G and J

Boy do I feel stupid, again. See, tiredness impairs the judgement lol

Our builder friend Steve is a bigger Makita obsessive than I am. Maybe even more than @Nick Laslett! He bought the 18v coffee maker on impulse. It’s yet to see service as I think he recognises it was a daft thing to buy. I wonder how many of these ovens will go the same way.

Does an MVHR extract have an IP rating or have I missed the point?

Da bungalow that is, not us mortals. We carry on sweating in our hi vis. We were pleased with how the timing worked out - planning to demolish during cooler months so all the neighbours will be wrapped up warm indoors away from the dust, plus it’s hard work so cooler temperatures help comfort. So much for that plan with our mini heat wave! Steve took pity on me by leaving me recovery time on Monday and Tuesday. Good news from a site clearing and tidying point of view. It gave me time to kick down the last of the ceilings, mostly while the windows were still in, and then for J to pick out all the lathes for safety and for disposal at our nearby recycling centre (I’m old fashioned, I still call it the tip!). Trevor the trailer was bought for £200 just over a year ago to help clear the mountains of brash from clearing the massive overgrown conifers. Skooby the Skoda was bought as a building vehicle for £700. We now realise that they have paid for themselves many times over in saving in skip costs. If I’d known how much we would be saving we might have bought a car with a working heater, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Monday afternoon was window removal time! Ben arrived bang on time and had agreed to help us remove the windows, though he’d never done it before either. I was relying on Steve’s knowledge. Shame he wasn’t there. So da bungalow now has a series of holes where windows were. Each neater than the previous one. If you look at them in chronological order you can see evidence of two keen but clueless numpties first hacking out a huge hole, taking forever, graduating in stages to the last one which was beautifully neatly and quickly and efficiently removed. Yet another example of experience being the thing that one acquires just after needing it. So by Tuesday evening we had a clear site, which is incredibly important on such a tight, narrow plot. And then next morning, Steve returned to the job, so progress exploded again. We stripped the felt and battens off, with muggins of course being the idiot hopping round on the battens for two thirds of the day, with the last third being careful removal of some of the roof timbers. Rather disappointingly, we found woodworm everywhere. So my plan to build my hideaway at the bottom of the garden from reclaimed roof timbers has gone. Some of the timbers came away scarily easily. But those that didn’t put up a hell of a fight - they used huge nails in the 1920s it turns out - and this wasn’t ideal as force had to be used in moderation in case of unseen weakness leading to accident or collapse. We were probably overly careful but better safe than sorry. The next two days are a blur of heaving and bracing and sledgehammering and chainsawing. Thank goodness for a decent twin battery Makita saw - saved us no end of time - and my little one handed chainsaw - AKA Lightsaber - was slower but brilliant in places too. It’s oddly satisfying knocking off the little bits of wood that hold up the soffits and facias and rainwear - sending the whole assembly crashing down in a plume of dust. Even more satisfying to push over the block gable - the thump when it hit the ground was like felling a big tree, primevally enjoyable. We did take a break for a site visit from the ground worker. He asked all the right questions which does give confidence, including asking me to gain permission from our neighbours for him to hand dig one shared corner of our frontage to carefully identify where our neighbours services are. He might even have a use for the roof timber mountain we now have! More skip cost saving. All this is punctuated with other strands of the project. They are vital but hard to find the will to divert onto when mid hammering. In that way J and I are working together fantastically. I haven’t the bandwidth to think - I run to keep up with Steve when he’s there - I run to tidy up when he’s not there to get ready for when he will be - I go home a bit too late each day and after a coffee and a discussion about the day I then bath and by the time we’ve eaten it’s bedtime. Buildhub, apart from my weekly therapy session (oh ok, blog writing) is a distant memory. So J does the thinking, I do the grunting. That’s a little bit of an overstatement as in my head, when I stop to access it, is a 3D model of everything and every junction and material and supplier and missing quote and little red flag of issue that might become critical path and hence needs sorting before it does. I can and do flick into ‘principal designer’ mode when needed. But the day to day scheduling and remembering is falling to J. J has given me a little exercise book and my own grown up ball point pen to keep my to do list in. It’s a bit year 5 but it turns out very effective, as long as J remembers to remind me to look at it. Between us we are working incredibly effectively. Long may it continue.

