Timber Kit Has Landed

The main elements of the kit arrived this morning, and by tea time this is where we are. All the external panels to the ground floor are erected and braced. the internal panels and the rst of the external ones, mostly the gable, are stacked neatly to be in place soon
The steelwork around the large glazing elements are in place, though not completely fixed. the external panels are slightly higher at one end as this is the "two storey void" above the living room.
Where the external panels are lower, prefabricated "room in roof" trusses will be placed. They come tommorrow, but i reckon it will be afew days before they are put in place.

For the first time it has become really real. No, really it really has. really.

Timber Kit on it's Way

My contractor tells me today the kit is coming one day early. He rang them today to make sure it was ready for delivery tommorrow, but he was a day early. They are a bit busy just now, so he was asked if he would take it a day early. That suits fine so programme for delivery is;-

main kit - tommorrow
trusses - Thursday
Windows - 10 days further on

ah, the picture? The timber at the top stops the concrete pouring out, when it's set it will be struck off and the timber soleplate put in it's place. The kit goes on top.

Concrete Slab

Nice day for pouring concrete, although my fingers were crossed all day as we had heavy showers yesterday.
However, all went well, and its looking pretty good; nice and flat, if not still a bit green.

I think Dr Who may have something missing from the Tardis, and its in the middle of my house.

These are the manifolds for the underfloor heating.They will be in the cupboard under the stairs.....maybe it will be bigger on the inside....................

Slab insulation and underfloor heating pipes

DPM will be laid and linked to the DPC.
On top of this is the shiny Kingspan Floor insulation.
On top of this, supported by concrete spacers is some steel mesh reinforcement. While this will give added stregth to the concrete slab, it also is used to attach the heating pipework to.
The timber around the edge is not the soleplate, but some formwork for the concrete floor which will come up to the level of where the soleplate will be. One of the reasons for this is the threshold on the large windows. We don't want a big step up, and it will be easeier for the level access to the front door.

Concrete didn't get poured today, I've not spoken to my contractor, but given we had some really heavy showers, it's a good thing.

sweaty Saturday

so now we can reveal the full purpose of the bitumen paint!

It's made it easier to sweat on this damp proof course which will link into the damp proof membrane under the concrete slab. This will provide a nice waterproof layer to prevent groundwater rising up through the blockwork into the floor or timber frame which is coming on Thursday.

Yahooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

.....more backfill, and a lid!