June 2016 – St Anne's Build

Week 13

Posted on June 28, 2016 by admin

Friday

Last year it was 37 C and people were convinced global warming was to blame. This year it’s 17 C with torrential rain and people are convinced global warming is to blame. Makes it tricky for laying bricks, but the guys are cracking on.

The walls of the house will be filled with this insulation. It’s foil backed and gets slotted in between the brick layers. Cozy!

house2016.07.03 - 1 (1).jpg — insulation tower

The site has been so soggy that they’ve built a raft out of pallets for the brickies to stand on while they build. I think it’s a nice feature that we should consider in the landscaping….

house2016.07.03 - 3.jpg — the whole site from the front

The 6mm raked joints take a bit longer to build, but they look lovely in the sun. The bricks look more irregular than we thought which is exactly the style we’re after. The original-many-moons-ago spec called for reclaimed bricks, but they’re bonkers expensive and sized with imperial measurements! Ours were always a compromise, but it’s been a good one. I hope we make as good a decision with the roof tiles. The rainwater notches look great–can’t wait to see the plinth detail bring it to life.

house2016.07.03 - 5.jpg — the whole site from the back

Thursday

Site meeting about 2:00 with Nic, Ben and Justin in our used-to-be-garage which actually makes a nice meeting room. Ben and I met Trevor the M&E guru. We sited boilers, gas spurs and foul drains and discussed the merits of separate manifolds for underfloor heating and towel rails. All good stuff. I’ve got some homework to do this weekend in making some final decisions before the floors are laid and the pipes are literally set in concrete (or below it anyway).

house2016.07.03 - 1 (2).jpg — where would YOU site the gas meter?

But my main homework is to sort the fireplace so we can tell the masons how big to build the hearth. I’m late and it’s not good!

Wednesday

Tuesday

Monday

Lucky 13–now that the awful weather has changed for 30 seconds, we’re seeing progress. The bricklayers have arrived!

The brickies will run the outer walls all the way around the building, then Lee and the ground-guys will lay the DPC. Clearly the DPC is VERY important given the events of last week. Then, I gather it’s all systems go for some serious vertical progress.

In the meantime, Grandma’s yellow rose is still hanging in there, and we’ve got another guest tonight.

Week 12

Posted on June 23, 2016 by admin

Friday

Team meeting at the contractors’ this morning, so not much occurring on site. A few deliveries and some tidying in the afternoon between raindrops. Looking forward to the brick layers arriving on Monday at long last!

house2016.06.27 - 2.jpg — electrical ducts, water input, soil pipe, garage slab and dpc

house2016.06.27 - 3.jpg — 18 square metres of concrete?!

house2016.06.27 - 4.jpg — loads of well-organised stuff

Thursday

The heavens opened today.

Screen Shot 2016-06-23 at 19.14.00.png

And closer to home…

house2016.06.23 - 6.jpg

house2016.06.23 - 4.jpg — garage slab and swimming pool

house2016.06.23 - 5.jpg — pipes on one end…

house2016.06.23 - 3.jpg — … and their other end

house2016.06.23 - 1 (1).jpg — monster double-whammy pump

I can’t believe our gorgeous lovely neighbour was flooded out of her house around the back of ours. She called the fire department early in the morning, but they said that they couldn’t help unless the water was in the house. It rose and rose all morning until Nic and the gang arrived at 7:30 and they were horrified. At 9:00, we called again to say the water was up to our ankles. We tried to save ornaments and curtains, but walking around the house was like walking on a waterbed with a rising lake under the carpets which are now ruined. Hopefully, with Nic, Lee and the guys moving countless numbers of our bricks to jack up her furniture, she might have salvaged some of it. The guys were incredible and we’re very grateful to them for stepping up and giving her a hand.

house2016.06.23 - 2.jpg

By evening the waters had diminished a little, but the pumps will be on, through the site, for some time. You can hear them in the background. There were three crews of firemen working on this and the other neighbour’s house.

Wednesday

Lots of stone rubble delivered and breaking up of the shuttering around the garage.

Thanks for moving the kitchen soil pipe, guys! Changing our minds yet again on the design…

Tuesday

Monday

All the sub contractors need to have the site prepared adequately before they work. Brick layers need to have a flat place to stand when they lay the bricks. So today was about site prep. We also had the massive pour for the garage just after break, and the finishing pour late in the day. It’s soggy work.

Week 11

Posted on June 15, 2016 by admin

Friday

Soak-away is under the bricks. It’s a little damp around the edges. The guys have split the bricks front and back and have forklifted the back ones around the lane.

house2016.06.19 - 2.jpg

After hours, there are loads of animals that visit the site.

house2016.06.19 - 1 (1).jpg

Thursday

One soak-away dug and dusted…

house2016.06.19 - 1.jpg

Wednesday

The bricks arrived!

house2016.06.15 - 2.jpg

The weather hasn’t been great. But Lee is a pro scout so at least he and the team are working in the mostly dry.

house2016.06.15 - 1.jpg — new uses for a DPC

Tuesday

Monday

Week 10

Posted on June 7, 2016 by admin

Friday

Wandering back from the house over the train bridge, Gareth spotted a lock on the railing. It’s just as atmospheric as the Pont des Arts…. apart from the dog poo.

house20160611 - 4.jpg — will this be the first of many?

house20160611 - 2.jpg — from the back door through to the lamp-post

The guys are finishing off the edges which requires a lot of cutting and mucking in. They’ll be doing this into next week too. Then the edges will be filled in with some of the earth that’s piled up in the back by the current garage. Apparently the brick layers will like their work areas level with no big dips to fall into or step over, and they arrive next week. The bricks are delivered Wednesday, and that will be a big day logistically for a few reasons. We’ve decided to dig the soak-away in the back garden rather than plumb it through the house. This is for the rainwater runoff from the back of the house and the original plan–it’s not going to be too big, only 3m cubed, but it’s landlocked on the other other side of the house. The alternative was to run it under the house and into the ditch, but we’d need a permit and some other permissions for that option as well as an £87 fee to the Council for the change. To get that all dug and sorted in the same week that the bricks arrive is a good puzzle for Nic. He’s thinking about forklift to ferry the bricks around the neighbours to the back of the garden. It’s going to be fiddly!

The garage is a total rock solid bomb shelter. It’s got an unbelievable amount of concrete in there, all because of next door’s conifers. An engineering marvel! The contractor has recommended a concrete floor rather than a thin screed to avoid cracks. I’m not sure when the pour is scheduled, but there is a LOT of steel in there and it’s all ready to go.

Apparently all clients at this stage worry that their house is too small. Lee reckons that sticking a sofa on the blocks will show how big it is and will alleviate all concerns. It’s jolly big enough–we have to remember that our main constraint is budget, so we were never going to go all gargantuan, and it’s about the same size as the previous house. The flip side of a normal, non-huge house is that the garden remains an ok size.

house - 4.jpg

We’re about to choose the hanging tiles. And of course we’re still dithering on the mortar colour.

house2016.06.12 - 3.jpg — hanging tile shortlist

Thursday

Crane Day!

Wednesday

house - 1.jpg — tomorrow’s project arrived

Tuesday

The walk over was very murky tonight. Thunder booming softly from far away.

Today ten tons of hardcore arrived and it was spread out around the garage. More will be dropped on the earth before the beams go down. Lee and the guys added more concrete and reinforcements to the garage and set up the foul drains.