Merry Xmas

There has been a flourish of work in the last 10 days so one final report for 2011.

The larch work is now fully completed on both the hosue and garage so there is lots more varishing to be done when the weather co operates with us again

Garage door finished

Larch detail on corner window

The pend glass roof has also now been installed so externally the house and garage are complete externally

Glass roof to pend installed

Close up of glass pend roof

The ground works guys have also been back installing the rain water harvesting tank, filter and getting on with installing the remaining drainage.

Top of rain water tank and filter

Drainage outside study

Drainage at back of garage

Work has now stopped for the year and will commence again on January 9th (weather permitting). There are 2 to 3 weeks ground works remaining so the focus for 2012 will be getting on with the internal works.

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to everyone

Garage exterior complete

Another work weekend finished and things continue to progress well. This weekend was cold with a sprinkling of snow on the ground when we arrived on Saturday morning which made things look very atmospheric.

View of the south face

Close up of dining room & bathroom

The garage exterior is now all but finished with only the top coat of harling to go onto the gable end closest to the house. The garage doors are in and the colour matches very well with the larch cladding.

Garage doors

The whole work weekend was spent laying DPM and cliptrack on the first floor in preparation of screeding the upper floor. I had a full work crew with me with my parents and Heidi's dad helping out so many thanks to them for all their efforts. It all takes a lot longer than on expects doing all this fiddly work. We managed to break the back of the job and only have a small section of DPM & cliptrack to go on the first floor before we can get the pipe down. Current plan is to get this done in February and screeded then as well.

DPM & cliptrack laid

In the meantime we will be waiting for the last of the ground works to be completed. Don't think this will happen until January and then we have to hope the weather co operates with us. Need to get this done so we can get water onto site for filling the UFH loops.

Trench warfare!

Another weekend of work completed on the house this time digging the trenches for the GSHP flow and return lines that run from the unit to the bore holes. With the trenches required to be 1m deep and 500mm or so wide we hired in a small 1.5 tonne mini excavator for the weekend to take the majority of the workload.

Tor at the helm

Using this was a blast having never actually used one before!. Two joysticks with 2 degrees of motion each gave the hand eye coordination a thorough work out but by the end of the job it was feeling much more natural. Makes you appreciate the skill level of the guys who do this for a living and make difficult jobs look easy.

While the mini excavator shifted most of the soil we still had to resort to hard manual labour to hack through a section of weathered granite that the bucket couldn't get into. This was up to 10" thick at some points and my arms felt the work out having to swing the pick axe to smash through this. The areas around the bore holes also needed the more dexterous human touch to excavate. Thanks to mum for getting into the trenches with me and sharing some of the hard work.

Tor & Evelyn in the trenches

Finished trenches

Work has also progressed on the garage with the block work all complete and the granite work on the front progressing well. The slating is complete as well now on the garage and the beams are installed between the house and garage to take the glass pend roof.

Garage front

Garage back

Granite work on garage progressing

Internally the partition walls and ceilings are now completion the first floor so we are good to go now with getting the UFH pipes laid upstairs.

Family bathroom toilet

Storage closets bseide family bathroom

Have decided to lay the screed in two separate jobs, first floor first followed by the ground floor. this will work out to be logistically easier and psychologically better as we appear to be progressing more quickly. With one more work weekend this year and a work party lined up again I hope to get all the piping down but will need a water supply to filling and pressure test the system before screeding.

Next update in a couple of week time

Internal works progressing

Progress has continued over the last few weeks with the garage roof starting to take shape and the partition walls starting to go in on the first floor.

North side of garage roof almost complete

House & garage together

On the first floor the flat ceilings have now mostly been formed  formed along with the partition walls so it is now possible to see better what the room layout is going to be like when everything is finished. The joiners remembered to put the MVHR unit up into the attic space before the last joists went up. Good thing since it wont fit between the joists - hope we never need to take it down again!

