curlewhouse

At the height of the door thresholds in the SIPS construction they are actually over 100mm above the DPC so my floor build up would have to go that high anyway somehow (I've already got the full UFH kit with the perimeter insulation etc. from Wunda) - I cant think of a physical reason why my screed should not be higher than the blocks, given that the perimeter insulation should absorb expansion movement thus not transferring it to the SIPs, but it just sort of feels odd/wrong. No advantage in making it thinner PeterW as if anything I need to take up more space in the build-up as even with 100mm PIR in place I've got about 150mm still to reach the door thresholds. Given the height of the door thresholds (they have the sole plate then another piece of wood on top, so the SIPs are in effect on two soleplates so to speak) actually, I'm not sure I've actually got any other option than building the floor up other than maybe remove the top layer of wood in the doorways. (but presumably its there for a reason).

So, I'm putting in UFH on top of a beam and block floor and so the build up is: beam and block, sand blinding (about 1-2mm) DPM which is turned up the walls at taped to the DPC, then 100mm insulation then polythene. Looking at it now I'd like to uprate the insulation from our original spec, but to do this would mean the screed would be up higher than the outside DPC and would be thus up beyond the blocks on which the SIPs construction stands and albeit separated by polythene and insulation permieter, up alongside the OSB board on the SIPS - is this OK? Is it even relevant? I can't find anything to say it is or it isn't, (it leaves 76mm from top of the insulation slabs to DPC level at present but 130 to the bottom of the door openings).

I must have missed this story! Do tell...

You know Mike, joking apart, that's not a bad idea!

Well, after being told the electricity connection process was "with wayleave dept." I spoke to the guy who owns the land our connection has to come 1 metre through - he is absolutely fine about it, but confirmed last night that no one has been in touch with him! So posted this on NorthernNetworks Facebook page again last night and surprise surprise I got a call today from an apologetic lady saying she works in wayleave and only received the job last night. You really have to wonder how firms can get so bad at what they do - I mean you'd really have to go out of your way to be this bad! It takes dedication and a lot of effort. Anyway, on the plus side, I took a day off work today as I'm expecting several deliveries and by sheer chance the building inspector rang and said could he come and take a look at the roof today. So that was great timing and he's more than happy with it and commented on how good the standard of work is. We are pleased too and a nearby roof has also been done recently and even with a laymans eye you can see that our guys work is better. We are really pleased with the roof - it's done with recycled slates, and as we'd hoped, looks the part (it's in a rural Northumberland village) already as if it's been there years. Only the neatness of the lines gives away that bits new. Today I am putting the DPM and floor insulation down on the utility and downstairs bathroom floors with the intention of doing them first so we can get the washing machine etc in and have a shower and loo ASAP. The UFH kit is due to all arrive today, so hopefully we might get that down before the weekend in those rooms, though the utility room is where the manifold will live so the pipework there is a little involved so I'll need to be sure its right before I concrete it!.

Yes, I can say that in my opinion this is the worst part you are in right now - planners, solicitors et al in a feeding frenzy on your wallet and your head buzzing 24/7 with all the decisions you have to make with the budget looking precarious amd setbacks - its amazing how often they occur exactly when you think you are safely passed that stage. If its any consolation, my own experience has been that once you battle through this bit it actually gets easier when you get to the "real" part - actually building. So get through this and your on your way. :-)

Electrical and plumbing is being done by us, but we also went for using the builders recommended roofer and contractor to do the site prep and foundation trenches - and we couldn't be more pleased with the work. I have tried hard to get anyone involved to talk to each other rather than going via me as middle man when it comes to technical questions beyond what the finished result is that we want to see. For example the SIPs designer kept asking me things where sometimes I could not even understand what it was he was actually asking me! So I'd refer him to our architect (curiously he was extremely reluctant to speak to our architect for an answer to these things) when it came to dimensions of various parts etc. - it seemed to me that as a layman in the middle passing messages back and forth about measurements etc. and things I didn't always understand myself would be a recipe for error. Similarly I get the roofer and builder to talk to each other about their areas of intersection - since they've worked together before it makes life a lot easier.

