Week 67
Wet on the outside; drying out on the inside.
We tested the fireplace this week with the goal to check the temperature of the surrounding built-out sections of fireproof calcium silicate board. The design we’ve got in mind is to stick a whopping great big TV above the fireplace, but also to ensure it and the electronics serving it don’t melt into goo with the heat. To make it even more complicated, we would like to clad the whole thing in corten steel. Today’s exercise was to sense-check the idea and take some temperature readings with the fire lit.
The Rais 900 woodburner is a beast of a thing and extremely well-engineered. Despite having read the instructions and having two of my intrepid expert Scouts along who are excellent at firelighting, it still didn’t quite go as planned. We got the thing lit, but there was no draw up the chimney, so all we achieved is to fill the room with smoke which wasn’t in the game plan. Luckily, there are half a billion fans onsite, so after quickly throwing the smouldering pieces out the window, we borrowed one for half an hour to get some breeze in there and air the room out. I must have been doing something pretty silly with the fire because the stove has been tested and has a HETAS certificate, but rather than do my usual and start fiddling around with it and risk a likely trip to the burns unit, I’ve organised a meeting with the installers who will visit next week and patiently tell me where I’ve gone wrong.
Generally, the weather, or at least the temperature, has been on our side for drying and it looks like the contractor will be able to start remedial work a week ahead of schedule. The environmental guys came in early in the week to take the tenting away and to move the fans around.
One of the bits of kit the environmental guys use is a floor-mounted humidity sensor.It records the moisture in the concrete floor, and this is key information to have before we re-lay all the wood on top of it. It looks kind of like a mini Tardis just sitting there, but unlike the other little red-box sensors from last week, this one can’t be accessed remotely. It’s pretty simple but effective: they seal all around the base and simply leave it to record data. This one is in the master dressing area where most of the water damage occurred.
The walls and ceilings are all discoloured, but it’s dry. Most of the damage can be simply decorated over by using Stain Block and more paint. But sections of ceiling right under the leak will need to be replaced entirely.
After more than two years of letting nature take over, it was time to give the front garden a serious trim. The beech hedge that we planted in 2001 has almost completely reverted to individual trees, and the rhododendrons in the ditch are now providing homes to wildlife. We cut a LOT back, and it’s a good time of year to get some air in there and let in some light on the hedge so it has time to fill out a little before the winter. I’m probably a bit disproportionately proud of my work here only because it was good, honest and hard–the kind of task that you feel in your back a few days afterwards. And it was a bonus that I also got son #2 out of the house and into the sunlight for a couple of days.
Many tiny jobs remain outstanding, mainly choosing fittings like door handles and storage units. Did you know that a letterbox is VAT exempt on a new build? As are toilet roll holders. But wardrobes and carpet aren’t? Odd. Also, in all the paperwork for the house move, I changed our TV licence (god bless the BBC) and noticed that one of the details alongside my address and phone number included whether the TV was colour or black and white. I feel that it’s been a while since these laws have had a serious look-see and need a bit of a revamp.
Week 66
It will be 2 – 4 weeks to dry the house out, redecorate, and get you in.
… has to rank alongside the similarly famous …
We’ll have the lights on for Christmas.
And more recently…
Put your family in a hotel while the work is done.
It’s not every day that you build a house from scratch, and you would hope that the utterances from the experts could be believed. We’ve learned a lot these last 20 months, the most valuable has been to pick out the genuinely good advice from the masses of optimistic twaddle.
It’s 30 weeks since we had planned to move in, 3 weeks since the flood, and now at least 12 more weeks still to go. The overly-optimistic comments have stopped, and we’re thinking desert-like drying-out thoughts to get us there.
The environmental guys have taken over the site and filled it with dehumidifiers, fans, sensors, and heaters. They’ve tented the master ensuite and part of Gemma’s room where the majority of the water flowed down the walls when the valve failed. The assessors originally said that they would set their gear up and monitor it each week to give a forecast of how much of the 28 days they reckon it will take before the building is dry and any remedial work can begin. Perhaps they’ll start that monitoring next week, because they haven’t been in much since Tuesday. Of course, we’re banking on the warm weather giving the process a boost and are hoping it will be shorter rather than longer than anticipated. However, I’ve spoken to two people who’ve been here before who said that when an insurance company says 0 to 28 days to dry, it usually means 28 days.
