The insulation in the roof consists of 50mm slabs of insulation between the rafters and the insulated plasterboard on top. The plasterers weren’t very keen on fitting the insulated boards. It has to be cut into strips and jammed in between the rafters. It is a messy and time-consuming job.
So guess who gets to do it?
These are going to be my next project!
And the rest of them! 48 in total.
We are slowly getting around to sorting out some of the finer details of the exterior of the property. The 3D images below show the detail around the new porch and the sloping roof and post that protrudes to shelter callers from the weather.
Budget permitting, this will be built in oak so that it will match the roof details inside.
This 3D image shows the detail of the new porch. We haven’t seen this detail before
Close up of the new porch detail showing the oak half truss and supporting post.
We have spent most of today back filling the land after installing the ground loops last week. We have installed 1800m of ground loops in the field adjacent to the house. This has been a mammoth task since it has involved removing all of the topsoil and subsoil from this field, installing the pipes and then back filling the field.
Today, the last of the pipes were covered up. Hopefully, we will not be seeing these again for a very long time. The pipework has been pressurised while we have been backfilling. If any of the pipes get damaged, the pressure would drop immediately. Fortunately, the pressure has remained exactly the same throughout.
I took some time lapse video of backfilling the field today. You will find it here on YouTube.
We have made some serious progress today on reducing the size of the spoil heap. All of the subsoil is back down.
This is probably the last we will see of the ground loops. Hopefully. Covered with light grey sand and then buried under the subsoil.
Last month, I contacted the local fire service about a damaged fire hydrant sign.
Well, today, I noticed that they have been out and installed a new sign. Not exactly sure when this happened, but I think it must have been this week!
This appeared this week. 100 is the size of the water main in mm. 17 is the distance from this sign to the fire hydrant in meters. No idea what the bottom number is!
I have pulled up the cover, but it looks as if someone has put some plastic sheet under the cover.
We are going to use the same cabling and sockets for the ethernet and telephone points. This means that any ethernet outlet can be reconfigured as a telephone point and vice versa. Since there are multiple ethernet connections in each room, this provides us with a lot of flexibility plus we won’t have to worry about those ugly telephone extension cables around the place.
We have a standard BT telephone line and master socket. I have acquired a unit that will convert the incoming telephone line into 4 RJ-45 connections. This is the standard connector for ethernet.
All of the room sockets terminate in a patch panel, so it is a case of connecting the telephone line to the appropriate socket using a patch cable – rather line the old fashioned telephone exchanges you used to see on TV.
Once the telephone line is connected to the socket, it is a case of plugging in a short lead that converts the RJ-45 connection back into a standard BT plug (or an LJU socket to be more precise). These are just a few pounds each.
In fact, the unit that I have bought is capable of converting two telephone lines into 4 ethernet connections each. This means that if we ever get a second line (e.g. for business use) that this could be patched to any room in exactly the same way.
You will find the central unit is available from CyberSelect. I did have a good look around and there aren’t many on the market. They also supply the converter leads too.
A couple of weekends ago a lot of rain fell on the Saturday during the day. On the Sunday, we noticed that water had dripped into each of the three fireplaces. Not down the internal metal flue, but down the chimney. And into all three fireplaces.
The only place where rain could get in is down the side of the new chimney pots. These were put only a couple of months ago. We took a look at the pots today. The sand and cement around the pots has cracked and is letting in water. There are cracks in the mortar around all three pots.
Guess where the water is coming in?
It is pretty obvious what the problem is!
The last 1km of ground loops were installed today for the ground source heat pump. We thought we might have run out of space, but much to our surprise, it all fitted with a little bit of space to spare. Phew. This was some welcome good news as we thought we might need to dig up even more land.
Tomorrow, we can start filling it all back in!
All of the remaining 1000m of pipe have been installed today. We thought there might not have been enough room, but it all fitted in with a bit to spare.
The stones and bricks are just used to weigh the pipes down while being installed. The stones will be removed before being covered with sand.
This is the third of the three manholes which houses the last 600m of ground loops.
Now the last part of the field has been excavated, we need to lay sand on the bottom of the hole to protect the pipes that will be laid on top.
By the time we have finished, we will have use almost 200 tonnes of sand.
At the moment, this part of the field more closely resembles a beach!
I just hope that it is going to be big enough to take the remaining pipework.
This has to be the largest expanse of sand in Holmfirth. We reckon it is somewhere between 800-900 sqm.
Sand is put on the bottom of the excavated ground to protect the pipework. More sand will be put on top of the pipes before the subsoil is re-instated.
We have started to build the studwork upstairs that will form the family bathroom. The other part of this space will be a (large) bedroom.
The partitions are tall – they go right up into the apex of the roof with all the roof timbers being exposed. The purlins have worked out really well in terms of positioning and I am hoping that this is going to make the plasterer’s job a little bit easy.
Strangely enough now the partitions are going up, the space feels larger. I was concerned that the bathroom was going to be a bit small, but as the joiner said “in a normal house, this is the size of a bedroom!”. So maybe it is not so small after all.
The new bathroom is the other side of this very tall partition.
The upstairs partition are starting to go in. This will be a bedroom and bathroom. This was taken before Zep rolled in the sawdust.
We have made some good progress today. The concrete floors in the extension have been laid. The concrete was poured first thing this morning and by “going home” time it was possible to walk on it.
We have also finished excavating the land for the ground loops. This is just as well since we seem to be running out of space to put all of the spoil. Tomorrow we will put down sand on the base of the area and on Thursday, we will install a 1000m of pipework for the ground loops. We aren’t entirely sure if we have the space, but we will only find out when we try. Let’s see what happens later in the week.
We started pouring the concrete first thing this morning and by close of business we could walk on it.
Tomorrow we need to put around 60 tonnes of sand on the bottom of this patch of land before installing the ground loops for the ground source heat pump on Thursday.
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