Ah, the power of Facebook. I posted on Northern power Networks page about how we are having to use a generator despite agreeing their quote back in March (I'm writing this sat in the new house with ear defenders o0n so I can concentrate above the generator noise) so cannot have electricity after about 7p.m or before 9a.m out of respect of our neighbours and got an immediate PM asking for full details - followed next day by a call apologising and (apparently) horrified that we were refused to be allowed to speak to a manager who could help. Apparently the matter is now "with wayleave dept" - back in March the neighbouring landowner was perfectly happy to allow his track to be dug up for the 1 metre it need to pass the cable through our boundary wall - however in the months since then he has laid a good surfaced track so fingers crossed he is still OK about it or we'll face further months delay as it has to come in another way. This would be avoided if they'd simply done it back in March or even April when we applied. He's a nice guy though so hopefully it will be fine. Water was promised last week but has not appeared....

Electricity: Well, we applied for electricity to be connected in March of this year (It is late August as I write this). Made a couple of calls to see how things were progressing, but never got any call backs. It would have been great to have an electricity supply for the a lot of the work, but in the end I had to buy a generator, which has been a godsend. So come August and we are now living on site in a caravan. I've been in for the last couple of weeks and last night my wife moved in too (we are doing the final move from the old house this week). So a couple of weeks ago we tried to ring Northern Networks new connections office - only to be told repeatedly that they were too busy and were not taking calls! So had to tell a receptionist who was fielding their calls the whole story - but still not allowed to speak to the new connections department. So over 2 days, my wife and I tried several times a day to get through since surely they must put the phone down at least once in 48 hours? Well, according to the receptionist, not. I asked if I could 1speak to some manager who may be able to help - no, we were not allowed! a flat refusal! I got an email from our original contact engineer to the effect that they had not received our acceptance of the quote in March! (in reality, things getting "lost in the post" is vanishingly rare, in my experience, certainly here in the North East, though I know it can be an issue in parts of the South). So I resent a copy - a week or two later we get it back with scrawled "OOT" - and a letter saying We were Out Of Time to reply! - and must start again from the beginning, getting an engineer to check the site etc. etc. By means I'll not disclose, I obtained a managers name in the new connections department and managed to bluff my way past the guard and was actually able to speak to him! He at least seemed to sympathise that 5 months is too long and I got him to promise he would watch to see this latest application didn't get "lost in the post" for 5 months yet again. Either way, I had to reapply - I pointed out to him how silly it was for the engineers to have to look at it from scratchy and could they not just resurrect using the map and details they already have? He agreed, and so after a week and a half another quote came - exactly the same as last time. So I've posted 2 copies of our acceptance in separate post boxes AND emailed both the department, and the person named on the letter, and got read receipts and delivery confirmation emails. Meantime, if we want a shower in the caravan we have to nip out and turn the generator on - which is noisy for our nearest neighbours, and whilst they have not complained, I am very aware of the noise. As at present I got to work around 0430, I really cannot in fairness run the generator, so it makes things pretty difficult. I'm sitting in the new house shell writing this with the generator running so I can use the computer and internet with ear defenders on! We run the genny in the house to try and cut some of the external noise down (with doors/windows open of course). Its not conducive to thought though to be honest. Unfortunately mobile data is so bad here that web sites time out, so this is the only way we can get on the internet from the site. I really wish they'd hurry up with the connection! Water: Curiously, we have had the same lack of response from Northumbrian water. They like to see the service pipe running into the house, but no way could I keep the trench open for 6 months safely so eventually, I filled it back in when they'd done nothing for 3 months (its a mere 1 metre from our boundary to the water main) . Chasing them up again, they were very good and apologised profusely and promised a guy out that week, they also said they quite understood that it was dangerous for me to leave a trench open 6 months on a building site. when the guy came I was at work, so when he turned up and said he needed to inspect the pipe (I've actually even pressure tested it myself) was deep enough and bedded properly she handed him a spade and told him to help himself . Strangely enough it then did not need inspecting - funny that! When they come to connect to it (the end is sticking out of the ground of course) and dig down, they will see the depth and the sand bedding it is in anyway. Openreach have been OK. PlusNet cut our business internet connection off 2 weeks before we moved (and that's a business connection!) and said it would be 3 weeks before they'd switch it on, despite Openreach having connected us up! In the event, they did it a couple of days early, but knocking business accounts off for 3 weeks is simply not good enough - that could destroy some businesses completely. We have ADSL rather than fibre, but actually, since the rest of the village is now on fibre we have it all to ourselves and so far it's pretty reasonable speed-wise (when the generator is no to power the modem of course). As for the house itself, the builder tells me that he should be starting the stonework in 3 weeks now the roof is 90% finished.

