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Simon R

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Blog Entries posted by Simon R

  1. Simon R

    Finishing off

    By Simon R,


    Finishing off
    It’s been over a year since we got our completion certification and we’re still mopping up tasks in the garden and generally cleaning up. It occurred to us that some aspects of the discovery process of the build may be off use to others on BuildHub.
     
    It’s too hot in here: Thermal modelling limitations.
    Our thermal modelling done as part of the design stage SAP suggested we had minimal thermal gain problems. However we suspected that thermal gain from our east facing windows would be a problem and indeed it has been. The first action we took was to put on a solar film on the outside of our east facing windows. After some research we opted for Johnson PD75 which claims to reduce thermal gain by 40%. It cost £1,170 so seemed like a good place to start. Well, it may have helped but by mid May it was clear it was not enough and we would need something more. We looked at air conditioning units and decided we would retrofit some.
    We hadn’t planned on this and the thought of messing up the clean lines of the build and the pristine plaster work did not appeal. Purely by chance it turned out that the false wall in our bathroom built at the request of my wife and much muttering from me (who needs somewhere to put a wine glass while your in the bath) was a saviour. It meant we had a service void from ground floor to second floor in which to route pipes to the internal units. We contacted Mr Harris and he kindly lent us the pump gear required for installation testing, so far so good. We identified the units with the best energy efficiency only to discover you are not allowed to purchase them without having confirmation the installation will be done by a certified F-gas installer. We wanted to do the main parts of the installation ourselves and just have the F-gas engineer do final test and connection. Sounds reasonable but we had a lot of difficulty finding anyone. Mr Harris came to the rescue again and recommended Artech Air who were unbelievably helpful. We ended up with two Midea Blanc units, a 2.5 kW for our bedroom and a 3.5kW for the open plan living area. Result – bliss, and a very reasonable bill for £1,800. In the long term they will add to the comfort of the house all year round.
     

     
     

     
    On a slightly different subject MVHR summer bypass. It sounds perfectly reasonable, don’t heat the incoming air form the outgoing air in once a set temperature threshold is reached. The incredible heat of the last month has made us completely rethink it’s use. If the air inside the house is colder than the outside air, then cool the incoming air ie you don’t want to bypass the heat exchange. Also when it very hot between 9:00 and say 20:00 don’t run the MVHV, there is plenty of air in the house and we certainly never felt stuffy. We set the MVHR scheduler to do this for us. Similarly in winter it goes off at 22:00 and back on at 07:00.

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

     
    PV
    We didn’t put any PV on when we built, the house should need such small inputs it simply didn’t make sense in carbon or cost terms, or so we thought. Two things changed our minds, the air conditioning and we bought an EV. Doing anything more than 4kW is a pain as it involves more certification and silly cost items like Southern Electricities £300 fee for observing testing on equipment that was already certified on the MCS database.
    Again we had not planned this in so it was a retrofit...grrrr. Very annoying as we were pretty smug about having thought through the whole build. Fortunately our standing seam roof made it as easy as it could be to fit panels and hide all the wires. With the panels added we are still in surplus on the air conditioning units, not cooling for free as we had to pay for the panels and inverter, but no additional utility cost. Bye the way this was done before some nameless psychopath started a war and energy prices rocketed. The house now sits at a very comfortable 23c while not drawing any energy from the grid. We even have enough surplus to charge the EV between 10:00 and 15:00 on sunny days at a very slow 6A. We also opted to put in battery storage which we ordered in February and has only just arrived, it should have been 8.2kWh but in the delay they manufacturer introduced a 9.5kWh version for not a lot of extra money. We’re not up and running with the battery as the manufacturers decided to change the inverter battery connection cables with the new model and there are no cables shipped with the battery. I must confess I found it very hard to see the funny side of this.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    House wiring
    We did this ourselves and got it tested and certified, but made no provision for an EV charger, inverter and PV. Fortunately we did put ‘Routabout’ access points into our floor intended to allow access should anything go wrong. We also have loose lay flooring which has made the four times the utility room floor has been up no drama. Providing access to fix and change is something definitely something that should be done early not as an afterthought, when we put the traps in we had no idea how useful they would be.

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Fixings and fastening

    Our build is ICF and while it’s great in may ways it does present some interesting challenges when it comes to mounting anything on the walls. The ICF system we used came from JUB and has a very tough vertical nylon strip every 150mm about 30mm from the internal surface. With a course thread screw you can hang things like TV’s but not heavy stuff cupboards. For heavy items it’s a case of drilling into the ICF concrete core 75mm internals and 170mm externally from the ICF surface. This makes for a significant cantilever, internally this is fine you just use big fastenings. Externally the problem is two fold, 1700mm cantilever and you don’t want any thermal bridging, this makes using big fastening as real no no.
    We ended up using four fastening types:
     
    Internally we used cheap and easy to use concrete frame fasteners for heavy stuff.
    For lighter stuff on plasterboard we used GripIt fastenings which do the job remarkably well. The largest size claims to be able to hold 70kg, but I wouldn’t trust it with anything like that.
    Externally we use Fischer ‘Thermofix’, expensive and not available in this country. Fischer say they don’t sell enough here to make it worth there while. It seemed lost on them that we were buying from Germany along with every other UK user of the fastening.
    For light external fixing we used pasta twirls supplied by JUB. Useless for anything heavier than a letter box.

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    DIY cabinets
     
     
    We found we couldn’t always source ready made furniture that was the size we needed. Some friends run a bespoke kitchen business and pointed us a site “wood online” who make up panels to your specification complete with edging. Using a ‘Pocket hole’ jig and these panels allows you to create you own furniture simply and quickly at a fraction of the bespoke cost. We also found some very neat panel clips for panels that need to be removed for access.
     

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Garden
    We finally got round to sorting out the garden. It’s small, just 11m by 5m and like a lot of self builds it had been used as a storage area (dumping ground) during the build. As we’re getting on a bit we wanted to make it low maintenance and low water. Raised beds and a patio area seemed to fit the bill. As the house is a contemporary build and we wanted to the garden to complement the house which is white and two shades of grey. For the patio we have used 600 x 600 porcelain tiles for ease of handling and laying. Getting a patio right is not the easiest of jobs and I was not looking forward to. With the patio base prepared, materials were order, tiles on Tuesday followed three days later by 5000kg of limestone chippings. Of course it just happened to be one of the hottest weeks on record…returned the rapid set tile cement and bought standard set. This still went off at a frightening rate. Trying to get a large are flat and true is not as easy as it sounds even when you’ve done all the preparation. With the first slab set to the correct run-off the other tiles were laid using it as reference. Despite our best efforts to get it right, the first tile was just off and as a result by the tile the 8th tile in the row was reached we were using a significant amount of tile cement, about 10mm deep. The four 20kg bags of cement that should have done the whole job disappeared quickly and another 7 bags were required to complete the job. The hoop and wedge helped keep everything flush and the result is perfectly acceptable.
     
     

     
     

     
    Lesson learnt, do buy the expensive laser measuring and levelling gear at the start of the build, it’ll pay for itself many times over by the time you finish. I’ll know for the next build, however my wife may well threaten divorce if I mention the idea….
     
  2. Simon R

    Done and dusted!

    By Simon R,

    Building controls have issued our “Completion Notice” a big milestone for any self build and definitely called for a celebration. A big sigh of relief from both our councils building control and us.?
     
    Our many thanks to all the contributors at BuildHub, we certainly could not have done it without the support of the forum members. Particularly Jeremy Harris @Jeremy Harriswho’s broad knowledge and good advice...goodness knows where he’s disappeared to but the forum is a poorer place without his input.
     
    It’s been a while since we first broke ground in January 2019 and it certainly has had it’s moments and a good few sleepless nights.

    There is no doubt in our minds when doing a self build that you have to be doing it for yourselves. We’ve ended up with a house that we could not have gone out and purchased and learned a whole lot on the way. Our initial vision was something small, manageable and future proofed. Hopefully we have achieved this and have added a decent quality house to the housing stock.

     
    When we started we visited the building research establishment (BRE) and looked at the Zed Factory house that was there. We decided to take a look at that route. ZED provided either a shell or turnkey solutions, both of which were within our budget. The cost per square metre in the ZED literature at BRE indicated a very competitive turnkey price in the region of £1,350 a square meter. As with all things the low price came with compromises as it was a “cookie cutter” solution and the finish was not all that we would have liked. What we have ended up with is our own vision at a comparable cost of around £1,400 a square metre built to our specification. Sounds like a great result, that is until you factor in the fact that we did the majority of the labour. It’s easy to see why the prices from ZED increased to more like £1,600 a square meter when we asked them to quote.
     
    From a design point we still need to live a full year in the house to know if we got our energy sums correct. Early indications are that we should need very minimal input in winter but may have too much solar gain in spring. Our east facing windows are great for the clear winter morning but a little too warm for April sun. In the big scheme of things it should be easily fixed by adding blinds. Our EPC rating came out as a “B” marked down from a due to our use of gas for heating and water, a bit daft given it’s the lowest CO2 emissions at 0.184kg per kwh compared to electricity which is in the 0.233kg region. It would be simpler and better just to do EPC on a kwh per square meter basis, putting the emphasis on input reduction. The MVHR is certainly helping, here's a screen shot from the duct temperatures on a frosty morning.
     

