livewirestu's blog

[livewirestu]

Holding place for my blog .
Will put a bunch of stuff here when I have more time.
Probably mostly about the following to start with:

• The house I am building for myself in my spare time!
• Ntreev USA praise and peeves
• My sister's wedding coming up this friday
• Records and stuff
• My new pang farming guides (anyone fancy up to 8k pang for 10 minutes work? - Front 3 on silvia with pang mastery - no pots required! )

Stu

[jshaw]

A BLOG SECTION OR LORD THIS WILL BE FUN. hmmm stu a house ehhh. you do know terms like square and well square covers most of it lol youll have to send me pics . any plans for a beer cooler with maybe hoses going to each sitting station in the parlor

[livewirestu]

Hrm the beer hoses thing sounds good . I'll remember to leave some room in my budget for that
Anyway. I've been promising to post some pics for bloody ages now so here goes. From (almost) the very start to where I'm at now.
I can't find any pictures of the land as it was when I first bought it. Basically there were just 3 fairly large (one massive!) greenhouses on the plot and it was overgrown with about 2-3 feet of weeds over the whole thing. The pictures here start after the deconstruction of the greenhouses and general clearing of the land, which took about a month of weekends in itself. I've reduced the picture sizes so that the page won't take a week to load.
So... Here's where the digging started. That's my dad's mini digger in the pic. Which was pretty sweet as it saved me the cost of hiring one .

Wow the plot looks small at this stage!

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Next piccie, all the footings are dug out and most of the muck cleared away. The remaining piles of earth were retained for backfilling later.

Those footings are about 4-5ft deep in some places. Thankfully the ground was really good at that depth.

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And here's my good ol' dad who's been brilliant so far with all the help and advice he's given me

My dad :)

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The next part was arguably one of the toughest parts of the job so far. Most exhausting at least anyway. It was time for the concrete which came in 3 trucks each holding 6 cubic metres. That's around 45 tonnes of concrete that wee needed to push around the footings by hand using shovels and rakes as there was only one pouring point!! Luckily I had a few friends and my Dad there helping that day as we were allowed up to 45 minutes per truck. Yup - that averages out at moving about a third of a tonne per minute. It was one of the hottest days of the job too.... figures huh. So, here's my friend's Olly and Phil who helped me.

Olly (left) and Phil (right.... obviously)

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And here's the result of that hard work after it had set. The Americans reading this are prolly wondering where the hell my basement is. Well - basements are not common in the UK. Btw - no, those aren't benches around the sides, they are profiles used for marking out.

Foundations are in. Big sigh of relief!

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I think I'll split this off into another post here...

[livewirestu]

So, the foundations are done. That's the first major stage of the build out of the way and we can really start to get cracking on with things.
Next stage - we get 10 tonnes of sand delivered and around half of the bricks and blocks (not all of them due to space constraints). Then bump the bricks out ready to start laying them. Yep there's no easy jobs at the start.... during the hottest part of the build .
Just bumped out enough bricks and blocks to get to DPC (damp proof course) level.

Some bricks and blocks in place ready for laying.

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....Then start laying some bricks and blocks!
The final outside ground level will be a few inches below the top of the brickwork level in this picture. Yep still lots of groundwork to go yet. but that ain't the half of it! The internal floor level will be flush with the top of the brickwork in this pic. But that's too much volume to fill completely with concrete as it would cost a fortune.

Brick and blockwork to DPC level

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While we're at it, here's a few piccies of the rear of the plot showing the remaining earth that will need to be moved by hand later on. Also shown is the soakaway - a fairly large pit, about 4 x 6 ft and about 5ft deep. This is where any visiting planning officers will be buried. Hehe not really. It will be filled with hardcore (rubble - not the other kind) and milk crates creating a substantial amount of airspace below the ground. The surface rainwater from the roof of the house will run into here to drain away, meaning I wont have to pay extra for it to run into the main sewage infrastructure .
You can also see my fairly large lean-to storage shed (well kind of a shed) at the rear of the property. Loads of storage space for junk hehe. The back wall of the lean-to marks my rear site boundary. Also note the trenches down the left and right sides for the services (water, electric, gas, sewerage).

piles, trenches, lean-to etc

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Grav....er... Soakaway

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Not sure why but I have a small gap in the photo's here. The next stage was to break up about 6-7 tonnes of hardcore (rubble from that pile shown in some of the previous photos) with a sledgehammer and spread it around on the ground on the oversite (inside the brickwork). This was the hardcore that came from the site itself, mostly from the foundations of the greenhouses and dug out of the ground. This was nowhere near enough though so I had a 10 tonne delivery of pre-smashed hardcore delivered which I wheelbarrowed from round the front of the garage (seen in another piccie earlier) as that was the only place it could be dropped. Still wasn't quite enough so then another 5 tonnes turned up.... which was too much argh! Not to worry though because it will be used for my paths and some will be thrown in the soakaway. Then the hardcore is all levelled out and compacted down firmly, after which it is covered with about 2 inches of sand to mask the sharp edges of the rubble beneath. This is then levelled, smoothed and further compacted forming a solid base for the insulation and concrete to sit on. At this stage there is about 20 tonnes of material inside the oversite!
You can partially see this in the next picture:

For some reason, the only piccie I have of the "hard work" beneath the concrete hehe

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tbc.....

