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Blogs

Blackmore House

Hold onto your hats!

After such a very long time of planning, waiting, more planning, plotting and scheming, the real and tangible world is now hurtling towards me at a pace.  MBC got in touch this morning to advise that the slab insulation and the MBC team will be on site on 31st July.  That's next week.  Eek!   Now, I don't know exactly what else is going to happen and whether that's the start proper of the slab going down, but I'd say it's a pretty positive sign of it.  Once I have more detail on the sc
Blackmore House

A little less conversation...

...a little more action.   The piles started going in today and it was a glorious sight to behold after so much waiting and anticipation.  It was, in fact, very understated for piles; these are, after all, mini piles, but there was so little fuss and hassle that it was almost underwhelming.  Not quite, though.   I may just happened to have mentioned before that I'm on clay.  Well, I'm on even more clay than I thought.  In fact, you would be hard pressed to find anything other
Our Journey North of the Border

The Build - Stone work commences

A few photos of the stone work that has now started on site, whilst others continue to prepare the upstairs for the first fix. I have also included an image of the "biscuit screed" laid upstairs over the UFH pipes. Close observers and those who have read previous entries, will notice that the windows have been corrected with fire battens fixed. Anyway, the stone is called a local blend and is made up of Perthshire stone, Cumbria stone and Borders Buff. The Quoins have a hint of lilac t
Blackmore House

Piles are go!

Game on.   The setting out for the piles is happening on Friday afternoon, 20th July.  The piling contractor will also be getting everything to the site that day so that they can start bright and early on Monday morning.  The piling is likely to take most of that week; I will be around at various times, but certainly Monday and Thursday, with a couple of hours here and there.  If anyone would like to come along, PM me and we can arrange suitable times.
A woodland house

Planning permission granted!

Rather surprisingly our planning permission was granted at the end of last week. It turned out to be easier than we'd thought and a good few weeks before the planning authority were required to make a decision. We have a few conditions, some tree related as we're surrounded by them and one or two of the usual suspects related to foul drainage etc.   As there's no progress on site, we've been doing a bit of woodland restoration (the main reason for building a house here). As I know you
Druim nan Darach

Sarking and Velux windows

With the fabricated trusses already fitted on site. The next job was to create the middle section of the roof, this part was cut on site and it was quite satisfying helping to fit the rafters into place.     We had some good weather for this job and I was pleased once these were all in place.   The next task after this was creating the bridles for the Velux windows, fitting the smaller lean to rafters and then the gable ladders.     After this,
Escarpment to the countryside

Broken Ground and Broken Brain Cells.

When the sun is below the horizon and 450 divided by 2 = 250 it is time to quit for the day.   My assistant setting-out surveyor and I had a minor domestic incident in the gathering gloom at a foundation profile where our joint mathematical error became apparent. The gloom was both visible and mental. We had no choice but to soldier on marking out the foundations because although it was 9:30pm, tomorrow was dig-day and the JCB would be onsite at 7:30am.   I had seriously unde
Our Journey North of the Border

The Build - Insulation ahead of 1st Fix - UPDATE

A few more images showing the completed UFH network for upstairs, the servicing battens downstairs and also some additional "supports" to accommodate the fitted kitchen units. I have really been impressed with the UFH fitter - he has even supplied photos of vulnerable positions so there should be no excuse for puncturing a pipe after the screed and boarding has gone down. You will see the areas left "unpiped" in the en-suite and bathroom areas. The manifold is stored in the landing cupboard
Recoveringbuilder

Day four... Truss Day !

So day 4 since the tf arrived and it’s truss day- we have a man with a telehandler who assured us he can load them all and has done many times, the joinery firm wanted us to hire a lorry with a hi-ab from a friend of theirs but since it was a very high rate ( in our opinion) and the fact that he also charged traveling time at the same rate we decided to trust our man who has done a few things for us already with no problems so fingers crossed it all goes well -my heart is in my mouth and for onc
Recoveringbuilder

Third time lucky?

