It's starting to look like a house

On schedule the drillers arrived on Monday 11th April and got started drilling the two 100m deep bore holes for the ground source heat pump flow loops. For those not familiar with these devices you pump cold liquids down the loops where it heats up due to the temperature of the ground and you then extract the heat from the liquid at the surface. In a perfect world you can get out 4 - 5 times as much energy as you put in. There is more to the science than that but that is the basics

Spudding in

Despite there being 95m of very hard granite in each bore hole the drilling went very well and the biggest problem was with the rig's air compressor breaking down. We encountered good water levels in both bore holes (as expected) which is good news since it should maximise the heat transfer to the system.

The following week the SIPs Industries team turned up and started with the erection of the house structure. A very exciting time and the weather co operated by giving us bright sunny and warm days for the whole week. The whole familiy were on site to see this work commence and even Ewan was helping to keep the site tidy fully decked out in appropriate gear

Ewan helping tidy up

The first day was a bit slow with the delivery being un loaded from the lorry and sole plate starting to be fixed to the under building block work.

Leveling plate and sole plate fixed to the blockwork

It was great seeing the very first panels going up. It felt like the culmination of a couple years serious planning were really starting to take shape.

The first panels are erected

 

Once the panels started to go up however things really got goings and the house is really starting to take shape now

Progress at the end of day 2 for SIPs Industries

Heidi & I have been taking advanatage of the good weather, being on site, and having a skip available to remove the old post and wire fence that surrounded the site originally. Even doing this has made things look so much better. We also plan to get the weed killer out while the good weather holds and stop the masses of stinging  nettles in their tracks.

Work is due to get going again next week after the Easter weekend holiday is over. more SIPs being delivered on Tuesday along with the scaffolding starting to go up

Floor slabs poured

 Another short week with work starting on Wednesday. Good progress was made finishing the internally drainage,

West side of the house

East side of the house

 
pouring the floor slabs

DPM down in master bedroom & lounge

Pouring the concrete by digger bucket

Leveling & smoothing the slabs

Floor slabs poured

and getting started with the external drainage.

Drainage outside the main entrance

Drainage between house and garage

Starting to get a bit behind schedule with the drainage work now which should have been completed a week ago. Rainwater harvesting tank is to go in next week now while the drillers are doing their thing. Should be spreading the top soil over the main garden next week so we can clear that away from being too close to the trees. With continued access for heavy machinery required to both sides of the house still, and until all the external masonary work and roofing is done it will be a while before the sewage tank goes in.

Drillers in next week for the bore hole and SIPs Industries still lined up for the following week. Soon we'll have a structure that looks like a house

Internal drainage

Work didn't get started until Thurday this week and was a late morning start after heavy rain first thing. Once things got going though good progress was made starting to back fill the under building and install the internal drainage for all the various pop up that are needed.

Back filling by retaining wall

Back filling internally

Drainage outside house on west side

Drainage and conduit outside the utility room

Work won't start again until Wednesday next week so hopefully we can get everything done we need to before the drillers arrive