it's a house
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.
After hours, there are loads of animals that visit the site.
One soak-away dug and dusted…
The bricks arrived!
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.
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.
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.
We’re about to choose the hanging tiles. And of course we’re still dithering on the mortar colour.
Crane Day!
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.
The test panel is drying out. Now we get to choose tiles! Which is your favourite?
Looking forward to concrete beams for the ground floor arriving tomorrow with any luck, and crane to lay it all on Thursday.
Week double-digits. Coming out of the ground bit by bit.
This test panel of bricks is a complicated affair:
As the top courses dry, they’ll end up lighter than the bottom half of the panel. You may remember that last week, we were concerned it was too dark so we got in a couple of different sands. One of them has more aggregate in as well. We like the deeper recess, but we’ll have to wait until the panel dries to make a decision on the mortar.
We’re also now reconsidering the brick. I know this is extremely poor timing, but it’s such an enormous part of the project we want to be sure to get it right. So off I went taking Toothless for a massive journey into deepest Sussex to check out the bricks below. Ours is the furthest to the right. We quite like the Tumbled Multi, but at some point we’ve got to adhere to the conservative system that is what we like vs what we have to spend! A project for the weekend is to reassure ourselves that this is the right brick for the right price.
The brick layers have been in and have laid up to the reds in the living room. They put lintels across gaps where the pipework will exit the building. Check out the red laser sight on the tripod in the middle of the room.
Lee and his crew will dig the last trench tomorrow; 8+ square metres of concrete arrives around 2:00 pm. Next week it’s laying the ground floor and pouring the garage floor. The crane is scheduled to spend the day with us on Tuesday, and Nic will have to post around a note to the 11 neighbours saying that the lane will be blocked for most of the morning. That is,…. if the brick layers have a dry enough time of it to lay on the foundations. The crane will lift the huge T sections onto the reds, then the blocks will fit in between. The final bit for Lee is to set these blocks into a loose concrete muck which is poured on top. I don’t know if he’s responsible for the DPC membrane, or if it’s another crowd.
Apparently one of the bricklayers kept hitting this exact spot and getting all religious about it. At volume. It’s pretty deep!
One of those nice shots of the lane; this one with the new blossom getting shot off the tree by torrential rain onto the tarmac.
And on the way back, randomly in front of the temporary digs….
In the meantime, we’re looking at the oak subframe in detail.
Check out the meerkat next door (1:28)….
Lovely day if you’re a duck. Here’s driving to the site….
It’s a lovely bank holiday today with stormy winds out of the East and torrential rain forecast for tomorrow morning:
Thankfully, we spent some of the weekend making a nice little shelter for the camera. So fingers crossed, there won’t be any more water accumulating in the housing and creating a foggy picture, and we’ll have lovely clear timelapses going forward.
Lots of other bits of the weekend were spent reading contracts, checking out local completed house projects like ours and investigating Arts and Crafts style points (including the bio of local architect transplanted from Scotland, George Blair Imrie who designed the Wisley labs–a long favourite of ours).
It’s meant to be a busy day onsite tomorrow with the brickies arriving first thing. Hope they bring their flippers and snorkels.
Hooray!
Concrete has been a real headache. Lee was anxious to get back on site today and make some real progress to finish the job. So close!…only one more trench to dig out. Having a silo onsite would have been the alternative, but the guys thought that since the concrete depot is only a couple miles down the road that it would be easy to have pours on a as-needed basis. But with the extra depth of trenches that the warranty company wanted alongside the vagaries of supply and plant operation, it’s been a hassle. As lovely and accommodating as Lee and his crew have been, Nic will be glad to see the us out of the ground.
They’ll leave the garage trenches for access until the brick layers are almost finished.
There are two types of bricks in the groundworks: the concrete blocks and the reds. The blocks are laid first, then the reds are used to achieve the right levels. The level of the ground floor is the same as the street although it looks deceivingly high at the moment. The reds are used instead of the blocks because they’re easier to cut and don’t fall to bits. There is a pile of sand behind the bricks too.
They found a second well! It’s about 2.5 metres deep and full of water! Can’t believe it. We’d never known of it until they were mucking away the big pile of earth and the digger took a huge chunk out of it. It must have been under the grass…. Bonkers!!
The concrete deliveries have dried up today, so Lee and his gang can go home and sit in the sun. This is not a good thing, and even Lee didn’t want to leave. But the deliveries are few and far between despite having been booked for weeks. Apparently the Leatherhead Cemex site is shut, and the last few loads have come from Crawley. We’re a relatively small job, so if every builder in the area needing concrete is using the Crawley depot, they’ll decide to deliver to the big jobs first, and we’re just tiny fish in this pond.
There are only a couple more deep trenches out the front to go.