     
    We’ll draw our blog to a close at this point, just got to dust off our resumes and add house building to the skill set ?.
     
     
  3. Simon R

    In at last!

    By Simon R,

    In at last! Building controls came out and checked the site and have issued a “temporary habitation certificate”. Big sigh of relief especially for a self build where you’ve been the main contractor.
     
    Lots of bits and pieces jobs, as you would expect at this stage of the project. Adding stairs to second floor, making lights work, finishing off bathrooms, the last bits of flooring etc… it’s a long list but getting shorter by the day helped by being on site.
     
    The stairs are a feature of the build and getting them right was a tricky path between the minimalist look we wanted and compliance with building controls. The main problem we faced was that the kit stairs we used from Fontanot did not have a stock solution for stairs installed in a void rather than from a solid floor. A modified mounting was ordered. When it arrived it was the wrong colour! And of course the colour was not RAL. Getting it re-manufactured was an option but it would have taken a couple of weeks. Fortunately we have a local powder coating firm K and N we have used in the past. They were incredibly helpful, managed to get a powder coating that matched for the manufactures copper-black. Two days later we had our newly powder coated bracket and we could start the installation.

     
    Working from a staircase is a little more tricky than working from a solid floor, a case of don’t look down. Again we started from the top of the flight and worked down. On the first flight we supported the assembly with props from the floor. This time we needed to support the second flight from the first flight. The lower stairs are rock solid, all the same we added supports to it to transfer all load to the concrete floor. This being our second installation it went fairly quickly. It proved more difficult to keep the structure square with no walls to gauge from. With the last tread in place and all bolts torqued up we removed the props. The stairs promptly sagged a good 20mm, some of this was due to the temporary supports being to long, but not all of it. After a bit of head scratching it appeared that it was down to flex in the modified bracket. Walking up the stairs showed another problem, the lateral stability was not brilliant. On the lower stair this was taken care of by stabilising brackets attached to the walls, not an option on a staircase with no walls. The stair kit comes with a very heavy duty mid-flight support bracket made to either attach to the floor or the wall behind the stairs. In our case, the wall is a window. The window is however flanked with 150mm of concrete inside the ICF. Plenty of structural strength to stabilise the stairs. More calcs and a design for a suitable structure was drawn up. Luckily for us one of our daughters is an artist blacksmith with more than adequate welding skills, steel was ordered, bracket constructed.
     
    We did a test fit before getting it powder coated. All looked good so it was off to the powder coaters. Installing the bracket was a three man job due to it’s weight and the need to get the position spot on. High tensile studs resin fixed into the concrete and left to cure. The stairs had been supported during this process and I must confess I held my breath as the supports were removed. I need not have been worried though, it didn’t move a bit or drop and lateral stability concerns resolved. Result!

     

     
    In addition to the internal staircase we also have an external spiral staircase. We had poured a footing for the stairs when the concrete pumps were being purged after the ICF pours, so the prep was done. Assembling the stairs was very straight forward, a central boss fixed to the concrete, onto which an armature is bolted. The steps then get added.
     

     
    Once all the stairs are on the armature the top platform is added and bolted to the wall. So that the bolts didn’t form a thermal bridge we anchored glass fibre rods into the concrete. The rods were tapped to take 8mm threaded rod. With the platform bolted in place the steps get rotated to form the staircase and are held in place by rods through the stairs. The whole armature is then put under compression by a large nut. All very neat and simple unlike the internal stairs.
     

     
    With the stairs done, it was back to work on the bathrooms. Before the covid outbreak we had stayed at Centre Parcs and rather liked the woodland pictures they use in their showers. After some research Pat found a company Reco Surfaces who manufacture them. We contacted them and decided they were a good option for providing an alternative to the run of the mill shower finishes. Interestingly it reduces the cost if you supply your own image. In hind sight we would have gone for this option, the only reason we didn’t was image size. The resolution needs to be a minimum of 300dpi to avoid pixalation. In our case a three panel screen would require a 48 megapixels image. Sounds a big image, but it’s not exceptional and even available from some phones. In any event we went with stock images.
     
    We decided on the images we would use to brighten up the showers and also one for the kitchen splash back. The panels were ordered and arrived in three days, really good support from the guys at Reco. The panels are easy to instal on a flat surface. We put ours on 11mm water resistant MDF. The track saw paid for itself again making accurate cutting of the panels possible.

     

     
     


     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    All in all the panels are a great way to add interest to an area, at around the £120 mark for a 2400 by 1200 panel much more affordable than glass. The pictures really don't do them justice they are very eye catching and with the option of using your own images very versatile, a real find.
     
    Next on our list was lighting. We’ve installed some lights during the build but not implemented switching or dimming. Lights get pretty complex, not in technical terms, but just what you want ,where and from where do you want to switch it. Lots and lots of decisions very early in the build when you have more important things like walls and roof to do. Our lighting very simple. All our lights originate from a single point allowing the switching to be changed at some later date should we need to or want to go to an automated solution. All lights are wired with a combination of remote controlled dimmers and battery powered touch sensitive wall switches.

     

     
    It’s a simple system that means the lights can get turned on from the wall switches or the remote. The dimmers retain there last level setting so come on at last setting when the wall switches are used.


  4. Simon R

    Standing seam roof

    By Simon R,

    Since our last entry we've been concentrating of getting the standing seam roof covering on. It's one of those jobs where it would be nice to do someone else's roof before doing your own.
    We're using a roofing system from Blacho Trapez, broadly similar to the Tata colourcoat.  It requires no crimping and minimal special tooling. It's around half the price of Colorcoat. The HPS200 coating we chose comes with a forty year guarantee. Our first impressions is that it's a quality product that's really well thought out. I'll raise a topic thread on the roof system with detail information from our install.. Here's a link to the Blacho documentation for more info:
    https://www.blachotrapez.eu/pl/26/instrukcje

     
    It was another Buildhub find. Back in April we came across an entry where one of the members @Patrick
    Who wanted to buy his roof abroad and was looking for someone to share transport cost. Enter Patrick, we exchanged emails and found we were going to need a roof on a very different time frame as Patrick is still in the site clearance phase and we were going to be ready to start in around six weeks. Lots of emails were exchanged and there was much head scratching over which components to order, In the end it turned out that three Buildhub members wanted roofs making sharing transport even more attractive.
    Patrick had been in contact with Blacho for some while, he's multi lingual himself and has a Polish wife. Without their help it would have been just too complex to sort our way through the parts catalogues even with the help of google translate. Having managed to get a list of parts we thought would do the roof, it occurred to us it would be good to get the guttering from the same source. It proved to be a step too far, we decided against it as the chances of getting all the required components correct the first time round was just too daunting, All is not lost though as it now looks as though there may well be an opportunity to get some steel guttering from them in future to replace the UPVC we have.
    Back to the roof and installing it. The three roofs were ordered and transport arranged to collect them from the factory on 03rd and deliver them to the UK on the 6th. The other Buildhub member ordering a roof is Greg, who is a builder with a yard with plant to unload and was happy to store the roofs ready for collection. The initial plan was to have all three roofs delivered to Greg's place and then we would collect, again Greg could help out as he has a lorry. The only slight problem was some of our roof sheets are 7.2M long and too long for the lorry. More negotiation with the transport company and they agreed to do a second drop off for a an additional 200Euros. All set for an 11:30 delivery on the 6th, we had arranged to have help to unload, no machinery just bodies. To our surprise and dismay we turned up on site at 7:40am on the 6th to find the delivery lorry already waiting...with just Pat and I to unload...by hand. Help was at hand in the form of the two guys who had come that day to do our roof insulation spray foam. They were brilliant, and between the four of us we had the roof sheets off their palettes and safely stacked on site. In addition to the sheeting there where also two smaller pallets for the other roof components, such as barge boards, eaves edges, screws etc. The lorry driver was getting a little fraught by this stage as it was all taking longer than it should have, not aided by lack of a shared language and the delivery documentation all being in Polish.
    Having unloaded and sent the driver on his way we started to look at the delivery documentation, this time under less time pressure. It turned out we had most of Greg's and some of Patrick's accessories. No big deal as we had already arranged to follow the lorry to Greg's yard to say hello and to borrow some roof tools that he had kindly offered to lend us. Meanwhile the delivery of the materials for our render arrived, 72 x 20kg sacks plus 20 x 25 kg tubs all to be shifted onto site..Just got that cleared when our MVHR system arrived, hotly followed by a soffit board delivery. Once done we set about loading the roof bits, only to find the length and volume of bit's overwhelmed the Jazz and we had to borrow a van great for volume but not so good for the 2M lengths and required me driving with my seat fully forward. Two and a half hours of agonizing cramp we arrived at Greg's, said our hellos and exchanged parts so we had the bits we needed to complete our roof. Finally got home around 10pm, oh the joys of a self build.
    A day to draw breath and it was time to start putting the roof on. The sheets themselves are 540mm wide and supplied to the customers required lengths up to a maximum of 8M, Being just 0.5mm thick steel they are not heavy but they are fragile, picking up a long sheet badly will result it it creasing, so care is required handling the sheets. The sheets had been packed at the factory front to front with polystyrene packing spacers which had stuck to the surface of the sheet requiring it to be cleaned prior to installation. After a bit of head scratching we decided to use a ladder to support the sheets. With the ladder tied to the scaffold we loaded each sheet, one person pulling the sheet from the top and another raising the bottom of the ladder we managed to slide the first sheet onto the front of the roof. All a bit “Heath Robinson” but it worked. Each sheet was then fixed in place and the process repeated. Soon we had a good part of the front roof in place. Cleaning loading and fitting was taking about an 90 minutes a sheet.
     
