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Last night was my first night sleeping in my new house, finally! Got 1 bedroom mostly finished. Ikea wardrobes, painted, blind and floor installed. Just enough to call it a home! Lots more to do but it saves rent and commuting time. I plan to take it easy for the next fortnight as the last two years have been creeping up on me. Small projects for the short term. Getting internal doors installed (by someone else!) currently. Put some acoustic insulation around the linings and cut it back. I like the look of the wood/oak veneer. Been chasing documentation for the BER (SAP) assessor. It adds up to quite a lot. Doors, Windows, Heating systems, section plans, U value calcs. Think I have all of it now - hopefully they'll issue a BER Cert soon! My airtightness commission went sideways, lots of leaks. So one of my snags is to put air tightness tape around all the ducts to the MVHR unit and outdoors and also between it and the manifolds. The testing unit is very sensitive (even dropping it puts it out of commission for two weeks!) so I've a bit of work to do before I call them back. The Renson Endura Delta 330 has a few levels of ventilation and they upped the minimums from 50m3/hr to 127. Will see with single occupancy if I adjust this down a bit. I can monitor the unit with an app only, there's no display. I noticed when I ran the supersayer gas heater for a few hours to warm the house (as the gas bottles had been unused for the last two years) the CO2 levels hit the roof and it went to max flow rate to clear it out. Anyway, I plan to use the Air to air system more going forward and that won't cause the same issue. Had two floods to deal with. I've a japanese bath I was trying out. We'd filled the bath with a little water to check for leaks a few weeks ago and it drained fine. The bath is on a platform to allow for a trap to be installed below it. The drain for the bath just fits into a grill so it's open and can potentially overflow which is what happened after I fully filled it, used it and two days later pulled the plug! Luckily I put the plug back in and used towels to keep the water in the bathroom as it's tanked / is a wetroom so no damage was caused to the rest of the house. There is a seat in the bath so I was trying to get the most comfortable position and removed the seat. I'll probably put it back as it's a short bath and my back didn't like the sitting position on the floor of that bath all scrunched up. The seat means you only get heat around your hips so will have to have a think about it more at some stage. Or get a bigger bath! The second incident was with the washing machine last night. The discharge pipe isn't big enough for the tumble dryer, air to air condensate and the washing machine so I got an adapter that taps into the side of the pipe with a spigot for the washing machine discharge. This didn't seal/hold so it spilled everywhere. I think I'll go back to basics, replace that section of pipe and glue on a y bend to create two parallel discharge pipes and this way I can get everything connected at once and no risk of floods! My car charger won't reach the car as it's about a meter short but that's due to a big hole I've to backfill with MOT. The dust is everywhere but at least with the internal doors I can mitigate this a bit going forward! So not finished yet but I have a doorbell, hot water, heating and an amazing house to walk around in and rest a bit before finishing the final list of projects and call it a day!

This day has been on my mind for months. We really struggled to find a company that would visit the site and confirm whether we could get a static down the lane. In the end we took an educated guess and purchased a 2023 37x13 unit from a private seller. So at 1100hrs today, the wife of the driver (Greg Caravan Haulage) appeared in the driveway telling me I needed to go and cut some low hanging branches. We got the static on site relatively easy, but then it got bogged down twice whilst reversing it over the type 3 MOT. We had to Jack it up and then finally decided that sheets of 18mm shuttering ply under the wheels might be the way forward. In a nutshell , if we’d done that from the start we’d have got it done much quicker. It’s in position and I just need to get it levelled and on blocks now. A bit too stressful for my liking, but relieved. I’ve been more concerned about getting the static on site, than building the house.

