Hello again - work has finally started

[Tennentslager]

Hey Ali

It's looking fantastic and quality takes time?

Hope it keeps working out?

[Nickfromwales]

3 minutes ago, AliG said:

You're testing my sense of humour there ?

Your going to get your chain yanked a bit if you post up pics of the house of the year   

I thought you were joking until I read it twice, but you are, of course, having a front door that's scaled to the house   

Not far to go now ? 

[AliG]

Almost there, they are mainly doing landscaping and snagging.

 

They seem to have left this pain in the neck job to the end.

 

We went out today with one of the pieces of stone hanging from a forklift as they manoeuvred it into place. They had 4 men plus the forklift. I realised they will have to do just 2 blocks a day and let the mortar set. Of course they said it would take three days, but they started the week before last.

 

The archway started off narrower in the first design sketches, but I asked for it wider. Our old house had a similar arch with narrower proportions.

Edited May 28, 2018 by AliG

[Ferdinand]

You're in? Looks superb, and you must be very pleased.

 

I'll post it so that nobody else has to, now that you are "In Da House".

 

 

Edited May 29, 2018 by Ferdinand

[Cpd]

As a stonemason I can fully appreciate this part of the works. I once built a stone road up to a lighthouse and each stone came in at about 700kg  we were aiming for  <3mm gaps and it all takes a long time. Looking great man.  

[AliG]

Thanks @Cpd

 

They did a dry fit of the last few pieces of the arch today.

[Mr Punter]

Is that a mix of Poratherm type and concrete blocks and if so why?

[AliG]

The house is basically built entirely from Porotherm.

 

But they have occasionally used concrete blocks where the strength is useful. They are tying the sandstone blocks into the blockwork and it is a lot easier to attach things to concrete blocks than Porotherm. As it is in a porch it doesn't make matter in terms of insulation. All the blocks that you can see are fully outside walls. That area was also built after the main house.

 

As an aside, I ultimately think that the Porotherm may have been a waste of time and money. Although it is better insulated than concrete blocks, the difference is quite marginal and the builders find blocks easier to work with.

 

If I was building again I would either try to use ICF which is what I originally wanted to use or full fill blockwork cavity. I have not fully looked into the full fill cavity option which I didn't explore as I didn't think that they would allow it is Scotland, now I am not so sure. I reckon full full cavity is likely to have a lot less issue with gaps and air getting into the insulation than the Celotex that we have used.

 

Another house has been built at the opposite end of the road at the same time as mine. It is timber frame with a blockwork skin. It has an enormous number of perpend vents in the walls. I am certainly glad that I don't have them.

Edited May 30, 2018 by AliG

[AliG]

The archway is finished so we can use the front door again. They do need to finish the front face.

 

We can now finish the render off.

 

Our fitted bookcases are in, we have to choose one of those three door finishes.

 

[Onoff]

Be a pity to render that brickwork over the bookcases!

Edited June 9, 2018 by Onoff

[AliG]

Those brick slips are attached direct to the Protherm, so we have a very solid feeling fake brick wall. They went a bit overboard with the pointing so it needs to be cleaned off.

[AliG]

I had hoped we would be finished by now and I would do a photoshoot of the house, but it is dragging along.

 

We are mainly doing landscaping and snagging.

 

We finally have a driveway, the resin bound top still has to go on. They seem very intent on us taking a specific colour and we are suspicious that is just what they have readily available so have refused to install it until we see more samples.

 

I hated the untidy bush along the road in front of the house, I thought it really let the place down, so I applied to build a new fence and then we tarmaced the pavement. Hopefully the neighbours are enjoying their nice new pavement.

 

The lights are connected up on the stairs and I think they just look fantastic.

 

Driveway, gates are also going in.

 

 

Pavement and hedge before we tidied it up

 

New pavement and fence

 

 

Stairs

 

 

Edited October 25, 2018 by AliG

[lizzie]

Love the stairs!

[newhome]

Stairs are stunning! 

[Simplysimon]

could see Fred and Ginger coming down those!

[AliG]

I'd probably be more Stan and Ollie!

[vivienz]

Gorgeous!

[Mr Punter]

Tarmac.. yawn

Fence.. zzz

Hedge... whatever

Stairs... Just beautiful!

[AliG]

Can’t believe that we still aren’t quite finished.

 

Have to report on a recent comedy of errors.

 

The builder decided he would use a cherry picker to put the tops on the chimneys so he could get all the scaffolding down.

 

The chimneys are pretty high up at 13m and have large aluminium tops that match the windows and soffits/fascias.

 

So in comes an enormous cherry picker.

 

They manage to have it sink into the garden.

 

So then they bring in artic to tow it out.

 

The artic can’t turn around in the driveway and backing it out they hit the gate pillars that they had built less than a week earlier.

 

Eventually they got up and put the tops on. Yesterday doing the second one they got stuck 13m in the air when the weight alarm went off on the cherry picker. I only knew because I looked out of the window and saw the joiner who had gone home earlier outside fiddling with the machine. Eventually we got them down once we figured out how to use the emergency battery power.

Edited November 18, 2018 by AliG

[Onoff]

Lucky it didn't topple into the house. Nasty bloody things! 

[AliG]

Notes on heating costs as we near completion.

 

The builder has applied to the architect for completion, there are a few jobs I would like done first, but we are close to being done.