After what feels like forever we finally started real works. We’ve done lots to the plot, tree clearance, root removal, digging out beds, planting, etc. but little to da bungalow itself. We held off stripping out ‘til we were sure the project was viable, which was über cautious but that’s us. Selection of timber frame supplier wasn’t straightforward. It came down to a local-ish company (ETE) who supply a panelised frame for manual erection on site or stick built on site under the supervision of an SE. Most frame companies require crane assembly, which we can’t have due to overhead wires. But once we felt we were in the right place, planning, party wall agreements, demolition survey, site insurance, timber frame supplier, the main peeps to help us build, etc. then we got down to it. That initially meant selling/giving away the kitchen, a fireplace, the conservatory, the UPVC windows and door, an electric fire and even a garage. I had intended to do more stripping out before the cavalry arrived, but there was always a more important task: digging test holes for the structural engineer (needed for the foundation design, so vital); getting the gas meter removed/capped off and the pipe cut of at the verge annoyingly costing £1,700 (not safe to have gas on site in the way, so vital); replacing fence panels including digging out big roots (to keep the neighbours on side, so vital); erecting a shed, with of course a base (to keep those working on site happy, so vital); moving the water supply (to avoid it being trashed by the groundworks, so vital); digging in (by hand) the 10m of electric duct, casting a concrete base for and installing a huge, but apparently necessary, meter kiosk to comply with the DNO requirements, enabling them to charge us £9,500 - ouch - so vital); dismantling the garage (which was in the way and we wanted it to be reused, so vital); and finally, dismantling the conservatory (which was also in the way and we wanted it reused, so, you guessed it, vital). Turns out breaking up concrete by hand is exhausting, but oddly therapeutic, even if you do bend your ancient trusty steel spade. I wonder, have I got so used to digging foundation test holes and digging soakaway test pits and digging out roots and digging in pipes and ducts that I’m actually going to miss digging? Scarily possible! Who needs a mechanical digger when you’ve a mattock from Amazon and a new steel spade from Toolstation? But then the real works start. 34 years ago we built our current house helped massively by Steve the builder, who was a bit older than us. This time round it’s a repeat, as the same Steve is helping us and given that I’m nicely in my 60s and oddly, Steve is still older, it means that none of us are in the first flush of youth. So my theory was that Steve was the brains and I would be the brawn. Wrong. Steve is both it turns out. Monday saw us stripping off roof tiles and after a day on the battens I was wiped. Tuesday saw me on the battens again for half a day stripping the rest of the tiles and then, just to vary things, I then spent some time on the battens stripping off the felt on one face so we could get the chimney down and kick down some ceilings (overboarded lathe and plaster). Whilst we were out on the tiles UK Power Networks, our DNO, dug up the road and put in our underground electric feed. And a quick bit of begging over the phone got the meter moved that afternoon, so we had site power again. Bliss in a coffee cup. So by the end of Tuesday I was pleased with progress but exhausted. On Wednesday we started stripping out walls and we discovered that there was a lot more plasterboard than I first thought. Damn. Pronto plasterboard skip ordered, we estimated that we’d need a 4 yard skip, so to be safe a 6 yard skip was ordered. Which meant we needed easy barrow access so we removed a window and cut a new front door. Wednesday night I went home totally exhausted and less than pleased due to all the newly discovered plasterboard. That night I came to terms with my limitations, so I messaged Steve to suggest he do a 4 day week to give me time to tidy up and recover. He agreed and offered to buy me a pipe and some slippers. (Pic of new door) The skip arrived promptly arrived at 07:30 next morning. There then followed a rabid day of plasterboard removal. Incredible how effective a spade can be indoors when instructions are given to the novice. By the end of the day we’d nearly filled the skip and had just a hallway ceiling left covered in the dreaded plasterboard. I could hardly raise my arms. One of Steve’s endearing features is his sense of humour. One of his most irritating features is his sense of humour. So as I’m on a step up, gritting my teeth and willing my arms up again and again yet another joke prompts the giggles. That was it, hopeless. My giggling got him giggling and progress paused. Priceless. But determination sustained and the skip was filled. Thank goodness for over-ordering. I went home a zombie, but with less energy. Friday and Saturday were tip runs and tidying up, and now on Sunday I sit quietly reflecting on a week that was unbelievably productive, thanks to Steve’s experience. But oh my, it starts again tomorrow. I have no idea if anyone will find these ramblings of interest, but they are, much like digging, remarkably therapeutic too!