     
    Doing uninterrupted areas of roof with decent access proved straight forward and the front part of the main roof was done in a couple of days. Then we started on the rear of the house. This part of roof has two large roof lights and requires sheets to be joined as the roof length 10M exceeds the 8M max sheet length. The roof has two sections one slightly shorter at 7.2M, the largest of the sheets we had ordered. It quickly became apparent that there was no way we could get a 7.2M sheet onto the roof from the rear of the house. At this length the sheet is very fragile and requires multiple supports to stop it from folding. We quickly abandoned any hope of using them. Fortunately we had ordered some surplus material, so not the end of the world. We decided to start on the side of the roof with the roof lights to allow us to minimise sheets cuts.
    Partick had kindly volunteered to come over to get some first hand experience of the Blacho system. We started framing the roof lights. All did not go to plan and found that we had a 10-15mm alignment problem, nothing to do with Patrick just a bad datum line. No easy way to correct this so we removed the sheets and started again from a more accurate datum line. Second time round was a better result all round and we were able to continue across the main roof section. A lot of work but worth it..now we just need a good downpour to validate the flashing.
    .
    By good fortune a thunderstorm provided a test for the flashing, all was nice and dry round the roof lights. Sigh of relief all round, the roof is now on.

     
     
  5. Simon R

    The end is nigh

    By Simon R,

    We’re getting there! flooring, kitchen and stairs, just bathrooms to go. It’s great to see it all taking shape as the finishing jobs get done. Not that it’s all gone to plan.
     
    The first job we tackled was to get the floor down. We wanted to get it done before installing the kitchen rather than having to work around the units. As the kitchen is part of the open plan living area on the first floor it meant doing the whole area some 70m2. It’s a lot of flooring and we needed something that was easy care and tough. After a fair bit of looking at the options, we opted for lose lay vinyl. There seem to be three vinyl options, adhesive plank, click and loose lay. I didn’t fancy sticking down such a large area and we have a couple of floor access panels that I wanted to keep access to. The click version is not dimensionally stable and requires an expansion gap and it’s not designed to have heavy objects such a kitchen units on it. Loose lay ticked the boxes, dimensionally stable, OK with heavy objects and as it turns out the simplest to lay. Karndean and Amtico both have loose lay options but they come in at £30-£40 per square metre. By lucky chance we found a commercial flooring supplier Quadrant who have a loose lay flooring system Salto with a spec pretty much identical to Amtico Access but at £22 per square meter. The planks get laid onto a three metre grid of tackifier, a non setting glue that just stops the tiles from sliding rather than actually gluing them down. If a plank gets damaged you can simply lift it out and replace it.

     
    Laying the floor could not have been simpler. In a couple of places we found that the tackifier was just not enough and we ended up fixing one or two end of row planks with a patch contact adhesive.
     
     
    With the floor down we could then start on the kitchen. With no stairs in place we used our electric winch to get the cabinets and appliances to the first floor. We bought the winch to get the 80kg MVHR unit onto the second floor and it has been invaluable in getting flooring, doors and many other heavy bits safely upstairs.
     
    With the units all upstairs we made a start putting the kitchen together. We had gone through a couple of design iterations and of course the one we settled on meant that the electrical sockets we put in when plaster boarding required moving to meet the 300mm minimum distance requirement. It’s easily fixed with a splash back so not a real problem.
     
    Our appliances are built in, a first for us. So we started out by getting the fridge freezer into its tall unit. There certainly is not much clearance, having carefully got the fridge correctly located I discovered I could not fit the hinges with the fridge in situ, so had to drag it out of the unit. Unit doors fitted and fridge shoe horned back into the unit. You then have to connect the fridge doors to the unit door, a bit fiddly but it all working nicely. Pushed the unit into place only to find the lead was a couple of centre metres short of the spur socket installed for it. Dragged the fridge out, made another hole in the carcase and re-routed the cabling, put fridge back in unit, push unit back into place only to remember the unit had not been secured to the wall after the second cable hole had been made…needless to say there was a bit of cursing as the fridge was dragged out again! A least if we ever have to fit another we’ll know how to set about it.
     
    The kitchen has a long set of linear units, which should have been a doddle to install against a nice straight wall. Unfortunately the wall they were getting installed against was the one that didn’t get braced properly on the final pour. Needless to say the units all required spacing out from the wall to form a line. A task not made simpler by the design which has two rows of bridging units over the hob. These are mounted on a wood frame constructed to fill the gap, which of course I cut before remembering the wall was not true. It didn’t take much work to re-jig it thank goodness. We also had to construct the shelving unit as this was a bespoke piece, to make the position of the boiler housing correct.

     
    With the linear section of the kitchen built, it was time to build the island. As it turned out this was a much more straight forward proposition as it didn’t involve and dodgy walls. It did involve cutting down a unit by half and cutting the composite worktop. We discounted doing an under-mount sink as we were cutting the worktop and any router chatter would ruin the worktop look. In any event the island went together nicely and the kitchen looks the part.

     
     
     
    One by-product of having the kitchen done was the completion of the electrical circuits. We duly called back in our electrician to do the final checks. With a couple of minor changes it was all passed. A significant mile stone to pass regarding building controls. Our electrician has been brilliant and supported our work through the build. Not something that all electricians are prepared to do and we were fortunate to find such a good one.
     
    It’s been cold and despite the high level of insulation in the house we were getting uncomfortably cool and decided it was time to get the gas boiler connected. We calculated our structure requires about 68w/degree input so very minimal heating should be required, making heat pumps not cost or energy efficient, hence the gas boiler. The boiler feeds two towel rails, no radiators. All the pipes had been put in place long ago before plastering and painting. A bit of a risk but we pressure tested everything before we put the plaster board up. When we finally got round to filling the system and pressurising it we found we had a leak and water was running down behind a radiator. Careful removal of plaster board revealed the cause, I had put a plaster board screw straight through the pipe! With the damaged pipe cut out and fixed, plasterboard and plaster re-done. I put the radiator back up and pressurised the system again only to find another leak. This one took a little longer to find. Again it turned out to be pipe damage, this time on the other radiator, and was one of the radiator mounting screws. Not impressive and something we’ll conveniently forget.

     
    At this point the system was holding pressure and all looked good, time to call in a gas safe man to commission the boiler. Called a couple of local gas fitters only to discover they were not prepared to commission a boiler they had not installed. Tried “check a trade” and one of the gas fitters replied saying he wanted to see the installation before taking the job on which is fair enough. Well, he turned up looked at the installation and said he was prepared to do the commissioning, he also pointed out that pipes within 1M of the boiler should be copper and not push fit fittings. We’ve been reciting building regs in our sleep since starting this project and had completely missed this requirement. We had done the gas pipe in copper of course, but why the water pipes? Still no point in arguing….so out comes the carefully installed kitchen cupboard and pipes replaced. Pressurised the system and guess what a leak, this time in a push fit with the new copper pipe. The pipe had caught the o-ring and cut it in two. Easily fixed but none the less annoying when you can’t see any benefit from changing the last meter of pipe to copper. All fixed time to call the gas man in, only to discover his colleague had a covid contact and they were all waiting on test results. Two weeks elapsed before he could come back and the boiler was commissioned at last. Bliss watching the room thermometer slowly creep from 9C to 18C. It certainly makes turning up on site a lot more welcoming.
     
    Last but not least we got our stairs in. We had bought the stairs from Fontanot last year and had agreed that the manufacturer would store them until we could take delivery. So they had been sitting in packing crates in Italy since last June and we didn’t get them delivered until October. They were well packed and all we did at the time was a superficial check of the contents, no damage, all present and correct. The stairs are modular and very minimalist, they give the impression of floating in air. Each stair tread support is connected to the next with an M20 bolt through the steel tread supports and spacing shims. It gets built from the top, so you start by installing the head bracket, then each tread until you get to the bottom step where another bracket secures the foot. On the ground floor this is fine, on the first to second floor it isn’t as the stairs don’t terminate on a horizontal floor. The manufactures representative had been on site so was well aware of this, the drawings also showed this but the stair kit shipped was identical to the lower stair. We contacted the supplier who was very responsive and would get back to me with a solution. Time ticked by with no word, so we contacted them again. They rather sheepishly admitted they had no “stock” solution and would have to make up a special bracket. Time ticked by again and we contacted them for progress. What they came back with was not elegant to say the least and would have spoilt the line of the stairs which are a feature of the build. We took a look at alternatives and realised that modifying one of the standard head brackets and mounting it inverted would provide a much better looking solution.
     
    New head bracket ordered from Italy along with a tread support. The tread support was modified to bolt directly to the head bracket. Progress at last. Modified bits arrived and unpacked, modifications just perfect, but they were the wrong colour...doh! So we are not out of the woods yet. It will get resolved just it is proving a rather painful process.
     
