I took two weeks holidays to catch up on some house building work and get some material onsite. Sometimes that worked, sometimes not!! 

The Plumber has already been and performed most 1st fix items and I'm centralizing everything back to central manifolds:

Should make replacing taps etc a lot easier in the future I hope!! 

I was outside during the recent sunny spell and noticed my Brise Soleil doing their thing - the shadow modelling looks spot on for this time of year:

I got a digger and driver for a day to dig out the front driveway and had 20 tonnes of 804 delivered to prep for backfilling around the house and to grade the driveway subbase. I ran the Electrical and Water service pipes / conduits at this time. 

While I was upstairs I did 1st fix on the MVHR outside vents using 150mm EPS conduit, realized the 92mm radial pipes to the rooms are going to make access to the manifolds difficult for commissioning later (restrictor rings are placed inside the manifold, not at the outlet/inlet). Will have to cut an access hole to reach in from the other side, will post pics once all is in place and hope it works! Will be a big of a spaghetti junction once everything is connected up! 

4 pallets of tiles arrived but I had help from the merchant with those but I got a phone call that my plasterboard was arriving the day after. The Buildhub favourite - Fermacell !!! I hear your screams!! The only problem is how do I handle these on my own? A full size board is over 40 kgs, nearing 50, I'm over 50 and not that strong! So I ordered one man boards 900mm x 1200mm and it took a few weeks but I have 400 boards onsite, there's 50 per Pallet and 5 pallets arrived day 1 and 3 on day 2. Weather was thankfully good throughout. I purchased a plasterboard hoist for installation but I also needed to move them inside to keep them dry and safe. I googled and bit and found a wonderful DeWalt trolley and successfully moved 2 tonnes of Fermacell per day (each pallet is just under 1000 kgs!) 4 days later job done!

About 5 boards per run was my limit, you need to keep an eye on the vertical alignment as you load up and offload or it will fall over, but as you move it the side clamp the sheets and it's rock solid. Perfect for brining them side in as at 900mm wide my old truck/trolley wouldn't let them past my front door, this dolly however made the heavy lifting much easier! I had to visit my Chiro one evening on day 1 but that was it! 

I've acoustic insulation arriving tomorrow hopefully, I'm ordering Luxaflex honeycomb blinds for tilt and turn windows on just one bedroom to see how they look / perform and how they fit. My window installer didn't recommend anything that inserts into the rubber seal, preferring limited drilling/screws or ideally 3m glue fixings. To find out which they use as the youtube video I saw showed gluing them on. 

Electrician 1st fix starts in a week so I've to get the MVHR vents in place as it's easier for him to route wire around vent pipes than it is for me to reroute 92mm vent pipe after electrical is run. 

I'm still digging out the sewer line to connect it to the correct outlet/shore and fix the fall. Tried getting a labourer for a day or two to help but failed. It's slow hard going but I'll get there! 

My site insurance runs out shortly so I've to extend that and plan for socket locations, figure out landing lighting (electrician doesn't like led fixtures in the service void beside the insulation) and get to grips with Fermacell in earnest!! 

Happy May 2025 !! Oh, and I went to see Warfare in the Cinema for a well earned rest!!