Sips and stones may break my bones...

I've never seen such shiny scaffold!

 

Me neither, if I didn't know, I would have said Photoshop!

Am really happy for you and must be great to watch it all taking shape!  keep the pictures coming.

 

What gorgeous stone walls!

Edited July 8, 2017 by Ferdinand

Yes, our dry stone waller is certainly skilled. The stone is from an old wall in the same position which had fallen down over the years - it shows on maps to be present at least 200 years ago. Some of the "stones" were quite literally boulders, and we've had to take the stihl saw to them to reduce them enough to even move them - makes you wonder what sort of muscles the men had who built it originally! What's nice is that although fencing is cheaper initially, it is unlikely I will have to do any maintenance to that wall in my lifetime, and it's organic to the site of course.  

Well, the SIPs took 2 weeks to do - weather was absolutely foul at times and the guys just kept working although even their waterproofs were utterly soaked through. Normally they'd expect to take a week, but our large dormers complicated matters and they finished around lunchtime on the second Friday. I would say one thing to bear in mind with the erection costs is that you'll get a quote, but then you  have to supply a 10Kva generator and a (massive - forget using a farm one) telehandler and in our case a crane for them, so with loo facilities too etc. your easy looking at another £2k on top of that quote.

Unfortunately our new BC guy is proving extremely enthusiastic and has now decided that he thinks SIPs shrink and is demanding evidence from me to the contrary (firstly he was querying whether SIPs are an "approved" building method!) - I'm not sure where he's going with this - he is picking up also the tiniest inconsequential things. (I have explained to him the physics of OSB) I have a sneaking suspicion he is new to the role. I've pointed him at Kingspans technical services suggesting he is more likely to get a detailed response than I am. I do hope things change and he gets a little more practical.  The bottom photograph is how far away I had to go to get the whole crane in the photo! 

Edited August 1, 2017 by curlewhouse

Just an update re our BC guys concern re SIPs shrinking - he contacted Kingspan at my suggestion and he's come back to me with these allowances for Eaves and GF.

 

 

Pretty much the same movement gap you have to allow with a timber frame and masonry skin. Wood moves and shrinks I am aftaid.

And Sips is so different to traditional  timber framed how in his mind? The method is different but underneath its pretty much the same as traditional timber frame surely? Osb, insulation and timber studs! 

 

One of these 'three bags full' moments?! Hope you weren't counting on stone sills! 

Yes, I actually did ask him that if he was seeing shrinkage as a big problem, how does any timber framed house survive. Of course, it's not a big problem at all, and at least he now has the information from the horses mouth so to speak, and seems happy about it. I'm sure it is simply because SIPs are new to him, so we get to be the learning curve.  We do have little in the way of timber studs actually as the panels are almost all spline joined rather than as some of the SIPs builders we checked out do with a whacking big stud in between, so there's an absolute minimum of timber running through from outer to inner even for a SIPs build (which I know some folks consider a drawback, but can be very much minimised if engineered with that in mind) and ours is getting another layer of insulation inside anyway* so even the odd ones of them that there are won't actually be reaching the interior.  But I think he's happy now with that aspect at least anyway.  We're fine for the stone sills as the outer wall is to be real stone anyway, and the sills are actually being made up as we speak. To be fair, at our first meeting the new BC guy admitted that clearly I knew far more about the subject than he - but then I'd been researching it for 3 years  and hanging out here and on eBuild picking up knowledge wherever I could. I suspect most of us on here will know far more about our own specific builds and build methods than any BC officer as of course they are not "just another house" to us, and a few folks on here are really pushing the envelope and progressing matters in clever ways so have researched things to the 'nth degree - probably a bit disconcerting for their BC officers! I am in awe of the levels of knowledge shown here by some folks. 

 

 

 

* we originally were looking at the thicker SIPs KIngspan produces (172mm as opposed to the 142mm) , but after speaking to the suppliers and actually on their advice realised we could do it cheaper (and possibly even slightly more effectively) by adding an internal layer ourselves, which would also then cover any element such as the timber studs which support the sides of the dormers, and which would have otherwise formed a (albeit not terribly efficient) cold bridge between the cavity and the interior. Better results, and cheaper, just an increased cost as regards time in labour for us to affix them, and the one thing we do have is time as this house is our final house move (that sounds a bit grim, but it's quite the reverse).