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

Under building complete

Over the last week the weather has co operated with us and it has been mostly dry but with a cold wind still blowing through. This hasn't stopped the brickies from cracking on with the under building and now the house and garage substructures are built and the retaining wall to the west of the house will be done tomorrow

House & garage under building complete

Retaing wall starting to take shape

Next week the drainage goes in, along with the rainwater harvesting tank & sewage tank, the under building  back filled and hopefully the floor slabs poured before the building contractor has a weeks holiday.

With most of the ground floor walls being SIPs and requiring load bearing under building we can really start to see the lay out of the ground floor stating to take shape.

I have lined the drillers up now to be on site 11th April to complete the drilling of the two bore holes for the ground source heat pump (GSHP) system. This is a week later than originally planned but was a float week in the schedule so no overall impact.

SIP panels are due to start going up on the 18th April which is great timing since we will be back in Aberdeen from the 16th for a couple of weeks after packing everything up here is Stavanger and before flying down to Copenhagen

Under building under way

After a week of inactivity due to the weather, its back to work this week. The erection of the under building being the focus of attention this week and next week. There are only two guys working on site blocking away but they are working at an impressive rate! From just having footings down on Tuesday morning

Footings laid

they had a substantial amount of the external walls completed by Thursday evening.

Under building going up

Gary & Jim hard at it

These guys do everything themselves, they are brickie and gopher all in one!

We can't believe how high these walls are, they are just to the ground floor level. There's a lot of back filling to be done! Its really good though to finally see us getting above the ground. Despite losing a week to the weather we are still much further on than we originally anticipated, in fact we did expect to get started until the end of March.

Long may the good progress last

Snow stops play

After two weeks of good progress the weather has turned wintery again  and there has been no work on site this week. We do have building block and sand now on site for the underbuilding which we will hopefull get started with next week - weather permitting

Good progress during week 2

We have just finished our second week on site and are making good progress. What was only two weeks ago a field is now clearly a building site.

Top soil stripped from site

The foundations were poured on Friday 4th March and the under building will get started next week. Needed to pour an additional 15m3 concrete due to some large soft spots but apart from that haven't come across any major problems yet. Surface water soakaway is in and we have had our engineer out to look at it several times due to some concerns with the high water table in the area. Things look good though and I think it is just due to the fact that we have hard granite only a meter or two below the soil surface and I think the water tends to run over the top of this. This time of year the water table is usually at its highest so most of the time it should only be better. Hope the rain water harvesting tank will act as a good buffer for this sytem as well.

Surface water soak away and field drain

So far we are still pretty much on schedule, its amazing how quickly things seem to be going. Only 6 weeks until the SIPs structure is due to go up but I may see if we can pull this forward a week. Looks like we will be back in Aberdeen for this happening as we transition from Stavanger to Copenhagen and a new job. It will be exciting to see the structure going up.

Looks like I have a driller & GSHP installer lined up again after the company who was going to do the work went out of business (thats the second company who had gone to the wall that we had selected - maybe I am doing something wrong - but thankfully we are not out any money this time round ). Should get our bore holes drilled at the end of March ahead of the structure going up.