vivienz

Knowing what I know now, I'd have taken up the offer from the disembodied voice, no matter how sinister.

I briefly popped out to the site this afternoon, dragging hubby with me so that I could show him that I really am spending all that money getting a house built and not squirreling it away into a running away fund. The MBC team were busy constructing the ring beams that then get tied into the piles. Lots and lots of work in this and so they reckon that THE SLAB POUR WILL BE EITHER WEDNESDAY OR THURSDAY now. No photos today, but I'll take plenty tomorrow for another blow by blow account.

And there are seasonal restrictions if it turns out you have a bat roost and need demolition done. We had to get our roof dismantled by hand, with an expensive bat person supervising, before end April/early May in case the bats returned, which would have meant more £££. Another thing is that if the roost is confirmed, you will need to apply for a licence from Natural England. Yet more £££ and it takes up to 8 weeks for it to be turned around by them and you can't proceed without it. Get up into the roofspace and give it a good sweep out.

It's been a busy old day on site today, and the main MBC associated action was deliveries of EPS and steel and sand, and the team getting on with putting the blinding sand down onto the hardcore, that they finished yesterday evening. The EPS supplier is based in Essex - the driver left at about 4.30 this morning to make an early delivery but even at that time of day, he didn't make it to the site until just after 8.30 as the roads were so busy. The amount of polystyrene sitting on the site makes it look as though I've had the mother of all Amazon deliveries and this is the left over packaging. It's in 2 forms, large flat rectangular sections and the angled corner pieces. Later on this morning, all the steel arrived, 6 tons of the stuff. It was interesting to see all the component parts of this as I'd never seen that much in real life and, for my own build, only on SE drawings. The MBC guys were very patient and explained to me how it all gets laid out then tied together to form the ring beam and how they tie everything into the piles. Very interesting if you've never seen it before. That lot was all put to one side until they need it, and then the main order of the day was getting the sand down. Progress was slower today as there were only the 2 men on site, but they're still working at a good pace. The garage area had the sand laid first. The brown pipe sticking up in the foreground is one of the foul water exit pipes. These have all been put in situ now, along with ducting for any electrical cable that needs to enter or exit through the slab, and this includes my broadband cable. The following shows the foul water runs; MBC put these to 1m outside the perimeter of the slab. And then we have the ducting to take the electrical cables, visible to the rear of the picture: Then there's a final shot of the blinding going down over the west facing living room area: The other thing that happened today and is worth of mention is the site visit from the scaffolder I'm using. If you look at the last photo, you can just make out some high voltage overhead cables that don't directly cross the new build, but are very close. These are close enough that a scaffold erector might accidentally touch the wires with a pole when putting them in position, so the upshot is that the cables need to be shrouded to protect the workers. This can only be done by the DNO and it's the scaffolding company who contact them and arrange it all as part of their own risk assessment procedures. When the scaffolding guy raised this with me, he asked if I was project managing the build and whether I needed to do any CDM stuff. Thank god for BuildHub, as thanks to that thorny and long-running thread a while back, I knew precisely what he was talking about and immediately stated that I wasn't a project manager, but a domestic client and dealing with a sequence of main contractors. Right answer. He said that was fine, he would take care of it all. Phew! Back to the scaffolding and that shrouding, with another worthwhile point. Although the firm will organise everything themselves re. the shrouding, there is a lead time with the DNO, currently about 3 to 4 weeks, as it's that time of year. You may recall that the MBC timber frame team were due on site on 20th August which is more than a little tight. As it is, I had an email from MBC this afternoon to advise that, as it's that time of year, they've had to bump it back a week due to staff holiday, etc. That suits me just fine and gives me enough time to make sure the scaffolding is properly in place for the job. My windows are due for installation on 24th September; MBC will need about 3 weeks for the timber frame, so all of that works out nicely. The hiatus between the slab and the timber frame will be useful time to make sure I'm organised for the next push with getting the guts into the house and sorting out all those niggly little details. Like a roof. Onwards and upwards!

Fantastic! I'm not sure I had stamina levels like that even in my youth.

Yes, indeed, Lizzie. It was you I had in mind when having my word with them this morning. I admire you in many ways, but have no desire to emulate your slab experience. I'm sure you understand.

MBC are currently scheduled to pour my slab next Tuesday, no idea what time yet. If anyone would like to come along, let me know. There are details on my BH blog of today's work on the slab with some photos of progress.

