THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

[Deleted User]

Just did a boil test, with my Induction Hob.

Using an open top pan, with the hob set on maximum (2,000 watts), 1 pint of tap water went from cold to a rolling boil, in 2 minutes and 20 seconds.

GreyQueen

Morning all.

kittie, I'd second your point about home maintenance.

My mother lived, as a girl, in tied cottages. These were often in poor condition and the tenants had to do things such as stuff holes in the walls with rags or wadded-up newspapers, paper over the patch with brown paper and then hang proper wall-paper.

These places often have no foundations (my cousin jokes their 500 y.o. timber-framed cottage actually moves sideways if you hit anything too hard) and have no damp courses etc. I recall reading a memoir about a lady who grew up dirt poor in the Forest of Dean in the early twenieth century, whose father joked grimly that if you really hated someone, you'd leave them one of these old cottages as an inhertance.

Amusingly, a place which my parents rented for £1 a week in the 1960s changes hands for above a third of a million at a time. Improved beyond all recognition in the interim but I bet the new owners don't know about the chickenwire holding the patched lime plaster in the wall behind the kitchen sink......... :rotfl:

ivyleaf

Bob I know nothing about induction hobs but that sounds pretty good

I love the idea of fuddle, Lyn and monnagran living in a row

[Deleted User]

GreyQueen wrote: »

These places often have no foundations
I bet the new owners don't know about the chickenwire holding the patched lime plaster in the wall behind the kitchen sink......... :rotfl:

exactly what happened here, except not that price but very expensive for what is a plot with a load of waste and rubble held together by anything they could find and filled with anything to make very thick walls that will crumble if not maintained. Really scared many of us and was a lesson going foward ie anyone looking to buy an old cottage

[Deleted User]

Bob I have an induction hob and got rid of my space-taking electric kettle. I just use a kettle straight on the hob, its very quick and whistles, I never leave it when it is on max heat as it is so quick

MrsL, are you finding the thought of moving very daunting? I kind of want to move to my own bigger plot with room for veggies but the thought of downsizing even more is horrible. I am trying to be content where I am, which is a tranquil area but no buses to speak of. If I didn`t have an allotment, then I would have moved by now, I need have to have soil close by. We started downsizing/clearing stuff three years ago and it was a work in progress when I decided that I was going to continue on my own, two years ago. I have recently finished for now. Any more downsizing might well be taking me out of my comfort zone. Its pros and cons and I don`t want to live in a ticky tacky Bob Dylan house with potential for noisy neighbours with hot tubs. Its one heck of a decision, potentially life changing

DigForVictory

Sez I, it depends on your nerve, your budget & your history.
There was a time when you could have a cottage in Wales if you could build it overnight. These folks weren't Amish - planed & squared timbers were not affordable but relatives would make wattle & daub panels & one night, assorted stock pens would shrink a bit & gosh - a new cottage. Roofed with armfuls of bracken, windows optional but it was yours.

The you have other built it myself & been repaired over the years dwellings (cob you can still go on courses to learn to build! Which means *someone* must still be insuring them tho I'd speculate hard against what) - where a bit of chickenwire is entirely within keeping with the history. (I've seen an awful lot of agricultural structures repaired with feedsacks & baling twine & even with the advent of vivid plastic, a layer of muck tones it down & lends historic credibility with a bonus slight ridigity until the next heavy rain.)

kittie, if you can get an archaeologist and a geologist out, they may be able to date or place or identify the rubble & suddenly the cottages will be built of out period fascinating items (to some). In one thick wall we found a child's shoe - one builder was a tad freaked, one (squinting at it) opined it looked like something out of antiques roadshow & their foreman said it likely had been put there for luck during the original build. So we added another (outgrown) shoe & a penny piece & carried on. Local conservation enthusiast examined phonesnaps of the original shoe & agreed the date, applauded the restoration & hugged the still-a-bit-freaked builder.

Lady over the road has a cowshed/shippon built against her farmhouse & when it needed repair, calmly had it rebuilt still sans damp proof course ostensibly to appease the Listing police, in fact as it had never needed one as far as she was concerned.

My requirements of a cottage are that it be dry enough to keep books, have water I can drink & wash with & be near a stand of trees to keep me in firewood. A pal has one, but the last 100 yards are not accessible by car & we've cheerfully agreed it's the ideal crafting venue - old enamel tub for dying fibre &/or dissecting bodies & wonderful light plus not overlooked in any direction. I may spend some retirement time there til that 100 yard hike feels a bit onerous & then grudgingly settle for a conveniently located modern shoebox.

Pick the very best of the bunch & make it yours til you are forced by your own body (traitorous thing) into something convenient. A grave you can breathe in & the care squad get access... (I do not want to dwell in such a place but since capital punishment has been taken from us, it's that or a jail cell & I'm not taken with what I hear of jails.)

[Deleted User]

digforvictory, archaeology not spuds, got it. So fascinating to delve into past history like this, the village has pictures of yokels on carts. Cottage is very tiny, they maust have been very poor when it was built. Everyone is being very sensitive to the owner, no-one will be calling anyone in. Local specialist is doing a grand job in making it safe and once it is re-rendered and I hope with lime plaster, than that cottage will keep on living and breathing. Much damage was caused to these structures by cement render, they became stifled. I know about lime render and plaster, I live with them

jk0

One of my tenants recently reported his electric hob packed up, and I offered him an induction one in its place. He refused this, as he would then need to buy compatible saucepans.

GreyQueen

When my Dad patched the wall of our tied cottage, he was a builder's labourer in his early twenties. He had to ask the old boys how to do lime plaster repairs as it was already obsolete in the building trade; the chickenwire being to hold the big chunk of plaster in, but I expect we're all savvy enough to realise that.

Nice old place, built in the early 1600s, of re-purposed timbers some of which have adze marks and clay lump, acquired a kitchen as a side-extension in the 19th century, eventually acquired a bathroom in the somewhere in the late twentieth (long after we'd moved on). These were estate cottages, mostly let to retired farm workers for 10 shillings a week, which included the rates.

Dad didn't work on the estate and the retirees thought it was shocking that we were being charged a WHOLE POUND A WEEK.:p

Lawdy lawdy, twenty miles up the road and a whole load of inflation in the past fifty years......... last time I saw it advertised it was 'offers in excess of £350,000' !! :rotfl:

DigForVictory

Lime plaster may be obsolete in the building trade but it's vital for running repairs to a certain age of housing stock & as for limewash, I learned it whilst in Primary school as a shrewd yet doting pa allowed his daughters a pigsty each as their play houses. When they wanted paint, we learned to limewash, and we got very canny at pegging muslin nappies as 'curtains' long before voile was a Thing.
Those who can have so much more choice than those who haven't learned yet!

I'll dig for history, spuds, when the machine it go beep on a familiar frequency (metal detecting is great for finding dropped things - I often get invited to local churches after weddings! Most pleasing find to date the carkey for Father of the Bride's car) & am near terminally curious...