• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Torrential Rain This Evening

That’s certainly hammering it down, we are due to get a huge dollop on Wednesday, after a smaller but significant amount the other day when the gutter on the side of the barn didn’t seem to be doing its job I investigated it this morning.
Now I’d been seduced by all the adds over here about leaf guard gutter top filters that stop your gutters clogging up and guarantees that you will never need to go up a ladder again so I was more than a little miffed that this was the culprit, almost 2” of leafy bits sitting on top, I suppose they’re correct though it did stop the gutter getting filled up— even with water! lol.

IMG_4684.jpeg
 
So much for advertising, no such thing as no maintenance gutters. I spent 2 hours cleaning our eavestrough and downspouts about 4 weeks ago, very few leaves mostly pigeon ****.
Looks like a single job coming soon, I can see gravel off your shingles sitting on the leaf guard.
 
Most of the UK would benefit from a downpour like that at the moment.

We get moss on the south facing roof. It dries out during the sunny periods and detaches easily when the first significant rain happens to form highly effective dams in the gutters. Total PITA!
 
We had a light rain mist for 5 minutes yesterday. We're irrigating the Japanese garden area and the kitchen garden from the spring, which is still active. The rest of the garden we are revamping over the next year or two to tolerate dry conditions. Mrs AJB T has found a design for a massive gazebo thinh she wants me to build as an outdoor entertaining space instead of the main (summer brown) lawn. The top lawn is being taken over by an enlarged kitchen garden - this is the wettest area. Gazebo (not really the right word - it is a galleried outdoor building about 10m by 6m with a very nice solid oak table in it) was at Riverhill (?) Himalayan garden half way up the steep hill to Sevenoaks towards Knole Park. Spectacular views actually. We're getting about 2cm evaporation a day from the ponds, which we are aeriating and topping up (or the fish will suffer).
 
We've had some overnight rain the last couple of nights and on Saturday afternoon it hammered down for several hours yet 20 miles south around Newcastle they barely saw a drop. :unsure: Cloudy and a bit damp this morning but still warm and I even needed to cut the grass yesterday. Looks like sun later so Northumberland has just a few benefits.
 
My very modest garden is a wreck now.
I am keeping the runner beans and courgettes going with the rinse water from the washing machine .
Like many, I’m planning a more drought resistant garden for the future.
The maddening thing is, during the winter, we were fed up with all the rain.
 
duke said:
So much for advertising, no such thing as no maintenance gutters. I spent 2 hours cleaning our eavestrough and downspouts about 4 weeks ago, very few leaves mostly pigeon ****.
Looks like a single job coming soon, I can see gravel off your shingles sitting on the leaf guard.
Click to expand...
Oh hell, thanks, I think! It’s a huge roof on the barn, seen adverts (yes I know) where they spray something to revitalise older rooves, bet it stinks!
 
Cabinetman said:
That’s certainly hammering it down, we are due to get a huge dollop on Wednesday, after a smaller but significant amount the other day when the gutter on the side of the barn didn’t seem to be doing its job I investigated it this morning.
Now I’d been seduced by all the adds over here about leaf guard gutter top filters that stop your gutters clogging up and guarantees that you will never need to go up a ladder again so I was more than a little miffed that this was the culprit, almost 2” of leafy bits sitting on top, I suppose they’re correct though it did stop the gutter getting filled up— even with water! lol.

View attachment 56858
Click to expand...
And which is precisely why French drains are useless and soon block up. Not with leaves but a fine tilth from the soil above. The membranes they tell you to put into stop this happening simply cost you a lot of money and wasted time. They just act like your leaf guards.
 
Sunday late afternoon we also had three down pours lasting 30 mins at a time.
If this climate keeps turning for the worse for you wild fires will be a problem as in France and Spain.
Read something about your moors becoming a fire hazard?
 
Blackswanwood said:
Most of the UK would benefit from a downpour like that at the moment.

We get moss on the south facing roof. It dries out during the sunny periods and detaches easily when the first significant rain happens to form highly effective dams in the gutters. Total PITA!
Click to expand...

We get similar bumps of green moss forming. The birds wait until I've cleaned the conservatory roof, then pull them off and toss them down.
 
duke said:
Sunday late afternoon we also had three down pours lasting 30 mins at a time.
If this climate keeps turning for the worse for you wild fires will be a problem as in France and Spain.
Read something about your moors becoming a fire hazard?
Click to expand...
We do seem to have been having an increasing number of fires on moorland. Last year one burnt for over a month at Fylingdales which is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. I live about forty miles away but we had days when we could smell the smoke. It seems the moor started to burn beneath the surface when the peat caught fire. The cause was thought to be an idiot who lit a campfire or portable barbecue despite warnings not to do so. While a big incident it was a pin prick compared to what France and Spain are currently tackling.

I'll be interested to see the natural recovery in France and Spain. I know the trees in California are pretty good at picking back up quickly - not so sure the European trees will be able to cope as well. I should add that (more importantly) I also hope the people who have lost everything get the support they need to bounce back.
 
There does seem to be an emerging pattern of idiotic use of disposable BBQs, campfires or even fireworks. I do sometimes wonder quite how we got to where we are now. While education ought to be to answer, those disposable BBQ's need to go. People don't seem to realise peat is not incombustible, despite it having been used as fuel for centuries. Also, I guess very few people think of how they will put it out, cool it, and take it away with them.

My son went to a BBQ party at a student house, where they used a disposable BBQ on a wooden table and were surprised that it burned. And these are students at a decent university.
 
The mind boggles re the students putting a disposable BBQ on a wooden table - but maybe it shouldn't these days.

I watched a short video (on a FB group about raptors/birds of prey) in which the commentator said people had asked, during a flying demonstration, "Why are the owls so unhappy? Why don't they smile?"... Ponder on that.. These young people are the future of the planet.
 
Accipiter said:
The mind boggles re the students putting a disposable BBQ on a wooden table - but maybe it shouldn't these days.

I watched a short video (on a FB group about raptors/birds of prey) in which the commentator said people had asked, during a flying demonstration, "Why are the owls so unhappy? Why don't they smile?"... Ponder on that.. These young people are the future of the planet.
Click to expand...
God help us
 
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