Hello again - work has finally started

[Construction Channel]

36 minutes ago, Steptoe said:

I'd seriously consider getting myself one of them for work at that price,

 

ps, get yourself some proper cutting compound, 

 

 

Don't worry i have got ALL the gear for it now 

 

But if you are thinking about it i will recommend Magdrill.com as a company, I dealt with a person called Graham on the phone and he was very helpful.

 

IIRC that is £350 inc VAT and Delivery, so probably about 295 if you can claim it  

[Onoff]

Machine Mart do a gallon of cutting fluid for about £30 from memory.

[Construction Channel]

i found on vertical surfaces the paste is easier to use 

 

e.g

https://www.magdrill.com/rotabroach-cutting-paste-0-5kg-tin.html

[Onoff]

Just now, Construction Channel said:

i found on vertical surfaces the paste is easier to use 

 

e.g

https://www.magdrill.com/rotabroach-cutting-paste-0-5kg-tin.html

 

I just decant into a plastic sports drink bottle (Lucozade) and give it the odd squirt. If I use RTD or Trefolex I usually apply with a paint brush.

[Construction Channel]

2 minutes ago, Onoff said:

I usually apply with a paint brush.

TBH I'm just copying what i saw the other steel fabricators do  

[AliG]

Progress finally seems to be a lot faster, although we are around 10 weeks behind the original schedule.

 

The first floor slab is on and they have strapped out the underside for the ceilings.

 

The first floor walls then went up on top of the slab and the slab for the second floor games room went in last Friday.

 

Last week the steel started to arrive for the roof. I was shocked to see how heavy duty it is. The steel you can see at the left hand side of the house is for an area that is 1.5 storeys high. The architect says that the SE tried really hard to make normal attic trusses work but we had to have steel. It makes you wonder how all the old houses manage without loads of steel in the roof!

 

The trusses are on site too and will start to go in after the steel. The roof structure should be finished in around three weeks then we can put the sarking on.

 

The windows also start to arrive and go in next week. So between these and the roof we should be basically watertight in around 5 weeks.

 

 

Kitchen sitting area looking west to the terrace.

 

 

Kitchen table area looking south.

 

 

Bedroom two and garage below.

 

 

Front porch, hall and looking up to the second floor slab.

 

Edited April 1, 2017 by AliG

[AliG]

Work is racing along now.

 

Big job now is putting current house up for sale, so need to finish all the little jobs I have been putting off.

 

 

The end wall of our bedroom has to go up here before they can put the steel in for the main roof.

 

There will be a chimney on this end of the house around 13m high. I'm a bit scared for it in high winds!

 

 

Roof trusses going up along one side of the house, then we can get the parking on to get it water tight.

 

Edited April 18, 2017 by AliG

[AliG]

Busy week as I have been off for Easter.

 

Long meeting with builder and architect. It was the first time I had stood on the first and second floors.

 

One of the most interesting things was seeing the sarking boards go on the roof. These are 22mm timber laid with a 2mm gap to allow the roof to breath. I had never seen the traditional kind of boards, I assumed it was going to be large OSB boards not long timber lengths.

 

The roof looks very robust relative to what I am used to seeing on most modern houses. Hopefully this will eliminate creaks as well as chattering tiles etc. It gets pretty windy up here, especially as we are 130m above sea level.

 

If you look at the picture below, there will be around 900mm between the insulated plasterboard and the exterior wall. I wanted to keep the walls above head height before the roof encroached on the rooms. The architect asked if I wanted to use it as storage. I don't think I need the space, but we are hoping to create a little secret room for my daughter off her bedroom.

 

They were still putting in the loose rafters on the other side of the room. The joiner's saw was not enjoying it one bit as he tried to cut the width slightly on what looked like a 5m long timber. I couldn't understand why it hadn't been ordered cut to width.

 

Originally the architect specified 200mm Celotex insulation in the roof, insulating it right to the peak so we can use the space above the bedrooms. There is then insulated plasterboard below the trusses to reduce cold bridging. As you can see there isn't that much space and the trusses cut into it. I suggested that where the roof is flat why no just change to 400m of mineral wool which provides the same U-Value as 200mm of Celotex at a fraction of the cost. We are still looking in to getting Kanuf Omnifit Stud instead of Celotex on the sloped areas of roof. This is roughly two thirds the cost for a modestly worse U-Value. Omnifit Stud has a lambda of 0.034 vs 0.04 for normal earth wool, but for some reason seems almost impossible to buy.

 

 

 

The stone has started to arrive to go around the windows. I love the variation in the sandstone. There were two pieces chipped on the front face which should be getting replaced. The individual pieces look incredibly heavy, I am glad I don't have to move them into place.

 

 

 

View North from my daughter's bedroom window.

 

 

 

View across the upstairs landing, they have filled the double height space with scaffolding so they can put in the windows.