    Back to installing the ground floor stair. Working from the top, the steps adding one at a time using hand rails rods to maintain positioning. The bolts get torqued to 140nm, even so the stairs moved around rather worryingly. Every third step we put a wooden prop to support the construction. By the time you get the bottom step there is a LOT of weight in the structure and it did not feel at all firm.

     
    The bottom tread support bolts in to the floor. In our case this is an insulated concrete raft, which is fine as it is strong and plenty deep enough. However it does have a lot of re-enforcing rod, needless to say we found it on two of the four holes. Drilling through with a masonry drill should be possible, but we didn’t manage it and ended up ruining two good quality 12mm HSS bits to get through it. I’m sure there are better ways to do it, over an hour per hole. At last we could bolt down the bottom step. With all the steps secured we left the props in and installed the had rails and four stabiliser brackets. With some trepidation the supports were removed and a tentative test at climbing them was made. They were solid as a rock! Result.

     
     
     
  6. Simon R

    Window dressing

    By Simon R,

    After a slightly odd but pleasant summer on our narrow boat we returned to site at the beginning of the month to resume work.
     
    We started with a simple job, putting our doors. We had done one last spring and had four more to do. It’s a simple and rewarding job, the Horman doors have a very solid feel to them.

     
    Next on our work list was completing the window reveals, a task we had started back in May and had completed two windows. While we were still fresh we had decided we would tackle the reveal on the staircase window, a job we have been dreading. This is a BIG window with the top over 8m from the floor and a frame height of 5.3m combined with awkward access. After a bit of head scratching and a lot of measuring we decided to make the frame in a single piece on the first floor and manoeuvrer it into place through the stair void. To further complicate the frame the reveal was a taper on both verticals due to an error when bracing the ICF wall which meant one wall was 100mm out of line at roof level. The ply reveals are an exacting job and would not look good it they don’t make very good fit with the window. After some experimentation cutting the long tapered sections we bought a track saw, a couple of hundred, but worth every penny. Without it a difficult job would have been a nightmare. With the frame cut and assembled it was time to move it into place. Fortunately the measurements were OK and the window just cleared the purlin allow it to be rotated into place. With a bit of huffing/puffing and knee tremors due to the working height, the window reveal positioned and screwed into place.

     
     
    With the most difficult window done we started work on the remaining nine window reveals. They are now done and it’s transformed the look of the windows. Not all went smoothly, some of the other windows were also out of line, again due to bracing errors during the pours. This meant the reveal boards needed to be cut with fine tapers, more work for the track saw.

     
    One point it bought home is that errors early in the build add significant work. If we were going to do another build we would definitely get the builder to allow more preparation time for the pours. Recovering from poor preparation has cost us several of weeks remedial work.
     
    The floor was next to allow us to get on with some of the ‘clean’ tasks. Again this transformed the look of the rooms…..it does look like we’ll be pretty much finished by February next year.

     
    Before we stopped work we had ordered most of the bathroom furniture and fixtures but not the kitchen. The design had been sorted out regarding appliance placing etc but not the cabinet style or colour. This is not an area of comfort for me and I’m only to happy to leave it to the boss. However kitchens are an area where pricing discussions tend to open with what’s your budget. It does not take much research to find out that kitchen prices can be plain bonkers. Our working method is get three quotes and if they are within 20% of each other that’s what it costs. With kitchens its multipliers rather than percentage, yes, they are different qualities but all essentially the same materials. We ended up getting quotes from a local bespoke kitchen supplier (high end), one from Howdens (mid range) and finally from Discount Kitchens. DIY kitchens have come in for quite a lot of praise in the Buildhub but we had to discount them. Our design used contrast between the carcase and doors, our carcases are a light wood finish, not an option provided by DIY kitchens. In all probability any of the three options would have worked for us. In the end we opted for Howdens, their design was the best and they could deliver before Christmas. More pricey than Discount Kitchens but within our budget at 8k. More on the kitchen next month.

  7. Simon R
    With the lock down continuing it’s been hard to keep our enthusiasm levels up without the required supplies to continue any major projects. It’s been a case of “what can we do today” picking off tasks.
     
    The gas boiler needed to be plumbed in, nice easy job as screwfix and toolstation were operating click and collect. Good to get a job ticked off.
     
    Our electrics had got to pretty much second fix stage, so we ordered an 12 way RCBO consumer unit, sockets and isolator switches and set about wiring it all up. We had been in contact with a very helpful electrician Lee, who had agreed to do testing and certification of our wiring. Lee came round a couple of months ago and did a visual inspection of our first fix work before agreeing to take the job on. Happy with what we were doing he agreed he would come and do the testing and certification. The testing went well and it only took half a day to test all circuits and get the consumer unit connect. Boy it’s good to say goodbye to the temporary supply and extension leads.
     
    Our lights wiring consists of two 16amp supplies to a central area and from that all the lights wiring is radial. After a bit of indecision we had decided to not have any “wired” switches. There are lots of options out there for simple wireless solutions and for wi-fi. Using wi-fi did not appeal, having it all controlled from you phone was a step to far so we have used battery powered wireless switches located where we would have place wired switches. Simple to use and we can move them easily if we find out the positioning is not ideal.
     
    We had thought all the wiring after the wireless switches would be low voltage, but we installed mains 1.5mm cable to give the option of using 220v to the fitting. This was a fortunate choice as we already have four circuits that are using 220v.
     
    The lighting is working out well, we have about half the lights in and it’s bringing the house to life at night.

     
    With the painting done we decided to install one of the doors we had ordered from Germany, always a bit concerning distance ordering and dimensions are not a good combination. The doors we ordered are from Hormann and the architrave/frame and door come as a single unit. As well as specifying the width and height you have to specify the wall thickness. The frames are easily assembled and have to be foam fixed into the wall door opening, taking care to keep everything square. It’s very satisfying to be able to put up a house door with what are automotive tolerances, lovely solid feel to the doors.

     
    It was not all plain sailing though. Our doors are all the same size with the exception of the attic storage/plant room, this door need to be smaller to allow for the roof pitch. It turned out not to be the size ordered, after a few phone calls it looks as though it was a picking error on Hormann’s part as the paperwork on their system agrees with the ordered size. We’re waiting on a resolution, I expect Hormann will replace the door and we’ll have to pick up the shipping.
     
    Next job...We’ve been planning on framing the window reveals with ply having seen the rather nice results shown on the buildhub
     
    Buildhub has been a god sent for us, well mostly, the post should have come with a “don’t try this at home” caveat. Throwing caution to the wind we decided it looked a nice idea. After a bit of phoning around we found out a timber yard in Southampton was operational, so we measured all our window reveals, simple depth, width, height etc. At this point it dawns on you just how many windows you have and the fact that a they are all set at different depths, not to mention not being 100% on the plane of the wall. Once we had done our measurement and produced a cut list. We contacted the timber yard. It’s amazing how much material you can get through on a job like this, there is the main reveal board, then two 20mm edging/framing strips. The framing strips came out at 230m total. A whole 1524x3050 sheet! An awful lot of sawdust added to the 34 reveal boards. The quote was pretty much what I had anticipated, the 1200 x 2400 sheets were £56 each and the 1524x3050 sheets £101. Bill for sheets £530, bill for cutting £30 which was a surprise, even with some clever electronic saw gear I consider that very reasonable.
     
    We’ve done just two windows so far, it’s an exacting task, but the results look good.

     
    Plaster board lifter coming in for more abuse


    very helpful for getting the frame into place.
  8. Simon R

    The plasterer commeth....

    By Simon R,

    In my last blog entry we had done the majority of first fix and were about to tackle the lighting circuits. We had intended to do this in the conventional ring and switch runs. Reading up on our options it soon became obvious this was not the best option and that running radial circuits made much more sense. A radial approach will let us install led drivers and any automation in a central area for ease of maintenance and to allow us too upgrade with wi-fi switches at some point in the future. Initially we are installing RF controlled relays with switches that look like fairly conventional switches stuck on the walls at appropriate places. There are a couple of of lighting circuits where having Shelly controlled switches will be beneficial as we can programme them to come on at sunset for a couple of hours.
     
    All has gone reasonably well, our council building controls visited and gave us a clean bill of health and said they didn’t need to come back before completion. They’ve been really good to us drawing our attention to possible problems, so getting the news was a nice vote of confidence. It’s been hard work and we’ve been on site most days, so when it came to the 14th I did little to help my cause by buying Pat a new set of overalls ? … we both had a laugh about it.
     

     
    Our plans were to get the plaster-boarding done by mid March, which is when the plasterer was scheduled to finish a large job. This schedule gave us plenty of time to fit service battens on the vaulted ceiling and get everything as true as we can to give us a nice flat ceiling. Not having plaster-boarded before we decided it was prudent to call in the plasterer to take a look at what we had done and point out anything we needed to do differently. So when Shaun our plasterer came on Tuesday last week and told us it all looked good and the big job he had been due to start had been delayed as the electricians had failed to come on site. Quick discussion and we decided to break our plastering into two pieces of work and start on the 25th a full three weeks before we had planned. It was an all hands to the pumps week to meet the schedule.
     
