To 18th May - Stone, Render and some work inside

The stone is going on well-thanks to Jamie and Sam (and Joe who's not in the photo).

We started at the bottom of the first-floor overhang - it's the one area where the starting level was critical.

The beech tree came in to leaf as the stone-work progressed.  It's really lovely to see everything greening up again.   (and there's a robin on the roof)

The stone window surrounds seem to work well - they've been mechanically attached to the building with metal straps that are now hidden beneath the stone slips. 

Hopefully I'll soon be posting the finished stone wall as pointed up  with gutters, lead etc all properly fixed and the scaffolding down.

The drip-strips on the wooden sill were supposed to protrude beyond the stone to shed water efficiently. However for mysterious reasons they've ended up flush with the stone sills (which look thick and solid, despite being only 38mm deep to avoid compromising the insulation).  Hopefully if we mastic the join carefully the windows will last just as well and look neater too.

 













I had to visit the stone yard at Cullingworth to get a missing jamb cut.  It's an interesting place - a mix of hi-tech and stone-age. Here they are cutting the jamb that goes up the side of a window for our house.


On the big east facing gable and northwest upper elevation we've gone for a lotus-like acrylic  render that should stay lovely and clean for a long time (unlike the child).

A close up of render - it is thinner than I expected but it looks very neat.

We've been washing some old flag stones for a hearth.

Meanwhile inside the house.....

Stud walls are going up all over the place - this one's in the hall.

Upstairs (not shown) even more insulation is being added in the attic, and we're getting ready for the pre-plaster roof inspection by Building Control. 

In the sitting room we've stripped a section of wall,  the width of the hearth, bare of polystyrene  to expose the concrete inside the wall.

We'll build a  natural stone wall against it. The stones are there on the floor ready.

It's an internal wall and the idea is it will retain the heat from the stove and also help transfer some warmth into the concrete core of the wall and on through to the rest of the house. It should look nice too.

Feeling happy!

It's starting to look a bit more like the model (but 100x bigger!).

Inside the house - late April

With the roof on we're turning our attention to the inside of the house.

2nd Floor

Most of the work has been on the top floor, putting in stud walls, a giant storage shelf and sealing and adding insulation.

Insulation board over rafters, and before the space blanket to fit between rafters.                                                                                

Depending on our Building Regs department this  internal window in the bathroom may or may not become a laundry chute down to the utility room.  I'm hoping it will be OK as it's not a "habitable room".

The boys' team.

Still Life with Foam Gun

 

Stairs to from first to second floor.  Possibly the world's finest temporary staircase.

First Floor - the main living area - this is ground level at the back of the house.

Corner of kitchen and utility

 

Looking through kitchen to utility.































View from landing to kitchen. The black webbing built into the ICF block can be clearly seen in the door way. There'll be a narrow pair of French doors onto the garden.

The sitting room - already in use.









Ground Floor

Apart from the windows the ground floor has looked the same for a couple of months at least....

It is freezing down here still, well not quite freezing but it still feels like it.


The biggest change on this floor has been the connection of the water supply. It comes in under the foundation slab and up into the ground floor store room.



 Meanwhile, outside we've started on the stone slips.  Pleased to say they seem to be sticking.

The stone cills and lintels are here from the quarry and ready to go up.    

Some of the slips are really tapered and just too thin to use. I really hope we'll have enough thick ones.

Next jobs, insulate the ground floor, lay underfloor heating and screed the ground and first floors. Also on the list, first fix plumbing continue , airtightness sealing and attaching stone slips.

Should be a busy week or so...

The roof completed week ending 16th April

Front roof complete and road dug up for water supply - finally connected 14th April

Back roof coming on well...




Weekend view 18th April - The back roof is finished. There is just the lead to dress at the ends and the guttering to go up.



Fingers crossed those solar panels work! They are nice and neat and look like roof windows.

The roof windows aren't quite as flush with the roof as I would have liked but for good reason - they are sitting on the insulation board rather than through it. This should greatly reduce any heat-loss around them.

Max in front of the kitchen wall, there will be a pair of French doors in the big hole and further along another glazed door to the utility room.

They are waiting in the garage for the scaffolding to come down.

My hope is that the unheated utility room will act as an air-lock during the heating season, with the kitchen French doors swinging into action for the warmer months (or days).

It was 22 degrees here on Saturday the 17th and just 1 degree first thing on the 19th.

It's definitely greener on the other side of the fence, but I've planted some grass. I thought I'd post this view as we won't see the garden from this angle again once the scaffolding is down.

View along the high gable...

Close up of Artstone slates - made down the road in Holmfirth - I like the look but they are quite fragile to work with.

Gavin, here to do the solar panels - he's kind of wishing we had the cylinder already..

Beginning to fill in the gaps, lots and lots of filling to do yet.  We're only on the first case of expanding foam, and we have plenty of insulation board in various thicknesses too.

Viewed from the narrow end of Field lane the house is fitting in.

A roof over our heads

The past couple of weeks have seen great progress on the roof.

The lower roof over the sitting room is already slated at the front and the green roof membrane is on at the back.

We settled on a warm roof construction. Most of the insulation is above the rafters to minimise thermal bridging through the rafters themselves.

We'll add a lesser amount of insulation between the rafters, which is advised to prevent condensation forming within the roof.  Total U value about 0.16, and we're working to get it really airtight.



We had to buy special skewer-like nails to get through the fat sandwich -  38mm battens, membrane, 75mm insulation and 35mm into the rafters.  The standard 4" nails are just too short and would have conducted even more heat out of the house, we would have needed more of them too.

There will be nearly 1000 skewer-nails as it is - each one puncturing the insulation board.

The picture on the right shows the front section of the the sitting room roof before the holes for the Velux windows were cut out, and before we started filling all the gaps between walls and roof. The rafters will be covered with plasterboard, but the 2 big beams will be exposed.

 The upper roof is far from straightforward. We're grateful to have such experienced people on the job.

They've worked hard to overcome the various obstacles (constructional discrepencies, lack of accurate drawings, baffling angles etc. ) along the way.

It's probably for the best that we felt we couldn't afford a SIPS roof - it probably would have been butchered to get it to fit

It was so bright at the weekend with the sun shining through the rafters I'm almost sad to think most of it will be covered in. At least the front bedroom will have a good-sized Velux giving a view across the valley.

We have been busy painting the soffits, undercloaking and exposed rafter ends. It's been a family job.

 

  


Plywood over insulation board - the green roof base.

Joe (who's not family) came over from Lancaster earlier in the week and put on the membrane for the green roof in the most miserable weather. It looks great so far.





He'll return later to finish it off and seal around the stove pipe and make the little balcony floor. 













Once the scaffolding's down and the tree protection zone fence dismantled there'll be a nice view up the garden from the sitting room.

This is the biggest window in the house at  2.4m wide by 1.8 high. I would have liked a full glass wall - but it was prohibitively expensive and would have lost too much heat. I'm quite happy with the compromise. This way there's room for the curtains to be drawn fully back during the day.

Our windows are due on site this week (they've been sitting in the factory waiting since Christmas) and hopefully we'll be having them fitted over the Easter break.