Partition wall between Fraser's room & recreation room

Flat ceiling with MVHR unit (in box still)

Flat ceiling and partition walls in Ewan's room

I (Tor) was also back a week ago and started to get the first of the UFH pipe work installed in the master wing with help from mum & dad. Many lessons were learnt along the way which will hopefully result in a more efficent operation in future.

200mm thick insulation down first.....

...followed by DPM...

...then the UFH pipes

The master wing is good to go now and the insulation is almost complete in the lounge and started in the study.

Hopefully the partition walls are almost complete now and the garage roof finished. I'll have the oppertunity to see next weekend when I am back digging some trenches for the GSHP flow & return pipe which are scheduled to be installed into the house by the end of the month.

Looking good!

Mum and dad visited the house for us today and sent us some pictures of the house without the scaffolding coat that it had worn since the end of April.......and it looks great! The render has dried now to its final white colour

West face showing windows, larch render, granite & slate all coming together

Corner of the master wing

South face

North face

Dining room and bathroom

The garage is fairly  flying up and the roof trusses are already in place

Garage timber frame taking shape

Work will continue on the garage over the next week and a half. Then I get to see the house in person again... hopefully with some partition walls on the first floor

House is now fully weather tight

A big acheivement this week was the completion of the roofing works on the utility room wing. This means the house is now fully wind and water tight before the worst of the winter weather arrives. The other big step this week was the removal of the scaffolding from around the house. It can now be seen in its finished external state.

We also had the electricty meter installed at the end of last week and a temporary supply hooked up in the house. This will allow us to progress with the installation of the partition walls on the first floor, the next step towards getting the UFH pipes installed on that floor and ultimately getting the screed laid. That is the next big mile stone that we are working towards.

On the construction front the brickies were back to finish off the foundations on the garage this week and the scaffolding went up around the garage as well. This will allow the garage timber frame to be erected next week. The ground floor panels and roof trusses are onsite - just need bodies on site now to pu the jigsaw together!

Booked a further weekend trip back in late November to dig the trenches for the GSHP flow and return pipes. I'll be doing digging with a mini excavator which will be fun! Its also a good oppertunity to progress the laying of more floor insulation. This is  the critical path workscope right now with regard to getting the screed down so an extra weekend working on that this year is helpful.

No pictures this week - you will have to wait another week for those.

Its back to managing the build from afar after 5 days back in Aberdeen putting some additional sweat eqity into the house. With dad still not back to full health I am beginning to feel the added pressure of not being able to see what is going on every day. Even if it was just few a few photographs a  phone call each day I now appreciate how much of a benefit that was during the early part of the build.

The good news is that we are now getting to the stage where the workscope is mostly with the builder with the house almost being completed fully externally now and work on the garage to commence next week.

We all arrived back in Copenhagen on Thurday after a 5 day trip back to the UK that flew by. During that time we saw the first of the wet dash render applied and started work on laying the floor insulation inside the house.  Time was also spent completing the varnishing of the remaining larch and installing gutter debris protection. The time flew by and looking at the progress it appears to be very slow and not much to show for 5 days graft. However a lot of the work is not visible but still very important to the overall goals of the build i.e. eliminating thermal cold spots and drafts.

The render is applied as a 3 layer finish. Firstly the scratch coat is applied to the block or lath, then a base coat the same colour of the final thrown coat is applied. Finally the textured final coat is thrown to give the required finish and colour. Although in the pictures above the base coat and top coat look a beige colour it will dry to a off white finish. Having said that I think we will end up painting these areas at some stage to avoid a having kameleon like house where the colour of the render changes depending on the weather and wetness of the render!

Scratch coat applied

Base coat and wet dash applied

Internally the most obvious work completed was the floor insulation laid in the lounge. This was probably one of the most fidly rooms to start with taking all day to get to this point. Lessons have been learnt and the process should be more efficent in future

First of the floor insulation laid

The big thing next week is the removal of the scaffolding from the house. It will be great to see it without this in the way and also finally see how much light our big windows will let into the house. The garage should start taking shape as well next week with work switching to there from the house. The final section of roof on the house should be slated  as well to give us a fully  wind and water tight structure -  albiet behind where I had originally hoped but still ahead of the winter weather which was the main objective

I'm hoping that our electricty meter was installed on Friday (the supply cable was pulled and connected on Monday) so we can get a temporary supply hooked up in the house. Once we have that we will also be starting to install the partition walls and flat ceilings on the first floor. Once these are in we will be able to better visualise how the layout will look on this floor. Exciting times ahead still!