Two weeks since the last blog and there’s a lot to cover - but lots of pictures too, so persevere! The main issues and concerns two weeks ago were 1. how well the airtightness test would go, and 2. keeping ahead of the plasterers. The good news is: both of those concerns can be consigned to the bin. Airtightness As previously reported, we had engaged Aerobarrier to test, spray their magic mist, then retest the airtightness of our house. Prior to their visit they asked us to send video walkthroughs of the house. Because of concerns we had about how well the airtight membrane had been fitted and taped, which the videos did nothing to dispel, I asked Josh from Aerobarrier to plan some extra time for them to re-tape some of the wall ceiling interfaces, for an agreed price. The Aerobarrier team duly turned up as planned - Josh plus two others. After a few hours taping the house, the initial airtightness test gave a disappointing if not entirely surprising 3.2 ACH - go enough to satisfy Building Regulations but above our target of 1 ACH. But after running the acrylic misters for a couple of hours the airtightness improved to 0.8 ACH - an 80% improvement which we are obviously very pleased with. Aerobarrier left the place quite tidy, they had masked the horizontal surface on window frames, door handles etc. The only weird result was the screed floor was left as sticky as a dodgy Wetherspoons. A week later and the stickiness has more or less gone though. No photos of the process in action I’m afraid, tricky to get inside with all that mist flying around. First fix electrics …is now complete! Power, lighting, PIRs, smoke detectors, data cables, room stats, TV… there are a lot of cables threaded round our walls. We’ve had a great team plugging away at this for a few weeks - Nick, Martin, but especially Darren, who installed the majority of cables and boxes, have done a super job. Carpentry In parallel our two chippies Chris and Alan have been making sure various false walls and ceilings have been put in place ready for the plasterers. They have also fitted three of our four pocket door frames - just one more to install next week. Somebody also needed to run the MVHR ducts and fit the vent plenums to the rooms the plasterers were planning to start with. This seemed like a golden opportunity for Chris and Alan to acquire some new skills. I am not sure it was high on their wish list to be honest but they cracked on with it nonetheless. Regular free breakfast baps still works wonders when you’re asking people to go the extra mile. Acoustic insulation I could see that Mrs P. was itching to get involved with something and fortunately someone needed to push all the Rockwall acoustic insulation in to the internal stud walls. Luckily as it’s Rockwall rather than glasswool no further itching was involved. Anyway, Mrs. P has done a great job, as you can see. Plastering All of the above were things we needed to have done (or at least done enough) for the 8th of October, which is when our plasterers Dan, Sam and Brandon were booked to start. They duly turned up as planned and we had enough of the rooms ready for them to get started. In the plan, all the carpentry work would have been completed before the plasterers started but they seem happy enough to board out then skim one room at a time as the carpenters keep ahead of them. The initial focus has been on the boarding out bedrooms 1 and 2 and the bathrooms and the early progress bodes well for the rest of the task which we aim to complete by the end of October… ready for the floor tiler! In other news… Our timber cladding has been delivered. We’re using Brimstone Ash from Vastern near Swindon https://www.vastern.co.uk/timber-cladding/brimstone-ash/ which we will be having fixed vertically. Once Alan and Chris have finished all the internal work required for the plasterers the plan is for them to move on to the external cladding - assuming they haven’t had enough of us by that stage. More breakfast baps may be required! We have also had a number of trees delivered, which Mrs. P. was strangely much more interested in than she was in the pallets of plasterboard or multi-finish skim! 🤷‍♂️ And finally, I have bought a new toy… a Topdon infrared camera to plug in to the iPhone. Cue quizzical look from Mrs P. “er… and you needed this for what exactly?” Good question Mrs. P, but I have at least been able to check that the UFH loops are all working: During the next two weeks... … we hope to be getting plastered! Dashboard: Contractor days on site this fortnight: 32 Contractor days on site since build start: 311 Budget: No change - still over budget but within contingency. Plan: Still on track to move in by Easter 2026. Issues and worries closed this fortnight: How well the airtightness test will go. Keeping ahead of the plasterers. Current top issues and worries: Nothing too pressing - it'll be something we haven’t thought of, probably.

We apologise for the interruption in our scheduled programme. Normal service will be resumed shortly. Lots has happened on the build which is great and as it should be and all that, but I just can’t write about that right now. Instead my head is full of leaving Bramble. 34 years ago, over a third of a century, we put flesh on the skeleton of a house and we breathed life into it. And it’s been a constant ever since. Now we finally decided to leave Bramble two years ago when we saw da (run down) bungalow. We had each come to the realisation that we would move somewhere else sometime before then, and not at the same time as each other, but the blue touch paper started slowly smouldering when we told the dumbfounded estate agent who was selling da bungalow we’d have it after only a few minutes of our first viewing. We started building without a sale on Bramble and without a sale we knew we’d run out of money just before the new pad was properly watertight, but we started anyway. Mid May we accepted an offer and carried on with the build, uncharacteristically for us we let the estate agents chase it through. Which is why after 18 weeks we’d still not exchanged. By this point we (meaning J) really was looking at a set of spreadsheets with way too many zero entries. So we started making calls, asking questions, setting deadlines and suddenly we’d exchanged. I thought that would reduce our stress level. I’ll never learn, will I. Part of why it’s so stressful is that there was only 17 days between exchange and completion. We (meaning me, G) gave the 17th of October as an acceptable completion date assuming a very quick exchange, giving four weeks between exchange and completion. But peeps being peeps they latched on to that date regardless of the passage of time. And it worked for us as it meant we could rent a bungalow two doors up from site, which has it’s attractions. Now anyone sensible would pause the build while they move house, or at least cut themselves a little slack and slow things down a bit. It appears we don’t do sensible. So we are running round like loons trying to get packed ready to vacate Friday. Moving from Bramble to the new house (via the rental) is definitely the right thing for us both. But it’s an emotional business, leaving your first build, hence my inability to catch up on me blog like I should.

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?!

So the drainage field is now in and the tank went in today. It was a bloody deep hole! Used nearly 20 tons of 10mm shingle to backfill the tank. just need to finish back filling and then I’ll need to create a couple of concrete bases for the electricity kiosk and the kiosk that will house the compressor for the Graf tank.