    Our house has a two story stair case in a 1.8M by 2.4M void so when working on the ceiling over the void it looks like a very long drop...a good 8 meters. The boarding above the void is in full view, so we wanted to get a nice straight line on the intersection on the apex. We set up staging in the void on the second floor. Well supported but still knee quaking. Getting the board lifter into the work area was also a problem. Just to help the wall on one side of the area was not true so getting a 2.4M board lined up and fixed true proved a bit of a mission. In the end it took four attempts and some use of packing shims to get it right. Not a good start as it had taken the best part of a day to do a comparatively small area.
     

     
    Our kitchen ceiling is vaulted and we had bought a board lifter and an extension arm to allow us to do it. This extension arm allows the boards to be raised to 4.6M plenty we thought. It turned out to be just 800mm less than we needed so we ended up putting the lifter on blocks to get the additional height. In the end it worked out fairly well with minimal trauma. Can’t imagine how people do it without a lifter.
     

     
    Progress picked up well from this point and we put up the last few sheets with a little time to spare. Plasterer arrived on schedule and got to work fast. Such a transformation.
     

     
     
     
     
     


  9. Simon R
    It's been a week of mixed emotions, we've made good progress on site but hit our first major budget overrun.
    First the good stuff, blocks got delivered on Monday. JUB will only ship them on pallets which sounds OK but in practice, but causes several problems on site. For a start we didn't have a fork lift on site and fork lifts don't tend to do well on soft ground. In the end we got in a tele-handler for which a single days hire is a significant cost. It should have been a small unit, but in the end the hire company delivered an 8 ton  far too heavy and large for our site. It was so heavy it ended up damaging the new dropped kerb work done for the build.

    Besides unloading the blocks, other problems with having them on pallets soon became apparent. It's a small site with limited space for storing materials we needed to store the pallets on the raft leaving room for bracing to be put in place once the walls are built. Each pallet had a manifest of the blocks loaded onto it. No cutting is required so it should just be a case of selecting the blocks and putting them in place.

    JUB provide a nice block plan for the build giving a cross reference of block type and location.
    646-2018 WALL - Assembly plan 1of2 A1.pdf
    It quickly became apparent that finding the right blocks would be a challenge. There are a fair number of types, some quite small, all carry an identifier in the form nnn-tt-nnn but it's not that easy to read, so we thought it would be a good idea to use a marker to add wall position. Not such a good idea as the same block has multiple wall position numbers which further complicates finding blocks as a no 5 is in fact just the same a no 11. I've now looked at the wall assembly plans a couple of times and the logic for the labelling escapes me. It would be a lot simpler on site if each unique block type was allocated a single number for a given kit and the number was used consistently throughout the kit assembly plans. This is a first for JUB in the UK so I expect the kit process will get refined.
    In any event the block assembly went very well and by Wednesday the blocks were up to the first floor and the bracing was in place. First impressions of the JUB systemare very favourable.

    One other item completed was the connection and testing of the sewer pump station. The pump has to be connected with “class C” 63mm MDPE pipe which is designed to withstand the pressures associated with a pump. The pipe is referred to as flexible but it's anything but especially over short distances. The result was that making a connection required the use of an angled connector, just a single 45 degree, but we would have preferred no connections. The 63mm run is very short less than 1M and has good access from the pump meaning it can be easily rodded.

    Now the less pleasant news, budget overrun. In hind site this is a self inflicted wound and I should be old enough and wise enough to have avoid it. Back when we started our project we had a budget offer from our shell builders Intelligent Building System. The budget included the raft and associated concrete and steel but not the ground works. From various items on the build hub and other web sources I had come up with a figure in region of £15K for the ground works.
    I didn't verify this with the builder or get a phase 1 statement of works prior to the work starting. Sounds a very basic error and I still wonder just how I ended up in this position, my only excuse is that I got carried away in the practical aspects of the build. The phase 1 works came in at 34K added to this was 4.4K for the insulated raft which I had to purchase directly from JUB, so 38.4K total. The original budget offer was 14.3K a figure which included an insulated Isodom raft, assuming this would be about the as the JUB raft brings the figure down to 10K. Some analysis of the costings showed the labour had changed from around 5K in the initial offering to 15K in the costings. There were also additional materials costs which are much easier to understand, we also added items like a very big hole for the rain water harvesting tank and soak away . I had discussions with our builder over this but they are adamant it's correct. My own fault for not getting the work properly defined  before starting.
    I'm still on talking terms with the builder, whom I'm generally very happy with and would recommend to other self builders. They have been very proactive and helped considerably with getting JUB to engage with the build and many other items.
  10. Simon R
    We’ve just done our final concrete pour, in fact two pours in one week. From ground floor to gables in two weeks with Easter in the middle is quick, a little too quick to enjoy. We can now get a real sense of how the house will look. Next week we are ready to start work on the roof.

     
    Before building the first floor, a temporary floor was laid around the room perimeters using 12mm OSB. This was done to provide a working area to build the blocks from and allow bracing to be put in place without damaging the final floor. 12mm board seemed awfully thin to walk on!  .
     
    With our builders now familiar with the wall plans the blocks went up very quickly indeed. In practice it takes longer to do the bracing and shuttering than to do the building. Not having to cut blocks on site is a major advantage, not just from an accuracy point of view but it also makes the site much cleaner. Some ICF sites look as though it’s been snowing with polystyrene.

     
    As mentioned in out last blog entry we had the option to do a single pour combining the first floor and gables. We’re really glad it was done in two stages, attempting it in one pour would almost certainly caused major bracing issues and risked the block work due to the higher pressures resulting from the depth of concrete. Never thought I would be happy to shell out £1000 on a pump.
     

     
    Having no experience of other build methods it’s not easy to evaluate the pro’s and con’s of each system. For us, the need to use concrete pumps has to be the worst aspect of ICF. It just seems like you’re never quite ready and there’s another dozen details to attend to before it starts. With multiple companies involved for boom pumps and concrete delivery, it’s both expensive and difficult to get people to turn up when you asked for them. Our last pour was scheduled for 11am and the concrete lory finally arrived a 3:30pm...To add to the entertainment the pump has to be vented after use. This involves a set of guys you probably won’t see again and want to be elsewhere dumping large volumes of concrete on your site. After three pours we have somewhere in the region of three tons of set concrete to break up and pay to dispose of. Some of the last lot got dumped on next doors newly block paved drive. Lots and lots of cleaning up. It’s not too much of a surprise that the builders don’t include this in there list of responsibilities. Definitely the Achilles heel of the ICF build method.
     


     
    Enough  moaning, it’s been a long couple of weeks with many disturbed nights worrying irrationally about being a lego brick short at the end of the build. We now have a house, no roof, but hey we have to do something next week.
     
  11. Simon R
    Following on from the plastering work we did a quick stock take. Our plan was to be back on our narrow boat for the summer but with the current problems that was out of the question. We didn’t have materials to start flooring or fit bathrooms or kitchen and there was little hope of getting them. After a bit of head scratching and phoning around we found we could get fencing material and paint. We also had a few other jobs on the list that we could tackle, commissioning the water harvesting system, second fix electrics.
     
    We decided that the fence should be at the top of the list. Our plot has been behind Heras site fencing for a year now and although we’ve kept the site tidy it still was not that pleasant an outlook for the neighbours. We’re not far from the coast and strong winds are the norm so over engineering the fence makes sense so we don’t get a long term maintenance problem. Some while back we erected a green oak fence with the expectation that it would last a good thirty years. That proved a false expectation with the post rotting out after 15 years. We replaced the post with galvanized steel, but it was a lesson hard learnt and a problem we would avoid this time round. Initial thoughts were to use galvanized post and larch stringers, my Larch is expensive! After a bit of searching around Pat found a fencing product by an English company Marano who make aluminium fencing and had a nice contemporary product called Breeze.

     
    It’s an aluminium product and didn’t cost a fortune, and as it’s name suggest is designed for windy locations. The only down side was that it is not the best from a privacy point of view.
     
    On the subject of wind we also had a pane of glass broken. It happened overnight and we think it must have been broken by flying debris as it’s on the first floor with no access. Annoying but no big deal we thought. The glass that got broken is in a door supplied by Velfac. Contacted Velfac to ask about re-glazing only to be told it was not an option and the door would need to be replaced. Unlikely we thought and contacted the Velfac specialist fitting company who has fitted our windows, they agreed and said they would come back with an estimate for re-glazing the door. After a week they got back to me and rather apologetically confirmed re-glazing was not an option...so repair was an eye watering £1200. I’ll add a thread in the glazing section of the forum with more information so at least others will be forewarned.
     
    Back to fencing, at the front of the property we needed something cheap and cheerful to smarten the site up pending some art work fencing courtesy of one of our daughters who is an artist blacksmith. We decided to go with park fencing really low cost but looks surprisingly contemporary. I guess it’s cheap because it normally gets put in by the mile.

     
     
    Fencing complete, attention was turned to commissioning the Kinspan water harvesting system. Pretty strait forward, wire in sensors, pump, and connect water pipes. Half a days work, year right! All went really well, followed the initialisation instructions, tank set up OK, gauge reading set, pump pressure test...RCD trips. Meter across pump, sure enough earth and live not separate. The tank is just over a year old and the pump is a Grundfos SB3, quick look on their site confirmed a two year warranty. Contacted Kingspan to ask for new pump only to be told their warranty is one year from delivery, never mind installation. We’ll send out and engineer to look at the problem, OK how much is that £350 and how much is a pump £350...OK I’ll take care of it myself. The pump it turns out is not the simplest thing to dismantle, the parts PDF line drawing is not the best so It’s been put on the back burner. After a bit of searching and some good technical assistance from Anglian pumps, a new Divertron 1200x pump ordered £235. Still painful as it was not on the budget and had not done a single days work.
     
