Week 22 - The best-laid plans…
Entry posted by Benpointer in General
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A principal role of the project manager is surely to deal with the unexpected - for example, when a key team member is ill and out of action. But what happens when the project manager is laid-up?
Following an ‘incident’ (all my own fault), I have spent the past week unexpectedly in hospital. That was definitely not in the plan. Fortunately I am home again now but largely ‘confined to barracks’ for the next month or so. At the moment I cannot even visit the plot, although I hope to be able to make the occasional visit over the coming weeks.
As you can imagine this is deeply frustrating. Worse still is the realisation that my lack of hands-on project management has made absolutely no difference to the pace of progress (well actually, it may have increased without my involvement, tbh). Curious.
The main thrust over the past two weeks has been carpentry, ventilation ducting, boarding-out and plastering. And fortunately we have two excellent chippies and a great team of plasterers in. We really have been very lucky with our trades; here’s hoping it continues through the remainder of the project.
Mrs P. has been magnificent during this period too, keeping the show on the road by constantly stocking drinks and snacks, regular runs to Screwfix, keeping the site tidy, as well as fixing all the internal acoustic insulation. Not to forget planting all our new trees! All while running back and forth to the hospital 20 miles away to keep the Project Manager sane and stocked with essentials (edible food mainly).
So, great progress has been made despite (or because of) the absent PM, and we continue on plan.
Ventilation ducting and caprentry
I had some wild idea that Mrs P. and I might fit the MVHR ducting but the least said about that the better. Fortunately, as noted in the previous blog, our chippies Chris and Alan stepped in to run the ducts very neatly to all the rooms.
Even though it’s a new build we’ve found it tricky to work out how to run the 14 semi-rigid 75mm ventilation ducts from the MVHR to all the rooms whilst avoiding obvious ‘boxing in’ sections around and across rooms, which would have detracted from our desired clean lines. Partly that’s because it’s single storey and most of the ceilings are vaulted right up to the insulated roof. If we did another build (Mrs P: “We’re not!”), I’d definitely look to use those open web joists to good effect for ducting.
But in the event it’s been left to Chris and Alan to ‘magic away’ all the ducting behind invisible false walls, whilst impacting the overall room sizes as little as possible. And a splendid job they have made of it.
The ducting plan requires seven supply and seven extract ducts attached radially to two 8-port manifolds close to MVHR unit itself. We chose to site the manifolds 3m away from the MVHR unit in a void above the kitchen alcove which will hold our built-in ovens, connecting the manifolds to the MVHR unit with 160mm rigid steel spiral ducts, which themselves needed to be hidden away behind a false wall in the utility room.
Acoustic insulation
As noted above, Mrs P. is an absolute whizz at fitting this. I'd like to think that she's enjoyed it but, um, I'm not brave enough to ask. Anyway, it's going in to every stud wall as soon as there's board on one side to fit it against:
Boarding-out and plastering
The main thrust over the two weeks has been the room by room boarding-out and plaster skimming. 12.5mm board to the walls, and 37.5mm insulated plasterboard to the ceilings.
The plastering team - Dan, Sam and Brandon - have been great. Particularly pleasing is that they are alert to problems and think about the finished product, raising any questions or concerns so that they can be resolved rather than simply plastering over them, so to speak. For example, questioning whether a pendant right by a wall rather than centrally in the room was what we wanted (it wasn’t, the cable had been dropped in the wrong place).
We are now about 2/3rds of the way through the plastering and it's making an amazing transformation - turning a house frame into something that begins to feel like a home.
Tree-planting
Remember all those trees delivered in the last blog? Well Mrs P. got them all planted with the help of our landscape man Ashley, and they are really looking great.
Focus for the next two weeks
...Will be on completing the plastering and then our floor tiler Steve should be making a start on the 170m2 of porcelain floor tiles. We thought about using engineered wood in some rooms but in the end we decided to have the same limestone effect tile all the way through and will use rugs to provide additional interest. Eight pallets of tiles are due to be delivered next Tuesday.
Dashboard:
Contractor days on site this fortnight: 42
Contractor days on site since build start: 353
Budget: No real change - still over budget but potentially using a little less of the contingency than previously. The benefit of an absent PM possibly 😉
Plan: Still on track to move in by Easter 2026.
Issues and worries closed this fortnight:
- N/A
Current top issues and worries:
- A fortnight ago I said "Nothing too pressing - it'll be something we haven’t thought of, probably." Well that was prescient!
- Current top issue: getting myself back fully fit - otherwise, how will the project manage without me?!
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