The test panel is looking better in colour. It’s incredible how much the mortar colour has changed and lightened up. We’ve decided not to go with the current bucket handle joint profile and have recessed or raked instead. Not enormously interesting as a detail, but it will make the bricks stand out more which is nice because in using engineered bricks rather than reclaimed, we’re losing the variation.
These two are West Ho and Bletchworth (I think!). We’re seeing if the mortar could be lighter (do we need to?), and if it could contain more aggregate. Here, it’s drying out in a high tech test environment so we can look at the colour properly.
Watch for an overambitious concrete delivery at about 0:23 below. The shuttering gave way and the guys had a heart attack. They managed to cut the pour and save the day before the whole thing went south. We’ve got a REALLY stable footing at the side of the family room!
Still digging.
Sometimes when I come round the corner and see how lovely the lane is, or see the neighbour taking a picture of a bird’s nest in some random place, I’m reminded that we’re so incredibly lucky to be building this house in this spot. This morning it was simply the steam coming off the road in the early morning sun that caught my eye. Mind you, the guys had been there long enough to be eating their toast before kicking off at 8:00 on the dot, that they could have appreciated it too, but they’re focussed on getting the job done and getting on outta here rather than waxing lyrical about steamy roads.
The percolation test is carrying on: 1 hr 55 minutes to drop sufficiently. That’s a blindingly fast rate of 1mm every 50 seconds or so. The average speed of a snail (Cornu aspersum) is 1.3 mm/s, and this is 0.2, or 6.5 times slower. The literature suggests a time of 24 seconds. Ha! Looks like we gotta kick the bejeezus out of Option B.
The guys have dug out masses from the deep trenches and have built up quite a Col de St Anne’s in the front. Rain is forecast, but I hope it’s not massively wet when the muckaway truck comes on Monday or they’ll need a few more trips to get rid of it. Not much more digging to go; just a couple of the garage walls.
The timelapse camera got some water in, so I’m missing a few days. I’ve got footage, but they’re not worth posting. The videos start off ok first thing, but as the unit heats up in the day, the water steams up, it stays in the housing and obscures the lens with fog. Not the best, but going forward we’ll squish one of those little silica packs in between the camera and the housing and we’ll see if that de-mists the whole contraption.
A two-droppper is NOT good when digging three metre deep foundations, and it really slung it last night. In fact, the guys dug out a deep section and shuttered it all up yesterday–all tickety-boo. But when they lifted the shuttering this morning to drop in the steels and pour concrete, the whole thing folded. Nic was unimpressed, and I can’t imagine Lee and his team were thrilled. After checking with Justin, the plan became digging at 45 degrees, shuttering, then backfilling.
It’s a real juggling act of mucking away the spoil in time for the concrete lorry to arrive and wedge itself in close to the trench. Nic has had one muckaway truck come when the concrete guys were pouring, and the driver was not happy because he had to wait around. But apart from that one time, Nic’s got it dialled and the system runs like clockwork.
The other fun bit today was thinking about the soakaway. All the rainwater is to run to a central pit filled with rocks under the middle of the garden. Sometimes these are called French drains. It’s a very simple and effective way of getting water into the ground. But you might ask: how big should it be? Well, there is a calculation for that which takes the predicted rainfall over a given area (roof) multiplied by some constants which gives a rough idea of the soakaway’s required volume. A more advanced way of calculating the volume is to check the draining capacity of the soil. To do this test they dig a small pit, fill it with water, and time the fall millimetre by millimetre. This is a percolation test, and that’s what Nic and Justin are comparing notes about.
If the percolation test warrants an unfeasibly large soakaway, we’ll consider running the rainwater out into the ditch. Next door does it, so it should be fine. But these decisions need to be made before the blockwork goes up which will limit access for diggers and machinery to the rear drive.
Sunday is supposed to be a big day for rain, but next week looks dry. The brickies arrive on Wednesday, so we’ll finally be going upwards!
The last thing to show you is the test panel of bricks.
We think we can improve the colour and texture of the mortar. It looks a little too dark and a little too smooth. This might be just a drying thing as it changes colour a lot as it sets. We’ll try the last 20 bricks next week with a mix of lighter sand and a little aggregate. I stole one of my bricks (how does THAT work?) and a chunk of mortar that Justin prized off the back of the panel, and I’ll have a wander to a couple of similar builds to compare the bricks and pointing. I hope I don’t get arrested wandering around Oxshott with a brick in my hand. One vaguely interesting thing is that we’re using engineered bricks, and the original specification was for reclaimed London Stock. These are about a pound a brick with about 30% wastage. No, thank you! And they’re olde worlde imperial measurements which don’t jive with our modern metric drawings. But a comparison would set my mind at ease to make sure we’re on the right track from a design point of view.
