Week Beginning 9.8.26
There are weeks when everything seems to happen at once, and there are weeks when life settles into a slightly more manageable rhythm.
This one somehow managed to be both.
It started with me and Hannah running 31 kilometres around Shipley Country Park, included everything from painstaking lime-mortar repairs on a 200-year-old chimney to doing my best to keep an ageing village hall watertight, and ended with a trailer tyre spectacularly giving up just as I was preparing to send it in for a service.
There were chimney surveys around Nottingham, repairs in Stoke-on-Trent, Mansfield, Bilsthorpe and Long Eaton, plenty of family time and, by Saturday evening, two Guardians of the Galaxy films under our belts.
And with the suitcases almost ready for Spain, this is the last Roof Tops and Pit Stops for a couple of weeks.
But first, there’s a week to get through.
Sunday – 31 Kilometres Before Sunday Dinner
There was no cherry picker involved on Sunday, but that certainly didn’t make it a rest day.
Hannah and I headed over to Shipley Country Park in Derbyshire for the Butterfly Run.
It’s a simple but slightly dangerous concept for anyone incapable of knowing when they’ve done enough: there’s a roughly 5km circular course, and between 9am and 3pm you can complete as many laps as you fancy.
Hannah is training for her Ultra X ultramarathon in September, and I’ve got my own running goals, so it seemed like an excellent opportunity to get some serious mileage into the legs.
Thankfully, Granny Ralph came over to look after Robyn and Wren, leaving Hannah and me free to spend several hours voluntarily running around in circles.
Five laps later, we’d covered 31 kilometres.
That’s the furthest I’ve ever run in a single day.
It was sunny, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and I came away feeling pretty pleased with what we’d achieved.
Better still, when we eventually got home, Granny Ralph had cooked a chicken Sunday dinner.
After running 31 kilometres, discovering somebody else has cooked your dinner might be one of life’s greatest pleasures.
Granny Ralph and Grumps joined us, and that was Sunday done.
Monday – A Day I Wasn’t Supposed to Have
Monday was originally reserved for finishing the large mill project I’d been working on in Sheffield the previous week.
Fortunately, I’d managed to complete everything ahead of schedule, which unexpectedly gave me a little breathing room.
I still woke up with a truck full of the previous week’s debris and equipment, though, so that needed sorting before anything else happened.
After clearing the truck, I managed a haircut and the weekly Tesco shop in Mansfield before eventually heading out to do some actual work.
First stop was Sandiacre, where high winds had removed a couple of sections of dry verge from a property.
Nothing particularly dramatic. A nice straightforward repair, everything reinstated and job done.
From there, I headed to Selco in Nottingham to replenish the week’s materials before embarking on what became something of a chimney-survey tour.
I carried out a drone roof survey in Sherwood to investigate damp around a chimney, another in Woodthorpe involving three chimneys in poor condition, and finally headed over to Daybrook to investigate a chimney with suspect lead flashings.
Three chimneys. Three different sets of symptoms. And potentially three completely different solutions.
That’s why proper investigation matters.
If you’ve got unexplained damp or you’re unsure about the condition of a chimney, my roof survey service is designed to establish what’s actually going wrong before deciding what needs repairing.
Back at DJI HQ at a reasonable hour, I even managed an afternoon workout before spending the rest of the day with the family.
Not bad for a day I wasn’t originally supposed to have.
Tuesday – Wrestling With a 200-Year-Old Chimney
Tuesday was considerably less relaxed.
I headed over to Stoke-on-Trent to work on a chimney belonging to a house that’s approximately 200 years old.
And this one was an absolute grueller.
The chimney needed repointing, which meant properly preparing the existing joints before introducing new lime mortar.
The old mortar seemed incapable of deciding what it wanted to be.
Some sections were incredibly hard.
Others were soft.
All of it had to be dealt with properly.
I spent a substantial part of the day grinding and preparing the joints before injecting and pointing them with an appropriate lime mortar. The chimney also needed re-flaunching using materials suitable for the age and construction of the building.
When you’re dealing with older buildings, material choice matters.
You can’t simply assume that the mortar you’d use on a modern property is appropriate for masonry that’s been standing for two centuries.
It was slow, physical work and, with the travelling added on, consumed most of the day.
Fortunately, the customer was lovely and I had a good audiobook to keep me company on the journey.
Sometimes that’s all you need.
If you’re dealing with deterioration to an older chimney, you can find more information about my chimney maintenance and repair work.
Why Old Chimneys Need the Right Mortar
Tuesday’s job is worth dwelling on because it highlights something that’s easily overlooked when repairing older properties.
Mortar isn’t simply the stuff between the bricks.
Traditional buildings often rely on softer, more breathable lime-based mortars that behave differently from hard modern cement mixes.