It was a comfortable 21° C summer day today with a light breeze and high clouds. But inside it was a dry, hot, deafening furnace well into the mid 30’s. And with this, comes the possibility that what was perfectly dry in other parts of the house now starts to bend and distort.
You can hear the humming of all the machinery going 24/7 as you approach the house. The building sounds alive, and it’s very strange.
With all this experience, one of the benefits is being able to pass it on. We probably should have a chat about the acronym seas we’re swimming in: JCTs, EOTs, LADs and General Damages. If you ever entertain the idea of building a house or engaging a builder to do a large amount of work that requires one of the many flavours of Joint Contract Tribunal or JCT contract, you should know a few things. Firstly, Kevin McCloud (For It Is He) subscribes to the phrase “hope for the best and plan for the worst”, and he’s right. But Hope alone isn’t the best strategy really. Planning for the worst involves having a solid contract in place to give impartial clarity to sticky situations should they arise. The hard part is guessing what exactly the “worst” could be from the keen-as-mustard and comfortable position of haven’t-started-yet and not-having-a-clue at the get-go. He also says that “house building has ruined many a good relationship,” so when engaging a builder, you should think less about beginning the marriage of your dreams and more about drawing up a hard-as-nails pre-nup for a possible divorce. Simply put, you will be completely clueless about how much protection you are going to need. This is why we hire professionals instead, and we don’t rely so much on the well-intentioned advice from friends, relatives or anyone else who hasn’t parted with hard-earned cash for a building project.
The second thing you should know is that you are ‘the insurer of last resort’. Any time anything goes wrong on your job, everyone will look to you to pay-up for his or her mistakes. This gets old quickly.
Time is everyone’s enemy on a job like this. The builder can request Extensions of Time, and the client can attempt to claim Liquidated Ascertained Damages, all in an effort to avoid being penalised for indecision or inaction. It all gets a bit messy, but if you’re clever from the outset and document these things properly, you will be able to fall back on the JCT to iron out the creases. If you don’t keep track, you end up scrabbling around in the dark recesses of history trying to figure out who did what when… and who should be up for paying.
Now that the muck has stuck, the insurance process, waiting around for reports, and reading the fine print in the contract is all taking a little too much out of everyone involved at the moment. Ultimately, there is a limited number of cookies in our cookie jar, and we are getting glimpses of the bottom of it these days which is scary. I Told You So is ringing in my ears with everyone saying to me that a self-build project always costs more than you think it will. Yes, you’re right. Everyone’s got a friend that has overreached in an extension, renovation or build. No one ever says, “Wow! And look! We’ve got loads of money leftover for curtains and new sofas!” Just, no. Knowing this, we prepared: we knew (thought) that so we had a robust contract, a sink (sunk) fund just-in-case, and effective (expensive) management in place. Along the way we felt comfortable enough to splash out on a few nice things, and this has been tempered by being more frugal about other things. And unlike the mystery figures and vagaries that are bandied about at the end of every episode of Grand Designs, we’ve kept track of every penny meticulously, so at least we know where we are, even while looking around for our paddle. Eight extra months of rent and professionals’ fees now means that we are making choices that we didn’t think we’d be facing because we’d prepared so well (we thought). After all, we’d waited 15 years to get started on this project so we’d had a LOT of time to think about it. It’s frustrating to see it all withering now, but curling up under the duvet isn’t an option, so onwards we go….
Downpipes have gone in on the sections where we had the brick pillars removed. They’ve also finally installed the contentious one hanging off the vertical tiles on the front elevation into a newly-cut plinth.
The joints between the oak and the brick were mortared in last week. I went round to another house built in a similar style, and the owners were super friendly and kind enough to describe some of the problems they’d had with joins between materials. In fact, the lady of the house was so nice that she’d invited me and Elder Daughter in to have a good look at some areas of concern. Their builders had used mastic to seal the structural-oak/brick joins. After a few years of wear and movement in the oak in this other property, some of the mastic has started to come away from the brick exposing the join to the elements. They’d also put clear silicon in the oak joints just like we did. They’re getting it all sorted now, but it’s taken them living through a few floods to see where the problems lie. We’ll put this in the Good Advice bucket.