 

 

View from the top floor.

 

 

 

Looking down onto the master bedroom. You won't be able to look down here once the walls are built. The master bedroom is double height.

 

 

View down into study. We had to add an unexpected wall here to support the steel members for the roof. This made the room smaller but we are going to build alcoves with a library effect. Perhaps the one room in the house where we had unexpected changes that had a major effect.

 

 

Important decision of the day. Roof tile colour. These are both supposed to be red, but the one on the right looked more like terracotta so we went with the darker one which we think will be less in your face over a larger area. Decision was made without the input of SWMBO but she thankfully agreed.

 

Edited April 21, 2017 by AliG

[Jeremy Harris]

I think it's well worth thinking about fitting eaves storage space.  I'm glad I took the trouble to put access doors into this space, as it's turned out to be quite a sizeable volume, and more importantly it's easy to access, so ideal for things like suitcases and Christmas decorations.

[Onoff]

One of my MANY envisioned projects that never happened was to make a copy of the TARDIS door at the entrance to the full height eaves space off of my boy's bedroom and decorate a la Doctor Who. Now that would have been a secret room!

[AliG]

Very good point @JSHarris. It is a lot easier to access than a loft and I have basically eliminated the loft above these rooms to save on insulation and as it didn't look as the space would be useful.

 

What I said was lets see how the space looks when the studs go up for the interior walls and how usable it is. If it looks like a space that we can readily get into and use then we we will keep access to it.

 

I had been thinking about putting lots of doors in which I didn't fancy, but if there is space where you can put in one door then move along inside the space then I think you are right and I should keep access to it.

[AliG]

Checked the plans and it is actually 1m from the back of the studs to the block work so should be a usable space.

 

Might put the PV inverter up in there also.

[Jeremy Harris]

Our space is around 1.4m high at the room wall, tapering to around 0.5m at the outside, and around 1.5m wide.  Each space is around 4.5 m long.  I fitted a full height access door at the end of each space, and it's easy enough to crawl down them.  I found some cheap carpet runners and laid them along the space, to make it easier on the knees.  We've standardised on open B&Q plastic storage crates (about a tenner for three) and they stack neatly and are a good size to move around.  We can get around 8 or 9 of them in each eaves space, so around 30 in all, including part of the service access space,  I think these crates are about 32 litres, so that's a bit short of 1000 litres of additional storage, plus there;s still room to get all our suitcases, rucksacks, climbing boots, ropes etc in there as well.

Edited April 21, 2017 by JSHarris

[AliG]

Our house is full of plastic storage boxes.

 

I found ones on Amazon that come with files and now use them to keep all my filling in rather than a filing drawer. Much easier to move around and stack them up.

 

My spaces are narrower but taller, so less crawling and more squeezing. The bedroom walls rise to 2.2m high before the roof encroaches so the space will be around 2.1m high dropping to 1m at the outside wall.

 

I will need to check to see if they are running the floor screed to the outside wall or just inside the stud walls as that will slightly impact on the space.

 

Off to show it to the wife see what she thinks. Will need to consider where to put doors so that they don't look odd.

Edited April 21, 2017 by AliG

[Jeremy Harris]

Here's what our (cheap) steel fire resistant doors look like:

:

 

 

Edited April 21, 2017 by JSHarris

[PeterW]

Another quick way is to use framed MDF for the panels and hold them back with decent magnets (assuming nothing is "pushed" in...) as they can be lifted out of the way and leave a big space that's easy to put things in through. 

[AliG]

Just a quick update, I maybe should turn this into a blog, but as I am not that involved with the building it probably wouldn't be as helpful as others blogs.

 

I was away for work last week, but in my absence the architect, main contractor and heating engineer had a meeting on site.

 

Due to steel going across the path of some of the MVHR it will have to rerouted. Luckily I had decided to have a stepped ceiling in the lounge and dining room and the MVHR pipework should easily fit in the stepped down area rather than the hall where it was originally to go.

 

We have changed from 80mm sand cement screed to 60mm liquid screed. It isn't really clear why we were not using liquid screed anyway. The heating engineers agree that the UFH should operate more efficiently as there is less chance of air bubbles in the screed. Also the thinner screed should be more responsive.

 

However, having made this change we have to look at the levels to decide on the thickness of the insulation.

 

On the ground floor it may be that we need to change from 100mm to 120mm PIR. I am not necessarily against this as more insulation is better, but it appears that 100mm is more of a standard thickness so 120mm is unexpectedly more expensive. This will depend on precise measurement of the levels.

 

On the first floor we had allowed for 30mm PIR and then 80mm of sand cement screed. Changing to 60mm should allow us to use cheaper 50mm EPS. It also allows me to move some insulation from the garage roof to the floor of the room above. Originally we had 100mm of PIR in the garage roof and 30mm in the floor above as the garage is not officially part of the insulated envelope, although the walls have the same insulation as the house, the problem is the doors. This is fine, but would have meant a lot of heat going into the floor with no rooms below to benefit unlike the rest of the house. Now we can have 50mm of PIR in the floor above the concrete planks and 50mm below. This will be both cheaper and perform better.

