Self-build in Perth & Kinross - hello

[Kelvin]

Cladding finished. Really happy with the end result. It’s not obvious from the pictures but there is a distinct colour difference between the end elevation and the front elevation. The end elevation has been up about two weeks and is already significantly less orange and lighter compared to the front. Really happy so far with how it’s weathering. 
 

Edited August 24, 2023 by Kelvin

[Alan Ambrose]

Looks great

[Kelvin]

A few of you asked about the SiOO:X treatment. Here’s a picture that shows the difference between cladding fitted two weeks ago (the light coloured cladding) and cladding unwrapped and fitted today. It also highlights that it’s weathering even under the cills. This is the North elevation so doesn’t get quite as much rain or sun. To speed things along I could spray water under the cill  

 

 

[Jenki]

Looks great. I'm hoping our will look similar.

My cladding will have to be au natural, budget dictated there was no chance. I looked at the cost of the treatment and it would have cost as much as the cladding🙈. Let's see what effect the Caithness sea air has on untreated Scottish Larch

Hopefully start our cladding in the next 2 weeks. I predict an orange tinted house for several months.

[Kelvin]

It’s not cheap. Remember you can apply it anytime so you could do it later when funds allow. 
 

I had to drop off three cockerels to a neighbour at the weekend. They also had board on board scottish larch that was 7 years old. It looked awful (to me) and exactly what I’ve been trying to avoid. It was black at the bottom, as new orange in all the protected areas and various shades of grey in between. This was also on the north elevation, never saw the other elevations to see how they were fairing. The other thing they had done was block off the ventilation gaps so I had a sly look close up and noticed that some of the cladding was loose so I reckon the battens have rotted and come away from the building. 
 

What screws do you plan on using? The self drilling/countersinking are great as they grip well, cut cleanly, and don’t split the wood. 

Edited August 29, 2023 by Kelvin

[Kelvin]

Here’s another picture showing about 3 weeks apart 

[TonyT]

Looks Ace!

[Jenki]

On 29/08/2023 at 19:31, Kelvin said:

Here’s another picture showing about 3 weeks apart 

This made me think, it looks so much better than letting it age slowly. But our budget says no.  Was looking around and found a product called Eco Wood Treatment. A one coat, one time,harmless to environment treatment.

The coverage rates suggest a cost for our cladding to be £160. Compared to around £750. So I bit the bullet.

It's a pack with crystals that you mix with clean water. 

So my trial brush on, no noticeable effect other than being wet. Then 10 minutes in the sun. Wow... 

The sample at the front 20mins after coating, the one to the left about. 10 minutes and the stack underneath are untreated.

[Kelvin]

Good stuff. Looks great. 
 

Sounds similar to the Sioo:X stuff. It’s a two step process though consisting of a wood protection step 1 and a surface protection as step 2. 

[Jenki]

10 minutes ago, Kelvin said:

Good stuff. Looks great. 
 

Sounds similar to the Sioo:X stuff. It’s a two step process though consisting of a wood protection step 1 and a surface protection as step 2. 

I'm not kidding myself that it will be the same quality of the Sioo:X, but it gives the silvery look a helping hand. I'd say at the moment it's more a light brown, grey. The instructions advise that the effect is better after rain and sun cycles. So we will see.

[Kelvin]

Airtightness taping and sealing finally finished. Hopefully I’ll never need to tape another window ever again! Judged the tape perfectly. On my last roll. 😂 

 

Boarding out about 70% done. Will be finished this week. About half the back boxes are in and the plasterers will make a start this week on the rooms that are ready. I also finished the cabling for the TV/cinema room. 
 

Ran into another kit erection problem though. One of the vertical steels isn’t plumb or square. We couldn’t leave it as it was 20mm off and is in the kitchen tall cabinet sightline so you would have seen it running off. The other problem is the horizontal steel, where it meets the floor joists, is running off from one end to the other across a 5.4m span and it also sits a few mm below the bottom of the joists so is presenting a problem of getting the ceiling plasterboarding level and how to fix it to the steel. The plan is to use thinner plasterboard than the 15mm ceiling plasterboard to see if the step can be lost when plastering. If that isn’t going to work we’ll steal an idea @Gus Potter suggested which is rather than trying to hide the problem make a feature of it by creating a definite step the width of the steel. Gus suggested this for a different reason though! 
 

 

Edited September 12, 2023 by Kelvin

[Thorfun]

10 minutes ago, Kelvin said:

rather than trying to hide the problem make a feature of it

we used this technique many many many times over the course of our build!!

[Gus Potter]

On 24/08/2023 at 16:49, Kelvin said:

Cladding finished. Really happy with the end result.

That looks great. In some ways when viewed from that angle the shed behind makes it all flow and blend into the landscape.

[Dunc]

13 hours ago, Kelvin said:

Airtightness taping and sealing finally finished. Hopefully I’ll never need to tape another window ever again! Judged the tape perfectly. On my last roll. 😂 

 

Did you bother with an air tightness test before starting boarding?