I have taken two weeks off work to prepare our site for our static caravan / shipping containers and also installation of the drainage field and Graf treatment plant. The digger and dumper arrived on Monday and the Kubota was brand spanking new with < 1hr on the clock. I wanted to tackle this all by myself, but I cannot grade to save my life, so I have enlisted the help of a local ground worker on an hourly rate. He’s been a god send and made easy work of the required excavation and grading tasks. Below are a few pictures of week one.

Weeks 40 to 56 So it’s been a year now since we started the build and I’m happy with our progress but perhaps more importantly I’m still enjoying it. If you have followed the blog from the beginning you might have thought this was going to be a quick build as the shell went up quick but don’t worry work is continuing as we expected at our own slower pace, we have no definite finish date but it would be nice to be in for winter next year. The cladding is finally complete. David started the cladding at the end of March and I think it’s fair to say it took him a lot longer to complete than he expected, but like me he likes to get the details correct ie drip angles on bottom edges etc and neat finishing around the doors and windows. The photos show how the Thermo Pine has already started to fade. We are happy with the colour changes it is greying nicely and hopefully will blend in with our working barn after another summer. Above is a sample piece that has not been exposed to the weather and the other image shows the first signs of the greying colour change. This is our working barn the wood on here is a minimum of 20 years old more likely 40 years old. Inside I have completed most of the insulation above ceiling height, we have slopping ceilings in 2/3rds of the building that will be completed after the screed is done. The MVHR ducts are in the roof, I carefully insulated around them as they pass through the Rockwool layer and the Celotex, then the VCL layer which is Gerband SD control. Not the most expensive VCL but still a reasonable price for a control layer. Putting the VCL up on my own was tricky I used double sided tape to attach it to the Celotex initially pressing it on top, middle and bottom as I unrolled it for 12m. This held it in place surprisingly well leaving me ample time, (days as it often too hot to work in the loft) to tape it up properly with Gerband airtight tape. I finally took a break from the roof insulation and moved on to floor insulation which is a much nicer job on my knees. Back in June we had a Cornwall/Devon meet up of fellow build hubers. It was great to put a face to the user names. The weather had one quick shower just as some arrived but then cleared up so that we could all sit around eating pizza and chatting. The waste for the two wet rooms is completed ready for the screed. I’m now ready to lay the UFH separation layer for this I have chosen something a bit different https://www.laminon.co.uk/. The material is a bit like weed membrane which if any body has ever pegged down knows how those pegs don’t want to come back out easily. It also has a grid marked on it that might make it a job for me on my own, together with the decoiler and stapler I have borrowed, or David will help me. Like many on here I downloaded LoopCad, input all the data about my location and the build then designed the loops. For reference I used the Ashrae load calculation method, rooms that didn’t need UFH e.g. the pantry I input as already having a heat source. I have kept my results and all the print outs but in the end I have chosen Wunda because they are very competitive compared to me buying the manifold and pipe from an online UFH trade shop. They have saved on their costs because they can send the coils out in lengths more compatible with my circuits e.g. I have 5 circuits between 109m and 117m so they can send out 5 x 120m coils. No matter how I combine different circuits I always ended up with a lot of wastage pipe. They don’t use LoopCad to its full extent e.g. the whole house modelling for the load calculation but from what I discovered most UFH suppliers don’t either so I might need my LoocCad summaries for the flow rates as Wunda are not accounting for a well insulated and air tight building. They are for now not supplying the pump or any thermostats as our plan is to get the house fully insulated and the VCL layer completed on the at least most ceilings so we can monitor the room temps with a few data collecting thermometers. This will hopefully tell us how cold its going over winter without occupation, and so far its certainly feels warmer than our current house. We now have drains connected to the main sewer line and our soak away is installed. Next job will be the guttering. I had to take down my potting shed for the build but hopefully next year I can reassemble my potting shed in its new location which is the opposite side of the cow shed than it was previously, but my view is a lot nicer. I also finally finished the Gabion wall, I used all our own stone and rubble. Most of the stone was from the initial groundworks that we had moved down to the lower field. This meant that I took the lawnmower and the garden mini dumper down there, climbed the piles and picked out the best stone and brought it back up to the house. When I was nearly completed and I knew the groundworks team would be returning for our drainage connection and soakaway I decided to wait for them to hopefully unearth some more nice stone. They did but I had to work fast to use it before it was back in the ground around the house getting the levels correct. There is still a lot of stone in spot on the lower field but for now I don’t want to build any more Gabion walls. Of the trades people we have had on site so far the groundwork’s have been the best and I would be happy to recommend them. To the left of the photo is the old stables you can see how this wood is aged, hopefully our Thermo Pine will age similarly and blend in. The photo above was taken just after the Groundwork's finished for the day, you can see the mist has blown in and the cladding looks different again when wet. The following day and we can see how great a job the groundworkers have done, its hard to believe this is the same soil I have picked the stone for the Gabion walls from. They sorted the soil with the digger and buried the bigger stones leaving quite good soil on the top. They are returning next week with a bigger dumper truck to bring the soil back up from the lower field. They will then fill in the bit to the right of the photo and round the front.