wk:10 ground floor frame mostly complete...

Week 10 started off with some pretty unseasonal weather with gales on Tuesday and plenty of rain to boot. However Jonathan's team have been cracking on with the ground floor frame.

The internal racking board is mostly in place with joints taped for air tightness. 

In addition the guys have started on the stud work that starts to give us a good feeling of the room sizes

In the photo below the racking boards are fully taped on the seams as well as air tightness tape being applied to the junction with the slab. Also the timbers have been placed onto the racking board that will take the plaster board leaving a service void between for running cables and pipes

Thea has been trying out the spaces for size and running potential.

The huge laminated beams are on site (below left) which will support the floor joists (below right) with some luck good progress will be made on these in the week to come (week 11)

Off site at Jonathan's workshop, Mark the Dutch Joiner has been cleaning up the 4 huge green oak posts that will support the first floor in the large open plan area. These posts came from Anton Coaker's farm deep in the depths of Dartmoor. 

Then we are trying to make a decision on whether to get one of these?

Basically its a hot water tank combined with an air source heat pump, in one unit! If you really want one you can get more info here: http://www.ariston.com/uk/NUOS/NUOS_250i_air_source_heat_pump

So previously we had decided against having gas in the house, instead just heating the hot water and space heating via electric with the bulk of it being Economy 7 for improved rates. Part of this was financial - it works out cheaper when you take everything into account (projected over about 10 years - albeit with a number of assumptions ) but part of it was driven by a desire to live in a house without lots of complex stuff to go wrong or need servicing. 

So this space aged looking beast does rather go against the grain on the complexity stakes but it gives an increase in heat output for a given heat input (approx 2-3 times) by using the input energy to extract heat from ambient external air, essentially by doing what a fridge does in reverse. So it makes hot water cheaper to produce but on the downside its more expensive to buy in the first place and is more to go wrong... 

First step will be to do the maths. Its amazing how much maths has been done in this project to try and make some sensibly informed decisions rather than going on gut instincts.