Day 28 - The day of the most people on site so far and the successes of the boiler wizard!

We started the day with 18 day volunteers on site plus 3 contractors working on The Barn and then more people arrived, more plumbers and boiler repairmen, more special project volunteers and more visitors to discuss future partnerships.  By the end of the day we had about 30 people on site, the most Foxlease Park has seen in some time and it was a hive of activity all day!

The first success of the day for the boiler wizard was the plumes of steam happily puffing away from the top of The Barn because the new boiler is WORKING!! (see photos). More work to do for a few more weeks, but great progress being made.

We had significant cleaning works and inventorying going on inside The Coach House with a number of our volunteers giving it its first deep clean and also two volunteers clearing around the right hand side of the building and the fire escape, which looks so much better.  The pile of things weeded and cleared grew into a hill of its own thanks to two more of our volunteers working hard on the border along the outside of The Sundial Garden along to The Coach House courtyard, removing weeds, brambles and overgrowth - there's still more to be done but the difference is already amazing to see!

We had more pressure washing outside of the vestibule/boot room to the side of Foxlease House and now more of the path is the right colour again.  We also had dry-brushing of the windowsills, doors and frames around the outside of Foxlease House to prepare for further cleaning and to remove the layer of cobwebs on them, and that paved the way for another of our volunteers to carefully clean the windowsills and pillars to the front of Foxlease House - it's starting to look clean and white in places again rather than grey.

We had first aid boxes being sorted and topped up, with more items needed added to the Amazon Wishlist, and thanks to the hard work of volunteer Jim over the past couple of weeks the sliding doors in The Coach House courtyard now actually slide! and are secure!

Three more of our volunteers spent the day fixing the guttering and drainage around The Barn - it's not perfect as it's a bit mismatched, but it's so much better than it was and will do a much better job of keeping the water where it should be and away from where it shouldn't until we get to the stage where the guttering can be replaced further down the line.

And with all that going on, then we had more boilermen and plumbers arrive to start work on the heating in The Lodge, and they made great progress there too, which we expect to continue over the next few days.  Foxlease Park will all be nice and toasty again soon!

AND, even more excitingly, the boiler wizard (also known as James) managed to sort the heating in part of Foxlease House for us so the site office is warm! A grand day of successes all round for the boiler wizard and we are very grateful to the Normans team for the work they are doing all over the site for us.

More big numbers on site tomorrow, Love Foxie x