Foamglass in the end.

Yes. Reminds me very much of when I used to use resin to "waterproof" ply and other wood for a boat ( thinned it with styrene so it soaked well in). You ended up with a really hard bit of timber. Sounds like something similar.

It is a tourer - I've forgotten but think it's a Bailey. Will know better tomorrow as I am moving in for security as we are moving house incrementally and there will be more valuable stuff at the new house from tomorrow. So I am sleeping there overnight from now on. Wife and daughter staying in old "proper" house until our official moving out date from our temporary rented house of 31st Aug. As regards the mystery holes and dowels (though why the holes needed circling in pen is still odd) I've been underneath and if it was a repair then I have to take my hat off to them as its rock solid under there even when I've tried to poke something in (an unfortunate trend of mine ) - in fact it may indeed be a repaired/replacement because I felt it was almost too good for the age of the van.

Taking on board the advice above, with the SIPS bit being all done we are actually storing stuff upstairs now, and since its already dry and warm in there, we are going to put our wardrobes, drawers etc in the guest bedroom so our clothing will be stored damp free rather than in the caravan and just bring in what we want the night before. I am going to be sleeping on site now from Monday too for security as we've reached the stage where there will be things in of value. We are living barely 10 miles from the new house anyway, so are moving house in increments rather than one big moving day. Our daughters horse trailer comes in useful for more than the horse! The caravan we got is 4 berth but it will only be myself and my wife in it (our daughter wisely perhaps, deciding to stay at my parents house only a couple of hundred metres away and she starts university in September anyway, so that's rather helpful timings-wise). It's second hand of course, but in rather good condition. My wife has re-dyed the curtains and bleached and scrubbed the place from top to bottom - it was clean anyway, but it is nicer knowing its all "sterile" so to speak. We also put a new carpet in which is actually an off cut from a friends new carpet fitting! So the place actually looks like brand new inside. Not bad for £1500, and I'm confident we can resell it when we are ready to for similar. I was just impressed it came with a build-in satellite dish, but maybe they all do now - the fact the loo and taps are all electric surprised me too - it's been a long time since I was in a caravan, and the taps had a little foot pump in those days, with a choice of cold or... cold. Anyway, I took the old carpet up to fit the underlay and new carpet and found something curious - in the top picture, this is the floor in the main living area - look at the markings around each tiny drilled hole, and the second picture is the floor in the bathroom, all squared off and each of those little circles is actually a dowel. It really doesn't matter in the least, but its got me curious - why the circles in felt pen around the tiny holes in the living area wood, and why drill and dowel the floor in such a manner in the other section - and the dowel bit is only in the loo, dressing and shower areas. Curious.

Another comparison this time with Northern Networks : The mains cable runs from the pole mounted transformer (30 metres away) underground and parallel to our Northern boundary less than a metre from it. So to tee off from the main and dig 80cm (not a mistype) to our boundary wall where I've dug to from our side, and I've put a pipe in under the wall (so it doesn't fall down - its a drystone wall) then run their cable a total of 3 metres from the main in the trench I've dug to our meter cabinet (which is separate from our house and set into a retaining wall -( I run 2 sub mains from it, one to the house and one across to the garage/workshop) is £1350. This is all in soil, no tarmac or paths. 8 weeks is good - I've been waiting 6 months now for them to start.

