Scaffolding comes down

Things are progressing and the scaffolding is down so now the world can see what’s been covered up for so long. No screams of horror from the neighbours so far.
More pics to come soon.

Monmouth hits the press

On thursday this week there was a piece on the house in the Independent newspaper, focussing on the ground coupled heating system.
In case you missed it here’s a link to the online edition.
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/lifestyle/article2484664.ece

Windows arrive – but what’s the colour?

We were expecting the windows and kept getting told that the German factory weren’t able to give a precise delivery date. In the end they were only a week late but when I saw them on site it was obvious they were the wrong colour. We ordered light grey and they were dark.
Happily they actually looked better if anything so we decided to keep them.
In fact they look great.
Unfortunately the glass roof for the second floor conservatory didn’t arrive which prevents the render going on at the back. Some of the window cills and aluminium trims were still to be made up which stopped the render at the front being installed. The delay in the render delays the scaffolding coming down.
Oh, and half the windows have tiny imperfections in the glazing which needs to be replaced. Thankfully this can be done from the inside and doesn’t affect the programme. And the timber louvres are also still somewhere in Germany.
Ah, the joys of the construction industry.
Attached is a pic looking from the rear at second floor conservatory.

2F rear windows

And one of the 1F bedroom window
1F bedroom window

Where oh where oh where the windows?

All was proceeding reasonably smoothly, with the Contractor pulling out all the stops in readiness for the arrival of the windows on Thursday 15th March. Needless to say on Wednesday, chasing up an arrival time I discovered they were not coming at all. In fact there still seems to be no clarity on when they might arrive. It’s the lack of information that’s totally maddening.
Having been awarded the contract on the basis that they had confirmed the delivery date for week beginning 12th March I am less than impressed. The only saving grace is that we haven’t paid them a penny to date so if they continue to mess around we will go elsewhere.
The window are made from sustainably sourced spruce, with high performance glazing and are manufactured in Germany by Seufert Niklaus. Here’s a link to their website:
http://www.seufert-niklaus.de/index.php?land=en
Latest ETA is friday this week. We will see……

Walls going up

The internal walls are nearly studded out in timber with netting being added to take the lambs wool insulation before walls are enclosed in plasterboard. Good progress is being made on site in preparation for the windows arriving week beginning 12th March.
Here’s a pic of the living room at the rear, showing the double height space with the clerestory windows.

Mind the gap

I’ve realised that so far I haven’t posted a picture of the site with the previous building demolished and the new one about to rise phoenix like from the ground. Here’s photo of the 8 feet wide gap where the building is now going up, taken in December.

Underfloor heating

So it’s cold, there are no walls, windows and only a bit of roof – it’s time to warm things up by installing the underfloor heating.
All the pipework for the upper floors with timber floor construction were put in on friday with the ground floor and rear mezzanine to follow.
First the sheeps wool natural insulation was fitted into netting between the joists and then the metal transfer plates were fitted to receive the underfloor heating pipework.
Each loop was pressure tested to 5 bar and left connected to the manifolds carefully positioned at ground, first and third floors. The main plumbing and the heat pump installation are to follow but at least we can now put the subfloors down.

Progress on site

Forgive me it has been many days since my last post. Life and work had taken over somewhat and I haven’t found the time or waking hours to update the blog until now.
So what’s been going on? We have a main Contractor on site, the steelwork is in, floors are in and the roofs are almost on.
The underfloor heating pipework for the upper floors is due to be installed on Friday.
Here’s a picture of work in progress: a snap from the rear scaffolding at second floor level. More to come soon.

What water shortage? How to harvest rainwater.

We’ve been looking into rainwater harvesting. With all this talk of water shortages and hose pipe bans and Thames Water’s recent request for drought status it seems more and more necessary. What is it? Storing rainwater from the roofs and using it to flush the toilets and potentially to do the washing too.
How big a tank?
How much water do you use?
Roughly daily use:
12 WC flushes per person @ 6ltrs per flush = 72ltrs,
plus, depending on how often you do your washing 1 washing cycle = 60ltrs
Calculating how much rain you can get each year obviously depends on the size of the roof. We’ve discovered that our neighbour’s roof drains onto ours so we have the benefit of that too. The tank we are looking at is approx 1.25m diameter by 1.5m high/long = 1500ltrs. That would serve a 4 person house.
Where to store it?
Either you store it high up the building and use gravity to feed toilets below or you put the tank lower down (in the ground) and pump it up to a header tank. Obviously pumping the water up to a tank takes energy and costs more but because of height restrictions and a 3rd floor bathroom, that’s what we’ve had to do. This will use approx 30 kw hours per year of electricity.
How much does it cost?
I’m still waiting for my quote. I’ll post it when I get it.
Here are some useful links:
http://www.rainharvesting.co.uk/
http://www.rainwaterharvesting.org/
http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/

Low Carbon Buildings

If you are looking to make some sense of energy your house uses and what grants are available for the various technologies a good place to start is The Energy Saving Trust. The UK government has a Low Carbon Buildings programme for grant funding details are available at

http://www.est.org.uk/myhome/generating/grants/