Using an inappropriate material can potentially move moisture and stresses into the surrounding masonry rather than solving the underlying problem.
That’s why the objective when working on an older chimney isn’t simply to make the pointing look new.
You need to consider what the chimney is built from, what materials have previously been used, how badly they’ve deteriorated and what is appropriate for the existing construction.
Good chimney repair starts with understanding what’s already there.
Wednesday – Keeping a Village Hall Going
Wednesday kept me closer to home in Forest Town, Mansfield, where I’d been asked to spend a day working on the roof of a village hall.
This was an interesting one because everybody involved already knew the uncomfortable truth.
The roof really needs replacing.
The building belongs to the Welbeck Estate and is occupied by Portland College, a charity, under a peppercorn-rent arrangement.
Unfortunately, the roof has suffered years of neglect and repeated patch repairs. It’s now in extremely poor condition.
But knowing that a roof needs replacing and having the budget available to replace it are two very different things.
So my job wasn’t to pretend I could magically turn an end-of-life roof into a new one.
My brief was essentially:
Spend the day doing everything reasonably possible to stop water getting in.
And that’s exactly what I did.
I worked my way around the building plugging holes, carrying out temporary roof repairs, removing Buddleia, securing loose lead, sealing flashings, reconnecting guttering and generally fixing anything that looked capable of allowing water into the building.
Was it suddenly a brand-new roof when I finished?
Absolutely not.
But hopefully we’d bought the building some valuable additional time.
There’s an important distinction there.
Sometimes targeted repairs can prolong the usable life of an ageing roof when replacement isn’t immediately affordable.
But those repairs need to be presented for what they are.
Damage limitation isn’t the same thing as a permanent solution.
Thursday – A Chimney Job Almost on My Doorstep
After Stoke-on-Trent and a day battling the village hall, Thursday was wonderfully straightforward.
I had one chimney to re-flaunch.
Better still, it was in my own village of Bilsthorpe, Nottinghamshire.
The sun was shining, there was nothing else booked in the diary, and I managed to get the job completed by around lunchtime.
No drama.
No marathon drive home.
No 200-year-old mortar refusing to leave the brickwork.
Lovely.
That left me with an afternoon for creating content and editing videos before taking Robyn to her dance class and heading to Tesco with Hannah and Wren.
Sometimes the quieter days are the ones you appreciate most.
Friday – Two Chimneys and One Exploding Tyre
Any energy I’d saved on Thursday was required again on Friday.
It was an extremely hot day in Long Eaton, where I had two substantial chimney repairs to complete.
Both chimney stacks had badly deteriorated flaunching, and the damage had extended into the upper masonry.
The top four courses of both chimneys needed repointing before I could properly deal with the tops.
So I repointed the upper sections, removed the failed existing flaunching, completely re-flaunched both chimneys and installed chimney cowls.
This is another good example of why simply putting fresh material over failed flaunching isn’t necessarily a proper repair.
If deterioration has spread into the pointing and masonry beneath, those defects need addressing too. Otherwise, you’re potentially just covering up part of the problem.
It was a hot, busy day, but everything was completed.
And that officially made it my last working day before our holiday to Spain.
All that remained was to get home, unload the truck and remove the cherry picker from its trailer.
Which is when the trailer apparently realised it was booked in for a service.
BANG.
One of the tyres gave up spectacularly just before I unloaded the machine.
In fairness, if you’re going to have a trailer tyre fail, having it happen at home immediately before the trailer goes to the garage is about as considerate as a tyre can possibly be.
Once the cherry picker was safely unloaded, I dropped both the truck and trailer off at HTV Vehicle Solutions near Southwell for a well-earned service while we’re away.
Tools down.
Holiday mode approaching.
Friday Night – Apparently I’m Getting Old
Because of the hot weather, Robyn was allowed to stay up rather later than usual on Friday evening.
We decided to watch Guardians of the Galaxy together.
Robyn was absolutely captivated.
She made it all the way through until about 10pm.
Her 43-year-old father, meanwhile, was snoozing on the sofa by approximately half past nine.
So after spending the day repairing two chimneys in the blazing sunshine, my eight-year-old daughter officially had more stamina than me.
Fair enough.
Saturday – A Sub-Two-Hour Half Marathon!
Saturday started at my usual 5am, but this morning I had a target in mind.
With the Robin Hood Half Marathon coming up in September, I wanted to see what I could actually do over the full distance if I pushed the pace a little.
So breakfast was four slices of toast, plenty of time to let everything settle, and then at 7am I took to the road.
The target was 21 kilometres.
And I absolutely smashed it.
I completed the half-marathon distance in 1 hour 50 minutes.
A sub-two-hour half marathon!
