Garden/Allotment

[sewer rat]

Dogsbody
Hire yourself a skip and a mini-digger for a weekend - even if you have never operated one before, a couple of hours and you'l be like a pro - trust me. They are easy to hire, most are self drive though the hirer will show you how to operate them. Then you can scrape off all the weeds and rubbish, and level the site using the ditching bucket, and then dig your pond using normal bucket, and utilise your spoil from the pond to either create banks or heap the soil up to use elsewhere at a later date.
Skip hire is not prohibitively expensive. Up here you pay a flat rate for the hire (about £60). The cost comes in what you put into it. If you just put rubble, subsoil etc in it, again up here you get charged £2/tonne, but if you mix it with household rubbish (old carpets etc) the cost shoots up to £40/ tonne, as it all has to go to landfill, whereas the rubble will probably be kept by the skip company and sold on as infill for new build houses etc.
Only thing to be careful about when digging your pond, or anything more than 12" deep is to be aware of the routes of your services - electric, water, gas and phone - burst them and the cost gets astronomical - only gas is really dangerous - electric is too but if the digger bursts a cable, all you get is a big bang and a bigger fright!

[nick the grief]

[QUOTE=sewer rat .... electric is too but if the digger bursts a cable, all you get is a big bang and a bigger fright![/QUOTE]

Similar end result as the Physio only messier to clean up

With Electric, the cables can be just under the surface & normally they have a strip of yellow tape saying Electric. You can hire cable finders don't know how much they are. If you've got Mains Gas in the area you want to dig the posd PM me & I'll see if I can find anything out for you.

Skip Hire round here is a bit of a rip off Rat. Last one I had cost me about £200 for the weekend inc the council permit cos it went in the street. I asked to see the permit but nothing happened so I wonder if they bother or not & just pocket the money I could put anything in it so long as it was level with the top of the skip. It then took then a week to collect it!!

[sewer rat]

Electric should be 18" deep and have yellow warning tape 6" above the cable.
Similar story with gas but do not know colour of tape as we do not have mains gas this far north - it stops at Alness which is 12 miles south of me. Water mains now have to be minimum depth of 800mm and are generally a blue alkathene pipe and should have blue warning tape above as per electric, but with the smaller bore pipes and the older systems you just gotta guess - if you are careful when you are digging you should spot the track marks - the ground will show up as a darker line in the ground (getting all Time Teamy here!). If the system is really old, the pipes could be steel or even asbestos.
BT cable if laid on the ground is generally light grey and is either laid on the surface and visible (think is is because there cable layers are either to lazy to dig a track and bury it, or they are on a bonus for meterage laid per day) or if buried is literally just below the surface.
Electric and BT cables can be traced and followed using the tool Nick mentioned - commonly referred to as a CAT. This picks up both power and radio signals.
Running water can be picked up by divining rods - all you need are two copper rods bent into L shape - hold loosely, one in each hand, parrallel to each other and walk slowly over the area you want to test. Therods will swing together when you are above running water - this really does work, really ! Alternatively, look for hydrant and marker boards on field / road boundaries and try and figure out possible routes from those.

[Jaxom]

Services can also be picked up using divining rods. Walk the area as Rat said and then place a stick in the ground where the rods swing towards each other. I used to work for a construction company years ago and I can't tell you the amount of times divining rods has saved the day.
You don't have to use copper rods though any twigs as thin as your little finger will work. They need to be about 18" to 2' long. Partly snap them so that they form the L shape as rat describes and away you go.
I remember the first time I went out with a water inspector for Welsh Water and I showed him how to find the domestic supply in an alkathene pipe. He had been moaning about the loss of the "good old days" when you could find a water supply that was unmarked on the plans with a metal detector..... I showed him “good old days” when I walked up to the nearest bush and snapped two twigs to find the pipe. After he lost £5 in a bet he never doubted the method again.

[nick the grief]

Electric should be 18" deep and have yellow warning tape 6" above the cable..

They always used to be Rat, but since the law was changed about 10 years ago Anyone can now lay the service's to a house & it's connected up by the local Elecricity company (this may have changed since I left the industry) Most house builders are fairly sensible & will bury it. I do know of an estate near me where all the mains incommers were laid along side the slabs going to the front door. When this was queried by my friend he was told that there was now No minimum depth!!!

This was about 10 years ago as I said, so it may have reverted back to common sense, but I wouldn' risk my life on it !

[dogsbody]

Cheers folks for the advice and info.

Hopefully all the servicesare at the front of the house and not the back, especially as the new big bit was bought from a neighbour's back garden and we know where his electric is as he had a conservatory put up and they cut his cables in the process!

I may well give it a go....

.... trouble is those delinquent chickens would probably be off joy-riding at lunchtime!

[Janette]

I didn't know how to vote as I am doing both. Salad crops at home where I can eat them within 5 minutes and everything else at the allotment

[kentish girl]

I do both as the greenhouse is at home with a small veg plot & some small fruit trees & now have 1/2 an allotment for the rest

[pigletwillie]

We do both, herbs in a raised bed, apple trees espaliered along a fence along with a fig and an apricot, tomatoes in the greenhouse for salads etc in the garden. The 2 lotties have every thing else on them including a polytunnel for chillies and "passata" tomatoes plus now my freecycle greenhouse as overflow in the spring.

[blossom]

Now, maybe my maths isn't brilliant, but I'm pretty sure the poll is a little off.

50% growing at an allotment and 62.5% at home. Doh.

[poultrychat]

blossom, it could be because I did the poll so you could vote for both for those that grow at home and at an allotment

[johnboyxxx]

Feeling as though I am in the minority - growing veg. at home - I thought it would be interesting find out whether there are more people with allotments on here or growing from home

Im growing at home got feed up waiting on list for my own patch at my local allotments

[VirginVegGrower]

Large garden at home with greenhouse and some growing there, fruit tree orchard, veg patch, etc. Majority of growing done on half plot allotment but prefer pottering at home.

[Aberdeenplotter]

Those with enough space to grow veg at home are so lucky. It is great just to be able to go outside and do minor jobs in between household tasks that otherwise mean an expedition to the allotment. Mind you, I do feel so lucky having my allotments.

[chris]

I do both, as I've just recently taken on an allotment.