The slab team from MBC arrived on site this morning. It's like having the building version of whirling dervishes who've just dropped a few speedballs. My word, they make progress! The team is headed up by Harry and he has 3 others in his team, but this will fluctuate a little over the course of the job with Harry needing to have a look at another job for most of tomorrow then the younger lad taking some leave to go to a music festival. Tsk, the youth of today! He worked like a machine, though, apart from the bit where he nearly rolled over one of the piles as he was looking in awed astonishment as a rather attractive young lady farmer drove past on the nearby track in a JCB that was most definitely bigger than the roller machine he was on. I don't think it was the vehicle that caught his attention so much as the driver. Sniggers all round. I arrived just after 8 am this morning and the first lot of hardcore had already been delivered. In total, there were 4 loads of type 1, but I piggybacked onto this and ordered an additional load (paid for by me) which the team will then spread and roller for me in the area beyond the bucket in the above photo, which will create a nice level area for the crane when it arrives to bring in the timber frame. I've had really good luck with the weather so far and hope it continues, but if it rains between now the completion of the timber frame, the site will turn to mud PDQ and slow things down horribly. Once the hardcore was going down and getting compacted, the piles were cut off to the correct height, leaving the rebar in position, ready to be tied into the beams. I have no idea what you call the digger thingy that they are using to move the stone around the site, but it's an impressive beast. It looks a lot like the bottom of a tank with its caterpillar tracks and then something a bit more transformers-like with its swivelly cab and arm. Either way, it was mechanical poetry in motion when driven by someone who clearly knew what they were doing. The team will have been working till 7pm this evening, so they will have got all the hardcore down and compacted and were going to start on the sand, if they had the time. The first load of sand arrived about 4.30 this afternoon, more to follow on tomorrow morning. As well as working 12 hour days, Harry has already had a chat with the neighbours to let them know that they will be working over the weekend, too, on both days. The insulation is due for delivery tomorrow and they will be putting the pipes that carry the service cables into this, along with the UFH pipes. I'm not sure when the steels will arrive, but that must be also imminent as the piles will need to be tied in before the concrete is poured. The building inspector is coming on Monday to check out everything before the pour. For interested parties, THE CONCRETE POUR IS CURRENTLY SCHEDULED FOR TUESDAY. I've read a couple of horror stories and some not-quite-horror-but-not-very-nice-stories about uneven slabs, so I've told Harry that before they leave site, I need him to demonstrate with a laser that everywhere that a wall rests is absolutely level and within tolerance. Harry is a man of few words and he didn't quite bat an eyelid, but I explained that I would much rather that something like that is demonstrated rather than just verbally assured. He seemed fine with it. So, one final picture of the hardcore going down, from the garage side of the house. More blow-by-blow action to follow tomorrow.

I wish my house was that clean and tidy, but that's impossible until I've had my bigger house built with enough room for all the crap we've accumulated! I do like the idea of sticking the plans everywhere - no deniability!

Thanks, chaps. I'm working on finding my roofer so I will get the velux included.

My timber frame will be going up in a few weeks and i have 3 fixed velux windows in the roof. My difficulty as that my timber frame company doesn't fit these as part of their remit and neither does my glazing company. Where am I best off trying to get these ordered and fitted without being charged a fortune for a relatively small job?

I certainly wouldn't class that as barely visible.

Hmm, bongo drums outside the bedroom.....no, I better not, I'll get as bad a reputation as Onoff!

Look at that! How exciting!

Better and better. Just look at that big open sky.

£300 is well worth the money to save the hassle of having to clear up after a leak.

I can't think about flooring at all - too busy concentrating on not scratching the mozzy bites running up my shin:(

We keep having rain forecast, but it never arrives. Hopefully the weekend rain will arrive and drown plenty of biting insects, they've literally been making a meal of me this last week. Lizzie - Waitrose have lovely long chiller cabinet aisles and freezers, you could take up lurking in those although I suspect plenty of others are doing the same at the moment!

After such a very long time of planning, waiting, more planning, plotting and scheming, the real and tangible world is now hurtling towards me at a pace. MBC got in touch this morning to advise that the slab insulation and the MBC team will be on site on 31st July. That's next week. Eek! Now, I don't know exactly what else is going to happen and whether that's the start proper of the slab going down, but I'd say it's a pretty positive sign of it. Once I have more detail on the schedule, I'll publish on here. For anyone wanting to see the piling in action, I strongly suspect that Thursday will be the final day (we are due a bit of rain there Friday morning, too) and I'll be around if anyone wants to visit. I now need to get my scaffolding booked and finalised - it looks like I'll need it soon. 5pm update: it's the full team arriving to do the slab on 31st July, followed by the superstructure on 14th August. Update 24/7/18 on MBC dates. Insulation and MBC team now due to start foundation on 2nd August, possibly 3rd, with superstructure due w/c 20th August due to over-run on current job.

