Once again it's been much longer than it should have been since I last posted with my last entry being July, wow where has that time gone.
Back then we were building the walls for phase 1 and installing the window and door lintels.
Back then it was warm, unlike now and building could be done in shorts and T shirts
Once these walls were built then it was time to think about a roof, even though it is going to be a temporary one for now as the
The roof rafters are being installed with the openings for the roof windows. LABC visits for the second time, there have been a few photos sent as well, they inspect the roof, anchors and fastenings etc. The internal walls are built up around the steel goal posts. Not as many hours on site this week were one man down, its half term here.
I started a Gabion wall, filling it with rubbish stone and facing the front with nice stone from around the plot, it just separates off the garden from
So I spent 3 days with a 1.5 tonne excavator and a pecker breaking up the huge amount of concrete slab. Thankfully, it wasn't reinforced and all I can say is that I didn't envy the neighbours. I am just finishing off pulling up the broken slab with a 3 tonne machine and getting the concrete collected with a grab lorry. There is about 5-6 loads to collect and that is going to cost me about £700. I could have hired a concrete crusher, but I calculated that to hire a crusher, 5 tonne excavato
How things can change on a six pence!
After deciding to go for the ASHP, I had a couple of local firms in to quote. CVC did come back with a quote of around 20K but without a site visit, I was worried things could add up and that seemed too much. see the whole ASHP saga here;
So next week, the new ASHP is being installed. And the unit is going in the back garden, under the kitchen window. This is not where I wanted it to go but the company were adamant that we could not have it a
Not posted an update in a while but was focused on getting the outside of the house rendered, painted, guttered and drill vented before the scaffolding came down. It was off hire on a Monday and I worked 11-12 hours days on the Saturday and Sunday to get through a few tasks including chain drilling the MVHR vents (2) among other things. Basically anything at height. Anyway, while peeling the masking tape off the soffit while lying down on my side I moved to all fours to get up and my back went i
On Monday the second gable is poured and most of the internal bracing, corner bracing and window shuttering is removed.
Tuesday rains all day so no work on site. The internal floor is under 1 inch of water with no way to escape, without us brushing it towards soil pipe. Good to know we are airtight at the floor/wall joint.
The steels are installed, we were supposed to have wooden roof beams but somehow this was not calculated by the architect who insisted the roof truss company would
On Monday the internal structural walls are up to the top of the ICF walls and are tied in to the ICF walls. The windows and doorways have extra bracing ready for the pour.
Nobody on site on Tuesday it rains all day and no more prep is needed before the pour.
Wednesday starts with the last minute checks ready for the pour. The concrete pump arrives on site at 12pm it takes 30 minutes to set up before the first concrete pours out. We have 4 builders onsite plus the concrete p
As many of you know, I like to measure everything. My energy usage is just about the top of the list, and as I have got a new PC with a bit more power than the old one, I have been able to analysis several years data in one go.
The main areas I have been monitoring are electrical energy usage, in my all electric house, internal and external temperature, and a weird one, zero power draw times.
For the last decade or more, I have been using a CurrentCost Envi, this has an optical sensor
At the beginning of Week 5 the scaffold arrives. The ICF walls get past window header height so they can be boxed in first with the ICF to close the side jamb, header and cill then the wood brace for the concrete pour.
The internal structural walls are started and tied into the ICF. These are to support the steel roof beams.
Its good to stand in the open plan kitchen and lounge area now and get the scale of the room, the three windows look down our field to the East and
The last bit of soil pipe and inspection chambers that are close to the house are completed.
The ICF is delivered and by the end of the week we have the start of door and window openings.
The insulation is extruded polystyrene XPS 100mm each side of the concrete cavity. U value of 0.14
The windows have rebar in them before 50mm insulation closures are added.
At the weekend we had a yellow wind warning for the South West, our home weather station recorded
Another beautiful week in Cornwall only 7mm of rain on the Sunday
The week starts with laying the soil pipes then it was sand, hardcore, burying the soil pipes, laying the radon barrier, mesh and more concrete for the slab leaving a lovely surface to start the ICF walls next week.
And the field was cut and baled, not as much as a normal September cut due to us moving our spoil down to the far field and tramping the grass down and making a very very muddy gateway between our two fields
Despite the yellow weather warning we luckily had the coastal wind pushing it away, most of it fell on Tuesday but only 6mm
The trench foundations are excavated and inspected.
