derwendolly said:

Has the youngster been castrated? I think that should lessen his dominance streak, eventually - I think.

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He's been nobbled. But he is a nasty little git.

derwendolly said:

......... and for the ignorant, what's that?

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You've probably seen it as it's had a lot of publicity. It used a variety of proxies to show, apparently, that the climate had been pretty steady for millennia (the 'handle' of the stick) and from around the year 2000 onwards there would be a rapid ascent of temperature (and by implication other climatological indicators) largely as a result of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions (in other words, the upturned 'blade' of the stick). This is not without criticism, in particular concerns about the highly selective use of indices and the 'flattening' of well documented fluctuations in the past such as the little ice age, the mediaeval warm period, the Roman warm period, the Minoan warm period, and further back, the holocene transgression and so on. Interestingly, Mann himself has backed off somewhat from the hockey stick graph, and even says it wasn't really his idea.

Anyway, back to the hydrology of Marsh Lane. Here's an aerial photo off Google Earth Pro from 2014:
Look at that pattern of discolouration on the crops that comes up from the south and includes a bit of the field to the west of the cottage and then appears to curve back eastwards, taking in the pond in the trees, which is probably part of a former oxbow lake. Looks like a former river channel to me. The current channel of the River Avon is just to the east. So before it was all ditched and banked and cultivated the river might well have been much closer to the house.

Stanleysteamer said:

"Dive dive dive" would be appropriate. When they came home one day, before all this, they found they had a flood in this room and the kitchen. It had been raining very hard and for a long time. They discovered that the floor was fitted with tiles which had each had a hole drilled in them!!! So the water came through it but then in a short space of time disappeared back through them. I'd love to have seen these tiles and photographed them. Only found this out last night as well! It is mad that the water table is so high. TBH it needs digging right out, (in the summer), the walls underpinning, as there are no foundations, then decent tanking put in place. Totally bonkers.

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Thats mental whay dont they just dig it out & have a nice pool

Stanleysteamer said:

Here in Dorset and in Hants a lot of people have "cob cottages" but so many do not realise that they have to be painted with paint that allows the "cob" to breathe!.

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Paint wiv holes innit?

kevstar said:

Thats mental whay dont they just dig it out & have a nice pool

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She got half a mill in the settlement, that ought to have bought a decent house. I don't know how much dosh, if any they had left over after the intial purchase but, even with her partne/new husband pitching in I think they might be about feeling the pinch!!
Sure is a ton of dosh to pay for an unheated, not very deep, indoor pool with a listing!!!!

I fink @Brown is right and the river is trying to reestablish itself, right through their living room!!!