This is part of a weekly (or fortnightly if I'm lacking content) series about owning an allotment. Click here for the Introduction Post. I am NOT a keen gardener, so this series will be telling tales of stuff I learn as the season’s progress. Hopefully you find it interesting, you might find some of it useful, and if you have any comments, questions or even better, some useful tips to share, then please add them below
Here in the UK we are in the middle of some very cold and Wintery weather. It has most of the local media up in arms with scary headlines about the 'dangerous conditions', but in my opinion wintery weather happening during winter is not really newsworthy.
But I digress.
Yesterday I went for a nice long run in the snow, and it was flippin' ace, however after I finished the run...
...I arrived home ready to rest and relax, and almost immediately got a phone call from work. A lady (who owns an allotment) had come in to the shop where I work and wanted to pass on a message to let me know that the roof of our shed had blown off - from previous post
So instead of a relaxing afternoon catching up on internet stuff and listening to music, I ended up quickly eating a bag of crisps and a random go-ahead bar thing for lunch, grabbed my Wellies and headed out to our allotment to see what the damage was.
This was the sorry sight that I arrived to. Fortunately only half the roof had been blown off. There were strong winds the previous day so that presumably was when the damage happened. The window on the right hand side had also been blown out, and that might have allowed more wind to come in underneath the roof and remove it.
The missing roof panel was to be found under snow behind where the shed stood. I tried to pick it up and realised that not only was it very heavy (the panel measures 8 foot by 2 foot) it was also badly damaged on the left hand corner (not shown in a photo because I forget to take a picture...sorry). I quickly realised that any attempt to lift it on my own would certainly result in making the damage worse. My partner was at work, and my parents were otherwise engaged, so I couldn't fix it at that moment.
However I could not leave it like that...
Looking inside the shed showed 1-2 inches had fallen inside...
And with more snow now falling, I needed to find away to temporarily fix the issue. In the allotment we have a pond and a bog garden. Both features were built a couple of months ago using a large amount of pond liner (a thick plastic sheet-like material). My partner had kept the off-cuts from it for some unknown reason, and now suddenly they had a purpose. I could use these to try to cover the gap in the roof.
I then spent 45 minutes with a Hammer and a handful of nails trying to arrange 3 odd shaped plastic sheets to cover the gap. There was a lot of shouting and cursing involved!
Yes I know, it looks absolutely awful... it does the job though and there was no more snow falling inside the shed.
The final task of the day was to clear out the snow from inside the shed. All that snow would eventually melt to water and there resulting puddles would cause significant damage to the floorboards. The shed itself is 2nd-hand and in pretty good nick, but I want to limit any lasting damage
With the snow getting heavier, and plenty more forecast later in the evening I crossed my fingers that my temporary bodge-job solution would be enough, and headed home to give my partner the bad news - that we would have to come back the next day and try and get this sorted.
Day 2:
The following day we headed up, and I was relieved to see my make-shift solution had survived the night. While I removed the pond-liner, my partner salvaged some pieces of wood from a skip on the corner of the allotment. Fixing the edge of the roof was relatively straight forward, and then we replaced two of the planks of the wood with the wood rescued from the skip.
Next the roof felt needed tacking down again. the edge of it is damaged/ripped, but at least most of the roof panel is covered again.
With the panel finally fixed (only wasted 3 hours on this simple and time-consuming task), we were finally in a position to lift it back where it belonged.
A convoluted process of squeezing it through the door, lifting it sideways up through the gap and then lowering it down into position and ta-dah!
Finished!
Well mostly. There is still damage to the roof felt to deal with (various holes and tears), but that will be a job for another time.
And just in time too as it promptly decided to hail as we were tidying up!
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