[Amateur bob]

On 22/03/2023 at 10:25, Kelvin said:

Fun and games with all the rain slowing us down a little so have got hardcore down all around to make site easier to work on. 
 

Meeting with timber kit company was interesting. The purpose of the meeting was to check the foundation ahead of the kit manufacture and delivery next month plus access, and delivery details. We had to talk them in to actually measuring it because it ‘looked fine’ We’ve already measured and it matches the drawings (2mm out in one dimension and 3mm out in the other, no diagonal on the drawing but it’s all square) but I wanted the kit manufacturer to satisfy themselves it was fine otherwise why bother coming out. It’s also in their contract. Eventually they did it. 
 

This week we’re finishing off preparations for the slab pour on Friday for house. We’ve delayed the garage slab pour until next week.  Drainage is all in and capped off. I said not to put the inspection chambers and manhole covers in place until after the kit is up in case they ran over them in the telehandler so we’ve banged some posts in for now. 
 

I now have all the trades lined up to hit the ground running as soon as the kit is up. The plan being to go as fast as we can so that we’re more or less complete by October. 

im just curious, why did the timber frame company have to check it before the slab pour? i had half thought about working away and getting founds done and up to concrete slab before then looking into the timber frame and doing it over a couple of years

[Kelvin]

3 hours ago, Amateur bob said:

im just curious, why did the timber frame company have to check it before the slab pour? i had half thought about working away and getting founds done and up to concrete slab before then looking into the timber frame and doing it over a couple of years

To make sure the foundation matched the size of the kit and to measure for the steels which they miscalculated ironically causing me no end of grief 

[Kelvin]

On 13/09/2023 at 08:42, Dunc said:

Did you bother with an air tightness test before starting boarding?

@DuncApologies I forgot to reply to this. Yes we did. I got 0.88 on the initial test. Obvious leak around one Velux so fixed that. The other two main areas were the balcony door which has a trim to fit and the ducting in the floor that goes outside to the garage. I had just used dpm tape temporarily so will eventually seal that up properly. 

[Dunc]

Cheers. Sounds like a good result!

 

[Kelvin]

Yes happy enough with that. I was a bit concerned we’d blown it (literally) due to all the early construction problems and screw ups so set my expectations low. 

[Kelvin]

Plaster boarding finished yesterday and plastering starts today. 
 

[MikeSharp01]

nice work

[Kelvin]

Got a bit of tidying up to do this morning! 
 

[Kelvin]

Interesting how things work out.  The in built book case at the top of the stairs wasn’t supposed to be there. That whole void ought to have been a cupboard. However due to the various construction problems HH caused us we had to re-route the MVHR ductwork up through here plus there’s some extra steelwork above that doorway. The option was to just create a void with possibly an access panel on the bedroom wall. However I decided to box it in and use some of the void to create that inset book case. It will come half way up with space for a nice picture we have above it. The beam was also never supposed to be exposed but this was the beam that caused us a bit of trouble so we decided to leave it open as a reninder 😂 While it’s not a big bit of solid oak the glulams are actually quite nice in themselves. I’ll oil it etc to bring it out a bit. Had we not had these construction problems to deal with we might well have not done any of this. 
 

The other issue HH caused us is the first floor height is wrong so the ceiling downstairs above the kitchen is much lower than it should have been by 120mm! I managed to reduce that by 35mm by reducing the floor insulation from 210mm to 185mm and cutting the 45mm wall plate out, adding back in a 10mm cement board and lowering all the full height windows. What a palaver that was. It does mean we’ve still gained all that extra height upstairs so the bedroom ceiling height is 2.6m and exposed beam room 2.9m. It also means the ceiling heights in different parts of the house are all different which I keep telling everyone is characterful. 😂 

[Amateur bob]

On 19/09/2023 at 21:22, Kelvin said:

To make sure the foundation matched the size of the kit and to measure for the steels which they miscalculated ironically causing me no end of grief 

They wouldn't be able to check once slap poured? Ah not ideal how did you fix this?

[Kelvin]

23 minutes ago, Amateur bob said:

They wouldn't be able to check once slap poured? Ah not ideal how did you fix this?

The slab was already poured. Foundation blockwork built. If the foundation is wrong they vary the timber kit to fit as it was still to be constructed. Our foundation was accurate to within 3mm. If was the most accurate foundation they’d ever built a house on. They measured for the steels twice and still got it wrong! 
 

I didn’t spot it until was too late to do anything about the steels as the house is as built. The consequence is the kitchen ceiling height is wrong by 119mm. I reduced the size of the problem by bringing the floor down and a few other things. Heb Homes ceilings are already low by design so it wasn’t ideal. It just affects the kitchen, downstairs bathroom, and guest bedroom. It’s not an issue in the bathroom and bedroom because of the utility of both rooms. We get away with it in the kitchen because of our floor to ceiling windows that look out to the Sidlaw Hills and it’s vaulted at the living room so your eye is drawn to that rather than the ceiling.