The rainwater harvesting system we're going to use is from rainwaterharvesting.co.uk - they sell a complete system, in kit form. Because the tank is shared with the fire sprinkler system, I thought it would be a good idea to get it on-site ASAP, if possible. So I've been thinking about how to achieve this, given the road closure going on with the United Utilities works (The tank we'll be using measures 2.4m x 2.4m x 1m approx).

At the moment, UU have the side road (which gives us access to the rear garden) closed during the daytime, but then they open it to (small) vehicles before they finish work each evening. This is going to change in two weeks' time. So I came up with a slightly convoluted but workable plan: hire a 3.5t flatbed from Salford Van Hire, drive down to Peterborough, get the rainwaterharvesting.co.uk people to load the tank onto the vehicle, drive back to Manchester (by which time it would be after 5:30pm so UU would have finished work), and have a bunch of people ready to offload it into the garden (then return the van next morning). After making quite a few phone calls to confirm availability of both the tank and the vehicle, costings, ordering procedures, etc, I came to the conclusion that whilst I could get it in to the garden, this would be pointless unless we could get all the displaced earth out of the garden - and that we didn't have enough time to also achieve that, before the 24/7 road closure comes into force.

So we'll have to stick to Plan A: wait until the roadworks are finished before putting the tank in. I need to tell the sprinkler people about this; they sent through a CAD file following Wednesday's meeting, mostly OK but a couple of points to raise with them, which I'll have to do on Monday now.

I'm very eager to ensure that we have good communication, and good relationships with the neighbours. Both the adjoining houses are rented. I already know the owner of one of them, but yesterday I managed to speak to the other one on the phone for the first time. He seemed rather concerned, so there will be more work to be done to put his mind at rest. In particular, there are some Leylandii trees in the garden that we are going to get rid of, and what gets done about the boundary (ie do we build a wall, plant a hedge, etc) will need some careful negotiation. He promised to have a word with his tenants, and then we'd speak again next week.

Fortunately for this project, my time is not being charged for - but in other circumstances such time would have to be paid for, yet the above aren't things you can "see" in the finished result. I had no idea when I started that my time would be needed for these kinds of things - certainly something to bear in mind for future projects.

Going to see the window supplier on Monday morning, which I'm quite excited about.