Clearing Up

Dr Bill looks at stormy after-effects

The recent storm was a reminder that summer has finally departed and that autumn is well and truly here. Chillingly, it also means that the onset of winter is not too far away. Building activity tends to start to reduce in intensity at this time of year and there is a noticeable change in emphasis, from outdoor work to indoor work.

But before winter sets in, there will be quite a bit of work needed in order to clean up after the big storm and prepare houses and gardens for winter. Particularly fences are often victim of high winds and a number of specialist pre-packed concretes (often called ‘Post’-something!) will be in high demand to fix fence posts in the ground in a short time ahead of the frosty season. Using these products (a cocktail of different cements and additives), especially for the first and last posts in a line, enables fences to replaced rapidly, restoring privacy an security to the home owner.

Other common repair works include checking the roof and chimney stacks, ensuring that tiles and bricks aren’t loose, damaged or missing. Builders know that if repairs or replacement is needed, now is the time to do it whilst we have reasonable amounts of daylight.

But it is also important to make sure that the inside of the house is ready for winter, as repair works during winter can be tedious and troublesome. From a cement perspective this means more in the way of floor screeds and patching mortars than concrete and brickwork. Prepackaged, preblended products are advantageous in that they minimise the amount of materials to be stored and also simplify mixing them indoors. I can remember not so long ago, sharing my dining room with a ‘cement mixer’ when I was having a new kitchen put in, not something I would care to repeat

Anyway, enough of the gloom and doom, the Autumn Rugby Internationals are now upon us, which hopefully will give us something to cheer about!