Welcome to the forum. I think my comments in this post more or less fit. Take no prisoners guys!

Would one see a benefit if one doesn’t have the latest devices?

So when you pull the plug out does some water sit in the bottom of the bath?

Ah, got that covered. We’re going for trendy wall mounted potties. Which unless I lose loads of weight building will need some big bolts to hold em up!

Hmmmm, I can believe that I need to do a factory reset in my heating brain cells but I can’t find the button. I'm committed to the single zone, WC, approach, with UFH throughout downstairs and limited upstairs heating (Fancoil in bedroom and electric UFH and towel rads in bathrooms). I'd figured I’d have a loop solely for the utility room which could be turned off to start with but brought on if needed. Taking the above comments to their logical conclusion I could almost forget the internal walls and simply pipe out in the most efficient manner to give equal loop lengths. So all can be more or less left wide open. I think.

Not started thinking about UFH loop design yet but as a principle, by removing loops as you describe do you diminish or remove individual room control?

Will you train it to go up chimneys too? 😉 (sorry, long day, I’m bordering on being giggly tired!)

A wet vacuum? If you can see the beastie laying at the bottom of the cistern giggling at you then you may be able to suck it up and save yourself the tenpence…..

My (me being G, the more mature, considered and sensible posts are by J) ‘do everything myself’ OCD thing would have loved to have stick built from delivered timber, but there’s two of us to consider, and I’d prefer to finish in less than forever. So I’m hoping that very experienced joiners with me adding in the bits needed for airtightness will result in a good build. If I’d managed to find a company to quote on a supply and erect we probably would have gone that way. Fingers crossed.

Insisted deposit being paid on cc. Relatively short timescales between final payment and delivery so 🤞. So far co. Have been great to deal with, did a lot of pre- work with us even before order.

Seriously, what are your concerns.......always happy to learn.....company are doing the first 3, as a panelised system, and it's a pretty straightforward rectangular build.

Tight site so need sensible u value for thinnish walls. Plus we want to get to watertight pdq. But as a general principle I can easily imagine you are correct. Ok coffee gone. Really must commune with my shovel again….

Very similar in approach, with a slight nuance of our build being a project of two halves. 1: To properly watertight - meaning main roof/solar/rainwear/render/cladding/etc done so scaffold can go forever. This is pre house sale so budget squeaks. 2: The rest. Post house sale so budget squeaks rather less. I hope. In software programme management there was a saying. The first 90% of the work takes 90% of the budget. The remaining 10% of the work takes the other 90% of the budget. I do hope that’s not what we end up doing.

I started down that path months ago and got some way, partly to make me a bit more of an informed buyer. But now my attention span is one of many constrained budget lines. Plus I have to constantly fight my ‘I must do everything’ obsession.

Couldn’t find one to quote as we have overhead wires which prevent crane use. Besides, I’ve an impact driver. What could possibly go wrong?

I spot a change of plan looming on the horizon. It all depends how quickly we sell our house. If we go under offer quickly (a nice problem to have) then I won’t have time to faff around and I therefore expect we'll use a design and commission package. If the house lingers on the market for ages then there is scope for me to follow your lead and save lots.

Steady on. There are squirrels on site and they aren’t my favourite (and at my advancing years and my tinnitus i have of course pin sharp hearing. Honest. )

We’re buying a kit and putting it together ourselves (meaning joiners who, unlike me, have done it before). In my mind I’m now thinking that I’ll be present (maybe even trying to help but actually hindering?) when the internal walls go up, partly to ensure the tony trays are put in but also to pop a strip of VCL in place vertically against the inside of the external panels to give a continuous airtight layer. Need to think that one through.

Did they charge an awful lot extra to do the MVHR commissioning and certification?

So you’ve just described exactly what I was asking about. I should have reread the whole thread before posting. However another question. Our upstairs is timber clad. By attaching the internal walls to the timber frame am I creating much of an acoustic conductor? I assume some of our internal walls are bracing the long sides off our upstairs which would be a 11m x 6m open plan room otherwise. Would I need such bracing?