Third, and last, attic space
We’ve just had a little rain here ‘up north’, not enough but thankfully not too much. I understand from the general weather forecast that the south and west in the UK is about to have a deluge; not good.
A dry tale
plans for a water tank, but no water
Over the last day and a half most of the village has had no water supply and here I am, set on doing my next mini task of building the water tank! Unfortunately the river is so low I don’t think I could have scooped up a bucket or two for the essentials.
I’d been putting off this min-ing job as there was so many other things needing attention and had allocated today to get at it as it were – I am such a sucker for a timetable.
It’s an unfortunate coincidence that the water had ceased to run here just as I was determined to at last give the tank building a go. Stupidly refusing to be totally deterred, I’ve ended up being wasteful of baby wipes instead of water using them to clean my hands and have been reusing brushes and everything else whenever possible. At the end I stood the brushes and bits of sponge in approximately half an egg cup of the water that we had been hoarding over the last 24 hours or so from the hot water cistern .
Where is this third space?
It’s directly above the boys’ bedroom.
- This dark photo is a shot through the doorway of the ‘wireless’ and storage workroom attic into this new space.
- The space itself without a roof on so that we can look down on it, that door opens into this attic.
- A not very successful attempt to get a shot through the doorway back onto the other two bits of attic.
The door we’re looking through, its wall and bit of floor are attached to the slice of house and the bits of other attic we can just about make out are the wireless room and bit of its ceiling and the very edge of the space that houses the stirrup pump and broken jack-in-the-box.
Tank and room
I’ve gone for a galvanised and riveted tank something like this image from a reclamation site.
- I’ve cut out some of the flooring to let in a tank platform framework directly on to the floor joists
- First I’ve got to make a tank. Using the 3 mm grey card and some multi grey wallpaper.
- I adjusted some of the card sizes, glued them together and have now added a false bottom as I fancy putting in a water effect
- Back to the room itself. What I take to be a gas light, which the house wouldn’t have, but here it is. I’ve darkened the white body and added yellow to the bulb
- A bit of white card for the ceiling for the moment, just to get a feel of the room when lit.
- Time to wrap the tank in a wallpaper coat, giving enough overlap to reach down inside to the false bottom

Not got any water effect left that hasn’t gone solid so have just order some to ‘pour’ over the false bottom to give a water level. Must remember to insert the ballcock before pouring the water effect.
Still got the supporting framework to make, and all the plumbing to add but this is it so far, rivets, rust and all 🙂
On the real world domestic water front, we have been very lucky and the engineers were able to fix the pumping equipment early this afternoon (bore hole supply) and we now have running water once more.