Leaderboard

Having promised my wife Debbie that I’d get people in to do most of the Work associated with the new house, i contacted two local demolition companies and got prices to demolish the old timber bungalow. The prices were £6,000 and £12,200. Being tight I demolished it myself, it cost the price of three skips, £540, The bonus for me was over £1,000 in payment for the scrap from the house, things like a hot water copper cylinder and piping, lead off the roof, the old cast iron AGA and two baths, the oil fired boiler, taps, light and socket fittings etc. The problem in demolishing a timber frame house is the amount of timber! So I saved as much of the timber as possible and cut up the rest into firewood sized pieces, I used leftover builders bags to store it and we’re burning it very slowly in the cabin, the problem is the cabin is so well insulated we only managed to burn half a builders bags worth last year!. An even biggest problem was the cedar shingle roof, it had been re-covered during its life so the shingles were two layers thick. I ended up cutting the roof up using a reciprocating saw, a lot less dangerous than a chain saw! The roof as then burnt on site, The roof being stripped. It’s going slowly! Progress. Finally clearing up the plot. All told it took me six months to dismantle the old bungalow and clear the site. luckly my time is free and I did save £6k and taking the scrap value into account I’m £7,000 in pocket to spend elsewhere.

So for the larger ground floor room, we got a professional screeding company to come in. They were due to start Monday morning so I took the day off work. For some unknown reason, over the weekend both my wife and I had we had an uneasy feeling they weren't going to turn up, but there was no logical basis for that. By about 0930 I had a suspicion, and sent a text asking roughly what time they thought they would arrive. A few moments later the phone rings and its the owner apologising saying their forced screed mixer broke down on Friday and he'd gone down South for a second hand one but it didn't seem to be working properly when he got it back. He called again a bit later to say he'd found a solution and his guys would be there tomorrow (Tuesday). Cue me ringing work and offering to work on Saturday if I could take Tuesday off too. So, Tuesday and 0830 the guys turn up. I'm pottering about but notice a distinct lack of noise and by 1030 they tell me that they cannot get the mixer to run and away they go. So another day taken off work for nothing..... I'm back to work on the Wednesday but my wife was at home. She rang me to say that the team had turned up at 0715 (!) and had the machine working. By lunchtime they were done, and the result is excellent. When I got home I even texted the owner of the firm to say how pleased we are. Last night, (Friday) I discovered they'd dumped a barrowload excess mix on my topsoil pile out of sight of the house! Now in front of the future garage is a hole I need filled so if they;'d only asked instead of sneaking out of sight with it they could have actually done me a favour - instead I've now got to take a pickaxe to it and break it up then barrow it back to where it can actually serve a purpose. What a shame to let themselves down like that after doing a good job. So..... next objective is to finish the downstairs bathroom.

In the last blog entry I was putting down insulation and the UFH pipework in the smaller of the 2 main downstairs rooms. In the end I decided we would do the smaller (3.5m x 7.5m) sitting room ourselves. So with myself and daughter levelling, wife and friend mixing and super fit farmer friend on the wheelbarrow we mixed the requisite 4 tons of screed and ton of cement and laid it in a day. Fish and chip lunch provided of course to helpers! All in all we didn't to too bad a job. Not as smooth as the pros but more than sufficiently so, and I may just run a very thin layer of self levelling over, more to fill in little voids than anything.

