Wednesday 3 October 2012

A house! A lot of rain...and some airtightness hiccups...


It is still pouring with rain and may well do all week - it is hard not to lament the weeks without rain we had in August now but here we are, and the builders seem to be doing their best to put  a brave face on it.

The rain may damage the OSB and destroy the hardboard protecting our floor but it hasn't diminished the excitement of seeing the plot become a 'house' at last! We took Meg over to have a look and she bounded in the front door like she was born to the place...

It looks massive here from the road/hedge with the scaffolding ready to put in the first floor...just the living room and kitchen wall not yet in as this will need some steel to support the windows:


(Rhododendrons in bottom left doing well!) The below is the downstairs bedroom with the office to the right, lounge/kitchen in the middle and front door and dog friendly hallway (!) far left.


View from the office...it does feel strange framing off the view we've gotten so used to just standing on piles of earth but one day that'll be a distant memory I suppose. I know the window frames will make the view smaller still but thankfully they seem fairly massive!


House from the back and lots more OSB out there ready to finish the ground floor:


View for Rob while at work...


 Overlooking lounge/kitchen:


Front door is the one on the right (below) - there will be a little garage on the left and that left hand door way will lead from the garage into the laundry/corridor space where the plant will be. There'll also be a big wooden overhang from the garage covering the walk to the front door where a handy bench will be for taking off wellies!

We were giddy with all this great frame work which was built in our builder's workshop near Cemmaes but then, showing round our Passif expert on Sunday - in pouring rain - he realised that the air tightness membrane had been cut for the internal wall joins which would allow cold bridging all over the house! We might not have felt the difference although our wallets would have when it came to the bills and as Nick said, its much better to get the basics right rather than find problems when it is built and plastered over.

A scary moment as so much great work had already been done but when we turned up on site Monday morning the builders thankfully agreed to remove the easier walls and leave a gap and with the tough ones they got in and cut out a section of wood (below) so that Mike, the airtightness specialist can come back and tape it all up. So nice to be working with people who don't freak out when something like this comes up...



Crisis sort of averted and the view of Cae Bach from top field (you can just see the estuary in the top right...)


Not sure what'll be there next time!


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