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

Water connection made

After what has seemed an age and way more work than should be necessary for what ia a relatively simple operation we have finally got water on site now. This was one of the last pieces we needed in place to allow the screed to be poured. This is scheduled for the 16th April so a busy week for us next week getting the last of the UFH installation done.

The water stop cock cover

One other piece of news that slipped un reported from earlier this month is the installation of a fence around the property. After the building site Heras fencing went the plot was left open so this now encloses it again and forms the start of our landscaping works.

The fence along the road.....

.....by the pump and lane....

.....south east boundary.....

....and the boundary with Mawgan

Pictures from February 2012

This will be a first.... this is Heidi updating the blog!!  Aha!  I hope I get this right....

Here are some pictures of the house, taken during our last family trip back to Aberdeen in February 2012.  It was a fun photo session as I was finally able to capture the whole house using my new wide angle lens :)

View of the house from the private lane

View from the instersection of the main road and private lane

View from the main road - loving all the glazing!!

Lounge - flooring insulation down, ready for underfloor heating pipes

Master bedroom suite, minus partition walls - ready for screed!

Part of back side of house... kitchen, utility room, and then garage

Looking forward to our next trip back when we'll finish the underfloor heating pipe installation and have both floors ready for screed!  Very exciting!!!!

Floor insulation progressing

The first weekend of March I managed to get a weekend of work done on the ground floor insulation and DPM with flights paid by work since I was doing my offshore survival refresher on the Monday.

Mum & I got busy laying the insulation in the utility room wing and DPM in the lounge, study, and utility. The utility room was a royal pain due to all the ducts and pipe work that comes into this area. All these things slow the process up considerably.

DPM down in the lounge...

...study...

..and utility room

After getting that work done we started with the insulation in the hall area, laying away from the front door. Laying full sheets is easy, its all the cutting and fiddling that is slow and tedious. After my course on Monday I spent a few more hours working on the fiddly stuff. The way I looked at it is that its a few hours less that I have to do in future!

Insulation going down in the hall

 At the end of last week we had the track inspection completed for the water connection so I am now just waiting on a call to make an appointment to make the connection to the mains. Need water on site to allow filling and testing of the UFH loops

We are back as a familiy again in 2 weeks time. That will be a big push to get the remaining work for the UFH completed so we can get on and get the screed down.

UFH installation progressing

Things progressing slowly at the moment since we have moved inside with the work scope. This is due to our UFH contractor (us!) not being availble to get back on site on a regaular basis and getting the UFH system installed is on the critical path. We were back for a long week during the kids winter break and managed to get all the UFH loops installed on the first floor and all the materials that were laying around the house moved into the garage - where they are now laying around!

Heidi and I worked hard while mum & dad looked after the boys for a few days - although visually not much seemed to have changed despite al lot of effort. This allowed us to make good progress although all the tidying up and small fiddly jobs always take more time than you think. I also started to don my ventilation and plumbers caps with some hardware being installed under the steps in the storage room ahead of us screeding. Again a fiddly job with lots of pipe and ducts running in a fairly small area

Heidi also had a meeting with a landscaping company about progressing the landscaping works, in particular the fencing around the site since we have nothing there anymore. We also met with the building contractor to discuss outstanding point so that we can get that contract closed out. It was fairly small list since we have kept on top of small snagging items as we have gone along.

I am back for a weekend in just over a weeks time and hope to get cracking with more ground floor insulation, DPM & UFH pipe laying operations planned. We are then back as a familiy again the week of Easter for a big push to get us to screeding readiness