The Right Tool for The Job

The hole gets bigger

It's amazing how much quicker progress is when you have the right tool for the job. Thanks to advice from Ted (you know who you are) I am now the owner of an 1100W SDS Hammer Drill. You fit a masonry chisel bit in the chuck with a single click, switch to the "Rotor Stop" setting and hey presto you have a 6kg demolition hammer with an impact rate of nearly 3000/minute. The photo above shows what I achieved in under 2 hours.

Jan's cousin has offered to lend me his scaffold tower while he is on holiday, so now I have all the bits that I need to finish this job once and for all.

I know a couple of people have expressed concern that I have removed rather a lot of the lower part of the outer skin of the chimney, while the upper part is still intact. When I made the decision to do this I was under the impression that I could remove the lower flaunches to still reveal a continuous row of block/stone behind it i.e. the flaunches were added onto a straight chimney afterwards. Of course it is obvious now, that the inner block construction tapers in the same way as the outer, so it is a simple double skin construction all the way up. Bottom line is, yes, the upper stonework is now simply clinging on ! In my defence, it seems pretty solid, and there are occasional wall ties joining the inner to the outer. Also, there is no real cavity - it seems to have been a repository for spare mortar and rubble which also helps to glue the whole lot together. Maybe I'll wait for that tower to arrive..........

The groundworks contractor has been in touch this week. Proposed start date is now week beginning 8th August (but it may slip to the following week). So that's one weeks slip since July 5th - possibly two. Arghhhh.