[livewirestu]

Next, on top of the compacted hardcore and sand we put 100mm thick jablite insulation (polystyrene basically). This is for thermal insulation. Note the waste pipes poking out the top.

Insulation to keep my tootsies warm

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Then we put a layer of DPM (damp proof membrane) on top of the jablite to prevent damp coming up from the ground.

Don't want wet carpets now, do I

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Now we're ready for the concrete... yay more concrete . At least it was only one truck load this time, so about 15 tonnes. My wonderful Dad helped me shift it all around, level it out and float it off

YAY another big sigh of relief as we reach the next milestone

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Woohoo! Now I have a floor (this is not quite the finished floor level as there is another 50mm of screed to go on top of this - but we do this later so it doesn't get damaged during the build).

[livewirestu]

Now things are really going to start taking shape. The worst of the hard graft is out of the way and it's time to start doing some real brickwork. We start by building up a corner so we don't have to keep moving everything around. It's also slightly less soul destroying to see parts coming up quickly rather than laying each complete course of bricks. My dad and brother-in-law did the main chunk of the brickwork as I was still at my day-to-day job. I still did as much as I could though at the weekends. These are some really nice looking bricks called "Ashdown Cottage" bricks. Quite a nice rustic look but a bit of a bugger to lay as many of them were slightly banana shaped!

Visible progress :)

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Then it's all systems go! Next piccie we're up to window level. I put aside some of the more reddish bricks for the soldier courses below the kitchen windows.
You can just about see the top of the internal brickwork around the front in this piccie too.

Window level.

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Here's my trusty Dad again and as you can see, the brickwork and blockwork for the ground floor is nearly complete.

My Dad again :)

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First lift of scaffolding goes up as the brickwork is nearing completion and we make a start on the internal walls. Note that these are not stud walls. This is because they will bear part of the load from the roof. You can also see some of the steel lintels have been placed above the window openings.

Internal walls

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Brickwork pretty much done now

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[livewirestu]

Ok, so the ground floor structure is finished . The first floor is going to be built in timber frame, so time to get some timber in. Several miles of timber in fact!! 400 metres of batten alone! First time I've seen red batten too. The red colouring denotes that it is of structural grade.
Most of the timber in this pic is 4.8 - 5.4m long.

Holy crap! Thats a lot of timber

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OMG there's more!

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Next we need add the plates - basically just timber cemented on top of the block work to which we will affix the first floor joists.

Plate level

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This is where the fun begins. I love working with timber... I think it is maybe some primal thing... and I like the smell too
Now we're ready for joists. I opted to exceed the building regulations specification here so went for 9x2" buggers for extra rigidity. Then inserted cross membered battens as noggins to provide lateral stability. Note the bloody awkward positioning of scaffold poles due to space restrictions.

First floor joists in place

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Now things are really going to speed up. The house is a mansard style, meaning that the rook will have two pitch angles, with the first floor being within the first pitch. Means that the bedrooms will have a sloped wall but they are of a pretty decent size for a first house so it's not much of an issue. Mansards look nice from the outside too.
Clamping these first wall raftes in place to be drilled and bolted was a bit of a pain but once I got the hang of it they weren't so bad. Meanwhile my dad started on the gable walls.

Flying up now!

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[livewirestu]

Here's a nice shot from the inside. The front rafters are in place, the left gable wall is pretty much finished and I have started on the rear rafters. You can see the bottom positions of where the dormer windows will be. Starting to look interesting now!

Getting exciting now!

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First floor timber work about 70% complete now (not including internal stud walls which will come later). Next step is to finish the dormer frames, then I have two really heavy beams to go on top of the gable walls you see here at each end. Not gonna be an easy task! The structural engineer has specified flitch beams which will be two 6m lengths of 11x3" timber sandwiched around a 250x8mm steel plate, all bolted together. The steel itself weighs the best part of 100kg and the two timbers together probably weigh in at around 150kg (estimate) so we will need to lift the pieces in place and bolt them together in-situe. I need to drill about 50 holes through the 8mm steel plates which won't be a lot of fun considering they are 12mm holes. Oh well.

Looking good now

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And that's about where I'm up to so far. I'll be doing the beams this weekend and hopefully do some work on the rafters. I'll get some more piccies soon