Windows and soil

Absolutely nothing to do with house repair, but wow! That's the coolest coosh ball ever. It's full of air, or squishy liquid, and a tiny ball with LEDs in it that makes the whole thing flash red, green and blue when shaken. It's massive. I spent ten minutes searching Tescos for this after seeing it in someone's trolley

The kitchen window, smashed, ghetto style. I'm going to try my double glazing hand out on refitting this and the side window, so I needed to be real sure of my measurements before having the whole thing cut and heat sealed together by the store. £380 for this and the side window. This one is around 1800mm by 1140mm, and the side is 2100mm by 700mm; from N&P Windows

With the ledge broken away, I discovered the frame was resting on a course of bricks lower than the those inside, an important discovery

Being so old, the window was stuck tightly into place. I had to hammer a chisel into the trim pieces to get the glass out, and so the screws fixing the frame. The trim is only free on the outside. From this I can deduce all glaziers must also have a break and entry record. The shims once again coming in handy to pry the frame loose. The neighbours came out into their garden when I started hammering, perhaps thinking I was breaking in

So long sucker!

Forgetting perspective and physics for a second, that bag of sawdust is bigger than Alex, for sure

Now that's artistic!

I think Alex took some art to the eye, that's never great

Dust and more chicken poo rotovated, raked and watered in

It'll be a week until they have the new window ready, far too long in John World, but a necessary evil of the process. The old one goes back in to keep the wind and rain out whilst I wait. Mum waves to the internet

The soil sample was back at a pH of 7 this morning, as I expected it would be. In goes some more acid. I'm now up to about 4.5ml of battery acid (37%) to neutralize a 400ml sample of soil. To treat the whole garden down to 150mm, that equates to somewhere between 40 and 60 litres of acid. 8^O I've had to upgrade to bucket chemistry due to the plastic food container not having enough volume. I've also tripled the strength of the acid solution I'm adding, to get it neutralized quicker. This introduces another interesting problem. The act of neutalizing the base produces salt. Salt is a natural enemy of plants, as it causes osmosis to lock water away from the roots. Which is worse, the ridiculously high pH or the salt from neutralizing that pH? Difficult to tell, but likely a balance of each knowing nature