So this is the 3rd self build we have tackled, the first being a 168m2 bungalow 26 years ago which we lived in for 14 years, this was followed by 18 months in a caravan while we built a one and a half storey 385m2 house, that was the build that nearly did for us, fraught with problems, friendships ruined, but it was a beautiful house.After living in it for 8 years and with the family gone we found ourselves rattling about in it and although we were living mostly in the kitchen/sunroom we still h
Our Journey North of the Border

The Build - Insulation ahead of 1st Fix

A quick pictorial update. The ground floor screed has set allowing those involved to install the additional 50mm rigid insulation to the inside of the external walls of the TF which had 120mm factory fitted insulation pre fitted. They then set about putting up the Vapour/Air Tightness Barrier — Protect VC reflective foil. The next stage will be the 50mm service batons and this will allow the electrician to start the first fix. Whilst this has been going on, the UFH pipes for upstairs are be
caliwag

Garden ideas

I make a point of thinking about the window/house relationship to the garden spaces at an early stage of self build design, in my book...'Self build design...the last thing you need is an architect' and associated blogs. I have a mate who attends and sells at garden furniture shows around the country, seasonally of course, but you would be amazed how much people spend. Of course you do need to have the 'designed' infrastructure for any furniture to work and look good! There are a couple of blogs
Our Journey North of the Border

The Build - moving forward.

What a difference a week makes in the world of self build – Half the roof has been slated, the additional insulation has arrived on site and the liquid screed has been poured. The guys who did the pour travelled from Perth, some 95 miles away – very few firms seem to do this work north of the Border it seems. The ground floor was prepared by the guy doing the UFH and our builder. The company doing the screed dispatched a surveyor the day before in order to measure the various heights
Druim nan Darach

Structural timber 5

This was one of the days that I was most excited about, the raising of the roof trusses.   Our joiners used our trusses as a template for constructing the gable end panels.    The trusses then just went in one by one.      3 lengths of Kerto were spiked together to form our central ridge beam.     The middle section of the 1st floor is being hand cut on site by our joiners. Our children will have a room on each gable. The middle secti
The Fun Irish (House)

Got Planning!!

Planning Permission Granted! After trying to ring the planning department on the day of decision at around 4pm and not getting through I resolved to wait until the next morning. At 5:03pm I get an email indicating that planning had been granted. I'd forgotten I'd subscribed to any activity on my planning application! Now, I've still to see the official notification letter with conditions etc but thankfully it was plain sailing. No objections, no requests for information. I took the planning site
Our Journey North of the Border

The Build - watch out for the pot holes!

I suppose after the impact of seeing the TF go up within a few weeks, progress on the eye thereafter, was always going to be less so. If that was the only reason, then it would be an element of self building one would have to adjust to. But unfortunately the lack of progress on our build over the last couple of weeks was not just simply down to a trick of the eye! Frustrating yes and in isolation a mere blip, but other things during this period compounded that frustration into real anxiety
Druim nan Darach

Structural timber 4

The attic trusses arrived today after making a three hour journey from Inverness to Skye.    Offloading took place at our site entrance.     Our joiner did a great job weaving between odd trees on our access.     Trusses unloaded and ready to start being fitted over the next few days.   Had a sneak peak on the top of the scaffolding to get a view from where the treble velux windows will be fitted.       
God is in the Details

A Domain Name for your Self-Build? Try .uk

I came across this conversation about having a domain name for a self-built house between @ProDave and @vivienz, and thought that the new .uk domain names are potentially of interest and would be worth a brief comment.   These are domain names which link straight into the uk's top-level domain - so you have dunroamin.uk rather than dunroamin.org.uk or dunroamin.co.uk. That seems to me to be more suitable for a house which is inherently neither a non-profit 'organisation', nor a commerc
Blackmore House

Move along, there's nothing to see.

No, really, there's nothing to see, it's all gone!   A great deal has happened in the 2 weeks since the last blog entry meaning that the planned update and photos never happened.  First off, very sadly, my father in law died 2 days after that entry which although not entirely unexpected, still comes as a painful shock and means that there's a lot to do at a time that isn't the best.  I was very fortunate with my in laws and my father in law was a lovely man and will be greatly missed.

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