Thursday, 26 January 2012

A quick site visit

Ian phoned this afternoon to say that there was a problem with the positioning of the greenhouse. The greenhouse rafters should line up with the clearstory windows above them but somewhere along the line the slab and the windows have ended up 150mm out at one end and a bit less at the other. It's enough just to make it look uneven. Nick and I were both about this afternoon so we popped over to site to discuss adjustments. I got some good pics:


From left, Steve, Ian and Nick the joiner standing where the greenhouse will be. Our new sliding folding doors look great and match the Greensteps windows nicely. They are double glazed rather than triple and bi-fold doors tend to be a bit leaky but as the greenhouse will be on the outside of this whole opening they will be protected from the elements so we thought we could afford the lower spec in this respect here. Less glazing means they are lighter and therefore easier to operate.  


Actual plaster on the walls. Wow!


The seamless guttering was going up today. This machine is in the back of a transit - you can see the black rolls of aluminium sheet which feed through the machine and come out in the profile you can see just above the yellow label. 


How many men does it take to put up some guttering? Four apparently!

Tuesday, 24 January 2012

A day and a night

Nick is away for a couple of days so I was on site at 9 yesterday morning to meet with Ian and the plumber(s). They are finishing off the first fix and wanted one or the other of us to be there to ensure all the pipes are in the right place before they are all covered up with plasterboard (see plumbing extra post below). It was quite a busy day on site and I had intended on getting an afternoon nap before my night shift but that never happened :-(

Our sliding folding doors were also installed and they look great, matching the Greensteps windows very well. Paul and Steve were working on the bargeboards and soffits (roof timber details) on the South East side of the house - I think the plan was to get the guttering up today and then take the scaffolding on this side of the house down tomorrow. Ian needs it removed as soon as possible so the greenhouse can go up and he can get  the site hut thing that he's been hiring off site as it's not needed any more (currently stuck on site as scaffolding is in the way of it's exit route). We/the architects specified seamless aluminium guttering which is formed on site. Unfortunately there seems to be only one profile available and we don't like it that much ... we got the sample last week but haven't had the time (or inclination) to do a whole load of guttering research to check out all our other options so we're going to live with it. I wish I'd got my act together and asked for a sample in grey but we didn't realise it was going up today so when we asked Ian about it yesterday it was all a bit too late and it will be black.


Not to be outdone by the development across the road, Nick designed this rather lovely sign so everyone knows where we are and all the Washpit Lane dog walkers can see what's going on.  


Nick's office taking shape. Some of the window boards are in and you can just see the gluelam beams which will be exposed at the top of all the upstairs rooms.


This is a shot of the landing. It will be a really interesting space with the earth wall and instead of taking the walls vertically to meet the ceilling these alcoves follow the line of the roof structure which should give a sense of how the building is put together. You can see here in the furthest alcove the ventilation pipe which rather unfortunately runs straight through our lovely design feature. The system design didn't take into account the alcove and it would have been very convoluted to go round it. Nick and I talked about boxing in a bit more of the alcove but Nick says he doesn't mind seeing the pipe (!) and so it will stay for the moment and I will save judgement til the area is finished - we can box later if it offends.



The master bedroom with an open passage through to the en suite. You can see the earth wall to the right and the underfloor heating manifolds in our built in wardrobe which is on the route round to the en suite. 

Had a very nice lunch on Saturday with Meg & Frank, hosted by my folks. You can see here that it's a house of two halves at the moment. The upstairs is starting to look a bit more finished and the down stairs, here, still very much like a building site.

Plumbing extra ...

Plumbing news from my meeting on site yesterday: 

We looked at the sanitary ware we have so far ... a sink and pedestal from the reclamation yard, another old sink that's been in the undergrowth in mum and dads garden for quite some time and 2 old belfast sinks that'll go in the utility and greenhouse. I showed them the art deco reclaimed taps I bought the other day which turned out to be useless as the threaded pipe has been cut off too short on one of them so back to the reclaimers they go. We also bought a reclaimed towel rail which should fit in the main bathroom. The plumbing men were very underwhelmed and certainly didn't want to contemplate adjusting a similar reclaimed towel rail for the en suite. We may end up with new ones after all!

They are going to lag (insulate) all the pipe work for us - hot and cold. I also have to speak to our other plumber (!! - fitting the heating system) to make sure he does the same and especially ensures all the pipes are protected from the beams they run past - we don't want any knocking/creaking and at the moment he has a hot water pipe touching one of our steel beams. 