Things like contracts, structural oak design, roof design, procurement and budget calculations are all happening in the background, but I won’t go into detail here. This project is a Big Deal, but not a Grand Design in the Kevin McCloud sense–we’re into low drama and minimised risk…and sleeping at night!
More digging, more mucking away, more concrete. That’s about it. Nic has been sending photos during the day which is excellent — thanks Nic! These are the small footings; the garage footings on the east side are deeper because of next door’s conifers and also because the floor is cantilevered off the back foundations. The idea is that although these will take a while to dig and fill, the first blockwork course before the DPC can start on the west side sections.
More digging, more cement, and more digging.
At least it’s warmer now, and the guys can dig longer trenches without concern that they’ll cave in while they’re waiting for the cement to arrive.
One interesting thing is that the test bricks have arrived. These will be made into a panel for inspection. We’ll be checking that they look right, the pointing is good, and the mortar mix matches everything.
The old post that used to stand on top of the turret roof on the tower is now propped up against the loo. It’s made of wood with a lead sheath round it. I’ll ask them to keep it and we can put it in the garden somewhere.
Oh my word, did it sling it this morning or what? It’s been summer showers off and on all day. And I mean ON or nothing. So the place is looking more Somme-like this week. I’ll bet the pump has been in action. Tony the structural engineer and Tom of building control have both been down to site, and everything is going to plan.
Big events include filling the well with a “lean mix”, quotes are for us newbies: this is a mix of less concrete and more sand so it can be chipped out if needs be at any future point. But our paddling pool days are well and truly over; we now have no more well. I don’t feel extremely good about this–the well was one of the quirky features of the house that we made the best of and enjoyed. By getting rid of things like this, are we making this place more generic? I hope we are improving the site and keeping somewhat true to Alice Grey’s original plan by keeping the design functional and honest and by not going all KT22-glam. I can’t see that we’ll be housing the poor of Lambeth any time soon, but the house will at least keep the heat in. Maybe losing the well isn’t that big a compromise for a little modernity and thermal efficiency.
The guys have dug, shuttered, braced and filled the rear bay too.
A little more shuttering and a little more concrete by the weekend.
Today has been about waiting for the building control inspection and the concrete, and fingers were crossed for most of the day that they would arrive in that order.
The sides of the trenches were temporarily shuttered with big sheets of ply. The first steel reinforcements went in just fine: Jamie dropped them in using the digger and Lee coordinated. The grids have little plastic feet on them so they sit nicely in the trench.
The footings will be about 800 mm of concrete then a couple or so courses of blocks, then bricks. The guys talk about concrete arriving in cubic metre loads.
I met Poppy the security system too.
We had a peep down the well today, and the guys are amazed at how clear the water is. Back in the day, we used to fill the paddling pool up with the well-water using Chas’ irrigation pump. All the neighbourhood kids would come round and it’s a drag that we are no longer off metering. Apparently all new houses require a water meter. But the swimming pool was awesome, if cold!
The well water wasn’t the only thing filled with water though….
The water table is pretty high where we are! Luckily, Nic has a pump just like ours and he’s drying it out before the building control guys come round to have a look. It needs inspecting before concrete is poured.
Ben brought his drone down and he got a lovely shot.
The steel reinforcements arrived onsite. They’re single lengths and need to be formed into the shape of the foundation channels. The guys have had a little bonfire today while waiting for the steel, and they intend to start digging tomorrow.
On site, the guys have been waiting for the steel reinforcements before digging. So they’ve tidied and sorted things like the water and electricity supply, the shrubbery, and making cozy the tea-hut/garage in the meantime.
I’m leaving out all the paperworky-type drama like negotiating with the contractor to get into a contract, dealing with the warranty company (Dave is just about still smiling), making regular minor structural engineering amendments, hiring additional engineers surrounding the oak and the roof, and choosing a kitchen supplier. I haven’t even chosen the fun stuff yet! And I have no idea what the letting schedule is going to be like and where we’re going to put all the “stuff” onsite. It really is a full time job, and we’re grateful to Ben to coordinating it all. The whole team is working together to make this house happen, and Tim assures us the Christmas lights will be on this year. But while it seems all sweetness and unicorns now, our first valuation is due to happen next week…..
Met Lee today, he’s the main ground work guy. Lovely chap and very patient! He said there is quite often a lag when trades handover.
We’re waiting around for the steel reinforcements for the foundations. It makes little sense to dig out the foundations only to have it rain and them to cave in over the bank holiday weekend. This wait is putting the plan back a week. The demo guys took a little longer than expected and the guys in the office won’t be happy to hear that nothing is happening this week except for some burning of the shrubbery.
