week:17 lots going on...

Week 17 has seen more visible progress than last week with movement in a number of areas. 

The Vakro roof-light 1.5m x 1m is in. Apparently it has a remote control and a rain sensor and is very elegant and looks great above the stair well. 

Not shown here but the slope of the roof is so slight (2.8 degrees approx) that water tends to sit on the face of it until it builds off and runs off. Here the rooflight can be seen from teh outside on the OSB roof.

Some of the small windows have gone in. Beautifully modelled here by Zac and Chris. The green material is the air tighness layer that ensures there are no air gaps between the window and the hole it sits in. The green layer is fastened to the window reveal.

Another joiner - Ryan has joined the team! He is the slightly mad looking one below.

Ryan has been amongst other things, working on the half height wall around the top of the stair well. 

And also putting the support in for the first of the first floor front windows:

There has also been a bunch more stud work done at the first floor, seen here on a wet day! This gives us a much better feel for the rooms now. 

Zac and others have been cracking on with the wood fibreboard which is now mostly in place on the outside of the house. Seen here on the west wall: 

Break time!

Then finally looking ahead to week 18. The first fix plumbing and electrics is starting. John Daniel from  JD Electrics seen below doing a pre start meeting with Jonathan ahead of a Monday morning start. In addition Chris and team from Smokless energy will also be on site, so a busy week and busy site all round in week 18.  

week:16 the glass arrives...

I don't get the impression anybody really enjoyed week 16.

Its was the first time I have heard Jonathan a little flustered, when I called on Monday afternoon. At the time he, along with the entire rest of the 9 man team, were in a yard unloading a lorry load of very expensive Katzbeck windows from Austria. The problem being that these windows are triple glazed and very big, so they are very heavy and they are very delicate. And they were actually unloading 2 houses worth, not just ours. And they were on borrowed time in a borrowed yard. So all in all they were all faced with a fairly big and nasty job. The windows could not be delivered to site as the lorry was just too large. So Jonathan arranged them to be delivered to a warehouse nearby so they could be easily ferried to the site. Jonathan was surprisingly quiet that week as I think the sheer scale of the task of getting these huge and delicate beasts to site unfolded. Suffice to say it took most of the guys most of the week to unload them and get them over to the site. Some pics below to give a flavour.

In eager preparation the scaffolding from the front of the building was removed, and Zack's Dad practised a little Tai Chi

Windows then started to arrive. But first the guys had to build a special a-frame for the hire van. Below a series of demounted (to save weight) glass panels are delivered

There was plenty of planning!

And lots of heavy lifting

And here they are - windows - the white protective tape covers up the RAL7016 (grey) aluminium exteriors. Even the smallest windows, a modest 800*1200mm need two men to lift.

Some big lift-and-slide panes for the dinning room and kitchen

But the week ended well with all the windows safely (we believe)

onsite and the biggest of all weighing in at almost 500kg installed!

Here seen from the inside looking out. 

Thea, Em and I celebrated by making a cake. 

And tested some of our flooring samples for their potential to stain. Our test substances being dark soy, curry paste, tomato ketchup and olive oil. Amazingly all faired pretty well. The coatings on trial were Osmo Raw and and Ciranova UN1CO Oil with a extra maintenance oil coat. The latter is used on the very nice (but sadly too expensive) floors from Reeve of which we have a number of very nice samples.   

And took a trip on the river to see how it was looking from the water. It was never going to be a discrete house. 

wk:15 almost a roof...

Again a week with some time lost as a result of bad weather but we do now have some wood fibre board on the downstairs external walls and most of a roof.

Here the metal channel is fixed to the edge of the slab for the wood fibre board to sit in.

And here it is like huge sheets of LDF but doubtless much higher spec. It looks like it should absorb water like weetabix but amazingly when I ran, even a cut face, under the tap for a few minutes it appeared to be fairly resistant to absorption.

The shot below shows the thickness (something probably approaching 90mm). 

The shot below shows the inside of the first floor (looking west along the southern balcony line) with roof frames all in place and a layer of membrane above (hence its starting to look darker inside. This is all helping to give a much better idea of the spaces inside the house on the first floor.

The photo below shows the roof from the outside. The 2"*2"s are ready to have the OSB Boards laid ontop. Eventually there will be an EPDM single ply waterproof membrane on the very outer surface.   

The final photo just gives a quick look from the south (front). Quite hard to get a good idea because of all the scaffolding but the three bays of the house stand out clearly. Apparently the windows from Katsbeck arrive from Austria on Monday.

wk:14 despite the weather...

Week 14 has not been kind weather wise. The week started with a heatwave and ended up with a deluge on site taking out an entire day and filling the building with large quantities of water.

However by the end of Monday of week 15 the first floor is coming on fast in terms of the stud walls, roof frame etc. The photos below show the structural stud work walls that run north south and take the load of the roof akin the to the oak posts on the ground floor. The big beams sticking out to the left below support the cantilevered roof that over-sails the balcony

You can also see that the 1st floor walls now have their green racking boards installed and blue airtightness tape in place.

As see from the west wide of the balcony looking east.

The picture below shows just how much of the roof framing has been completed. The West bay is still todo, the gap in the centre is for the skylight which will let light down into the stairwell and down the the back of the ground floor open plan area.

Jonathan has sourced a Fakro rooflight that looks much better than the one we had planned to use originally, has a motorised remote control to open it and a rain sensor. If you are interested: click here And the real thing is even onsite looking as yet fairly modest.

In other news the southern most oak posts are now installed and looking good, though we'll rotate one!

We are teetering on placing an order for the kitchen...

We are trying to finalise the electrical layout (sockets, lights, switches) ahead of electrical first fix in about 2 weeks we hope. 

We are even looking at paint and not just any paint. As recommended by Jonathan we are going to save the planet by using pollution neutralising paint from Keim. From their website

Keim Ecosil-ME is a high performance, environmentally friendly mineral paint for interior use.  Keim Ecosil-ME is the only internal silicate paint which optimises air quality, making use of the MiNox™ effect – using photo-catalytic pigments to reduce noxious gases and odours by transforming them into natural substances

 Bring on the tie dye and patchouli...