Granite walls finished

A brief update this week.

The granite walls on the house were finished this week. After a power hosing down a final smooth mix of mortar was applied to point the joints to add the finishing touch

Garry brushing the joints after pointing

A finished section

Render application should start  the middle of next week as long as the weather co operates and the personnel are available. This time next week we will have seen for ourselves what the house looks like and it won't be long before the scaffolding is down and the house is revealed in all its glory!

All windows now in

Another productive week and a half with the last windows being installed and the granite walls continuing to progress.

Bathroom dormer window

Work progressing by the study corner window

Granite walls nearing completion

 

The good news is that we now have a structure that we are able to lock up and that is essentially water tight. 

The flue installation for the wood buring stove in the lounge also started but will require a further visit from the installer to finish it off.

Stove flue installation commencing

Stove fire box temporarily in place to allow positioning of flue

Another week should see the granite walls completed and the work to get the remaining walls rendered should start next week.

Heidi is looking forward to seeing the house in person again in a couple weeks time for the first time since the end of June. A lot has happened since then and we have a busy trip planned now that we can start working on the inside.

Granite work started

Another productive weekend and a half has seen the outside of the house really starting to take on what will be its final appearance. I had the oppertunity to spend some more time on site earlier this week as I was in Aberdeen for a training course so could spend a couple hours on site in the evenings before it became too dark to work. This allowed me to get a bit more varnishing of the larch cladding done but there is still a good amount to go!

At the end of last week the remedial brackets were installed onto the corner windows steel lintels. These brackets transfer the load of the walls into the steel work at these locations and allow us to avoid having a pillar in the corner of the window apart from where the window meet. This allowed me to remove the temporary supports, which was a rather nerve racking affair to start with. However the saw blade never jammed once indicating that in fact there wasn't much load being taken by the temporary supports.

Temporary supports gone

With this done the corner windows could be installed along with the utility room door and the boys bedroom windows.

Master bathroom corner window installed

Windows installed in Ewan's bedroom

The only outstanding windows to be delivered when I left yesterday was the family bathroom window and that was due today. So hopefully we now have a wind tight structure.

Probably the biggest visual change in the last week though has been the start of the granite work on the walls. The brickies so far have managed to take our wishes into account and the stone work is really starting to look good. Its quite a jigsaw puzzle for then trying to get all the pieces to fit.

Detail of the granite work

West face with granite almost complete

With all the ground floor windows in now it shouldn't take them long to complete the masonary work and I expect that by the time we go back in mid October for a few days (school holiday time) externally the house will be complete. It will be exciting to remove the scaffolding and have clear view of the house.

Dad unfortunately developed a bad hernia last week so won't be on site again until he is fully recovered. This will make it a bit more challenging to keep updated with progress so updates maybe less frequent for a while.

Blockwork started

Work progressed visually again this week with the main progress being the start of the external blockwork skin in the areas where there will be a wet harl render finish and where there will be granite work

Blockwork outside the utility room

Electricity meter box installed

At the end of last week we had one more door show up which happened to be the front door and this was installed and the larch cladding completed at the main entrance way.

Front door with larch cladding

The brickies started the block work by first finishing off the stove enclosure. This will allow us to get the stove flue installed while we still have the scaffolding in place and easy access to the main ridge.

Stove enclosure

The blacksmith was out on Monday morning this week to look at what was needed to implement the remedial bracket solutions that will support the structure at the corner window locations. Apart from having to move the steel lintels out a bit to allow the brackets to be installed the solution the engineer developed was fairly simple. Hopefully we will get done soon and get the last remaining windows on the ground floor installed - looks like I'll get get the job of removing the temporary supports when I am back next weekend. I know I'll be holding my breath when I do that!