November / December 2009 The house finally starts to go up...

5th of November - the crew arrive to start erecting the ICF walls. In theory the polysterene blocks are simply stacked up and concrete is poured into the hollow centre.

The polysterene provides the shuttering during construction and stays in place to provide a high level of insulation.

Unfortunately it's not quite as simple as that. Our walls have to hold back the hillside behind the house, and need a strong retaining element. 

Consequently there is a maze of steel bar - horizontal and vertical to assemble within the blocks. Kilometers of the stuff! It proves quite a challenge.

Some of the internal walls were built while we were waiting for the ICF blocks.

The ground floor walls are almost ready to pour..

After the first floor walls have been poured and the internal walls to the ground floor are finished the beam and block first floor is laid.

Friday 13th November is a beautiful calm and cool blue-sky day. A satisfyingly large crane appears for a few hours to lift the beams into place (though I'm told it's the second smallest crane you can get).

This will be the kitchen and the patio outside, I'm pleased to see the house and back garden starting to "match up".  That gap down the side there is 3 metres deep and 23 metres long.


It takes days and days to back-fill with free-draining gravel. It feels much safer now the gap is filled - I take the opportunity to fill the planting area with spring bulbs, hoping the scaffolding is down again before they come up.

This will be a corner of the sitting room, over the garage. It will have windows to the front and rear but none facing the neighbours. 

The stair from the ground floor will come up here, facing a pair of doors that open onto a narrow area with the stone steps up to the garden.

There will be three steps up to the sitting room on the right which is 60cm higher than the main first floor to give a better view of the garden.

The big kitchen, utility and main bedroom are also on this floor.

The ICF crew return and build the first floor walls. External scaffolding is erected.

The house so far viewed from up and down the road.

 The last working week of the year sees the first floor walls being filled with concrete as snow flakes start to flutter.

October 2009 forming the slab

8th October 2009 - The evening before the pour.

The workers had been pelted with beech-nuts from the trees above throughout the week and the formwork was full of them.  Most of the leaves were still on the trees.

An incredible amount of steel was used in the foundation slab, we need to be sure the hill cannot push the house.



Starter bars for the walls are also built into the mass of rebar before pouring the concrete slab.

Starting the pour....

.....almost finished.

  another view...

31st October The finished slab - waiting for the wall blocks to arrive - it's now raining beech leaves.

June to September 2009 - Site Clearance, new garden walls, a new entrance formed

June 2009      Just over a year after we bought the plot we start clearing the land in earnest.  We have to be so careful to protect the roots of the big beech trees at the top of the bank. It takes a long time.

We re-house several frogs and destroy some birds' nests in the process, it doesn't feel great to hack down all this vegetation.  We rescue some of the things we like best.

It will be great to put them back in the new garden.

My first little garden is soon obliterated. I don't know when it will be this green again. I've planted lots of sedum for the roof and these are moved to containers at the top of the garden.

The excavator arrives - I come home from work to find the digger has "jumped" a 3 ft wall and made a fair sized dent in the bank. 

It's the first time the fence is down and we can all see the area more clearly.

The bank seems bigger and wider than ever it did with the shrubs and plants. 

There's some lovley rock under there. 

.....and some enormous slabs

Lots of it makes retaining walls and steps for the back garden. 

We're very pleased with them.

We find an old stone trough buried in the bank, it's damaged but we incorporate in the terrace wall.

I'm shaping the wall to create a curved patio outside the kitchen doors.

At the moment there is just a big void where these doors will be - it's not so easy to imagine.

After building the walls there are hundreds of tons left, we can't store it up on the garden because we'd damage the tree roots so it has to go.

I try giving it away, I try selling it.  I end up selling 20 tonnes on ebay for 99p.

We have to pay for most of it be taken away.

Three months later we spend 6k on gravel to back-fill the ground floor at the back.....

September 2009     Eventually the digger goes through all the rock - which thankfully came out easily - and through to a layer of shale.

Our plot is finally ready for setting out.

2007 - 2009 We find a plot and get planning permission

I'd always wanted to build a house, an eco friendly house, a house that really suited us now and for the future.

September 2007 I was out shopping and saw the plot in the estate agent's window. Public viewing that weekend. We liked it, well I loved it. It has outline planning permission. I start dreaming revised plans but we fail to agree a price.

April  2008 The plot is put up for auction. We plan to bid and then risk a pre-bid offer a few hours before. It's ours!

(And we will always suspect no-one else was interested in a fairly narrow, steep, stony plot with three huge beech trees that have preservation orders.)

February 2009 I join the greenbuildingforum.co.uk I find it  fascinating and informative. I'm very grateful to the members who offered and continue to offer information and advice. http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/

The list of "wants" grows, we want a south facing roof for solar panels, morning sun in the bedroom, afternoon light in the sitting room, views of the trees to the back and across the valley to the front.

Equal sized rooms for the children. Good drying space. Plenty of windows to the south, hardly any to the north. Great insulation, a green roof area. An easy-access ground floor bedroom....

We must avoid the tree roots and overshading issues to the back, yet we need enough space to park at the front. We mustn't overlook certain neighbours, the ridge height has been fixed by the planning department. The list goes on and on...

Drawing continues, books are consulted - many, many books! It's an obsession.

Drawings are drawn and redrawn, models made, and remade.

The models I make prove really useful, with seven walls and six roof planes it's hard to put into words.  I take an early model to visit the planning officer.  He likes it!  It has been carefully designed to be non-controversial.

In the end it feels that these desires and constraints have, themselves, almost literally moulded the house into its present design. I'm finally happy with it.

April 2009 - I apply for planning permission, decision due in 10 weeks.

June 2009 - Full planning permission granted with just a few easy-to-do conditions. Happiness!

Preamble

This is my first blog and the first (and quite possibly last) self-build project, I'm very grateful to everyone who has helped with the project, and to my partner and family for allowing me the time and space to work it out.
Thank you.