I was sure I would do 3 or 4 today.

Instead the day went entirely on preparations just as the last week has.

I had intended to get up at 5.00 am but the alarm went off while I was in the middle of a very amusing dream.I turned the alarm off and rolled over in the hope of continuing the story but the spell had been broken.

I was eventually out on site by 7.30 am, worked outside until 5.30 pm, then worked inside for a few hours.

We had experienced very heavy rain over the past few days and the sump pump that I patched up several weeks ago had failed again.

It kept throwing out the circuit breaker immediately that I turned it on and I am pretty sure that the silastic around the power cord seal has failed.

I could get a cheap sump pump from Bunnings for $119 or a more expensive one from Midland Cement for $286.

The advantage of the latter is that it has thermal overload protection - so if the float arm became jammed on by some floating debris it will shut down if it needs to.

I bit the bullet and ordered a Vortex ZSC-015.

They don't carry it in stock - it has to be ordered in. Hopefully I will have it in time to install next Saturday.

Anyway - as a consequence of the pump failing there were large pools of water around the house - right where I needed to work.

Fortunately I had a pair of wellington boots.

These allowed me to keep my feet dry while I spent an hour carrying calsil bricks and planks around to set up duckwalks.

The first job was to lock in the vertical level of 6 of the columns.

Two of the columns were already perfect and I used ratchet straps to move the other 4 inwards or outwards.

This took a couple of hours to complete.

After I had the columns aligned I wanted to lock them in by clamping on some scrap purlins.

This was very slow work and took me another 3 hours.

Next I needed to transfer the cleat positions from the outside beam on to the core beam.

I had to go up and down the ladder at least 33 times to record the as built distances.

Then I worked my way along the the scaffolding platform marking the dimensions on to the inner beam.

I achieved agreement between the two beams to within 2 mm which was very pleasing.

By now it was dark. I had some dinner, a rest and stacked floor boards for an hour or two.

Hopefully next week I can finally make some progress on the purlins.

Tuesday

I was at Midland Cement at 7.30 in the morning.

I picked up the sump pump and a fitting to change the connection to the new outlet orientation.

Then out to site where I modified the riser from the non functioning pump.

I had about 6 lengths of 40mm pressure piping which I used in conjunction with the new pump to empty out several of the lakes around the house.

I then installed the pump in to the well where it belongs.