That's exactly what they've agreed to do for me. I'm expecting the drum droppped off sometime next week. Taking a leaf out of others book here and running g it it the utility room then cabling off to where I want the WiFi router. Unfortunately we are 6 months too late for a free fibre install as they did the whole village under some rural initiative. However, since we'll be the only house on the exchange on ADSL it may be interesting to see what speed we get with zero sharing and a cheap contract.

God, can you imagine taking a wall down with unbonded beads in it on a windy day! ?

Just thought I'd update this thread with some real life observations now our own SIPS house is in place. Really surprised at the comment above re 1st floor being supported *on* top or inserted into the panels - they should really be using joist hangers so there's no penetrating the structure at all.This is kind of fundamental to take advantage of all that insulation really. Even where we had to have steels in because of some.large spans they've cleverly been terminated without going through the wall (big strong upstands on massive timbers) The only things that go actually through the construction of our SIPs (done by clays) inside to outside (that is to say exposed in the 55mm cavity between the sips and the stone outer wall or under the roof slates) are 2 beams where we have a very large roof window I believe called a cabrio?) which needed that extra support, and ditto on our really large dormers, which would not be a feature in a normal 2 storey. However, even then since we are applying a layer of insulation inside too, nothing in fact will be cold bridging dorectly into the interior of the house. We certainly don't have any of those massive timbers referred to acting as cold bridges. There are large timbers involved but have quite cleverly been designed to be *within* the envelope. As for gaps, so far the only air gaps we have been able to discover were some timy ones between the sole plate/DPC and the thermal blocks it is sat on - and I think they were down to slight irregularities in the blocks/block laying actually. But these were sealed and we've gone over it all ourselves again and silicone the edges above and below the DPC even though it wasn't really necessary. Similarly since we'd bought boxes full of sealant, we sealed all the joins in the panels ( which was pointless to be honest as I saw how they were sealed together but attention to detail seems to be key, and I've tried to provide jobs that everyone in the family can feel part of available for them to do) Where you may see expanding foam used is I watched when they fastened the panels together - talk about thorough... the panels were spline joined, so no big timber cold bridges (the splines also being SIPS themselves), and they "glued" the insides first with low expansion sticky type foam, then the panels were pulled together under a lot of pressure with a device that reminds me of a fence tensioner, so a lot of the foam squeezed out at the joins of course then literally about 100 nails were fired in each edge( I stopped counting at 100. I reckon those house must weight an extra ton from all the nails ?) I was quite genuinely amazed how thorough the guys were - particularly when we got torrential rain and they were literally soaked to the skin through their waterproofs even. Needless to say, there's not been a lot of gap finding to do despite us going over quite literally every mm of join - but I do have to say that the guys were unbelievably thorough, I mean to a degree *way* beyond my expectations and possibly not all firms will be quite so exacting. I also think bridging from big timbers had been thoroughly thought about, because you *could* build it in a simpler faster way for the builder, but have those timbers bridging between the cavity and the interior. I think our checking out of the various firms for a few months paid off. One thing I have noted is that the breather membrane touted as waterproof for up to a few weeks has not stood up to some of the heavy rain we've had amd has definitely let water through... but the roofers started today and being a belt-and-braces type is actually felting over the lats too! So even if we lost a slate at some point in the future there would be 2 layers in fact between the outside and the osb face.

That's interesting stuff about the caravan. We are *hoping* to only be in it a couple of months... but I think we all know what "just a week or two" tends to turn into for us self builders ?

