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General

Front Gardens

This is a follow-up of a discussion that has taken place on a couple of forums in the past.   A book that I have not referred to in my book to be found in cargocollective.com/selfbuildhome is Bernard Rudofsky's 'Behind the picture window'  an excellent little book from 1955 by a writer, teacher and architect. (Sadly £50+ on ABEbooks.co.uk) It is written from an American perspective, though the sentiments seem to apply equally to the UK. Indeed when I worked for a speculative house-buil

Eureka - Northern Electric Networks finally turn up!

Well, though in total it was almost 7 months, we finally got electricity. Life in the caravan is now much more civilised, and I can write this without ear defenders on because of the generator noise. No more lukewarm showers or worrying about flattening the caravan battery. Hooray!   On the other hand, our builder is getting increasingly vague about when he will do the stonework on the house and it is getting very much colder in the caravan now here in Northumberland - we have to keep

We have a bathroom!

Wow, I cannot believe its 4 months since the last blog entry.  Life has just been busy, busy, busy and for a while, there didnt seem to be much to report, even though we have been busy.  The bedrooms have been plastered and painted, skirting fixed and the bedrooms doors have been bought and are awaiting fixing.  The best thing was finally gettitng the bathroom fitted. Its been a while since we had a working loo and while the 'portaloo' in the cellar was adequate, the new one is fab! Fist we

Part 23 - Final Groundworks and Landscaping

Having completed the initial groundworks last year (see Part 15) it was great to get the digger back and be able to spread the remaining sub and top soil over our site.  All in all, there has been around 150 hours of digger time to get all of the site landscaped.  Other than using stone excavated on site to edge parts of the driveway and round the back of the house, most of the digger time (supplemented for earth moving with a dumper) has been spent on earthworks.   At the front of the

Bay windows and Oriels

I have always tried to design in Bay and even oriel windows in my house designs. Bay windows can often add a quite 'slot' to do the home work, read, write or draw, use a laptop, have breakfast and even admire, relatively undisturbed a sunrise or set-set, or admire your efforts in the garden. In a busy kitchen, where more people gather round these days to await or help with supper, a bay can provide the social spot, but still with work etc...more like the trad farmhouse kitchen many which seem to

Fitting of new windows in EWI layer using EWI brackets

Original house contained cheap UPVC windows that were ill fitted and would not match the new windows in the two extensions. So the decision was made to fit new windows throughout with the original plan to go for alu-clad wooden, nut resorted to UPVC due to cost and worries on how some of the alu-clad windows were constructed.  Surprising how difficult it was to get quotes that were in an affordable category. Some companies needed numerous follow-up calls which was very frustrating in view of the

Topsoil, topsoil everywhere..

So, after the last entry, we were back to scratch again, having managed to secure an additional piece of land and an alternative access to our plot. Lots of measuring and pacing out later, we were able to basically take what would have been the 2nd floor of the planned house, and put it on the ground floor. The ground floor footprint was made considerably bigger by this, and the overall shape was much less "passive-friendly", but for our tight site, it really was the only option. After a lot of

Gravity water system

Two years on from starting the hut I'm fitting a gravity water system...I have a wash hand basin in the toilet and sink in kitchen both of which have taps. I connected the waste pipe ages ago which drains to the soak away but never go around to providing the taps with the one thing that kinda makes them useful! To be honest the hut isn't in any way uncomfortable to live in. We have a standpipe less than 30m away and just fill up 5l water bottles for drinking and washing. However, I've got s

Ugly new homes

This is modified blog from the first one I added referencing a small, underplayed article in the Sunday Telegraph of 3 September, which I did reference, possibly breaking a rule...or I pressed the wrong button! So you'll need to google at your own leisure. It caught my eye because in the title are the words 'Ugly Homes' and 'Nimbys'...well what is the definition of an ugly home for starters. We all have our own definition of same: mine would be ill-proportioned, jumble of materials...or too busy

Caliwag

In the Observer magazine...03:09:17, is an illustrated article (homes section) about a  beautiful, unspoilt 60s house near Shepperton designed by Swiss architect Edward Schoolheifer (no, I hadn't heard of him either!) which would no doubt be hated by the so-called committee of self-appointed experts of the  last blog. Strangely it was reviewed in 2013 when under different ownership...there is a fine photo of the bedroom with a double height hall. It is quite magnificant, in my opinion. It is sli

Floors, horses and UFH

So apart from the long running saga getting the Northern electric network  to understand their own reson d'etre, I've started to do the utility and downstairs bathroom, so as to give us facilities as soon as possible. Coincidentally the two houses to the North of us have been bought and are being renovated and the guy doing the building work called in to see me and very kindly told me that there has been a 14% or so rise in insulation costs and another forecast for October according to his

Expensive access .....