    With the plastering done we also wanted to get a mist coat applied and now we had more time get a finish coat as well. With a lot of area to cover, spraying looked a good option as I already had a HVLP setup. It turned out not to develop enough pressure for the emulsion, time to get an airless sprayer. Being a single use project I decided to see what was on Ebay and found a Wagner 418 sprayer being sold after use on another single project, looked clean and genuine, result I thought. Sprayer arrived and setup with paint to experiment and get to know how to use it. Not easily as it turned out, the spray was tailing badly, this is a solid central strip with a gap either side then a thin line, not what you need. Read the manual, googled it and it looked like it was down to low pressure. The 418 has no pressure adjustment, and the manual said it was down to cleaning out the inlet valve and paint filter. Lots of cleaning, no result, more research, cleaned outlet valve. Tried new nozzle, tried another gun and so on. Several frustrating days later opted to return it and buy a new one. Thank goodness this worked brilliantly and we were soon painting. Allowing for a 50/50 mist coat mixture we should have had plenty of paint. Half a day later, half the rooms done and all the paint gone. Fortunately the local Toolstation had stock. Another half day and it was done. All I can say is airless sprayers are brilliant, but boy do they have a drink problem. For the top coat we are using a really tough mat latex paint that you can scrub. This of course was special order and ordered before we knew about the sprayers drink problem. Needless to say the 45lt disappeared in half a day. It did cover the majority of the house, and we just have two bedrooms left to finish.

     
     
    The finish is very pleasing.
     

  12. Simon R

    We're plastered

    By Simon R,

    Well it’s been an exhausting and rewarding three weeks. The plastering work started on the 25th February and finished today the 18th March. Keeping ahead of Shaun our plasterer has been a real challenge and has meant we have not had a day off.  Our internal doors arrived from Germany intact which was a welcome diversion, we've stored them safely in the garage until we get the painting done.

     
    The heat and humidity that goes with plastering has been interesting to say the least in a relatively air tight house. We don’t have our MVHR balanced yet but it’s been a real life saver being able to increase the fan speed and get a surprisingly comfortable working environment. Getting the MVHR up and running early in the build is not something we had planned, but in practice needs to be done as soon as you start making the structure air tight. The filters will be trashed but it’s a small price to pay for comfort.
     
    One things for sure getting plaster board up focuses the mind on the details of first fix work right. We had left plenty of wire at the sockets we thought but some were a close call after cables were fixed into place so they didn’t interfere with boarding. The water pipes were more troublesome. Our build uses wall plates (timber bolted to the ICF concrete) that support the joists. The wall plate is 50mm thick and ends just 30mm before the ceiling, so pipes have be bent round a tight curve, too tight. We ended up notching the bottom of the wall plates and even then some were a really tight fit.
     
    One other problem we had to overcome was a curved wall. The curve is a “design feature” and like a lot of things looks great on paper but rather more troublesome to turn into reality. The curve has an outside diameter of 1800mm. We took a look at the options and decided against using doubled up 6mm sheets of mdf as the long term stability invariably results in cracking. After a bit of internet research we found a plasterboard product “V-Cut” that looked an ideal solution. The boards are standard plasterboard cut every 10mm with a fine kerf saw. The result is very flexible in one plane, they were rolled into 400mm tubes. When it came to using them however the very fragile nature of the sheets became very apparent. Plaster board is very friable at the best of times, cut into 10mm strips makes it nigh on unusable. For example the plasterboard screw driver would simply pass straight through it. We ended up using the solvent free version of pink grip to hold it in place. The curve is in our hall so it’s exposed to potential knocks and needed additional protection. After discussing it with Shuan we decided to apply rendering mesh with a base coat plaster and then apply a skim over that to complete it. The end result looks and feels durable. It would have been a far better product if the boards were laminated with an additional layer of mesh and paper before they get cut, as it is I would not recommend V-Cut in it’s present form.
     

     
    On the positive side it’s been immensely rewarding seeing the house turn from a building site into something that looks like living space. It’s quite curious how your perception of the space changes, it looked smaller and the ceilings lower before boarding, then got bigger again once plastered.
    At times it’s been reminiscent of the track laying sequence in “the wrong trousers”, needless to say we’re going to take a couple of days off to recover.

     
    Next on the list of things to do is mist coat the plaster to seal it before applying a spray of latex mat white.
     
  13. Simon R
    After a summer spent cruising the canals we arrived back on site with a little trepidation and a lot of enthusiasm.
     
    When we left the build we had just got the scaffold down and had a lockable water tight shell,. Well almost water tight, we still have two leaks. One where our roof lights join and another on a roof seam that abuts the wall on the house gable. Fortunately neither were bad enough to have caused any damage over what has been a pretty dry summer.
     
    The internals of our ICF build required no supporting walls making it a nice big unencumbered space to start installing the MVHR, electrics and plumbing. We had decided to get the MVHR installed first as the pipes are the largest and least flexible. The system design for our MVHR had been provided by Blaugberg making it a fairly straight forward install. Of course the design hadn’t taken into account joist spacing or any other details of the construction. Taking the joists into account etc we ended up mounting the two manifolds next to the MVHR unit raised for the floor to allow access. Getting the MVHR into position involved getting a bulky 80KG box to the roof area of the house, a task made pretty simple with the aid of an electric winch.
     

    With the manifolds raised off the floor and two of us feeding the pipes through the aero joist webbing we managed to get all the pipes in with minimal loss of skin. The manifolds have large removable panels that allow access to install flow constrictors. Our intent is to get the MVHR setup as soon as we can to help keep heat in the house and to get the humidity down from the 65-70 percent it’s currently at.
     
    One other job we wanted to get done early was an initial air tightness test. Although we are not building for passive certification we want to make sure we are as close to the 0.6 passive house level. We needed to get the roof VCL installed, in our case this is just a plastic membrane. Getting the membrane in place where we have vaulted ceilings was time consuming as it involved step ladder, a ladder and staging to get to the top of 5M high. With the membrane in place we called in a local firm to do the air test.
     

    With the fan drawing air into the house detecting leaks was straight forward as the air was much cooler outside than in. We had a few leaks virtually all at the junctions of the VCL with the roof purlins. The guy doing the test recommended trowelling mastic over the spray foam which had been used to seal the junction of the purlins and the ICF. Having identified the areas we needed to fix we got on with the air test proper. As the test proceeded restrictor rings were fitted to the fan until the required air pressure was stable. The initial figures are excellent down at 1.08 ARCH which given we have a bare structure and know leaks around the purlins mean we should be able to meet the 0.6 ARCH. Interesting form me was the degree to which the fan got restricted, you can see from the photo that just a 15mm ring was left exposed. For a normal build this would be the case for a small single bedroom flat.
     

    With the MVHR tubes in place we set to installing the water pipes. It’s surprising just how much having to make decisions about tap positions can exercise your patience. We had opted to use a water softener and after a bit of searching around decided to use a Monarch Solo, a non electric water softener that gives ample flow rates for our house size. Compared to re-plumbing a house starting out from scratch made it a simple and quick. Again having two people to feed the pipes makes the job a lot simpler and saves shaving the pipes through the ceiling webbing. We will pressure test all the water circuits prior to do any plasterboarding.
     
    Along side the water pipe installation we also installed the electrical ring mains. With ICF it’s important that the wires don’t come into contact with the polystyrene as it leaches the plasticiser from the cable insulation making it brittle over time. Lighting rings will follow. We have a fairly good idea of where we want lights but it’s difficult to be sure so we plan to put in a lot of redundancy so we can change lighting as required once living in the space.
     
    We have also installed stud walls for the two bedrooms and bathrooms. The seemingly huge space soon shrinks! Having said that the rooms are generous. In the entrance hall one wall has a curved corner, a little more fiddly to construct but well worth the effort making the hall/stair area look really good.

  14. Simon R
    Scaffold down and windows in...big dose of euphoria....feels like a real milestone. We can now get a sense of the completed project. With the scaffold removed the house now looks far more suited to the plot and we hope our neighbours will be as relieved as we are.

    The window install went well. Our windows are Velfac and we opted to use an approved installer as it extended the warrantee to six years. It cost a bit more but the standard of install was good with great care being taken. A few grubby hand prints on the render but nothing we could not clean of with soapy water.
    One aspect of doing your own build that we had not considered,  is the fact you start out with something perfect and new. It will slowly age and degrade. It’s akin to the feeling of the first mark on a new car. Pat and I have restored a couple of cars in the past and avoided going the whole hog of a concourse restore as it can spoil your willingness to use and enjoy the car. We just need to keep the same mind set with the build.



    With a house we can lock, our intention is to let the dust settle. We’ll come back to the project with fresh enthusiasm in October.