Before we get into the events of the day, I have a little quiz question for readers of the blog. - What is the connection between my build in rural north Dorset and a mystical character from the legend of King Arthur? Answer at the end of today's entry. All will become clear. Today was another busy day on site, with 3 main areas of activity - flat roof, pitched roof and windows. Let's start with the windows, as they are (mostly) looking great. Both of the big lift and slide windows in the living room area are in now and quite a bit of the upstairs glazing is in as well. The flat roof guys changed their work order to get the membrane from the balconies and parapet gullies overlapped on the window thresholds so that the windows could be installed on top of them. This will allow the sarnafil membrane to then be folded up slightly against the window frame and give a shield against any water that tries to force its way in under the window frame. There's a bit of debris on top from the window fitting, but you can see how the membrane extends inside from the balcony. This is the west facing bedroom first thing this morning. And here is the west facing lift and slide window, looking west down towards the woods. Note the view of the woods, which are in a slight valley formed by the River Lydden. It is relevant for a later comment. Unfortunately, all didn't go to plan for the window installers today. The final window in the living room area faces south towards my neighbours' cottages and is a four pane fixed window. As the bracket was being screwed into the frame, this happened: The window installers looked very troubled by this, not surpringly. It's the inner pane of glass that has shattered and you can see that it radiates out from an obvious stress point. Stepping aside from the obvious downside of this, the very small amount of my brain devoted to aesthetics allows me to think that in a strange kind of way, it looks rather fetching. Then the far greater logical part of my brain tells the aesthetic side to get a grip as we have a broken window. So, what happened next, I hear you ask. Well, the window was put in situ and fitted along with the other 3 panels and Norrsken have ordered up a replacement pane and internal bead. They are, however, up against the clock on this one, as it can take several weeks for the replacement to arrive and MBC are now due back on 5th November, by which time all my windows must be fully installed and as they need to be in order for the air test to be carried out. Tick, tick, tick. Breakages aside, I'm delighted with the windows. I know that it's possible to go to the ends of the earth in research and expense to seek ever thinner frames and other features and that my windows are certainly not the most minimalist products out there. However, given the expanse of glass compared to the width of the frames, bearing in mind that plasterboard will reduce the visual appearance of these in due course, I think that the frame:glass ratio is more than pleasing enough for me. Also, the profile is very flat, both inside and out, and combined with the washed wood interior finish, I am content. Tomorrow will be very interesting as the installation team have quite the challenge ahead of them when they fit the floor to upper ceiling window that is in front of the stairwell. It's one heck of a piece of glazing, so I think we shall all be holding our breath then. Moving out of the building and up to the roof areas, both roofing teams have worked their socks off today. It was hot work as today's weather was warm/hot, sunny and lovely. Let's start with the flat roof guys, who have been very busy with their protractors getting all the framework in place to make the capping that sits on top of the parapet, ready to receive the membrane that will wrap over it. you may recall that due to the MBC construction methods, I have a cold roof. This means that it needs to be ventilated, and this can be a little tricky when you need to have a membrane on the flat roof and it needs to go over a parapet. Fortunately, I visited the build of @Weebles a little while back now and they had exactly this set up, so being the diligent researcher I am, I did nothing more after that and just shamelessly stole their idea. And their flat roof people. Why re-invent the wheel? From the firring pieces and OSB that I pictured on yesterday's blog entry, more of the membrane went down over the main part of the stairwell roof: The flat roof guys had to put in the upstand that goes up onto the pitch and they've been measuring and sawing as much as they have putting down membrane today. Here's the framework they made ready for OSB to go on top and form the cap over the parapet: As well as forming the cap over the parapet, this area also needs a drain for all the water that will come down from the pitched roof, and this is a hole drilled through the parapet and a drain liner inserted through, then the inside will be coated and sealed with the membrane. Prior to putting the membrane on, the OSB is rollered with a contact adhesive (red), then the membrane is heated to activate the glue. This is where they are bringing in the membrane from the parapet gully to run under the window frame, working ahead of the window installers. In their current allocation of time, I have the flat roof guys for one more day, so I'm not sure how much more we will get done, perhaps the remaining balcony, which would be good, as the balustrades are going in next week. And so onto the pitched roof. The pitched roof team were badly delayed yesterday as the tiles that were coming from Bradfords in Yeovil were supposed to have been on a morning delivery but didn't arrive until 3pm. They made a good start yesterday but have gone at an amazing pace today. They've done all they can on the east/south faces for now, pending the PV installation. This picture was taken just after 2pm and you can see that this side of the roof is still getting a good amount of sun, and had been since sunrise. At the same time as that pitch being tiled, the guys were also working on the long north face of the roof, leaving gaps for both the velux and the MVHR penetrations. This is early afternoon: And by the end of this afternoon, they had got this far: That's about it on the roofing today, but the scaffolding is also being used as a storage area. As the telehandler was on site yesterday, as much heavy stuff as possibly was lifted close to its final position yesterday, and the solar panels are stacked up there now. My panels are black on black (not quite the title of the AC/DC track) and from LG. As these things go, I think they're a nice looking piece of kit: And so now to the question I posed at the start of today's entry. There are a few mystical characters in the legend of King Arthur, but the one I have in mind is the wizard, Merlin. I hope you're enjoying the blog, guys, and wasn't it a lovely day for buzzing a self build in north Dorset?! Let me explain to, by now, confused buildhubbers. I've mentioned that there seems to be a definite airborne interest in my build, mainly stemming from RNAS Yeovilton and up until this week, it was predominantly the Navy Lynx helicopters. I got an upgrade this week and having nearly peed my pants with a very low buzz from a Hercules yesterday, we had an interesting buzz from a Navy Merlin helicopter this afternoon. I need to give this a bit of context, though. The Merlin is a big bugger with its three engines and gives out a very distinct bass thud that doesn't quite make your liver tremble in the way that a chinook does, but it's not lacking in long wave frequencies. So let me take you back to the view that I asked you to make note of earlier, looking west over the field and down towards Bagber Wood. I couldn't hear Ride of the Valkyrie, but there was undoubtedly a whiff of Apocalypse Now as I heard the distant but increasingly loud thud of a helicopter from the direction of the wood, before it rose up from the dip of the valley, over the wood and well and truly buzzed us, flying low and slow over the house. Nice to see you guys, keep up the good work, but honestly, you'll get a better view from the ground. Victor Zulu signing off until tomorrow.