Hello again - work has finally started

[AliG]

Hi Everyone,

I was all excited that work was starting and about to post when the other site went down!

Anyway, finally work has commenced. There is a house to demolish before I start work on the new one.

As I suspected the disconnections of gas and electricity have taken way longer than they should have and so they have been working around the house for a few weeks and done the interior strip out. Gas is disconnected and electricity is supposed to happen on Friday. Let's hope so.

I bought the house I am demolishing in August 2014, I though I would be moving in around now!

We are looking at roughly a 52 week build from here. My wife has been driving past the site pretty much every day. I am not sure that she can keep that level of enthusiasm up!

Anyway the delay has allowed me to alter the kitchen plans and work on redoing my current bathroom ready for selling.

A big thank you to the guys for getting the new forum up and running so quickly. Well done

Edited May 24, 2016 by AliG

[Guest Alphonsox]

Welcome aboard - good luck with the demolition

[jack]

Welcome back.  Exciting times!

[Stones]

Yes, good to have you back.

[AliG]

Work is finally progressing. The building warrant was only finalised a couple of weeks ago. Between that and the builder massively underestimating the amount of earth to be removed we are 5 weeks behind.

 

Strip foundations are dug and area of the house has been flattened.

[AliG]

The pool was delivered this week. We have to store it on site for a few weeks until the slab is ready for it.

[Crofter]

Wow, is that one huge fibreglass moulding?

[joe90]

I installed one like that a couple of years ago, although that one was boat shaped and yes one big GRP moulding ( came from France). Now that's big boys plumbing, 2 and 3 inch pipes and a swim jet to save doing lengths.

[AliG]

Sorry guys, I missed your comments. There was me all sad that no one cared 

 

It is actually polycarbonate. I did look at fibreglass pools but I believe the polycarbonate is stronger and longer lasting. It is indeed a single piece, any larger and they have to weld it on site.

 

It is made by a company called Niveko and shipped from the Czech republic.

 

I spent a lot of time investigating pools before choosing this. There are lots of options such as tiled concrete, liner pools, fibreglass etc. As ever with a bespoke product it is very hard to get information to compare the products and to get pricing. Some price quotes were laughable, some were cheaper than what I finally chose.

 

One thing I was very concerned about was running costs. I have mentioned a few times that historically houses with pools were almost impossible to sell due to the heating bills, not that I plan to ever sell.

 

The pool will come with 50mm of XPS insulation around the sides and bottom. It will be mounted on 120mm of Celotex underneath. This will reasonably insulate the pool shell. Because of the pipework I couldn't get more insulation at the sides, but as it isn't very deep the area of the base is almost the same as the sides.

 

However, the real cost of running a pool is actually evaporation from the pool and heat loss from the pool room as the room has to be kept at around 29c. The large temperature delta to the exterior creates a large amount of heat loss. Once I understood this I could see why pools built in the 70s and 80s cost so much to run. Invariably they are in cheap extensions or garden rooms often with little insulation and single glazed windows. I can see how this kept down build costs for what was often an expensive add on, but you are basically heating the outside.

 

The pool room will have a floor with a U-Value of around 0.14 like the rest of the house, wall with 0.15 U-Value and triple glazed windows with around 0.7 U-Value.

 

The pool will have an automatic cover to reduce evaporation.

 

There will be a dehumidifier and heat recovery system that recovers heat back to the pool. What I didn't realise is that this costs almost half what the pool costs, it is serious kit.

 

According to Jeremy's calculator, heating costs should be around £500 a year, then there will be the cost of running the dehumidifier, chemicals etc, I reckon I will be around £1000-1500.

 

 

 

 

[AliG]

Finally they are getting out of the ground and work is now proceeding pretty much to the schedule.

 

The strip foundations and pool slab went in a few weeks ago.

 

The foundation walls are going in now and the pool ventilation in the last week.

[AliG]

The slab is down (apart from the garage). Now we can start on the walls.

 

I will be on site tomorrow. I feel I should lay a few blocks myself. Then as I do when I help my wife cook, I can claim I made it myself 

[Barney12]

I like your thinking. A couple of blocks laid and claim all the credit  

by the way....just how big is your house? looks huge!! 

[jamiehamy]

Looking good! The porotherm should go up fairly quickly once they get into the swing? 

[AliG]

11 hours ago, Barney12 said:

I like your thinking. A couple of blocks laid and claim all the credit  

by the way....just how big is your house? looks huge!! 