Well, some interesting developments: 1. We bought a caravan! Even though it's only about 8 miles from where we are temporarily renting (though that "temporary" has ended up into it's 3rd year since we sold our old house!) , it's a pain working on the house then having to hide/ lock everything away each time, before going home, then spend half an hour getting it all out again next day, so we gave notice on our temporary tenancy and are moving onto the site at the end of the month. That should make it far easier to do work on the site. 2. The stone has arrived. It's backed off stone from an old convent school, and we've also got a few interesting bits of stone found on the site which we intend to have inserted into the stone walls, like ones I cut up for the dry stone waller which have fossils in (nothing startling, just marine corals and the like) and one small piece which for various reasons we believe is likely saxon. I also managed to get free of charge 2 genuine old stone gateposts of which I know the provenance - goodness knows how old they are. One of them looks like Stonehenge is probably missing it . But I really like the idea that we know the provenance of all of these things, even the roof slates are recycled (they have not arrived yet but are imminent). We are really pleased with the stone, and fortunately amongst it are enough quoins, which is an unexpected bonus, 3. Openreach came out and were helpful. We discussed options and in the end we are going for armoured cable which we are laying as it can be laid simply on the surface, so is going along behind a hedge where it will disappear into the ground of it's own accord. All perfectly acceptable to Openreach due to the low voltages, and actually something they do quite commonly in rural areas where digging would be an issue. The nearest pole is too far away. Only downside is that despite the entire village getting fibre in only about a year ago, they'd want an arm and a leg to get it to us - however, the guy tells me we'll be the only people on the exchange on ADSL so will probably end up with quite a respectable speed anyway for less money, so I'm not too bothered if this turns out to be correct. I know that as houses in the village were moved onto fibre and off the ADSL, those still waiting were noticing speed increases. 4. Electricity board say they'll be progressing things in the next couple of weeks, so I've cracked on with getting their cabinet installed - it's going onto a retaining wall rather than on the house itself (they are perfectly happy about that) so we have a second cabinet alongside for our junctions off for our sub mains to the garage/workshop and the house, as well as putting an external RCD socket on the outside to give us a temporary supply (handy for the caravan!). The retaining wall is built in blockwork, but is getting covered in real stone, so that's definitely not it's final appearance. 5. With deciding to move onto the site, I need to get the utility room and downstairs bathroom (though the caravan has loo and shower of course) sorted ASAP so we can have a washing machine and so on, so instead of doing the insulation, UFH pipes and screeding on the ground floor all at once, I'm going to have to do those two small rooms first (staged finance prevents me doing it all at once just yet), so am looking now at screeding them myself, though will get a firm in to do the main parts of the building later of course. So last night I put the base of the partition wall in to make it more manageable for me to do in 2 smaller lots. As ever, our dog is fascinated by the laser level (that's not it shining in her eyes I should point out!).

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).

*Update* - got an answer from Clays to the effect they can simply be removed as they are not structural, though also blaming me for not noticing them in their proposals. Actually, whenever their designer kept asking questions and making amendments I asked him to refer to my architect since sometimes I couldn't even understand what the question was! But for some reason he simply would not engage with our architect though. So anyway, looks like they can come off and that simplifies matters no end (plus we've now got that in writing).

That was our first thought - but each contains a screw bolt attaching that bean tom the adjacent SIPs panel. I've emailed Clays who did the SIPs to get their view.

You know its crazy in a National Park when they phone you on the day of determination to ask if you plan on having electricity and telephone in your house and that they're concerned about it... I kid you not!

Issues with Buildstore? Surely not We have come to utterly detest that company. Unfortunately we are still stuck going via them to the building society for progress reports on the build and stage payments, but we will be genuinely overjoyed when we can finally finish with them. There is a phrase I believe which involves the organisation of parties in brewing establishments - translate it to latin and it could be their company motto!

"As much as I like old cars I do feel that running them until they are truly dead is better than trading in after 3 years and scrapping after 10. My cars have 188k,193k and 234k. I feel no guilt that they are theoretically worse for the planet. " - I feel like this about my 21 year old Landrover Defender. Sure it drinks diesel, but how many cars have been made and died in it's lifetime, whilst its still going strong? As I'm not doing huge mileages in it these days, I think it would be interesting to compare energy consumed in the running and manufacturing of the 2 or 4 cars it has so far outlived (so far!) even factoring in it's fuel consumption. I'm also convinced that the current crop of microprocessor controlled cars will be uneconomical to fix by maybe 5 years old due to the insane parts costs, and thus scrapped despite having perfectly good engines and bodies. Not green at all!