I was absolutely delighted.
I’m 43 years old, weigh around 90 kilograms and only started running in May, so to be knocking out a half marathon in 1:50 just a few months later feels like a massive achievement.
I’m not particularly interested in comparing myself with the quickest runners out there. The person I’m competing against is the bloke I was six months ago.
And that bloke got absolutely battered on Saturday morning.
Of course, there was a price to pay.
For the rest of Saturday, I was aching everywhere. My legs knew exactly what I’d done to them, and stairs suddenly became a considerably more complicated engineering problem than they had been earlier that morning.
Going up them wasn’t pleasant.
Coming back down wasn’t much better.
But I couldn’t take anything away from the achievement.
Earlier in the week I’d completed my furthest-ever run at 31 kilometres, and six days later I’d managed my fastest half-marathon effort in 1 hour 50 minutes.
For someone who only took up running in May, I’m absolutely thrilled with the progress.
The rest of Saturday was therefore deliberately relaxed.
In the evening, we headed over to Granny Ralph’s for a nice family dinner before coming home and settling down with Robyn to watch Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
This time, after the morning’s effort, I had an even better excuse if I happened to fall asleep on the sofa.
And with that, another week was done.
Locations Worked This Week
- Shipley Country Park, Derbyshire – 31km Butterfly Run
- Sandiacre – Dry verge repairs following wind damage
- Sherwood, Nottingham – Drone chimney survey investigating damp
- Woodthorpe, Nottingham – Drone survey of three deteriorating chimneys
- Daybrook, Nottinghamshire – Chimney and lead flashing survey
- Stoke-on-Trent – Lime mortar repointing and re-flaunching on a roughly 200-year-old chimney
- Forest Town, Mansfield – Village hall roof repairs and weatherproofing
- Bilsthorpe, Nottinghamshire – Chimney re-flaunching
- Long Eaton – Repointing, re-flaunching and cowl installation to two chimneys
A Week of Making the Best of What’s There
Looking back, there’s actually a common thread running through much of this week’s work.
It wasn’t about ripping everything out and starting again.
In Stoke, it was about respecting a 200-year-old building and using appropriate materials.
In Forest Town, it was about understanding that although replacement would be ideal, the available budget meant making sensible targeted repairs instead.
And in Long Eaton, it was about recognising that replacing the flaunching alone wasn’t enough because deterioration had spread into the brickwork below.
That’s a large part of what roofing actually involves.
Not simply knowing how to repair something, but knowing what repair is appropriate for the building, the problem and the circumstances.
Do You Have Concerns About Your Roof, Chimney or a Persistent Leak?
If you’ve noticed damp, deteriorating chimney mortar, damaged flashing or another roof problem and aren’t sure what’s causing it, I offer two survey options:
Targeted Roof Inspection — £100 + VAT
Designed for investigating a specific problem such as a leak, chimney defect or area of concern.
Full Roof Condition Survey — £250 + VAT
A more comprehensive assessment of the overall condition of your roof.
I generally carry out surveys within approximately 1 hours of North Nottinghamshire. For customers further afield, it may also be possible for me to provide guidance or quotations remotely from suitable photographs.
You can find more information about my roof surveys and inspections.
Time for a Holiday
And that’s where Roof Tops and Pit Stops finishes for this week.
From running my furthest-ever distance on Sunday to ancient chimneys, leaking village halls, local jobs, drone surveys, two chimneys in the blazing sunshine and a trailer tyre choosing the perfect moment to explode, it’s been another wonderfully varied seven days.
Now it’s time for something different.
We’re off to Spain.
I’m taking a proper holiday with the family, which means there won’t be a Roof Tops and Pit Stops blog next week.
No daily diary.
No chimney flaunching.
Hopefully no exploding tyres.
Just some proper family time, sunshine and a chance to recharge before getting back to it.
I’ll see you in the next one.
A Quick Word About Granite Workwear
Weeks like this are exactly why decent workwear matters.
Between grinding mortar from an old chimney, crawling around an ageing village hall roof and spending a full day working in the heat, my clothes don’t exactly have an easy life.
I’ve been wearing Granite Workwear throughout my working weeks and I’m very happy to recommend them. If you’re looking for proper trade clothing and equipment, you can find them through my affiliate link: https://www.graniteworkwear.com/?afid=danny
About the Author
Roof Tops and Pit Stops is compiled and published by Danny Iwanejko (Dan the Cherry Picker Man), documenting the reality of roofing, chimney repairs and specialist high-access work across Nottinghamshire and beyond.
Based in North Nottinghamshire, Danny specialises in solving difficult-access roofing problems using cherry pickers and spider lifts, while documenting the jobs, decisions, machinery and occasional mishaps that come with working at height.
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