 

I have been examining my gas bill as E.On have got themselves confused and won't accept my meter readings which they think are too high. They seem to have extrapolated from the brief period when the meter was fitted but the heating was not switched on and so the new figures seem wrong.

 

It appears that we have used £3000 in gas over the first 11.5 months. On the one hand, arguably not bad for a large house with a pool, on the other hand higher than expected.

 

I am trying to figure out what the normal usage will be, there are a few things that drastically increased gas usage in the first year.

 

The heating was connected up before the thermostats, thus for a few weeks it just ran flat out 24 hours a day. With a 40kw boiler, that is around £30 a day.

 

The builders don't believe in closing doors as this slows them down, luckily they are no longer about.

 

They have only just finished mastic around all the windows and doors. In particular the bottom of windows and doors was not sealed up and so we had some draughts to contend with. I reckon that heating costs have fallen by around 1/3 in the last few weeks as this has happened.

 

For some time the hot water loop was not insulated and used more energy than expected.

 

There is still some sealing to be done around a couple of windows and the flue for the kitchen fire, they just cut a big hole in the wall and pushed the pipe through without sealing around it. There is a very  clear draught into the kitchen from this. In hindsight I probably would not have bothered with a fire, it costs a fortune to install due to gas regs, requires cutting lots of holes in the house and hardly ever gets used.

 

So recently we have been using around 325 kWh per day in gas. When the heating was not kicking in we were using 75-100Wkh per day for hot water and heating the pool. I am guessing that heating the pool uses more energy at this time of year, even the hot water will use a little more, so let's say that we use 100kWh per day for hot water/pool and 250kWh per day for heating. It has been unusually warm and usage has been closer to 350kWh on days with more normal winter temperatures.

 

My guess is that I will end up with around 4 months of 250kWh per day space heating and 2 months of 150 kWh per day. The rest of the year the heating will be off.

 

Judging by @JSHarris worksheet, I should be using around 150kWh per day for heating. My suspicion was that this was always a best case scenario and involved the builders doing everything correctly as well as not allowing for cold bridges reducing u-values below the numbers that I input.

 

Using these numbers I will get to a gas usage of 30,000 kWh for the pool and hot water, around 1/3 hot water, 2/3 pool. For heating I would guess around 40,000 kWh.

 

So a total bill of around £2200 a year, gas has now risen back over 3p per kWh.

 

This is roughly what I was spending in the old house at around 45% of the size and with no pool or pumped hot water system. My hope was that I could run this house for a similar amount. Indeed, now that I have typed this out, I may even allow some thermostats to be set a little higher as gas usage isn't as bad as I felt it was.

 

I still have to get a diverter connected up to use excess PV generation to heat hot water which will save a little.

 

Our MVHR is on and working well in terms of providing fresh air. It is noticeable that spare rooms where the heating is off I think have their temperature dragged down a little by the MVHR.

 

We do notice that some kitchen smells get dragged into the hall. As the kitchen has an extract and input I am wondering if I should seal under the door. We tend to forget to use the extractor fan.

 

There are definitely areas where I think I can improve further on insulation/air tightness, we have not had an airtightness test yet. The integral garage ceiling is insulated, but not sealed around the edges which may be allowing some cold air into the fabric of house. The two rooms that have coombed storage space have could definitely take more insulation in the coombed areas and the doors into the coombs are not  sealed. The room in this area with the heating off is noticeably colder than the other spare rooms.

 

But I suspect that I could do a lot of work and spend some money and only reduce heating costs by £1 per day.

 

What is noticeable is that the temperature in the house is very steady and only falls slowly at night when the thermostats turn down. Also I felt the triple glazed windows and the outside walls the other day and there is little difference in temperature, unlike previous houses that I have lived in it is very difficult to tell what the outside temperature is doing from inside the house.

 

BTW by far the cosiest room in the house is the home cinema. Constantly running we have two ethernet switches, a CCTV HDD recorder, Heatmiser controller, Fibaro Homecenter and Sky Q. Then there is a projector and AV amp running when we are watching the screen as well as games consoles. Heating has never been on in the room and temperature rarely drops below 22-23C, can get to 25C watching a movie, the back door of the AV rack vents into the utility room if it gets too warm. I had them make the MVHR in this room an extract to make some use of the heat. I have not checked our electricity consumption yet!

Edited January 3, 2019 by AliG

[AliG]

The driveway has been laid and I think they have done a fantastic job.

 

I have also finally got around to putting up a postbox and a doorbell.

 

I got the doorbell from a company called Metzler Trade that sells on Amazon and its own website, a lovely quality item. It always disappoints me when people have little plastic doorbells. I forgot to include power for the bell so put a Grothe wireless bell behind it.

 

All the gutters, soffits and fascias are finished. We also framed around the garage doors in matching aluminium. This is an area that is usually just painted wood and starts to blow after a while.

 

The builder just has a smallish list of things to finish off.

 

Finally we can get the walls and doors washed down, I didn't see any point before the drive was down.

 

The landscapers want to start in a couple of weeks now also which is good.

 

Edited January 12, 2019 by AliG

[newhome]

Wow, that's all looking amazing! 

[Gone West]

Congratulations, very smart. Where did the post box come from?

Edited January 12, 2019 by PeterStarck

[AliG]

Thanks.

 

Cam from Postboxshop. Quite reasonably priced. 

 

Can take a parcel 200x330x200 so you don't need to answer the door for lots of smallish Amazon parcels.

 

https://www.postboxshop.com