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We did it!

December 2009

Work on the indoor aspects of the heating and insulation project has continued throughout December and if you’ve looked in the Hall when the door has been open you will have seen the consequences!  The plaster in the main hall is gone, the windowsills have been taken off and the electricity fittings all removed.  The floor has been dug up and taken away and the wall which separated the entrance hall from the kitchen is knocked down.  It all looks a bit grim!  But, to reassure ourselves we say that the worst is over and from here on, we start putting things back.  In fact, with funding in place it’s really just a matter of getting on with the work.  Some of what has to be done will be down to contractors, such as the making and installation of new windows, but much is to be done by volunteers.  We expect to start on relaying the floors with under floor heating as soon as we can in the New Year.  The other main part of the work is the digging of trenches to bury the heat gathering pipes (called slinkies!) outdoors.  But it’s been raining!  In fact it seems to have been raining forever (and at the time of writing this it’s snowing).  So outdoor progress has to be delayed until ground conditions improve and we can get the digger in (and out again hopefully).

The same difficulties (boggy ground), limit progress on the playground, although we had expected to do this work once the heat gathering pipes were laid, and not until the early New Year.  Still it’s good to have the paperwork done so that when the sun shines again we can press on.

 All of which suggests that we’ve not been very busy lately.  Far from it!  You soon realise when you get involved in these projects that lots of aspects of the whole are inter-related.  Laying a new floor has to take account of where new indoor toilets will be sited and where the kitchen furniture will go.  And if you’re planning a mezzanine you need to check where the doors will be and which way they will open etc etc.  So in the last week of December we’ve been busy sorting these details out.  We have a good relationship with our architect whose services have been available free until recently, and we’re getting more technical advice from builders as we go along.  We’re also very grateful for the help and advice we get from the members of the RSME.  As their new building progresses it’s vital that we collaborate to make sure that, for example, new drains and electricity supplies don’t conflict.

 So … it may seem as if not much is happening, but things are steadily sorting out and hopefully you’ll be able to see things developing before too long.  Looking at plans for the new facilities is quite exciting and if we can realise our ambitions we’ll have a smashing village hall.

With everyone busy with Christmas and the exceptionally snowy weather, you’ll not be surprised to hear that not much progress has been made with outdoor works during late December and January.  Digging trenches when the ground was so wet in December was impossible and coping with such a prolonged covering of snow has not helped.  Nevertheless, the time has been productively used in making sure our plans for the location of both the heating system pipe-work and the sewage pipes don’t conflict either with existing underground pipes or electricity supplies. To complicate matters we have to integrate this work with the plans for the layout of the outdoor play facilities which will share the same area of ground.  All these separate projects will have to be faced as soon as the ground is reasonable and … honestly … this will be within the coming weeks!

The play facilities for the children (not just a playground), sound more exciting each time they are discussed.  At a recent on-site meeting with the equipment installers the landscaping which forms part of the project began to come to life, not just with fixed equipment (although that itself is exciting) but with rocks and trees to clamber on!  ‘They’ didn’t have things like that when I was a child (I don’t think).

 Other changes to the Hall which will become evident soon are the replacement windows.  The new east window (the one on the end of the hall) should be installed, weather permitting, in late January and the other large window in the hall soon afterwards.

Indoors, the main task is the hall floor.  At the time of writing there isn’t one!  The floorboards are gone together with the underlying concrete.  The floor level has been reduced to make room for the under floor heating system.  We hope to have a new base layer of concrete laid, on which the insulation will go.  Heating pipes will be laid on top of the insulation and the whole covered with a screed (liquid concrete) to top it off.  Then we have to find some money to put down a suitable floor covering.  The same process will eventually extend throughout the whole of the ground floor of the building.

 So things progress – but rather more slowly than we had hoped.

 The ongoing work is largely funded by grants (see earlier reports for details).  However, one of the other tasks facing the committee is the search for more grant funding to keep the momentum of refurbishment going.  A big effort has gone into finalising and sending off an application to the BIG Lottery during late December and January.  This seems like ‘the big one’ for us in terms of grants, if we are successful we hope to receive enough funds to complete the work on the indoor toilets, new kitchen and mezzanine floor and we’ll be ‘almost there’.  The BIG Lottery is very competitive with a low success rate but we hope our application will do the trick!  At 33 pages long with 10,000 words (and that doesn’t include the supportive information), it should.  Cross your fingers!  Incidentally, the application uses the word ‘community’ 109 times, a reflection of our aspiration for the village hall for the future.