There are a lot of multi-material junctions throughout our building. Our mortar joints are raked in 3 or 4 mmm in which gives a lovely shadow effect to each course but it makes life a little tricky for making a nice seal. Mastic along the joins between the window frames and the bricks would only splodge into the mortar joints, potentially leaving a messy uneven line. So unlike my new friend with the similar house, we’ve decided to forego the mastic and use just compriband on its own instead. This is a sticky-backed foam that squishes down into nothing and expands to fill gaps in the heat. The trick is to put it in the fridge or freezer right before installing it (especially in summer) to give time for it to be cut to size onsite. They’ve used large sheets of it in some of the larger gaps between the structural oak and bricks, so it will be consistent too. Marvellous.
Despite a little rain in the week coupled with the moisture in the mortar leeching the tannins from the oak onto the plinths and discolouring it a little, having mortared joints are still a damn sight more reassuring than having possible failed future seal.
Despite all the hot mess of problems we’re having at the moment, it’s refreshing to think it’s actually a beautiful building with some architecturally interesting features. And it looks nice in the sun.
Week 65
I had a minor surgical procedure a good few years ago which went all a bit pear-shaped in recovery. On speaking to the surgeon, who was a really nice chap despite my setback, it turned out that this particular complication was a one in a bijillion type of thing to happen. Really rare, definitely unexpected. He said then that in all his work, this sort of thing happened less than 1% of the time. But he also understood that despite the odds, it was still 100% of my experience. That’s a lot of responsibility to carry around as a person and a doctor. To his credit, he saw the whole thing through really well, all the while being proactive and keeping positive in analysing the problem, firmly believing that a good solution would gradually emerge. His attitude turned out to be pretty infectious (no pun intended) and a good learning experience in retrospect.
So, here we are in the midst of another less-than-1% experience. At least, I hope for the building industry it is! No one is happy about it, but onward we go, getting past the worst part which is seeing the nest we’ve built our family upended once again. Demolition was bad enough. I’m upset, but curiously not devastated at the damage done by the flood. It’s not seeing the tangible building wrecked that is gutting, it can and will be mended, it will just take about four more months. It’s more the emotional side that’s galling and the general disappointment that can’t be repaired in any speed but has to be ignored now and eventually left to percolate and dissipate over time.
We started this project with the family in mind, and the goal was to get this house to work effectively for all of us. Rather than have the nice shiny efficient home we’ve worked so hard for, the family is now shoe-horned into our third rental that the kids don’t feel a part of. It’s just like camping, kids, just with better plumbing!, says their ditzy mum. It must be very unnerving as a teenager to have your space dismantled and your parents all distracted 24/7. It seems like this project has taken ages to me (it has by anybody’s standards), but for a bit of perspective, we’ve been at this for a sixth of my youngest’s life, so it must seem horribly normal to her, and that’s not right. I suppose it will make them resilient in the end, but inwardly, I look to my surgeon from before for inspiration and try to be proactive and positive for the kids.
Keeping a smile on is taxing, but we’re quite upfront with the kids about what’s going on–there are no secrets or glossing-over of facts. We’re probably a little too free and easy with opinions around the dinner table, but as this project has eclipsed most of our social life, the build is kind of all we talk about now. It’s easy to be glib and remind them to appreciate that we’re fortunate to have the capacity to put a roof over our heads and food on the table. But this level of subsistence isn’t what we signed up for, in fact what we signed up for is completely the opposite. We tried to ensure that by having loads of tiers of management in place and work cross-checked by a host of professionals, that this sort of disaster would be avoided. In years to come, will I appreciate the house more because the journey has been more arduous? Will we chuckle ruefully as we look back on today’s drama? Or we will feel like just another couple of middle class ya-hoos getting too big for their boots and wading into seas where they shouldn’t be swimming in the first place? Whatever it is, there is no point having a moan, but it’s bloody hard to look at the lovely ruined walls and ceilings and not feel a little robbed that we were so close to living in it.
As a rule, I haven’t shouted anyone out in either a positive or negative way, just because I feel that this blog should be more a story where the House is the central character, and no one wants to read about my dirty laundry. But I feel compelled to give Andy Bald of Removals In Action five virtual stars for being completely awesome. Kevin, Kesta, Shaun, Simon and everyone on his team were total gentlemen and will have moved us five times when all this is said and done. This week the gang worked solidly for days moving us back and forth from rental to storage to another rental with stops to our friend’s house and to the new house to leave some logs in the garden. They’ve put up with me being emotional, 35° temperatures, and a constantly changing gameplan. Thanks, guys…. you’re incredible.