Then the concrete poured, and the first blocks laid followed by dolly blocks and internal supporting wall starter blocks
Total man days of labour for week 2 is 13
We have finally started to build.
Day 1 was Monday 2nd September 2024.
It was nearly 3 years from the first invoice which was for the private planning consultant to discuss and review the possibility of demolishing one of our old barns and building a bungalow on its footprint. Back then we weren’t overly confident of our chances but the consultant gave us a fairly good chance.
Our current home is a listed property on 3 floors. It is far too big for us with 4 double beds, 3 bath
One aspect of the Passive House PHPP I paid close attention to was overheating risks. As a result we looked at shading and extended the downstairs porch to shade the downstairs bedroom window. The upstairs we though about using Brise Soleil and have 3 canopies over the 3 main windows. I've been working on this for about 8 months with more than half on design and structural engineering and manufacture taking place in June. Then I spent most of July / August trying to get them to fit before bring
Just been reading through my last post from end of May, and thinking how on earth did it take me so long to get to this one 🤣
A lot of blood, sweat, tears and swearing later, and i've finally finished the bathroom, which has exceeded what I imagined i might be able to create, I still keep walking in and thinking, naaa this can't be my bathroom. So another room brought to a close 🙂
Those panels on the wall were actually meant for the living room, sound absorbing pane
There were 28 cattery pens and an office building to get rid of. We really didn't want to have to pay to have this removed, so we put an advert on Facebook, and were inundated with calls. We sold the lot for 2.5k and after 3 days of removing the roof structure (didn't want to risk people falling through it), the buyers came and removed it. They left a complete mess, but I spent a further three days putting the remnants in one 4 yard plasterboard skip and 2 * 10 yard skips. This meant we wer
Introducing Skoobie, a Skoda Fabia and the newest member of the team. Not the first purchase towards the build, we’ve already bought a twin battery Makita chainsaw and Trevor the trailer to help clearing trees, but they were back in January.
Skoobie is not in the first flush of youth so fits in well with my (G’s) seventh decade creaking knees, but we are hoping she (yes, this Scooby is female) will do great service in pursuit of our new home.
So where is the project now? We have full p
Over the last couple of months we have made steady progress.
But, I've been very remiss in taking photos.
Last time I posted we were busy building up the walls in phase 1.
It's now ready for the lintels, which we waiting a month to be delivered.
This one requires some blockwork changes as the overhang is over a block joint.
This is the inside looking North looking down over the valley.
This is the outside looking in, again so
After building the shower room, we had a free shot at planning so I put in for an extension down the side of the bungalow, to create a utility room and this was granted. But we did not think my parents could cope with the building work so it was never implimented. And, as they do little cooking, the current kitchen is enough for them. See origional and permitted plans.
However, now that we are planning to move into the bungalow ourselves in the future, we would be looking to remove the
Life has been busy since I started the blog so apologies for the lack of posts. However, the hot water went off in the bungalow on Monday so this has become an issue again. In April, the hot water also stopped working. I called Worcester then as the hot water cylinder was still under warranty. When the engineer arrived, he replaced the immersion but he did say that the installed hotwater cylinder, a GreenStore SC 120l indirect unvented cylinder, should have a boiler to heat the water. We don
Back in ‘91 we self built the house we now live in. Block, render and pantiles. We were both working full time in those days and we did as much as we could, but that doesn’t include groundwork, blockwork, structural carpentry or plastering. Rural location, fields front and back, nice big garden.
A third of a century later, at the end of September ‘23, we found ourselves in the back garden of a small, run down 1920s or 1930s timber framed bungalow. It’s in easy walking distance of
There is only one time to get the design correct for your house and that is at the beginning. So many consequences are baked in from the early design work that (in my opinion) you would be crazy not to get professional help.
Another maxim we have when investigating potential plots is talking to local people. We button hole anyone we find to solicit their opinion on the local area. And so it was on a visit to Lymington. As the Estate Agent walked me between two potential properties we walk
Just an update - had the last two weeks off. Ran a bit low on energy for first week and took a few days off from the build to step back and recharge. The bricklayers arrived onsite and I was able to collaborate with them and address any issues or questions they had as they started off. We're currently about 3 days from finishing - half way up to the 1st floor and it's giving me a massive appreciation for the hard graft/work bricklayers face every day. There are two of them and their labourer qui
