The house that Jack built - pt2 29 Sept 2016

Day2 of housebuild was lost due to the second lorry being lost, or at least late. So no work today, site closed and I can go cycling.
Day3 of housebuild, second lorry arrives, as does new larger crane, and by half past ten half the house is up. By the end of the day, internal and external walls are up, and those windows not pre-fitted [most of the small/medium ones were installed in factory] were lifted into the house along with front doors.

The first section is lifted in - east wall with front door and small lounge windows.

A bigger and better crane is here for Day2

North wall with small windows in service rooms overlooking the street, and the front door in East wall.
The crane also uplifted various materials such as the Baumit lime render, 50 'railway sleepers' from which I shall construct small supporting walls around the house where it has been sunk into the landscape.

We were allowed to use the golf course maintenance area, which lies behind/below the house to site the crane and offload materials, which was an enormous advantage which I am sure the contractor will recognize with an appropriate donation.

The House that Jack built - 27 Sept 2016

An exciting week now, after some feverish activity to make preparations, now the kit arrived.
Crane was there and waiting. Lorry arrived at about 10 with the Studio kit on board, plus various other bits and pieces. It was a bit of a challenge getting it through the narrow entrance into the golf club grounds at the rear of the house where the crane stood. And a bit worrying when the wind started to blow, but it was nothing like the 40mph forecast for the central belt at the time.

 However all went smoothly and by 4pm the building had a roof on.

Why from Poland? Much of our construction timber is sourced from overseas. In Poland they make Steico I-beams [joists made of a thin central core of manufactured board with timber at each end] which are less termally conductive and also stronger for given size than solid timber. Steico also make insulation from wood fibre. So a Polish factory can construct competitively an excellent quality wall/roof frame from I-beams, fully filled with insulation and clad on the ouitside with a further 100mm of insulation.

Windows were fitted later after these pics - they were supposed to be fitted in factory, but arrived on the back of the lorry.

Raft Foundation preparation and concrete pour - Sept 2016

Insulation is laid out on carefully prepared level foundation of Type1 and sand. Steel reinforcement is laid on insulation and in deeper sections under walls.

Concrete pump arrives and pumps 15m3 of concrete into raft foundation. The raft is then floated off for level and finished with a whirlpool.

Garage ceiling/studio floor taking shape.