  15. Simon R
    Lies, damn lies and building schedules!
    Where does the time go! it's been a month since the roof was started a process that should have taken a week...and we're only just ready to put the standing seam roof panels on a month later. More on the standing seam roof in my next blog.
    At the time of my entry we were trying to find a roofing team to finish the work. The team drafted into build the roof had had to return to Glasgow to meet other commitments requiring our builder to find another team to pick up and complete the work. Much to our surprise we ended up with a choice of two, a local builder who had done work for us in the past and a local roofing company ICF Homes had used in the past. Our builder decided they would call in a favour from a roofer they had used in the past. There was inevitably a few days delay.
    To add to the entertainment we had two large roof lights 1200 x 2400 each weighing 220kg scheduled for delivery on the 3rd and the roof was not ready for them. Some last minute calls to Roof Maker and we managed to get the windows rescheduled for the 8th. With the roof far from ready we needed to get the area for the roof lights completed. Our builder put in two guys to do the required preparation to take the windows. This probably created as much work as accomplished as they were not chippies or roofers, but with some corrective work from the new roofers it was enough to prepare for the roof lights installation.

    To get the windows onto the roof we made use of Terry Peach and his show hiab again. The day of the window delivery arrived and true to form it was just about the windiest day we had had in a long while. Wind, cranes and large fragile objects are not a good combination and we thought we would need to call off the installation and try again on a more settled day. In any event we decided to give it a go and the windows were gingerly lifted up to roof height on the sheltered side of the roof and gently eased over the ridge into the gale...with a couple of restraining ropes and guiding hands on the roof they where successfully lowered into place with a sigh of relief from Pat and I
    .
    With the windows in place the roofing crew continued to work on our roof. They could only do a couple of days a week due to other commitments and work progressed rather slowly. By the 18th the roof was still not finished, and our roofers departed. Fortunately the remaining work was neither skilled or structural so Pat and I stepped in and completed the boarding, papered and battened the roof. We also boxed in the eaves ready for the spray foam insulation of the roof.

    The delay in completing the roof also meant we had lost our slot with the spray foam insulation company. They had been rebooked by our builder but just failed to turn up, no phone call, no email, not a good way to operate. In exasperation we agreed with our builder we would get it organised ourselves.
    Back to our schedule... all our windows from Velfac were due for delivery imminently. In our initial planning we had allowed some contingency time for build delays, but not nearly enough. Our original delivery date, the first week in April was arrived at after discussion with our builder. We realised some while back that it was unrealistic and delayed to mid May which seemed like a safe option, oh how wrong you can be! It's a curious detail with the Velfac design that you have to have your window apertures rendered prior to window installation.
    Our render work finally started on June 2nd with an anticipated completion date of the 21st. The work got off to a good start and it looked set for an early completion. We opted to go with JUB for our render as they are our ICF supplier . With us being their first build in the UK they have been very good to us providing render materials at cost.
    In general the ICF block work was clean and true, just perfect for rendering. Of course there were areas that were not good enough to just render and required remedial work. On our first concrete pour the cantilever beam supporting the first floor was not braced correctly. The beam had twisted deflecting the first floor wall 10-15mm. Regrettably it did not got spotted at the time of the pour and the beam was set. To correct the problem the course of blocks added to the beam was adapted to straighten the first floor wall. This worked out reasonably well and the remainder of the wall is straight an true, but it left a step in the ICF wall face that needed to be fixed before rendering could be done. We did this by building up the wall with cut block and shaving it back, a lot of work. We also discovered another wall bow, not anything like as major but still another task to get fixed prior to rendering.
    With some help from Velfac we had managed to get the delivery delayed a further week, but after that they would be charging us £50 a week for each pallet and we have five pallets. With the budget already groaning we decided to take delivery on the 17th June and to store the windows in the house ready for installation once rendering completed. We have some big windows and getting them into the house without damage is going to take a lot of care. We talked to the company doing the window install and they kindly agreed to split the install and to assist in the window unload. When our scaffold was installed we had a loading bay added on the first floor specifically to get the windows into the house. We also have organised a hiab delivery vehicle. Even so it's bit nerve racking, fingers crossed all will be well.
    Last but not least we have water and gas utilities connected, just electricity to go.

     

  16. Simon R
    With our final concrete pour over last Friday, we breathed a sigh of relief. The worst of the messy work was done and it we could start work on the roof.
     
    It was a heck of a week and loads got done, on a very busy and noisy site. Good for us but not for our neighbours. It’s a problem every build faces, maybe worse for a self build where you have known your neighbours for years and been on good terms. We’ve done what we can to keep noise down and not to work antisocial hours, but sometimes you just can’t avoid it. Our last concrete pour should have started at 11am, the concrete lorry didn’t turn up until 3:30pm and as a consequence we were still working on site at 8pm. Then two days of incessant hammer drilling didn’t help. When you already feel like you’ve been put through a mangle, being confronted by an angry neighbour telling you they are at their wits end and that you’ve got to stop is not a good feeling. I think we are now past the worst of the noise but there is plenty of sheet to be cut and nailed down before we return to relative peace.
     
    Our plan for the week was for two experienced roofers to start work on Monday and have the roof done by Friday. As always it didn’t quite work out the way.
     
    First problem, the steel purlins (the beams that span the roof to support the rafters) were not in place. The sockets for these should be cut in the nice soft ICF and shuttered prior to the last pour, in our case this did not happen as the builders ran out of time preparing for the pour. With the concrete being new and not fully hardened we were told it would be a straight forward process to cut the purlin sockets. Good news as the lifting gear to place them was scheduled for Tuesday.
     
    At the same time as the purlin sockets were being cut work was being done to get the pole plates in place to take the floor joist for the loft. Getting the floor in place would make working on the roof much simpler and safer just by reducing the working height. To their credit the roofing team Jimmy and Sam did not sit around but worked with our other builders to get the flooring down on the first floor. To do this all the bracing from the pour needed to come down and the temporary 9mm OSB floor removed along with all the shuttering bits from the pour.
     
    Lifting the beams into place on our site is awkward, the front of the house is less than 5M from the pavement making reaching into the site difficult. We had thought we would need a crane to cover the angle and distance rather than a tele handler. Cranes are expensive, over double the cost of a tele handler even if you have an unsupervised lift. After a bit of phoning around we found a HIAB lorry with a massive reach. This turned out to be a very good option, far less disruptive than a crane as it did not block the road. Our beams are all less than 150kg so well within the full reach capability of the lorry.
     

    The lorry turned up on time mid day Tuesday, and what a lorry it was. It turned out to be a show vehicle with stunning paint work, apparently it’s been on TV on multiple occasions.
     
    There were still two purlin sockets to cut. While work continued on those, the HIAB lifted in the other three beams into place. We only hired the HIAB for half a day and we were running out of time. After a bit of discussion the remaining two beams were lifted onto the gable walls by their sockets, so they could be manhandled into the sockets later.

     
    With the purlins in their sockets it was pretty obvious that they needed packing to bring them to the correct levels and set them straight. It had already taken a day and a half to cut them out, so still more work. Our lesson from this is that while it seemed reasonable to cut the sockets after the pour it really is NOT. The sockets are much rougher and cutting their depth with a hammer drill is far from precise, noisy and time consuming. It’s quite surprising just how quickly the concrete hardens of.
     
    By close of day on Wednesday we had the floors done ready to start work on the roof. With just two days before the lads headed back north it was agreed they would also work Saturday morning. Just to add to the entertainment we had two very large 2400 x 1200 roof lights each weighing around 200kg scheduled for delivery on Friday. The roof lights sit on OSB sheeting on the rafters not a complex fit but the roof aperture needed to be constructed. Our builder wanted to stick to the schedule, but by late Thursday there was still a lot to be done and we decided to postpone to the next Wednesday. By then we should have a decent chance of being ready and have hired the HIAB again so we can get them into place safely.



     

     
    Work on the roof progressed at a pace and by 11am Saturday we had most of the rafters in place, just one complete section untouched. Our builder does not have any joiners or roofers, so we are now scrambling to find help to finish the roof next week.
  17. Simon R
    Well, it’s been a month since my last blog update. We've witnessed out first concrete pour and now have floor joists so we are all set to build the next floor. The bracing plan we have from JUB looks like we have the potential to pour the second floor and gables in a single  pour. This is a decision I'm only too happy to leave to the builders who continue to impress us with their ability to get on with a job regardless.
     

     
    In my last blog we had got on really quickly and had the ground floor pretty much ready for a concrete pour. We needed to wait as there was no rebar on site for the cantilever lintels for the first floor. Our structural engineers had provided a revised structural plan toward the end of February, but it did not have a bar schedule. One was requested and sent through quickly. So far so good, we had the second lot of blocks scheduled for delivery on the 24th March. The original schedule allowed the pour and joists to be in place prior to the block delivery. At the same time as this was progressing the pricing for the next phase was finalised and we gave agreement to proceed.
     

     
    A hiccup with the joist delivery delayed work on site. On a small site the second block delivery pretty much took up all the available space. ICF blocks and a cramped working site are not good news. The ICF is pretty dense but it’s easily damaged when it gets in the way. We ended up playing shuffle the blocks to get the remaining work done and for the first pour.  Our builders did a splendid job and just took it all in their stride they were careful with the blocks and didn't complain about the site restrictions once.
     