The rainwater harvester chucked up a couple of problems ... the header tank is a bit big for the space we have for it in the loft (despite Nick's phone call to them with our dimensions) so it may be going on top of the earth wall. yoiks! And also the outside taps need a special large diameter pipe and they should come direct from pump in the underground tank rather than the header tank so they have decent pressure. 

Plenty of plumbing dilemmas to keep us busy.



Tuesday, 17 January 2012

Plasterboarding

I've just paid the site a visit and it's a hive of activity today which is nice to see. I was working over the weekend but Nick's been on site sorting out a gap underneath the oriel windows (bay windows but upstairs) and braces for the earth wall.

Last week we both visited a build project Ian completed 6 months ago to look at the conservatory he did there. This is it below - we thought it looked great so we've given him the go ahead to use the same system and framework for ours so it will look similar (minus any brick work of course). He'd renovated several rooms in the house here and the finishes were all excellent - definitely made us feel really good about his work and excited about getting to that finishing stage.



Plasterboard! The master bedroom taking shape. The boarding has made the space look smaller I think. 


All the doors now have frames.


Well. They're not subtle but I do think they look neat and the slate border looks great.


Our reclaimed slates - instant character.


Our rainwater tank has been delivered. It will be buried at the back of the house.

Tuesday, 10 January 2012

Ian, Paul and Steve

Ian (our main contractor) has two guys working more or less full time on our house - Paul and Steve. They have loads of experience and get on with the job, no fuss. Lovely.

We had a long meeting with Ian yesterday afternoon. He's finished his other projects before Christmas so we're it now and he's wanting to be finished by the middle to end of March. Seems like a lot to fit in in the next 2 months but we'll be very happy indeed if it all comes together. We talked about door architraves (frames), window cills/boards (outside/inside), stairs, greenhouse, kitchen, loft hatch etc, etc.

Today I visited site to walk around the house with all three of the guys and voice/look at our airtightness concerns (I should really say obsession here). It's not something Ian has much experience in so we're trying to stay on the ball with this. I've had a happy afternoon sorting out the cobbles from the architectural dig and looking at thousands of kitchen sinks!

Our solar panels are up and we were hoping some of the slate roofing would be completed by now but the team doing the roofing were on site for a day on Thursday and have been unwell since!



20 x 190w Sharp panels making up a 3.8kw system. Shame the government has reduced the feed in tariff last month (incentive scheme where they pay us for energy we produce from our system) so we won't be making so much wonga, but we still feel its a good investment: We make lots of nice free non carbon producing electricity, our estimated pay back period although extended is still only around 10 years after which we get 15 years of earning (if the govt stick to their promises). 


Battens and counter battens ready for the slates.


Our reclaimed doors. All victorian 4 panel doors. They've been dipped to strip the paint. In need of some minor repairs and a coat of paint. 

Wednesday, 4 January 2012

Happy new year!

There goes another Christmas. Lots of family and food - all good :-)

Nick and I visited the reclamation yard again the week before xmas and picked out a sink, some door handles and picked up the doors so we can get measured up and frames can be built to suit each door. A successful visit except that we think it was probably a bit too active for Nick after his appendix op and the next day the op site became quite rigid and painful. So close to xmas the doc sent him straight back to hospital for another scan. All clear and home the next day with some antibiotics. phew. 


Creative Christmas cake decorating has become part of the xmas tradition at Girton with a rather grizzly theme developing!! Last year santa was involved in a horrific accident and was being rescued by ambulance. This year he was on the operating table as a nod to Nick's ordeal. 

Back to the house ... the solar panels were fitted just before xmas, along with the flat roof. The slates should be going on this week, or next (somewhat dependent on the gale force winds i'm sure). Inside plasterboard is the next major task. I think the floor downstairs must be happening quite soon as well. It's currently just the concrete slab which will eventually be outside the thermal envelope - insulation and then a layer of screed with the underfloor heating pipes in it are to go down bringing the floor level up by about 200mm. We're meeting Ian on Monday to talk about the schedule going forwards as we still haven't really nailed it down again following the delay cause by the earth wall. I'll get some pics of the solar panels to post then. 


Samples of the quarry tiles we've picked out for the wet/utility areas downstairs.

Tomorrow we are picking up a shed Nick's bought off ebay - we're planning on setting it up on the car port so we have somewhere to store things that we buy for the house.