 Lastly, we continue to be grateful for the funds raised by events organised by generous people who seem not to be deterred by the lack of a hall in which to hold them.  By now you may know if you won top prize in the quiz, maybe you’ve spent the cash already!  But funding comes from many, often unexpected sources.  The Ampleforth fun run held late in 2009 raised £1292.09 which was donated to the village hall refurbishment fund.  Our thanks go to the organisers, Jane Butler and the staff of the St Alban Centre and Alan and Sarah Summers of Thirsk and Sowerby Harriers.  Thanks also go to the sponsors of the run, Jeremy Deedes of ‘Planning for Life’ and Alan Summers, Fire Safety Consultant, to Rob Thompson (White Swan/Fairfax Arms) for prizes and last but not least of course, to all the doughty runners.

Well, it seems as if it hasn’t stopped snowing or raining very often since the last news item but nevertheless, it’s good to be able to report that lots of progress has been made with Hall projects.

Outdoors we have begun to lay the sewage pipes which will serve the new indoor toilets when they are installed.  Although only a start, this has critically involved laying the pipe work under the area by the main entrance gate so freeing up things for other ground work.  Then, against all the odds (weather-wise) and thanks very much to Ian Mosey’s generous help, the first trench for the ground source heating pipe has been dug.  More than a metre deep and a metre wide, this needed a skilled JCB operator, but all went well.  Then with expert guidance, the heat gathering (slinky) pipes were laid.  Two similar trenches will need to be dug in the lower field and the pipes joined by a manifold to ‘supply’ and ‘return’ pipes which will take the warmed water into the Hall.  The ground source heat pump which will use this water is on its way and we now have the pipes and insulation ready to install the under floor heating. 

Storage of these pipes etc would have been difficult had it not been for the laying of an ‘under floor’ layer of concrete inside the Hall.  Morning walkers passing the building on a recent Saturday will have seen a parade of men with wheelbarrows queuing up to take very runny and very heavy ready-mixed concrete into the Hall where it has been laid to form a base for the new floor.  Nine cubic meters of liquid concrete were delivered and had to be moved and laid before they began to set in the delivery lorry so there was no time for slacking.  A hasty ‘cuppa’ was just possible between one lorry delivery and the next.  Thanks to a tremendous effort from volunteers the base layer of the floor is now laid!

Then, if that weren’t enough progress to report, the first of the two new windows arrived in mid February and was duly fitted into place.  Specially made and double glazed, the new east window looks splendid and of course will be an invaluable aid in heat conservation in the longer term.  The second (north) window for the Hall should follow soon.

So lots of progress!  Hopefully, outside work in the area to the east of the Hall will be more or less completed very soon so that the installation of the new playground equipment and landscaping can be done before the end of March.  It’s all happening!

Behind the scenes, our application for BIG Lottery funding has been completed and submitted.  If all goes well and we are given the funds we have asked for, starting in June, we should be able to get on with the toilets indoors, the kitchen renovation and the creation of the mezzanine floor.  This latter will give us a downstairs meeting room and a smaller upstairs room.  Please keep your fingers crossed for success in our application!  It would be so good to be able to keep up the momentum of refurbishment now that we’ve started.

Lastly but not in any way ‘leastly’, I’ve said before that we are always desperate to add to the funds we’re gradually getting from grant bodies.  Having a little money of our own helps us to do the ‘joining up’ jobs which are essential.  So it’s with very great pleasure that I report the extremely generous donation of £3000 raised on behalf of our Village Hall by the Hovingham Pantomime group (if you missed the performance or would like a reminder, DVD recordings are available from Hovingham shops).  We particularly thank Wendy Swann, the director, all the artistes, the back stage crew and of course all those who attended.  Thank you very much!

Two weeks of good spring weather have transformed the ground outside the village hall and the tempo of work has increased proportionately.

Installation of the play equipment is complete, stone ledges are built and a large (dead) oak tree for adventure play has been delivered.  Finishing touches; ‘grass’ matting underneath the equipment, seats, some planting and final landscaping and re-seeding will transform the area.  This first phase of the play area is primarily aimed at older children (8-13 yrs old), because that’s what the grant was given for, but next we will set about finding some cash to add equipment for younger ones.

 The ‘heating, window and insulation’ project for the hall itself is also moving steadily forward.  The second set of new windows is now in place at the back (north) of the main hall.  The ground source heat pump, which is at the heart of our heating system, has been delivered to the site and good progress is being made with the laying of the heat gathering pipe work outdoors.  The next main phase of this project is to lay the under floor heating pipe work.

