Nearly a complete walls up….
Entry posted by G and J in The house itself.
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On your marks: Get set : Wait!
Day 1 of panel erecting was rained off. Humph. I tried to pretend to be human again by popping into town with J for a spot of bargain hunting (for stuff we don’t need, natch) but inside I’m still a self build automaton. My recovery won’t really start till we move in methinks.
Next day we start the day by admiring my new paddling pools. The previous week I carefully swathed the piles of panels with tarps before it rained oodles. Good theory. But without me noticing the panels with doors or windows happened to be uppermost so they filled with gallons of water - pulling the tarps into the hole with them, so parts of the panels got a bit wet as I wasted time bailing and lifting tarps to get rid of the water.
Eventually we started fitting sole plates. Happily the blockwork was very close to mm perfect so there was little in the way of adjusting needed. Next job was to fix trimmers to the outsides of the windframe which stabilises the rear of the house, and was, we felt, the safest place to start fitting panels. Cue Hilti gun.
I was dead clever at this point. Instead of wasting money hiring I bought a cheap ex-hire one. After a false start requiring the gun to be swapped I tried to use it to fix a trimmer to the windframe. Nil pois. The flange was 12mm and there was no way a Hilti nail was getting through. So I’d ended up wasting more money than hiring. Damn. Will try and resell.
The self drilling screws I’d bought as a backup didn’t work either, they just snap. So the cavalry, in the form of J, raced to Grip Fixings for some FB self drilling screws which, after some experimentation we did get to work.
Once the sole plates were down and the trimmers were on it was time to play musical panels (without music, we are a no radio site). The panels were stacked for most effective transportation, not in installation order.
But that doesn’t matter as each panel has easily removable lifting straps so it’s dead easy for the crane to pull them off from the top, drop them into position, apply a temporary prop and go on to the next one till they are all up and can be stapled together. If you have a crane that is.
Our site is oversailed by next doors telephone and mains cable, and the front of the site has both kinds of wire strung across it too. That’s why almost all of the timber frame companies I talked to at the self build show wouldn’t quote. Just one SIPs company would but they gave every impression of not caring about minor details like feasibility, perhaps because with the prices they charge they could hire a Chinook.
The company we are using typically supply builders who instal themselves, which suited us a treat as tins of spinach aren’t that expensive, and otherwise it would be stick built on site which was a bridge too far. We’ve benefitted greatly from the experience and engineering knowledge of the panel company so in hindsight right now it feels like a really good plan.
But on the ground, when the panel that logically should be installed next is at the bottom of the biggest pile with the biggest, heaviest panels sitting on top of it, one questions previous decisions. Many times I called time out to consider if we needed more muscle on the team. I have excess bloody minded JFDI determination but compared to Rolly the Chippy I’m a snowflake. I’m not sure he understands the word can’t, which makes ensuring on site safety requires both strength of character and a big gob. And firmly resisting the temptation to ‘just go for it’.
To start with it really did resemble one of the old sliding tile puzzles I used to do as a kid. Only with tiles that don’t slide and are up to 8’ x 11’ and weigh up to 135kg. It started getting better when I took some time one evening to ship as much possible down to the man cave slab at the bottom of the garden.
With each panel it got easier and we steadily accelerated. Happy days. Not so happy when it rained though, but we erected the little camping shelter I had in reserve which gave us somewhere to sit and plan in the dry and it gave us the chance to deploy my table saw, which is useful.
On the Friday the joist delivery and subsequent stacking took me most of the day. The delivery driver was about 4 decades younger than me, a foot taller, looked strong and was brilliantly helpful. At first, us moving 6.3m 47kg posijoists from the lorry to our slab saw me running to keep up. After the first few he slowed down to match my speed, or so I thought. A few more and I found myself wondering why we were going so slow. I’d worn him out. By the time we’d finished he was visibly wilted, but we’d done it.
I separated the flat roof stuff out and shipped that down the garden too, which used up the last of my day. Thankfully nothing stops Rolly the Chippy so he’d carried on doing useful stuff.
By the end of the week we’d got the two sides mostly done. I stood in the back garden and looked back at the pics of the site when it was first cleared. We’ve come a long way. It was a needed boost.
The next Monday our big glulam arrived, easily transported on my super useful little trolley. I’ve been laughed at and teased about my trolley, but it’s moved an awful lot both on the slab and up and down the garden. Rolly’s little board with casters is better for moving panels on the flat slab but my DeWalt trolley is the bee’s knees otherwise.
By the end of Tuesday we had all load bearing panes (external and internal) up, with header plates in place so we were ready for the metal men to come and instal about 800kg of steel atop the panels. So Thursday Rolly and I rechecked everything was still plumb (small adjustments needed) after the weight of the steels had landed and then it was time to focus on getting ready for joist hanging.
Friday saw the arrival of the same team of brickies who saved our plant based bacon equivalent two weeks previously. They are a team of celebrity look alikes: Pete Townshend; Paul Weller and Charles Branson. Despite this they are a whirlwind.
It hadn’t occurred to me that hitherto I’ve only worked with builders, not brickies. They are brilliant at what they do, but they only do brick and blockwork. So I needed to ensure that all was done/planned ready for them. That meant sorting all the breather membrane on Friday late afternoon ready for the brickies’ Saturday shift. J and I worked late to do enough to be ready for them and whilst we managed it, with only a modicum of tetchiness, I now realise, that looking back, I really needed to stop and carefully think through how the brickies would work in with the project.
They are a force of nature. Light the blue touch paper and dive for cover, but in a good way. Sort of. Once they start things happen so fast that there s no time for me to think, and frankly I wasn’t ready. I think we’ve just avoided cocking up but only by overusing J and my combined brainpower and if I’d been on my own the project would now be in trouble.
It isn’t helped by the fact that they’d offered to do two days to sort the plinth bricks. That bit I was ready for. But then they announced that they could stay till the house blockwork was all finished, so things I thought were a good few days away were suddenly NOW!
I’m loving working with Rolly on the frame, he’s precise, informative, patient with my constant stream of dumb questions, and he makes us productive. But I need to do my part of project management too. And it turns out I find it too easy to get lost in the woodshavings.
J and I are project managing between us and that is working well. At least I think it is, if you’ve seen Arthur Christmas we’re a bit like his parents, Dad, like me, wears bright clothes, smiles a lot and peeps think he is leading, but in reality Mum, like J, is keeping track and thinking and usually quietly steering.
I must try harder next week or we won’t be ready for the upstairs panel delivery next Friday! And like Rolly the Chippy, I can’t let the word can’t onto site.
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