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!

A slower week

Not much to report for the week just past. The slating of the north roof did get finished and the ridge is on so we should now be water tight. The ridge blends really well with the slate and we are very happy with the way it looks.

Roof with ridge installed

The flat lead roof area over the main entrance was also completed during the week.

Lead roof completed

We did get the last of the windows installed on the ground floor ... now only if we could get some doors delievered.

Last lounge windows installed

The only other thing of note to happen was the erection of the steel lintels for the corner windows of the master bathroom and the study.

Steel lintels to support granite work above the windows

This though brought to light to a problem regarding how these corners are to be supported with the details having avoided the structural engineers drawings. The intenetion is to avoid having a support column on the cill to give a clear unobstructed view out. A solution is being worked up and we will hopefully be able to get it implemented this week.

Next blog in two weeks time since this week is going to be very quiet with the build waiting on the arrival of the last doors, the window solution and the brickies.