We have laid the first 3 ground loops and are now in a position to cover them back over. Each loop is 50m and there is a layer of sand below and above the pipework. The subsoil is then carefully reinstated avoiding any very large stones.
Month: August 2013 (Page 2 of 5)
There are two large bi-folding doors in the new extension – one in the lounge and another in the master bedroom. We will be using steel beams to bridge these openings. These beams will be supported by two large steel posts. The steel will be hidden behind the stone surround for the large square picture window (you can see this in the elevation below).
These steel posts are 140mm x140 mm square with a large plate on the bottom for bolting to a concrete pad. Then the foundations will be bricked up to the posts and the posts concreted into the floor slab. The posts are over sized and about 300mm too long. These will be cut later on to the correct length and the cross beams welded to them.
One of the things that has surprised me is that a number of decisions need to be made so quickly. Here’s an example…..the kitchen.
The concrete slab has yet to be laid in the new extension. This includes the slab for the kitchen. You can see the current state of the build in the photo below.
To be able to get the pipework in the right place in the concrete, we need to understand the layout in the kitchen. We have really had to move quickly over the next few weeks and have just placed the order for the kitchen. While the finishes may change, the layout is pretty set. We have used the layout to define where the pipework should go in the concrete slab.
There is a 75mm layout of insulation to go on top of the slab and then another 75mm of screed. The screed will contain the underfloor heating pipes. You can put the water feeds into the insulation layer, however, we have put the cold water supply (blue pipe in the photo) inside a brown plastic waste pipe. By putting the cold water supply into the concrete slab, we avoid the cold water from being warmed up by the underfloor heating.
The kitchen design has been done by KC Design in Clayton West – again, we are using another local firm. The kitchen is bespoke and will be produced here in Yorkshire. Now we have sorted out the layout, we can relax a little bit as it will be the back end of the year before we are ready to install it. Lots of decisions to be made between now and then.
The base of the hole that we have dug for the ground loops needs to be fairly flat and free of any large stones. This is achieved by what is called “tracking in”. This means using the metal tracks on the 14 tonne excavator to crush the stones by driving up and down. In our case, the sandstone underneath is fairly soft and seems to respond well to be “tracked in”.
After the bottom has been tracked in, around 100mm of sand is spread across the bottom of the hole. This prevents the pipework laying directly onto any large stones potentially damaging the pipes. Once the pipes are installed, another 100mm of sand will be put on top of the pipes before the subsoil is reinstated.
The hole at the moment is around 1m deep and covers around 750 sq m. This is only 2/3 of the area that we require for the ground loops. Once this hole has been covered over, we will dig underneath where the spoil piles are currently located. This will be approximately another 400 sq m. If I have got my maths right!
Even so, with a 750 sq m hole, it took around 40 tonnes of sand to cover the bottom. At the moment, it is starting to looking like a beach (and there aren’t too many of those in West Yorkshire!).
Before the new concrete floor slab can be laid, the plastic drains need to be inserted into the foundations. There appears to be a lot of them!
We were hoping that the new concrete slab for the extension would go down this weekend. However, the excavations for the ground loops has distracted us (big time!).
Compared to digging massive holes in the ground, putting up new cast iron gutters seems pretty tame!
These are being installed “after hours” by a couple of local installers. The gutters have come from the local foundry in Holmfirth (JJ Longbottom) and the brackets have been made to a traditional model. The threaded bar in the centre of the bracket allows the height of the bracket to be adjusted so that it holds the gutters level.
The gutters are supplied already primed and painted. I reckon a couple of more evenings and these will be done.
Installing the loops for the ground source heat pump is turning out to be a lot more labour intensive that we were expecting.
Rather than digging trenches, we have decided to take up all of the top soil and sub soil to a depth of about 1m. Digging 1 m deep trenches 1m wide and 1 meter apart is just to hard. It is easier to remove all fo the soil in one go rather than digging trenches. However, this approach has generated a lot of soil – and I mean a LOT! We have mountains of the stuff. We have even flattened the top of one of these mountains and are piling the soil on top.
The other problem that we have is that subsoil contains a lot of fractured stone. It doesn’t contain any clay. This means that we need to scrape the bottom and pack the subsoil down so that there is little chance of the pipework being damaged when they are laid. The ground is then “tracked” in. This means going backwards and forwards and using the tracks on the excavator to flatten the bottom. This also crushes a lot of the bigger stones. Since we have upgraded to a 14 tonne excavator, it really does crush the stones in the bottom.
All of this means that it is taking longer (and costing more) to install the ground loops. I am not sure that there is anything we could have done differently. But we probably could have plan and estimated the ground work a little more accurately. Clearly, the amount of effort involved in installing the ground loops will vary according to the quality of the ground. It would be wise to check this out before starting on work like this.
The other issue to consider is access – can you get machinery of the right size onto the site. Doing ground works on this scale requires big machines and getting them on site (or even to site) can be a challenge. If your contractor is hiring machinery, make sure that the hire company has looked at the routes to the site and agreed that the machine can be delivered. Then if there is an issue, this is down to the hire company and not you.
We need to remove around 1100 sq m of soil to a depth of around 1m. This is a lot of soil and we intend to install the ground loops in three sections. We will dig each section, lay the pipes and then refill the hole. We simply don’t have enough space to take all of the soil off in one go.
It took the whole of the first day to remove the top soil (at a depth of around 100-200mm) on 1100 sq qm. The top soil will not be put back until all three sections have been installed and the sub soil put back. If we were to put the top soil back section by section, we would end up with a mess if it rains.
By the end of day 2, we have removed around 250 sq m of subsoil. The mountains of soil are starting to build up and we are running out of space.
We are using an 8 tonne excavator. We tried to get a 30 tonne excavator on site, but it was too big to get up the road. The 8 tonne excavator was the biggest we could fire at the time. We have a 14 tonne excavator turning up in an attempt to speed up the ground work.
With the underfloor heating installed, it is time to lay the floor screed. This is a semi-dry mix. There were two deliveries during the day. The photo below shows the first delivery of 10 tons, the second delivery was for a further 6.5 tons.
The screed was intended to be 70mm thick, but the existing floor was not level so it varied for 70mm to 100mm in places. The end result was a perfect level floor. The downside is that it used more screed that expected, but we still had a enough. The floor was laid in one day – admittedly, a long day.
It takes 48 hours for the screed to go off, so we won’t be able to walk downstairs until Friday. So we have had to reorganise work for the next couple of days.
Young Daniel (the HD9 Construction apprentice) showed me how to do some lime mortar pointing. There is a lot of it to do!