At the end of the last episode, we were the proud owners of a landlocked, overlooked, overgrown plot in the centre of a medieval conservation area. Easy to develop, right?    The plot was accessed through a narrow close, about 2cm too narrow for a transit (even with the mirrors folded and a brave/careless driver in charge), so completely impractical for the creation of a new house. On either side, the plot is overlooked by 3 storey blocks of flats, tight up against the boundary, and at

Starting the interior

Just a quick update seeing as I had the camera on me. As always, not as much progress as I would have liked- I was away from the build for a lot of August, but it's good to come back to it refreshed. The painting is finally finished (that seemed to take an age), the WC is temporarily installed, and the woodburner is up and running- I'll do a separate entry for that, at some point. The overhead beams are now sanded back and sealed with Osmo Polyx oil- I'll use the same stuff on the wind

External wall insulation.

Started external wall insulation, 240sqm in total to fix.  Its Pavatherm combi, 40mm. Fixed a 40mm (cut down from 50mm) batten on the outside edge of soleplate and rested boards on top and off you go. Takes a while to then fit dpm and horizontal battens which I now need to remove and fix vertical battens first......Nearly finished the house frame except the flat roof, Seems a little odd to start covering walls after so long, I need to contact window suppliers again for more accurate quotes.
  • Nestor

Services.... or not.

Electricity:  Well, we applied for electricity to be connected in March of this year (It is late August as I write this).  Made a couple of calls to see how things were progressing, but never got any call backs. It would have been great to have an electricity supply for the a lot of the work, but in the end I had to buy a generator, which has been a godsend. So come August and we are now living on site in a caravan. I've been in for the last couple of weeks and last night my wife moved in too (w

Finding the plot

Six years ago, we had a casual conversation with an architect friend about the fact that we'd like to build our own home. Taking the resulting vague, non-committal "hmmmmm" as rampant, unbridled enthusiasm, we started looking for plots. First thought - our very own back garden. It was massive, a pain in the arse to garden, and it would be free!   Back garden plot Pros:    - Free -Less gardening   Back Garden Plot Cons:   - On a notorious flood plain

Part 22 - Heating and DHW

In this entry I'm going to discuss in more detail how I came to choose our heating and hot water system, and how it has performed to date.   As other forum members have found, deciding which fuel source and type of technology to use in a low energy house, is a challenge given the different requirements each of us has.  We had three stipulations – low running costs, hot water available on tap 24/7 and maintenance of the whole house at an even and constant temperature 24/7.   H

The stone arrives, as does a caravan!

Well, some interesting developments: 1. We bought a caravan! Even though it's only about 8 miles from where we are temporarily renting (though that "temporary" has ended up into it's 3rd year since we sold our old house!) , it's a pain working on the house then having to hide/ lock everything away each time, before going home, then spend half an hour getting it all out again next day, so we gave notice on our temporary tenancy and are moving onto the site at the end of the month. That shoul

Rafters done.

Monday and Tuesday were fine to measure, cut and fix 52 rafters. Next is to fit 75mm horizontals and fix Isoroof and membrane.  Just had quote from BPC for MVHR, is everyone happy with the kit supplied? Please PM if necessary. Thank you.    

Steel ridge beam.

This was last Monday and was quite a challenge for my Dad and I.  Steel was 10.5m in length spliced in the middle, about 400kg + the added timber ridge and needed to be 4.7m high sitting on two 100mm square posts.  Overall length was 15m.. The night before I realised one of the posts was 400mm to short. We carried on using some blocks until the post was replaced on Tuesday. Blocks visible in 2nd picture on top of post. Rented 2 x Genie lifts and away we go. Well, it took all

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