Apologies for the lack of updates on the blog. Things have been quite taxing over the past couple of months, coming to terms with my Dad's unexpected passing.
I have struggled to find my feet, and to get anchored in the present again. My beautiful wife Kim and my (mental) kids have been amazing, and I think that I am ready to carry on in earnest.
Long story short, I am getting my mojo back a bit now, so expect a big update in the next 48h - there might even be a bit of
So, our ground floor walls are up, and ready for a concrete pour... almost! Despite our use of Logix ICF blocks, I had fallen in love with the simplicity of the joist hangers used by NUDURA. Essentially, all you do is slot metal plates through slits in the ICF blocks, hook them onto a bit of rebar in the wall, and pour the concrete. Then you wrap the end of your joists in a folded metal U-plate, and put tek-screws through the metal plates, through the U plate and into the joist. The shear streng
Right, Christmas came and went - I had spent enough time with my family and friends, recovering from the previous 3 months. It was time to resume on site! ☺️
So, first up - inspect what the basement looked like, now that it was largely enclosed... Big mistake, because it was horrendous:
You can see that the water level is approx 2/3 of the way up the first course of blocks, so about 250mm deep. You can also see the bit of EPS that were chipped away to make t
And Christmas is a time for reflection, mostly because it was cold and wet and nobody would go to site with me to work! So, in addition to planning some stuff in my head for the upcoming few weeks, I took the opportunity to review the budget...
... And promptly started to cry.
We had budgeted £22k for groundworks, based on the estimate from the company doing the works. We had agreed to pay them on a day rate, with 6% overage for the foreman they were supplying - I thoug
First off - an apology. I've been lax in getting this next instalment posted. Several days away over the holiday season led to several days more trying to sort out family issues, which have since spiralled out of all proportion. I think I have now put the genie back in the bottle, so on with the show.
Where were we? Ah yes, we'd poured the basement walls. They'd gone a little wonky (because I was a numpty and failed to install adequate bracing on the outside of internal T-walls), but
Before I carry on, let's answer the question I posed in the last blog entry. I posted this picture of the basement rear wall, showing how we had joined the cross wall to the side wall (following the suggestion of the boss of Logix UK, who had attended site whilst the walls were being assembled (and even assembled some of them himself) as part of our on-site training:
The problem here is that this wall is supposed to form part of the watertight barrier of the basement. Th
So, our slab is down, starter bars set ready for our walls, lovely. Time for some ICF...
Nope - more prep work to do first, apparently. The boss from Logix UK came up a couple of weeks prior and gave us some on-site training. "It's just like Lego!", exclaimed I. To be fair, it did seem really simple. I learnt just enough on the first day of training to be dangerous.
The basement wall blocks arrived on a pallet truck. Except it was only some of the blocks - they'd forgotte
Ok, so maybe I got a bit ahead of myself again...
The second wagon that they filled with spoil didn't fare as well. Matter of fact, it managed to beach itself on every axle:
The muck-away company had to send a 2nd wagon, fully loaded with 6F2 and a big-arsed chain. Then it dragged the beached wagon out across the street using the chain. The (now-freed) wagon drove off with our load of spoil. Since there was a load of crusher run on the rescue bus, we had it t
Our groundworkers broke ground on October 9th 2017. Here's the digger and fuel bowser arriving:
Bit of a squeeze, but they got it on-site in the end! The driver set to work on the site strip right away. He'd been working for perhaps 45 minutes, when work ground to a halt... A land drain was exposed (well, kind of dug up, if truth be told), in the middle of the plot, all of 6" below the ground. The digger had removed a 2' section of it completely, as this photo shows nice
Waiting isn't something I am known for. Waiting nearly 3 months, for these mythical birds to vacate the invisible nest isn't going to happen.
4 weeks later and we're into July, and I've had enough. Here's what was left of the hedgerow, along with my weapon du jour.
As it happens, there was no nest in the hedgerow. Probably because the houses all around have cats that hunt, and even birds aren't stupid enough to nest 4 feet off the ground when there are dozens
Preparing the documents for the planning application was simple enough. We paid a nice man to come and prepare an "arboricultural impact assessment". Basically, he looked at what trees were on and around site, asked which we'd like to keep, and went away. 3 days later a nice 22 page report appeared, and remarkably it said good things about only the trees we had expressed fondness for.
Then another nice man came around and dug very narrow, but very deep holes in a few places on site.
But I am getting ahead of myself here...
Whilst the purchase was ongoing, I was assuming a number of roles in the project. One of which was the "architect" (and yes I know I am not an architect, and not allowed to call myself such, hence the quotemarks).
So, I bought a piece of house design software and spent a week playing. I came up with what I thought would do nicely... a big box with a pointy lid and some windows (and doors).
On paper at least it ticked al
Kim and I were/are avid watchers (and readers) of Grand Designs, and so we took the plunge - we would build our own house.
Well, sort of. Our plan was to "armchair self-build". I would design the house (big box with a pointy lid and some windows and doors), and we would get a builder to construct it. Seriously, at the point we were buying the plot, that's as much as we knew had to be done. Of course there was the detail, but we expected the builder to handle most of that - after all,
I am Neil, and this is the story of my self build - warts and all.
First, some background. My wife and 2 girls and I live in Lancashire, in a 5 bed detached modern build house on a smallish estate. For a few years, we have looked around for somewhere a bit bigger, but in the same village. We had no luck for ages - everything was either too expensive, or too small, or too near a busy main road (and frequently all 3).
Then in December 2016, a house with a large garden came
