Ben Silk, Property Manager

In case you hadn’t noticed, the weather has not been particularly brilliant recently. This brings many challenges to the Estate – and to my job.

A lot of my time over the past couple of months has been spent inspecting and repairing damage to our properties. With high volumes of downpour, and significantly strong winds, many of the buildings are experiencing conditions they haven’t seen before. Whether this is cracked chimneys, broken pan tiles, or simply seals around a front door failing, it’s my responsibility to find the right solution.

We have several trades that we use – sometimes in combination – to carry out repairs.

One of our cottages was recently experiencing a large amount of water ingress and we identified that there was a tear in the lead roof valley. The photo shows the tear we were dealing with – it was only about 2cm wide, but that was enough to allow a significant amount of water to penetrate the building and damage the internal plasterwork. A new valley was required, which was installed by our plumbers. When we removed the old valley, we discovered that the sarking boards below were rotten and our joiners were brought in to fix this as well. Finally, the stone masons came to complete the rough casting for outside and the plasterer completed a smooth finish.

  At another site, one of our old cow sheds has required some work to be carried out on the roof. Again, not an ideal time of the year to be doing it – but unfortunately, it could not wait!

 

 

 

We currently have joiners working away in one of our sheds. As you can see in the photo, they have followed the existing curved stone wall and have created an impressive curved wooden wall, which will be plastered at a future point.

 

 

I spend a lot of time on site liaising with contractors, overseeing works, and planning for the future of our properties. While at our Balcormo Steading last week I snapped this rather lovely photo of a rainbow.

 

 

I have a particularly exciting week coming up – on Monday, all of the Estate’s septic tanks are being emptied! I’m also having all of our electrical equipment PAT tested – over 600 items to get through. It’s not all glitz and glamour!