If you haven't already done so, have a good snoop on the local authority planning website to see what gets approved and refused to give you more of a feel for what you might succeed with in any application. It's also a good source to see the work of alternative architects and architectural technicians and have a chat with others. Don't feel obliged to stick with the same architect.

...a little more action. The piles started going in today and it was a glorious sight to behold after so much waiting and anticipation. It was, in fact, very understated for piles; these are, after all, mini piles, but there was so little fuss and hassle that it was almost underwhelming. Not quite, though. I may just happened to have mentioned before that I'm on clay. Well, I'm on even more clay than I thought. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find anything other than clay on my site apart from a few meagre inches of topsoil where the garden used to be. Although these are mini piles, they still go down to 12m in some positions and all that came up off the augur was clay. Yellow clay at the top, dark grey clay from about 2.5m downwards. So onto a bit of technical stuff for the piles. They are being put in by Advanced Mini Piling Systems, who are based in Bath, and they're very nice chaps. I have 34 piling positions and these were set out by a surveyor on Friday afternoon. Late Friday, two of the piling guys dropped off the rig for an early start this morning and that's just what they did, about 8am. Now, don't ask me questions about loadings and things like that; I can probably find out if you really need to know, but I take the view that as I've paid an SE to work out these things for me, I'm not going to double up on the effort and fry my brain in doing so. Actually, if I come across the pile schedule I can post it if anyone really wants it. First up, the rig is moved to the piling position and the hole is augured out to the specified depth, with the augur being cleaned of debris as they go. Because my clay is so dessicated, it came away from the drill with no problems and no difficult cleaning was needed. The spoil was just shoveled out of the way of the piling positions. The top 3m of the holes are lined with an anti-heave sleeve - this looked like a giant tube of plastic impregnated cardboard and I suspect that's exactly what it is. I understand that they can, at times, be tricky to put in. The team tried to put the first one straight into the hole and seeing someone balancing on one of these to try and squish it in was quite amusing, but ineffective. The solution was very simple - before inserting the sleeve, it got wetted down with water and they dropped right in. The sleeves are a few mm smaller than the hole, so still a tight fit, but the water lubrication worked well. The concrete lorry turned up mid-afternoon. The drilled holes and sleeves aren't left open overnight, they are always poured and filled by the end of the day, with the rebar inserted. The concrete pour was equally straightforward. A dumper truck gets filled with enough concrete to fill one pile position up to the top of the sleeve, the rebar then gets inserted, tied and pushed in all the way. Rinse and repeat until all the positions are finished. Once the concrete has gone off, the rebar will get tied into mesh. Judging by the rate they're getting through the work, the job should be finished on Thursday or Friday morning at the latest. I will add a word about the dumper truck and, in general, the diminutive size of the equipment. Because everything is on a smaller scale, they were able to negotiate the site and all the piling positions that were down and I only saw one squashed pin. Larger equipment would have run the risk of burying everything, if only to manoeuvre around, but this system was very nimble and capable. The combination of smaller kit and the dry weather also meant that I was able to completely avoid the need for a piling mat, which wouldn't have been cheap. I'm chuffed with how the work went today and just hope that the remainder goes as smoothly and no one gets heat exhaustion - it was punishingly hot on site today, even with the strong breeze. Now, what you've all been waiting for, the photos.

I recently had to get my water supply traced as it wasn't where anyone expected it to be. The chap from Wessex Water came out within a week of ringing for an appointment. He got all his tracing gear out, pushed a very long wire thingy through the MDPE and we found the supply to be running through the field. I haven't had a bill for any of this. That said, it's easier to trace the supply through an open field than a built up area.

Hahahaha! Nah, 3 hours 20 mins! I'll leave the typo in - it's quite funny!

A brief update on this. My order of cellulase arrived last week and so I put my 3 metres of linen fabric onto a 70C wash with soak, total wash cycle time approx 30 hours 20 mins, with 50g of cellulase. It's done a great job of softening the linen up, but not entirely beating the crap out of it. This sort of linen comes in at around £8 per metre, but if I were to buy enzyme softened linen it costs anything between £20 and £26 per metre, the last time I looked, so it's well worth the effort.

Haha! There's been many a joke from my mates and the condition of my piles.