Consequently I arrived on site at 6.30 am.

I spent the first 4 hours moving the various PFC steel around to give Ian a clear path when we move the earth near the columns.

Maybe I should have left this to Ian to do with his machinery as the next day I was really sore and really tired - I used a combination of levers, a rolling trolley and plain old muscle power.

I was just about to start work on wire brushing the beam when Ian rang up to say that he was coming to move the earth.

I wasn't expecting this but luckily I was almost ready.

I just needed to finish moving a pile of besser bricks out of the way and to remove one of the diagonal braces.

While Ian was doing all his earth works I was able to brush down all surfaces on the beam and remove any rust flakes.

Ian did a really neat job on removing about a quarter of the earth near the columns.

We had agreed to store this material on top of an existing pile near the back left hand corner of the block.

It occurred to me that we might as well mix in the organic matter at the bottom right of the block to ameliorate the effect of the clay.

All in all a very neat cleanup.

After this Ian brought his bob cat up to the top verge and we hooked up chains to lift it over the safety fence.

At the top of the driveway he had to change over to dragging it.

At the bottom of the driveway Ian changed back to two lifting chains and had a trial run at lifting the beam on to the support columns.

It looked rather tricky but from his testing he decided that he would used a boom when we eventually do the job.

We then parked the beam on top of some large gluts, Ian put away his equipment and we stopped for a coffee and a chat.

Around 6.00 pm Ian headed off and I was about to leave as well.

Then it occurred to me that if there was any rain in the next week all of my rust brushing work would be wasted.

I set up a spot light and worked on in to the dark - painting rust converter on to the beam.

Finally I managed to get away at 7.05 pm and home just in time to watch "Doctor Who"

Wednesday

Mid afternoon I popped out for a short visit / break.

I washed the ruster converter off the U beam and reapplied some in areas where a little rust was still showing.

Ross was working in the back right corner removing some coffee rock that he had stored there a couple of years ago.

He did a very nice cleanup job for me.