 But inevitably, major works of this kind are complex; one project element has to wait until another is complete.  For example, the laying of the under floor heating system cannot be started until the sewage pipes for the new indoor toilets are installed.  Hopefully this will be done very soon so that the floor laying can continue.  Then we set about the wall insulation, roof insulation, re-plastering and so on …..!

 It’s very exciting to see things happening at the hall.  It begins to seem as if our hopes will finally be realised and we’ll have to give thought to how we use this new facility rather than how to rebuild it.  Much depends on the success of our funding aspirations.  If our lottery bid is successful we’ll be able to complete the majority of the remaining major work on the hall over the coming months.  Please continue to keep your fingers crossed for us.  We should hear whether we’ve got the money by the end of April!

Spring is here at last, the birds are singing and work at the Hall is progressing more quickly.

 We expect the playground work to be complete by the time you read this article and it should be open for use (at last).   We’ll make sure you know what is happening!  Remember, this is the first phase of the playground project; hopefully equipment for younger children comes next.  Work on other projects inside and outside the Hall will continue and the trains (Ryedale Model Engineering Society (RSME)) will be running from time to time, so we’ll all need to take care.  We plan to have a ‘grand opening’ a bit later on when the grass will have settled down (and it might be a bit warmer).

 Our main effort is now focussed on the completion of the heating and insulation project.  We expect the heat-gathering pipes in the ‘back field’ will be laid very soon and all will be joined up to the rest of the system.  Indoors, the flooring in the entrance hall has had to wait until the sewage pipes for the indoor toilets were laid, but as these are now in place it can go ahead.  Then comes the laying of the under-floor heating pipe work, covering with a sand cement screed and the final joining up and testing.  Lastly, wall insulation, re-plastering, roof insulation and so on ….!

 Painting the new windows, the replacement of the entrance gates and re-planting the flower bed in front of the hall (where the drains have been laid), likely to happen in the coming weeks, will make the hall look nearer to being useable.  However there is still a lot to do and much depends on whether we’re successful in our lottery bid (I hope your fingers are still crossed).  With luck we may have a partly useable building during the summer, but full operation will not be possible until at least next year.  The RSME new building is nearing completion which will mean the society can ‘vacate’ the main building in October as planned, then we can get on with the last phase of refurbishment.

 The flower beds in front of the hall are south facing and ideal for a good selection of ornamental plants.  If anyone has any advice on how best to make the best of the new planting or can offer any suitable plants we’d be very ‘receptive’.

Spring is here at last (did I say that last month)?  At least the weather has been dry if cold, and that has meant that the playground has been finished off to schedule.  The grass seed which has been sown is beginning to emerge and there are one or two ‘snagging’ details to be resolved, but children should be using the equipment from now on.  It will help if we can allow the new grass to establish, so using the ‘stepping stones’ to the swing etc will be best, but his shouldn’t prevent use of the playground.

The double gates for the entrance to the playground are to be replaced with new ones soon, making the access easier and more attractive.  This, together with the flowerbed (many thanks to contributors of plants) and the paintwork gradually being done (thanks to the volunteer painter) makes the hall begin to look useable again.

 However, work is still in progress inside the hall.  The last stages of the heating and insulation project are well advanced now and we begin to see a date when that work will be complete.  For hard-worked committee members and volunteer helpers this will be a relief, it’s been quite a big job. Hopefully all the hard work will be repaid as we get a nice warm hall for the winter (and nice small heating bills to go with it).

 The next phase of the refurbishment, as you will remember, depends on the success of our bid to the lottery fund.  We expect to be able to complete the toilets indoors, create a new kitchen and a mezzanine floor to make an upstairs room at the south end of the building.  Announcement of the grant successes has been delayed until after the voting for our constituency MP (public announcements which may affect voter preference cannot be made during the ‘run up’ to a general election (the ‘purdah’ period) ) but we’re quietly confident that we have a good case.

 So….    We keep on going, making good progress.  Fund raising must continue, we’ll be looking for money to buy equipment for the younger children for the playground, furniture for indoors, sports equipment, curtains, computers, projectors and screens, and more and more things.  Before too long we’ll hold our annual general meeting then we hope you’ll come along and help us decide what things are most important.  Lastly, donations are always welcome and we would especially like to offer local businesses the chance to sponsor aspects of the hall activity, or offer contributions ‘in kind’.  If anyone wishes to discuss these in more detail don’t hesitate to contact a member of the committee.