We can see where the house is going to live! Very exciting.
Today was all about theodolites, stake and paint. The guys marked out Dave’s grid on the fences and from stakes set into the ground. The walls are outlined in blue paint. It’s fantastic to wander around with the ground floor GA drawings and look at the markers to figure out where you are. Just like Battleship.
It looks a LONG way back from the road. We realised that the ditch gives a false sense of space, since we’ll have to restore it and leave just the two bridges.
Dave came to site yesterday and said that the tolerances of the layout are within 20mm. 20mm?!! That’s bonkers. GPS will locate within a metre or so, but apparently it only took an hour to set out the whole thing. Pretty dang impressive.
Didn’t take any photos today, but it’s the first day of our new site manager, Nic, so welcome aboard. They were due to set out the plot today which is exciting, but not much discernible change.
Gone.
I couldn’t come down and take photos today, so the only thing recording was the time-lapse. It’s great that the whole thing carries on regardless!
Thanks very much, Alan and the team!
We were due to go off to look at universities today, but we couldn’t leave before checking in with the guys. Alan and his team have done a really fine job with the demolition and he believes they’ll be offsite by Friday. All the material has been sorted, and today is mostly carting away. When I popped by this afternoon, they were taking out the drains. Lovely!
It’s hard to tell what’s happened during the day when we have a look in the evening. But I suspect that since the digger is riding rather lower that there have been a series of skips down the lane to take our house away.
The garden that I’ve dug, re-dug and tended for 16 years is completely trashed. I couldn’t even recognise where the well was today! (it’s under a fence by the shrub in the first photo below)
Photos are becoming a little less interesting as there is less and less to show.
We expected there to be some digging out of foundations occurring this week, but Alan says there were absolutely none. The whole house was resting on earth. Bonkers. What an enormous relief that we didn’t engage on a restoration programme. We would have had to underpin the whole thing. One of the reasons we didn’t go down the renovation route was because we really didn’t want to find out the house’s inner secrets and be surprised. Surprises make good TV for Grand Designs, and not for our nice calm and organised job in Oxshott. I just hope they don’t find the bones of Alice Grey somewhere…. (more on her later).
They’ve left a little bit of the wall round the back of the kitchen that contains the water pipe. It saves the demolition guys putting in a stand pipe while they’re onsite. That will be a job for the main contractor.
I can’t believe how many bricks they’re keeping. Lots of them have spalled (are spalling?), and I thought they weren’t of any use to anyone. But they look much neater and tidier on the pallets than they ever did on the house!
All that’s left is clearing and grubbing out the foundations. Dulux says that they’ll start setting out next week.
We took the day off house-gawping yesterday as we were all scattered to the winds doing fun things.
Today, the sun is bright, and I’m reminded of why we are doing this project. In having a look at the destruction, the birds around us were chirping, the lane was quiet, and the sun was warm. Gorgeous.
But it makes me kind of wistful looking at the old fireplace sitting there intact amongst the rubble. Doorways are the weirdest; I remember chasing children through the warren of rooms, and now there is nothing.
But there’s no looking back and I can’t wait for more progress and seeing the rest of it flattened this week!
The demolition team is working really hard to get through the house. It’s not so much the knocking down, it’s the sorting and finessing all the materials into different piles. The wood goes off somewhere, the bricks set into pallets, and the real junk (most!) goes off somewhere else. Alan says that it would take a blink of an eye to knock the thing down, but a further two weeks to sort through the materials. This way appears tedious, they’ll be done next week. Hooray!
The entire front gable is gone, so bye-bye boys’ room. Chimney breasts don’t take very long either!
The camera got a little knocked when the garage was made watertight.
Gillian’s room is gone. Funny that when she saw it had disappeared, she said she didn’t feel much loss. She’s very keen to have a new room that doesn’t have mould that she can decorate and relax in. Sensible girl! We’ve now got the kids’ loo and the boys’ room on show.
Work gets right in the way of watching the house come down! It will just be photos over the next few days, but I can see that the tower and stairs are completely gone, and Gemma’s room has disappeared. It’s funny to see how the tower-extension consisted of a simple plastering over the outside bricks.
Dulux felted the garage roof, and the interior is being made into a nice mess room for the guys on-site. The 18T digger arrived after a 1.5 hour holdup on the A3. After that, it was taking down section after section in the pouring rain. The demolition company had originally thought to take down the boys’ room corner first, but started with the tower instead so there will be more room for the enormous bins that arrive tomorrow. It’s amazing to walk up the lane, turn the corner and NOT see parts of the house. Bonkers!
We’re no longer allowed onsite for safety reasons. Steve reckons the house may fall, but only around its footprint. Any potential devastation is unlikely to venture past the garage or the front fence. Fingers crossed.
