Pictures from Easter

We had a productive Easter holiday week back in Aberdeenshire as seen in previous post about preparation for the screed.

Thought it would be nice to share some pictures of the exterior of the house ... taken during the Easter week.  As you'll see, we experienced some rather non-spring weather!!

Monday 2nd April - snow!!

Tuesday 3rd April - is it still winter??!

View down private lane toward main road

View from near the corner at main road

West side of house as seen from the main road

South side of house

Screed floor laid

I like it when things come together!

The floors were screeded as planned on Monday without any issues which represents a significant step forward for us on the build. We can now get the last partition walls up and start strapping in the SIP walls to create a service void for our wiring and plumbing.

We used a pumpable calcium sulphate based screed which reduced the installation time to just a day. It was a late finish for the crews and dad and they didn't leave site until gone 19:00 having started sometime after lunch. The pumpable screed avoids having any air pockets around the UFH pipes, gives a better surface finish, and allows for a thinner screed depth compared to a standard sand/cement screed. All our hard work of the Easter week and before that is now buried never to be seen again although it will certainly be felt

Starting to pump the screed on the first floor

Screeding the hall area with surface level devices visible

Screeding the master bedroom and en suite

Screed poured and leveled at the front door

The screed now has a couple of weeks to cure before I am back at the beginning of May for a long work weekend. Attention now turns to getting ready for all the first fix work that needs to be done and I have already lined up the electricians & home automation people for the end of June when I will have a week on site while Heidi and the boys are in the US. It feels the work list gets no shorter, but at least it is different than it has been for the last few months! Attention is now turning to selecting plumbing and lighting fixtures so that we can get the first fix sorted out correctly.

Ready for screed

After 8 hard days work we are now ready for the screed to be poured on both floors of the house. We have been busy laying floor insulation , DPM and UFH pipe work all week. Its amazing how much time this all takes.  There have been times when I have thought I should have just paid someone to do this but doing it ourselves I know that things have been done correctly and know the systems inside out now - not to mention hopefully saving some costs. All the sweat equity we are investing makes the emotional bond with the house stronger! We ran out of clips for the UFH pipes on Wednesday and Heidi checked with an untold number of companies in the area before finally managing to source some locally on Friday which really saved our bacon. This was about the one material shortage of the works so the up front planning was pretty good - even if I say so myself!

All UFH loops are now terminated and have been pressure tested. Getting to this stage has been critical path activity for us and when the floors are screeded we can really start to progress again. We had a meeting with our joiner during the week as well to discuss the next stage of work for him since this is the next phase of work for us.

Looking from thedining room to the front door - DPM  down

Kitchen with DPM & pipe Cliptrack

UFH pipes installed in the dining and hall area

The big 10 loop UFH manifold before termination....

....and after

We also took delivery of the insulation that goes below the first floor ( keeping the heat from the UFH system in the first floor screed rather than going down to heat the air in the ceiling of the ground floor ) and the garage storage area plus the two baths for the house during the week so have no space left in the garage now. these two deliveries were delayed from our February trip over so it was good to finally get the goods on site.

While the house is basically completed externally the garden still needs attention and Heidi had a meeting with the landscapers during the week to try to progress this aspect. Between them they have some interesting ideas which I am looking forward to seeing sketched up. We are looking at keeping things simple inititally until we are actually back in Scotland but still wondering how much this will cost to acheive.

After concentrating on getting ready for the screed for so long my thoughts can now turn to the work list for my next work weekend in the beginning of May. I look forward to having solid floors again and not having to tip toe around on the insulations and UFH pipes