Equally as steady is Warren the Milky 07889 141395. Having milk delivered is a special treat and a cultural phenomenon that I’ve had the pleasure of supporting since I moved to the UK in ’91. Despite our recent vagabond existence, Warren has worked hard to keep the supply consistent for no benefit to himself. When we moved outside his patch into the first rental he found a colleague to continue our delivery seamlessly. It was a pleasure to move back near the house in the second rental and have him resume the service himself. Now, with this short term rental, he’s not only gone and found another colleague to deliver, but he’s given us his good wishes and looks forward to seeing us back in our old neighbourhood soon. Seems a completely unrelated thing to the house-build this whole milk thing, but he’s been delivering to the house for over 15 years plus the two we’ve been out, so it’s kind of a long-term relationship, and one that’s slightly odd because it’s all so ninja–I hardly ever see him! Thanks, Warren.
I apologise for leaving last week off the blog; in the midst of finding new digs and moving into them and it all feeling a bit chaotic. This week is better and we’ve found a path to tread again. The insurers have taken over the Drying Out Process which they say could take anywhere from 0 to 28 days. There are damp reports, forensic assessments, dehumidifiers, environmental teams and all sorts of experts introduced to this project and taking a look this week. Some damage is making itself evident a couple of weeks post-deluge as the underlying structure starts to dry, and even I can see these bits.
To catalogue a few of the areas as they’ve changed in the past fortnight….
But work continues, and although we were planning on moving in, I can’t really say that it was to a complete house anyway. We’d agreed with Tim that work would continue once we were in, and some important bits remained outstanding. Like the 1.25″ diameter water supply which was installed this week. The old pipes were lead, and the water company has a scheme for replacement (which is a little known fact), and they came to replace the house’s supply for free–hooray!
It turns out the supply runs alongside the road between it and the ditch, so there was no kango-ing of tarmac and far less fuss than expected. Phew
The Swedish-sauna oak soffits on the first-floor overhang went in all along the front and west side of the building. It’s all bright and sparkly now with Clive’s double coats of Osmo oil, which looks a little jarring next to the structural oak that’s been there for months, but it should grey out like the rest of building in time. Spencer will be back to install a lead strip around the west overhang so it’s completely watertight.
Shower screens went in and niche lighting is on. We’ve had a little trouble with the screen for the girls’ bathroom–it’s got a dippy kink in the wall which prevents fitting the screen flush with the edge of the tray, and it’s just plain too long leaving a slim 560 mm gap to get into the shower. We can’t do anything about the placement of the glass, but we can adjust it’s length. The catch is that the screen is made of special safety glass so it can’t simply be trimmed onsite. These things are jolly expensive, so it takes some nerve to say it’s not right. We’ve asked for a price on replacing it at this stage, and we’ll make a decision whether to change it or not depending on how astronomical it is.
Lots has happened on the outside of the house in the past few weeks.
The electricians will re-attend after the driveway is complete. There’s a day or so of work to put the car charging point in, wire up the coach light and run all the garden spots out to their respective beds. But for now, the wires will be left all coiled up on the side of the garage. Some will be on timers in the garage and others will be switched from the front door which is exactly like we had it in the old house.
The oak support for the garage overhang was mortared in with the rest of paving slabs. This post replaced the very large brick pier that was built first and then demolished when we discovered it left no room to move around it. The edges of the post are really square, and we’ve got to decide whether to chamfer off the corners–what do you think?
This kind of finishing work would have carried on regardless of the flood, and would have been happening even if we had moved in. The builders have been part of our lives for 65 weeks, and the house is pretty dang big compared to what we’ve been living in the past two years, so I’m sure we could have fit in the odd chippie or electrician during the move. But fortunately for them, they’ve had a chance to work unencumbered, and they’ll soon be clearing off to hand over to the environmental guys as part of the insurer’s package until it’s dry.
Pain is a funny thing. It gradually fades, and the weird bit is that you don’t notice it’s gone. I hardly think about my surgeon any more, but all sorts of thoughts have come to the fore recently. One day, this trauma won’t burn so bright, the technicolour will dim, and things will calm down. Looking forward to it.