 

The other thing to come out of the meeting is that we are 6-8 weeks behind schedule. I have been noting this for some time with the contractor constantly saying he would make it up. I have just ignored this and assumed we would be at least 1 month late. This does give me a bit of an issue as we put our house up for sale last week. If my house sells quickly though I won't exactly be complaining.

 

Regarding the discussion a couple of weeks ago on the under eaves storage, I think it is very useful space but my wife is very concerned how the doors will looks so we will have to wait and see how we get around that.

 

I found a door supplier nearby who I want to buy the garage doors from. For some reason they cannot get a quote from Hormann for the doors I need. Someone else I spoke to in England got a quote in around an hour, the Scottish dealer have had weeks. I really want to give them the business but there is a limit to how long this can drag out.

 

Now that the roof is going on I am having the PV panel installers come out to do a site survey. I had thought of having 12 panels facing south and 6 facing west to get power for a longer period of the day. Now that I look at it I doubt the west facing panels would get power any later in the day whilst losing out in the morning so I suspect that it will be 18 panels facing south for a 5Kw system.

 

 

Dormer being formed for my daughter's bedroom

 

 

Main roof going on so we can see roughly how tall the house will be.

 

 

The parking is coming along nicely.

 

 

Edited May 7, 2017 by AliG

[Oz07]

50 and 75 pir if 5mm isn't a deal breaker 

[AliG]

Fair, not sure exactly what the screed spec will be yet. Could probably do 60mm PIR and 50mm screed.

[jamiehamy]

Looking good sir! 

[AliG]

I've not been in town to see how the build is going for weeks. So I had to sneak into my own site today.

 

There has been a nice amount of progress.

 

I am loving the double height spaces and the glass front to the upstairs landing.

 

Master bedroom looking back towards the dressing room.

 

 

Chimney breast and glazed gable in the master bedroom.

 

 

View from upstairs landing.

 

 

Double height upstairs study, when I was in here I wondered about putting in a roof window.

 

 

Eaves space that I asked about using for storage in another thread.

 

 

View along bathrooms/en suites/dressing rooms. Velux windows go in soon.

 

 

Guest room dressing room. Not sure about the airtightness membrane.

 

 

First stud walls going in.

 

 

 

Another view from the upstairs landing.

 

 

Games room, really sunny with the Velux windows.

 

 

View from the top.

 

 

View down into study from games room.

 

 

Chimney and balcony at the end of the house.

 

 

Eaves space in my daughter's bedroom. She wants a secret area in here.

 

Edited June 3, 2017 by AliG

[Archer]

Really interesting stuff. I'm a bit late with this, but out of interest why did you go for an inner and outer skin of 100mm porotherm with insulation in between? My understanding is that you can get pre-insulated 365mm blocks which perform as a modern solid wall construction. I guess this was just based on the SE's recommendation was it?

[AliG]

Basically yes, the SE wanted to use this method.

 

The conductivity of the 365mm block is 0.26 so the block on its own would have a U-value of 0.71. You could use 365mm blocks with EWI/IWI I guess.

 

I didn't really look into it, with hindsight I think I might have been better using full fill bead insulation than PIR. I am using insulated plasterboard on the inside now which I was not before and this would have achieved an acceptable U-value.

 

I was not sure how BC would see full fill insulation. Theoretically it is fine where I am but they might have worried about water ingress.

 

One reason for choosing Porotherm is it does not need perpend vents which I find unsightly.

 

I think in reality it proved much slower to use than advertised and may not have offered that much benefit over other kinds of blocks despite being more expensive, but it is hard to compare as you cannot know how your job would have gone with another method.

[AliG]

They second and first floor screed is in as is most of the UFH pipework.

 

The ground floor would be in, but the torrential rain last week flooded the ground floor. We are letting it dry out with a plan to do the screed on Saturday.

 

Any issues if it isn't totally dry when this is done as I am a little worried water will be left under the Celotex in some areas?

 

 

 

[AliG]

I've been very quiet for the last couple of weeks.

 

I've been busy at work, but the thing that has really hit me has been doing the electrical planning. I have spent more time of this than anything else in the house as I have specified sockets, lights etc, marked up drawings for where everything goes and so on. Finally this is pretty much done.

 

I have this week off so was on site discussing progress. We are another 4 weeks behind, but it s looking good. They are working on the electrical first fix and have just started some of the plaster boarding.

 

I am really pleased with how the roof tiles look, not having a ridge added a lot to the cost but it is such a nice finish and the tiles themselves have some nice variation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 31, 2017 by AliG