That's the kind of noise a floor sander makes.
Picked it up this morning (hi Jan! :P ). With so much sanding to do, it was cheaper to buy it than rent. Ironically, this one is coming from a hire tool wind down. Cosmetically, well used. Mechnically, it's an absolute monster, the base is hard to lift and a ferrous casting. The motor is gigantic and obviously rated for high duty at the full output. There are Alto / Clarke & Hiretech who make most of these sanders. These Alto ones seemed cool to me because they have a handle to raise the drum and three casters, so you can easily steer 'em around and don't have to pick the machine up and drop it down at the ends of each strip. Leaving the drum in contact with the floor while it's spinning, without moving the sander along, will chew a hole into the wood almost instantly - so smoothly tapering in and out of each run is the difference between "I just wrecked my floor" and "Whoa... it's like a mirror!".
Sander collected, Alex and I got on with rotovating the sawdust into the garden. It became apparent real quick that we are going to need at least a few more of those massive bags to loosen up the clay. We found the foundations we hadn't taken up with the old garage and they were getting in the way of rotovating. Around the new garage, the clay is almost entirely rubble and grit. There's also a drain gully down there that needs pulling and capping.
Out come the spades and into the sticky, annoying, heavy, foul smelling clay we began digging, deciding to stop at 7pm. The clay is terrible. It's so pure it's easier to slice it off with the spade and pick it out by hand, that's how bad.... Digging is apprentice work. A perfectly clean hole 5ft into the floor is suprisingly rewarding though.
As luck would have it, this piece of junk we no longer need, and for some reason didn't get rid of when we had the hydraulic JCB breaker to hand (I think because we were bothered about snapping the clay drains beneath), is one of the strongest bits of the house I've had to wreck so far.
The blue thing is the water mains. Houses this old in the UK usually have a lead water mains. It's not a health problem because lead isn't at all soluble in tap water, and an oxide coating builds up on the inside of the pipe over time anyway - you only need to worry about lead when you're dealing with salts of it, which'll dissolve into your bloodstream. But the pipe bore is small, so flowrates through it are low and there's a lot of pressure drop. The new plastic 25mm MDPE is much better. It's also incredibly easy to cut with a rachet chopper and uses pushfit connectors, so no more messing around with blowtorches and solder.
The blue MDPE is moled in through the ground using something that looks like an industrial sex toy. It vibrates back and forth and chews through the ground. The guys dig a trench every few metres, drop into it and let it go, then catch it and send it back on it's way at the next trench. It was 400 pounds to have our mains redone. Quite a lot, but just about worth it. I remember watching the guys dig it in and jeeez, I wouldn't want to do it. There were about five of them going at it all morning with spades, through clay. Nasty. Their apprenctice was on fag duty, constantly running back and forth with five cigarettes between his fingers to keep the workers charged up.
Not sure why they decided to make the new water mains 25mm. Standard pipe has always been 22 or 28mm. It's very cheap, about half the price of standard plastic plumbing. It'll only take cold water. At 25mm and costing so little, I plan to run it right up to the points of use in the house so I don't have to pay for long runs of the more expensive PEX and PB pipes (which are heat resistant).
Alex loved being Mr R. Otorvator for the day. Watching someone turn it on for the first time is always worth the effort, as it takes off dragging them behind it. But the beast is quickly tamed. It's much more effort than it looks, since the best churning is achieved by dragging it backwards, against the direction of the 4hp pulling it the other way. Your back will ache. It's weirdly fun just because the throttle has a picture of a tortoise and rabbit on it. Then there's revving it right up to the full open setting that's meant for cold starting it, which is like nitro mode on a racing game - it'd only be better if it played Benny Hill music at the same time.
Oh yea... and check out that rock under the spade. I thought we'd gotten rid of all that 60's attempt at a rockery, but no, there's more. I carted two or so tons of the rock to the front garden the day before - darn 60's enthusiasm and hope, creating large rockeries for me to dig up... Needless to say, the rotovator doesn't enjoy hitting stone potatoes, but it also has an automatic clutch that disengages the tines (blades) when it catches on something. That, or it jumps around like a crack addict having a fit.
I have my replacement DeWalt 9" grinder. 2.6kw of destructive power.... yea baby... there ain't no messing around with this dirty bitch. It'll knock the breakers out if it's not plugged into the cooker socket - with it's 10mm^2 line and higher current breaker. Also picked up a DeWalt heatgun for stripping the woodwork inside, 2kw makes for a hot hairdryer. Obviously, I had to experiment putting my hand infront of it just to make sure it actually did get hot.
The wheelbarrow is on it's way out. But damn! For 15 pounds, one of the most useful things I've ever bought. It's shifted literally tens of tons of concrete that we've thrown into it, and it's still going. The first time we used it was to shift 40 tons of broken crete, rubble and rock from the yard. Then the entire brick structure of the garage. I don't know if I'll have the heart to throw the sucker out. Look, it's all beaten into an oval with all that work... awwww...... Wheelbarrow, I salute you! xxx
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