    We had been warned that pours are not for the feint hearted, thankfully in the end ours went pretty well. The only real surprise was the bottom courses of blocks on one side of the build started to move outward on the raft. Fortunately it was spotted and the pour was suspended while Mike and the other lads added some more shuttering. With the new shuttering in place the pour continued and was completed without incident. Apparently it's unusual for the bottom row of blocks to move, but given they are not keyed into the raft and are subject to the greatest concrete pressure it's not entirely surprising. The blocks on the second floor will be keyed into the existing blocks so they should not suffer.
     
    With the pour done it was time to get the ledger beams in place to take the first floor joists. Our structural plans had the ledger beams fixed by bolts at 500 centres with the joists at 400 centres. Sounds OK but in practice it’s not ideal as it means you get clashes of beams and bolts, so the plan was revised and the bolts put in at 400 centres so they would not clash with the joist. Ledger beams in place the joist went in pretty quickly, transforming the house.
     
    Once you get past the ground floor you need to get scaffold in place for an ICF, not to build from but to prevent possible accidents if someone were to fall through the blocks from the inside. Our builder wanted us to arrange the scaffold, not sure if this is the norm, I suspect it’s liability related. We have used a local firm ROM Scaffold. Their guys arrived on Wednesday and pretty much had completed their work on the Thursday. The scaffold will also allow for our window installation and rendering.
     
    Looking forward to getting the next floor up and starting work on the roof.
     
     
     
  18. Simon R
    Bang on schedule the raft components arrived on Monday morning. We knew it would be quite a big volume of material on a small site and getting it unloaded and put somewhere it would not get damaged or need moving was s little tricky. JUB insisted on sending the raft on pallets. Our builder was not that impressed with this as unloading the lory requires a folk lift which is something we don't have on site. So we had to hire a set of folks for the digger. With the raft safely stored at the back of the plot the work to prepare the site progressed. The drainage had been marked in the site setting out exercise along with electrical and water ducting. Trying to keep raft punctures to a minimum but also allow for future needs was a concern. In the end we kept it to a minimum with electrical conduit for the rain and foul water pumps and two for water.
     
    Along with the raft we received a letter from our neighbours complaining that I had put our water meter box on their garden wall. In retrospect a valid complaint, it was one of those decisions made in expediency without enough thought. Our water supplier Portsmouth Water will now only make new connection when an above ground water meter box is installed. I duly bought the one box they permit (so much for choice), water pipe and water conduit.  Not having a house on which to mount the box, I made the required connections and left the box mobile so it could be put in place in due course. At which point I called in the Portsmouth Water, regrettably they said they could not make the connection until the box was in situ. Having explained our situation and the need to get water on the site it was suggested I could mount the box on the wall by our property. At this stage I should have thought about it rather than simply get on with it, my mistake entirely. The wall it outside my boundary, by millimetres true , but still NOT ours. Our neighbours were not impressed so Monday was spent  moving the box and apologising to my neighbours. I  shuttered and cast concrete into the wall footings and backfilled with type 1 MOT to repair the wall. Having done this I then putting in two concrete posts 200mm inside our boundary and mounting the water meter box on them. This is what I should have done in the first place.  Slightly different subject, the Groundbreaker Water box, this is the only box that Portsmouth Water will connect to. At around the £150 mark it's a pretty hideous piece of kit both aesthetically and in product design terms for installation. Given their current monopoly and the fact that all new connections will require one it made me consider looking into producing an alternative. A swift kicking from the boss and I was reminded to get on with the house...maybe later once the house is done.
    .
     
     
    With the drainage in place the MOT type 1 sub base was spread over the raft area,  levelled and compacted. Our builders ICF-homes did this with considerable care and we ended up with a good surface to spread the sand layer which was again compacted before putting down the membrane. Our structural engineers had specified a Radon barrier, we ended up using a standard plastic DPM as Radon is not a problem in our area. The DPM gets glued to the side of the raft sealing it and providing some additional protection for the polystyrene.
    .
     
    With the membrane down the work of setting out the raft. The perimeter is all keyed together

     
    It took a while to get the corners located precisely but once this was done the raft slotted together very well with a really solid interlock.

     
    The raft was then completed by adding the rebar, four layers around the perimeter. All in all a lot of steel, Pat and I spent most of Saturday morning helping get the rebar in place and wire tying it to make is solid before the concrete pour.

     
     Our raft is now complete and this week the surface water drainage will go in.
     
    Along with the problem with the water meter box our neighbours also bought up the "Party Wall act". Doing a self build is nothing if not educational. The act came into law following problems with basement excavations in London. It dictates that excavations in close proximity to your neighbours 0-6M have to be notified and agreed. In our case we were within notifiable distance, but fortunately were not excavating to a notifiable depth. Our builders were not familiar with the act and no mention had been made by building controls. The act did effect our other neighbours and I contacted them letting them know what work has been done.  Fortunately all the excavations were made and backfilled without incident.
     
    Hoping for a less eventful week to allow us to regroup before our first block delivery next Monday. As this is the first build for JUB in the UK the factory are sending someone on site to assist with the build and wall bracing.
     
    It's very positive to see the house taking shape, we have our EPC which suggests we should require in the region of 68wats/K to heat the house which is great, but we still only come out as a "B" energy rating! the rating system is bonkers.
  19. Simon R

    And we're off

    By Simon R,

    The firework instruction phrase "light the blue touch paper and retire to a safe distance" comes to mind.  It's been a real baptism of fire, however our builder says it's the worst time and it should settle down now.  All in all it's been a productive week and almost all work has moved us forward.
     


    The digger arrived to dig out the raft area at 8am as requested and work got under way. We had muck lorries scheduled for Tuesday and it quickly became apparent that we did not have enough space on site to build a significant spoil heap. After a bit of phoning around found a local company who could supply vehicles. Our builder had asked us to take care of paying for the muck lorries which was fine by us, getting the lorry company to accept that it should be a zero rated VAT service was more difficult. Contacted HMRC and had a discussion and they were adamant that it should be zero rated and that if VAT was charged I could not reclaim it as it would have been at the wrong rate... Managed to resolve the problem in the end. Now we had lorries arriving and clearing the soil we were able to make real progress.

    Tuesday the rainwater harvesting tank arrived, we knew it was big and boy was it big! The tank needed to get dug in just 2.5M deep and 4M long, a very big hole. Fortunately the ground conditions were good and a nice clean hole was achieved without the need to grade the sides.

    By Wednesday we were ready for site setting out. An interesting  activity and an example of technology being used because it's there rather than essential. Making sure the house position is millimetre perfect seems a bit over the top when string and triangulation would get it positioned within 10mm. Where it really does help is  positioning services and getting drainage levels set. A second visit on Thursday had all the levels set and perimeters marked, by the time the guy left the site I had changed my opinion and consider it money well spent.
     
    More and more lorries to take muck away, the tally now sits at twelve loads and we are mostly done thank goodness as at £240 a 12 ton load for the clay it was making a bit of a whole in the budget, a quick calculation of the volumes validated the figures, so it really should not have been a surprise. In hindsight I'm surprised our builder didn't ask me to organise in more lories in the first place. If I do this again I'll order the lorries in advance rather than madly phoning round for spare capacity so that work can continue.
     
    The foul water pump arrived on Wednesday, having the levels all sorted from the site setting out I was able to cut the input to the tank, so it's all ready to get dropped into a hole once it's been dug and a concrete base is in place. The next task was to get all the drainage runs under the raft in place. With the raft due Monday and the builder having to go to another job on Friday to supervise another ICF concrete pour we were running out of time. Hopefully resolved the problem by getting a crew in on Saturday to get the drainage done.  Stone for the raft substrate should star arriving first thing Monday, so fingers crossed we should have the raft ready for concrete which is booked for Thursday...we shall see.
  20. Simon R

    Almost ready to start

    By Simon R,

    Well with just days before we start we have our house block plan. All the bricks have ID's so all we have to do its put them in the right places.
     
    The blocks are coming loaded on pallets, each with it's own manifest. The scale of the kit is a bit daunting and having done my bit of Lego with the kids in the past I can't help remembering the fun of looking for that special brick that seems so illusive. Fingers crossed we don't end up with one left over after the last concrete poor.
     
    With site works just about to commence some of the details we thought were sorted are coming unravelled. Our rain water harvesting tank (RWH) which was nicely located on the edge of the property has had to be moved as the builder is concerned over the size of the hole next to the public highway. At 2.5M deep and 3.2M long. I can only agree, just a pity it didn't get mentioned until the week before we start digging. The tank is being moved to the rear garden along with all the associated changes to surface water collection drainage. While sorting this out it was spotted that the  tank overflow was connected to the sewer, the sewer company takes a dim view of the idea of connecting surface water the sewer system. The fact that the tank capacity is very over specified and the overflow will probably never see any water is irrelevant.  One of the main reasons we are an RWH was to take care of surface water as our plot is small and we could not get the 5 metre separation required by the building regs.  There is a surface water drain in the road outside the plot but it's very deep which will make connecting to it prohibitively expensive. Just another detail to sort out that we would rather have handled before we started. Still no ones hurt so it's not serious...
     
    An 8 ton digger is scheduled for delivery first thing Monday and site setting out scheduled for Tuesday faternoon. Lots of lorries for waste and MOT.  With the raft components being delivered the following Monday it's going to be a busy week. Hopefully we'll find no bodies on the site...
     
     
     
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