What happened to June? part 1 - Inside the house

Well so much happened I didn't get around to adding to the blog.  I did take photos. Here's what happened inside floor by floor.....

There's not really much to see on the ground floor....

The shower room with the toilet sitting where the shower will be.

The main ground floor room was set up for joinery jobs.

The temporary stairs to the first floor have been replaced by the real thing.  They are a generous 1100mm wide, as are the french doors at the top, which lead out to the garden. You can't really see from here that there's a landing at the top in front of the doors - turn right for the sitting room, left for everything else.












The bottom step has an extaordinarily long bull-nose (seen here from above) I'm not sure how it happened, it looked just fine drawn on the back of an envelope at the stair-makers.  It juts out into the hall, we will have it trimmed back.

We're amassing a handy wood-pile in the garden.

It's looking lovely and leafy-green out there in the trees. It's best to look up as there's not much grass at the moment. Next year should be the year of the garden.

The First Floor 

The colder outside walls  have been given additional insulation using polystyrene backed plasterboard. 

The amount varies between 25mm and 75mm depending on which way the wall faces and how much space there is in the room, and whether sun falls on the outer leaf. Some may say it was just whim but I did think about it!

The main bedroom here just has the foam-back board on the north east facing wall.

These views of the ceiling show some of the miles of wiring and also the red heat-recovery ventilation pipes which will supply fresh warmed air to all the main rooms. The red pipe wasn't as flexible as it looked and has been bullied in to place.

This stud wall is for the little office over the main stairs. There's loads of wiring heading back to the consumer unit in the garage.

The office has a window to the front and I've added an internal window (in photo) to the back which looks up to the garden through the french windows.  It should also further lighten the room and the stair-well.

We had to buy special fire-rated glass and fit it with fire-rated mastic as the Building Regs say the room needs 30 minute fire protection.  We will have fire-doors all our habitable rooms just because we have one bedroom whose escape exit is more than 4.5 m above the ground.

Our little ensuite has been plastered out and a generous splay added to the window.  I wish I had stuck to my first plan to have window splays everywhere! I was told it would be too expensive, and of course there's now less insulation around this window. However I do think this is more than compensated for by the extra spread of light.

The utility room is starting to look a bit mad-laboratory-ish.  This is the corner where the solar panels and air-source heat pump feed heat into the 300 liter tank. There's definitely one more of those little expansion vessels than I was expecting. I'm looking forward to learning how it all works (and hoping it all does work.)

All the MVHR ventilation stuff is on the wall behind me - another mad assemblage of ducts and boxes.













The sitting room

Meanwhile earlier in June I was busy laying underfloor heating pipe over 150mm of insulation. I gouged grooves in the foam and laid foil under the pipes.  A very cheap version of the metal spreader plates.  I don't know if it will work at all but at least there won't be the annoying tick of expanding metal when the heating comes on. 

I've floated a chipboard floor over this, and there will be a timber floor on top. This is rather a lot of wood over those pipes but if it ends up as a sort of giant storage heater that will be no bad thing.  If a quick warm up is needed there's always the stove or dare I say a fan heater.

The pipes were very springy. Fortuantely there where plenty of stones to hand to hold it in place. I kicked them away just as I laid the chipboard panels.

I quite enjoyed carving the grooves out with a scalpel. The dust doesn't seem too healthy though. It's Kingspan Kooltherm.


There are three loops in the floor so there were six pipe ends to bring to the door way. 

Once I'd finished the floor Paul came and used those stones and many more to build the stone section of wall behind the stove-to-be. Most of the stone came from our own excavations.

The walls and ceiling were plastered towards the end of June.


At the beginning of July we masked off the windows, beams and stone and started spraying the wall with plaster primer. It's a breathable mineral primer but quite opaque.

 

Of our two step ladders I've found one is too short and one is too tall for much of the ceiling.

The wall behind the stairs to the second floor has just been plastered - the stairs look part of the building now. (The doorway is through to the kitchen with scaffolding tower).

We've used wet plaster on to the internal block-work rather than plaster board.  It's supposed to help balance the heat in the building - taking in heat when it's warm and giving it back when it's colder. A bit like when a rock that's been in the sun all day feels warm on a summer's evening.

Plasterboard (and especially any air gap behind it) would tend to isolate the solid mass of the wall from the room stopping or slowing this from happening.



The second floor



All the rooms up here are plastered now.  The sloping ceilings and beams have made plastering a slow job. It's been done very well we feel. Much attention has been given to airtightness as well as aesthetics. 








The steel beams recieved plenty of  insulation before being plastered, but I fear they still represent a significant thermal bridge.

Action shot of the floor scraper.  Theres' been a lot of floor scraping over the weeks. We want to stick cork tile directly to this floor and it needs to be FLAT!

We'll wait until the house is plastered to lay the tiles. Everything is still very dusty.

The bathroom sink has been plumbed in. It's the first item to be fitted. No running water yet but it gives us a pleasing impression of progress. The tap is so posh it has it's own soft fabric bag to keep it safe.


More progress  - the top floor has been wired and it has LIVE sockets!