Week 7 - We have a house!

timber frame

Entry posted by Benpointer in General 19 hours ago

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https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/blogs/entry/1096-week-7-we-have-a-house/

…well, the shell of a house at least.

What a crazy week. We chose the factory-built timber frame route because we like the idea that the shell goes up within a few weeks. But the pace of progress this week has been startling.

The frame erection team of 3 arrived at 7:30am on Monday. A big yellow crane arrived at 8:00, with the frame arriving on an artic by 9:15. First off: a careful check shows that the frame fits the footings. Hurray! In fact the footings were within 3mm all the way round, which is credit to the groundworkers.

From then on it was flat out and 7 days later the structure of the house is pretty much complete.

Those guys do work very hard though - long days under a blistering sun, and straight through the weekend. They are aiming to finish the tidying up by Tuesday, get Turners to sign-off the frame, and head off home to Essex. A great crew - real grafters.

We’ve also been very lucky with the weather of course, though the erection team certainly wished it had been cooler each day (we’ve had highs of between 28C and 32C for the last 5 days). We kept them supplied with cold drinks and ice-creams as best we could and we’ve installed a fridge in the workshop which has been popular.

The frame itself looks very good - it all appears to fit together tightly from what we can see. No gaps around the insulation, or between the panels.

I’ll say more about the frame structure next week but for now here are some pictures of daily progress, plus some at the end showing some of the detail:

This time last week:

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Monday:

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Tuesday:

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Wednesday:

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Thursday:

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Friday:

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Saturday:

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Today - Sunday:

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And a few of the details, some taken earlier in the week:

And finally, for both of you who made it this far, one of those oak posts I cut and chamfered last week (the softwood beams will be hidden in the soffit: