• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Mike's ext'n & renovation (solar panels)

Good progress Mike.

Apologies as I may have missed this but it looks like those joists won't be resting on the blockwork, so remind me what it is they will rest on eventually...?

Cheers
Mark
 
This surprised me too Mark. Given that all the insulation requirement is met by the outer wall and celotex, building the joist end into the high density blocks would not constitute a thermal leak however I'm sure Mike has a first class reason for using hangers.

Bob
 
Can hangers be cemented into the courses of brickwork and therefore you don't have to work your blockwork around all the joists? Would require a lot of careful planning but then we know who is doing this work......
 
I will be bolting a girding beam to the blockwork, and hanging the joists off that using jiffy hangers.

Unfortunately I couldn't make the floor work to block (or brick) courses, because it lines up with the floor in the old part of the house. It was a choice of having the plinth work to the same course as the existing house, or the first floor, but I couldn't have both. On a new-build, I would make it course, and then use masonry-type hangers to hold the joists.
 
9fingers":ini4kw1v said:
Given that all the insulation requirement is met by the outer wall and celotex, building the joist end into the high density blocks would not constitute a thermal leak......
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Doing that provides an airpath into wall when the timber shrinks, increasing the chance of interstitial condensation. The whole reason for doing a balloon frame construction in the first place was to reduce the amount of air infiltration into the wall.
 
I had to get some help to manhandle the 140 x 100 x 2.1m lintels into place:

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That allowed me to do the really awkward couple of courses of blockwork which where it passed the first floor. I was constantly running from upstairs to downstairs and back again:

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But once I got clear of the floor, it was the easiest blocklaying of the whole job. No windows, only one corner...........joy!!

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The only thing that was in any way awkward was holding long lengths of insulation in place, so I quickly devised this little technique:

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A temporary wall tie and clamp did the job whilst the foam went off. I got this far, then ran into a sand issue:

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The Builder's Merchants delivered the wrong colour sand. That is unimportant for this blockwork, but the next job for it is face brickwork, inside, and colour is extremely important for that. They swapped it over as quickly as they could, but it did leave me with a day potentially kicking my heels.............so I did the girding beam and floor:

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There is a house opposite us being extended by some builders that don't seem to like spending too much time on site. The house owner is despairing somewhat at the slow progress. Thinking about it you have single handedly made faster progress than they have.

You make it all look so do-able but it is still impressive to watch. Always good to see the next instalment :)
 
Mike, How did you get on with that style of bolt? I used three on a job recently and only two held firmly into brick. If I needed more I'd used chemical bonding but it is not really economic for just three anchors.

The load was in shear so not too desperate but I was not impressed.

Bob
 
You are doing great work, but I pity the next person to come along who wants to lay a few cables for a new socket or new light fittings and finds, well, nothing to put their cables down!
 
Robert":3u6ypcj2 said:
There is a house opposite us being extended by some builders that don't seem to like spending too much time on site. The house owner is despairing somewhat at the slow progress. Thinking about it you have single handedly made faster progress than they have.

You make it all look so do-able but it is still impressive to watch. Always good to see the next instalment :)
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Thanks Robert. I just put in the hours, that's all. 80 last week.

Over the years, the axiom I have developed is that 2 people work three times as fast as one person alone. If I had someone with me, this would be all-but-finished by now.
 
9fingers":11clswz7 said:
Mike, How did you get on with that style of bolt? I used three on a job recently and only two held firmly into brick. If I needed more I'd used chemical bonding but it is not really economic for just three anchors.

The load was in shear so not too desperate but I was not impressed.

Bob
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Fifteen out of 16 got a great grip. The one failure was placed too close to the edge of a block, and there must have been some local breakage. I couldn't get it out, so had to cut it off. The rest, the nuts cranked up as tight as my carpal-tunnel-suffering hands could manage.
 
Halo Jones":11p4u8xd said:
You are doing great work, but I pity the next person to come along who wants to lay a few cables for a new socket or new light fittings and finds, well, nothing to put their cables down!
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I'm not sure that it would ever be done differently, even in a normal brick-and-block house. The cables are chased into the blockwork. Most of the cables will run in the first floor, and only have to be chased 450mm up the wall to the 1st floor sockets, or 1800 down the wall to 2 lounge sockets. The rest of the lounge sockets are fed through studwork and oak framing, and in the kitchen there is one drop through a duct which will then run around on the surface below worktop level. There is a straightforward cable route into the loft space through the airing cupboard so the cable runs to the lights will be easy. There will be so many sockets, light fittings and BT outlets that I doubt anyone would ever want to add any, although I suppose a data cable system might be something someone else might want to add.
 
Cracking stuff Mike, looking very impressive.

Regarding cables, I remember watching a programme once about Bill Gates and the house he built. It incorporated miles and miles of cables for IT infrastructure in huge ducts...... right before wifi became available :D

Steve
 
I cat 5 cabled my house when we built it and despite wifi it has proven really useful because it's long and ranch style. It means I can plug wireless access points into sockets which run back to the router via the house cabling. Without the wireless access points I cant extend the signal far enough to either the middle or our bedroom end of the house. I did try those wireless range extenders that plug into the mains and just pick up the wireless signal and boost it but found them to be rubbish.

The cat 5 coming out the walls saved my bacon. Also I have music distributed through the house via ceiling speakers and that too uses the cat 5.
 
Agreed - you can't have enough cat 5 and it is also usable as low voltage signalling eg BRUB and extra phone wiring.
Concrete blocks and wi-fi don't go well together as the blocks attenuate the signal. I can walk through a doorway in my 3" block walls and lose two out of five "cherries" on signal strength. The house is 14 m long and needs two wi-fi terminals linked with cat 5 as well as homeplug down to the workshop with a third wi-fi terminal inside the workshop.

Bob
 
This is why I need to get on with it a bit....

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Newly constructed rat holes in the utility room ceiling.

You can just see in the second photo a bit of a headache for the restoration phase of the project: that is a weak, primitive scarfe joint in the bridging joist holding the upstairs floor up in the air. It works OK now because there is a supporting wall nearby at the moment, but there won't be by the time I've finished work........leaving the floor vulnerable to collapse.
 
How newly constructed Mike - since you moved in? My SWMBO would be having a merry fit if that was the case in our house and moving in with her sister while I got rid of the vermin. :lol:

Steve
 
A thought occurred to me today and apologies if it's already been raised way, way back. When you come to planning applications, do you have to go into the level of detail that would demonstrate your way of construction, Mike? Or do you have to get Building Control on-side before you start. Otherwise I could see my local BCO having the heeby-jeebies, TBH.

I'm also wondering about how you go about explaining/proving everything that would be hidden (in terms of insulation) when the jobsworth from the company that issues the pointless energy certificate comes along.
 
Planning aren't concerned about how it is built. They only care what it looks like, what the exterior materials and finishes are, what size it is, relationship with neighbours etc.

Building Control are the ones who want to know what the nitty-gritty of the build is, and in my long experience, they absolutely love stuff like this which is a little out of the ordinary. My BCO is brilliant, and even drops in for a cup of tea when passing. He is helpful, and interested. I am doing this on "Notices", which means that I haven't had prior approval for the working drawings. The upshot of that is that I am doing each stage of work at risk, meaning that if I get it wrong he can ask me to take it down and do it properly. However, I do discuss each stage with the BCO beforehand, and have built a number of similar projects which the same department have inspected over the years. Hey, these guys passed a straw bale building of mine, so they are up for anything interesting!

As for the energy rating thingy.......

They aren't interested in what is in the walls or roof. They don't even ask. The software assumes it is built to the Building regs in force at the time, and there is nothing you can do to over-ride that. They don't have a tick-box for triple glazing, and they don't know what a mechanical ventilation system is. The system is beyond a joke.
 
At least you will have plenty of photos should you ever have to have a green deal assessment.

I had a right idiot from BG who came to do mine but at least a few photos I had, stopped him wanting to drill the walls to see how they were insulated.
He still made some erroneous statements about my heating system which I had to get changed in order to get RHI approval.
As far as I can tell GD assessors are just looking for opportunities to drum up business for remedial measures.

The trouble is OFGEM require GDAs to prove that certain measures have been taken before they will grant RHI status.

Bob
 
I haven't a clue why. They don't appear to have descended into the room (which would be difficult anyway, from the middle of the ceiling). Maybe they just find the board tasty. The "how" is easy: they just gnaw at it.
 
TrimTheKing":255h2ywr said:
Andyp":255h2ywr said:
....They're some big holes!!!

Mark
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It's all relative !

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I've hated every minute of it, but at last, the blockwork is finished:

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Seventy three square metres of blockwork, and I ended up 4 blocks short! I'm happy with that guess, even if it means a few scruffy blocks left over from an old project end up in the gable:

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I haven't had a day off for over a month. I might just have half a day tomorrow to watch the London Marathon.
 
Mike G":3616mw54 said:
I haven't a clue why. They don't appear to have descended into the room (which would be difficult anyway, from the middle of the ceiling). Maybe they just find the board tasty. The "how" is easy: they just gnaw at it.
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Are you sure its rats not squirels ? - the latter made a royal mess of the thatched roof of our forge, and the holes were that sort of dimensions.

If i were you i'd lift a board in the floor above and set a couple of Mk4 fenns - next to the holes. Its a better bet than poison because they won't scuttrle off to die somewhere inconvenient (to make sure you tack the tie down chain to a beam s that they dont drag themselves off fenn and all )
 
Intermission :)

There will now be a hiatus. I have a torn muscle in my forearm which prevents me even holding a toothbrush, and tomorrow I have an operation on my Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. So updates here will be scarce for a while. I'll be off the forum for a few days, I guess, as typing only left-handed might be a step too far.
 
Best of luck with the operation Mike. You must have been struggling with those HD concrete blocks.

I was in my original 9fingers mode in 2005 when needing to build my workshop out of similar blocks and ended up getting a couple of weekend brickies in.

Perhaps you will be able to hold the camera whilst SWMBO does a bit of chasing of the wiring into the blockwork or other light duties :lol:

Good Luck

Bob
 
9fingers":23sts4dd said:
Perhaps you will be able to hold the camera whilst SWMBO does a bit of chasing of the wiring into the blockwork or other light duties :lol:...
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I'm doing the electrical drawing at this very moment. Not for my wife, though; I know one or two electricians with all the necessary kit who might be a bit quicker :)
 
Unbelieveable progress! Especially carrying multiple injuries - you must have played Rugby League in your youth! Where did you pick up your bricky skills?
 
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