 

The ground floor covers 504 square metres! We were insistent on having all the most frequently used rooms downstairs, plus a bedroom just in case for when we get older. The last 70 square metres for the garage isn't down in that pic, it goes at the top left.

 

 

11 hours ago, jamiehamy said:

Looking good! The porotherm should go up fairly quickly once they get into the swing? 

 

The Porotherm guys have been up to demonstrate and the architect said it flew up and it was so easy to get it perfectly straight. I am excited to be seeing some walls in a couple of weeks.

[Barney12]

2 hours ago, AliG said:

 

The ground floor covers 504 square metres! We were insistent on having all the most frequently used rooms downstairs, plus a bedroom just in case for when we get older. The last 70 square metres for the garage isn't down in that pic, it goes at the top left.

 

 

Feck! Will guests be presented with a map when they arrive or are you using GPS?

[Crofter]

Wow. Your ground floor is over ten times the size of mine.

[jack]

29 minutes ago, Crofter said:

Wow. Your ground floor is over ten times the size of mine.

 

Hey, size isn't everything. 

[AliG]

I was hoping to see some walls this week. Looks like I have to wait another week. Meanwhile I have a lot of blocks!

 

Went to see the guy making my curved stair. Felt better about the price when I saw a Grand Designs where they said a helical stair was costing £40,000. Im not spending that and I have curved glass and 14m of balustrades on the landing.

 

 

[AliG]

Finally I have some walls.

 

They seem to be flying up, I think this is only 2 days work.

 

Wall between kitchen and dining room -

 

 

End of kitchen looking towards garden -

 

 

Ground floor en suite -

 

 

 

Back wall from outside -

 

[PeterW]

So what sticks the porotherm blocks together ..? Is it a thin joint adhesive system or a standard mortar ..?

 

Have you compared it for cost against block work ...?

[Ashburyselfbuild]

4 minutes ago, PeterW said:

So what sticks the porotherm blocks together ..? Is it a thin joint adhesive system or a standard mortar ..?

 

Have you compared it for cost against block work ...?

I had the same questions and Googled porotherm   www.porothermuk.co.uk/‎

The first course is laid on sand/cement mortar and all other layers laid with joint adhesive applied with a roller applicator.

[PeterW]

Looks interesting - what is your wall build up @AliG and the target uValue..?

[ToughButterCup]

On 8/26/2016 at 12:46, Crofter said:

Wow, is that one huge fibreglass moulding?

 

That's the size of our house............

[AliG]

The walls are 2 layers of 100mm Porotherm with 100mm Celotex CW4000 and a 50mm cavity. The inside then has 37.5mm Celotex insulated plasterboard(25mm of insulation). The outside will be a combination of off white render and natural sandstone around the windows.

 

The target U-value is 0.13 for the walls.

 

The inside of the blocks has a 2-3mm parge coat for airtightness.

 

One surprising thing is that they can build the inner course separately. Thus they are aiming to put the first floor on in 2 weeks without building the outer leaf.

 

It is indeed as Ashbury described. The first course are cut to size for the floor heights and laid on a mortar bed, then after that there is 1mm of thin joint adhesive. There is no adhesive at the end of the blocks and they interlock.

 

The builders said that watching a demo wall go up it was very easy to put up straight. Also the next morning when they tried to knock it down the blocks were already stuck hard.

 

I did not get a quote for blockwork versus Porotherm. The SE wanted to use Porotherm and I was pleased to be using a thin joint system having been through iterations of ICF(too expensive) and SIPs(too much steel required according to the SE). As I understand it the Porotherm blocks are more expensive, but the labour component is lower so costs are siimilar. My suspicion is that the builders did not believe how fast it would actually go up so used some conservatism in their costs which has worked against me. The blockwork costs excluding insulation etc are around 5% of the total build so it wouldn't have made much difference. I don't have the per square metre cost but I guesstimate it was around £80/sq metre for the two layers of Porotherm, with insulation and render etc on top.

 

In Scotland one of the benefits of Porotherm is there will be no perpend vents which I think can look quite untidy.

 

 

[AliG]

Had the afternoon off today so went up to the site.

 

The last of the steel on the ground floor was going in today and the first floor slab will go on next week.

 

Could really get a feel for the room sizes now the downstairs walls are finished.

 

The beam across the hall is 365x350 and 11m long!

 

Edited January 27, 2017 by AliG