Although it looks like it will be another week or so before the granite sink bowls arrive, the kitchen appliances have arrived on site this morning. With any luck, they will all be fitted by the end of the day. This is just as well since we would like to get the timber flooring down in the hall (where the appliances are currently stacked up!).
The kitchen appliances arrived first thing this morning. They are due to be installed by the end of the day.
The tiling in the kitchen is all done. And in just 4 days!
The grout will go off overnight and then in about a week’s time we should be able to turn the underfloor heating back on. It takes this long for the tile adhesive to fully set.
The last bits of upstand were installed this morning, then the whole of the floor has been grouted. We are using a slightly off white (actually Jasmine white) grout to blend in with the colour of the tiles.
It is difficult to see here, but we are using jasmine white grout to blend in with tiles. These should be dry enough to stand on tomorrow and then we can turn the underfloor heating on in about a week (we need to give the tile adhesive time to go off completely).
Almost of the tiles are down in the kitchen – there are just some upstands (tile skirtings) to install at one end of the kitchen.
Tomorrow, the tiles will be grouted before the kitchen appliances are installed on Friday. We are still waiting for an update on the sinks. Until these arrive, the granite worktops cannot be finished or installed. Last we heard, two out of three of them were on their way from Spain!
All of the cuts around the island unit have now been completed. The upstands (tile skirtings) have also been done. Grouting tomorrow.
The tile upstands (tile skirtings) are now in place as well as the tile step into the lounge – there will be timber flooring in the lounge. We have also tiled the window cill to the right of the step. Longer term, there will be some artwork here. The timber flooring in the lounge should be installed later this week (or maybe early next week).
I guess this is a big day. Carpets going down. :0)
We are using low TOG (0.8) underlay because of the underfloor heating. Bizarely, the underlay is heavy, but it is about the heat transmission quality of the underlay rather than the weight of the material. The carpet is also a low TOG (1.4) carpet from the Cormar Glendale range.
As we have tried to do throughout the project, we are using local suppliers.
We should get the upstairs and a couple of rooms downstairs done over the next couple of days.
MMmmmm….I don’t think there was much room left over.
The underlay for the carpet needs to have a low TOG value to ensure that the heat from the underfloor makes it through both the underlay and the carpet. This underlay has a TOG value of 0.80. The carpet has a TOG value of 1.4 (Cormar Glendale range).
There are a few cuts to do tomorrow plus the upstands (tiled skirtings). Then we should be ready to grout these tiles on Thursday. With any luck, we might get some of the kitchen appliances in before the weekend.
The first of the kitchen tiles were laid today. We hope that all the tiles will down in the kitchen by the end of the week.
It took a couple of hours to work out the best layout for the tiles, but once we start, the tiles go down very quickly.
On a less negative note, we believe that one of the three granite bowls are on their way from Spain. Unfortunately, two of them had overflows fitted 40mm from the bottom of the sink. This is no good for us as you couldn’t even stand a mug up in the sink because the overflow was so low.
With any luck, the one sink without the overflow will allow us to get the island worksurface installed towards the end of the week – hopefully, on Saturday. Godness knows when the other sinks will appear.
The first of the tiles are going down on the kitchen floor. It took John a couple of hours to work out the best way of laying the tiles.
Using a laser to lay the tiles. This ensures that the tiles are perfectly lined up.
End of day 1 and we now have a square of tiles right around the island unit. This is the quick bit. Next are the cut tiless that go around the edge of the kitchen. However, tomorrow it will be possible to walk on these tiles to access all of the kitchen.
We have just installed a Network Owl to monitor our energy usage. This monitors the power being used on our incoming electricity supply and uploads the data to the internet. We can then monitor power usage from anywhere and (pretty much) in real time.
We have a 3 phase supply and are using a Network Owl and Owl Intuition-lc. This solution is intended for home and light commercial premises that are on a three phase supply. The hardware is under £100 and it took less than 30 minutes to set it up.
Creating an online account to view the data is a little quirky, but if you follow the instructions carefully it doesn’t take long.
Having installed a ground source heat pump, all of our heating and domestic hot water is essentially electric albeit aided by extracting heat out of the ground. So we thought it would be important to having an understanding of the amount of power that we are using. This solution looks promising and I am somewhat intrigued by the numbers. By combining the data from the Network Owl with data from our weather station and internal temperature sensors, we should be able to get a reasonable understanding of the heat performance of the house.
Once you have the network owl up and running, you can view your power usage in real time via the web. I only installed it yesterday, so it is a little sparse in terms of data.
As well as getting an overview of power usage, you can also see more detailed graphs as well as downloading the data into Excel (CSV format). Our online weather station also captures weather data as well as monitoring the internal house temperature.
This is a small device that connects to your router (Ethernet connection on the right, power on the left). It connects wirelessly to the sensor box with the three sensors that are clamped onto the incoming 3 phase supply. It then uploads the date to the internet where you can access it online.
The sensor box is installed in the meter cupboard with three sensors – one onto each of the incoming live supplies (we have a 3 phase supply). I may move the sensor box and sensors to cables inside the building as it will be warmer and kinder to the batteries (as well as improving the signal strength to the Network Owl).
The sensor clamps are very easy to install and only loosely clamp onto the cables. You just need to remember that this is a live supply that you are dealing with!
Despite the installation of the kitchen being delayed by two weeks, the tiles arrived today. These are due to be fitted next week once the kitchen was fitted (or not). We will go ahead and complete the tiling anyway before the kitchen worksurfaces are installed.
These have been stacked in the porch out of the way. They will be laid next week.
It took about a week between ordering these tiles and them being delivered.
This is one of the kitchen tiles laid next to the new units. These tiles are 60×60 cms and are shipped 4 in a box.
The kitchen worksurfaces were due to be installed today. I found out yesterday afternoon that there has been a delay in getting hold of the granite sink bowls. This means that the worksurfaces won’t be installed for another couple of weeks.
This sort of thing is not unusual on building projects, but is still a pain when it happens.
The electrician turned up this morning to install the appliances. These only arrive when the worksurfaces are installed. The tiler starts next week in the kitchen. While we can tile without the worksurfaces installed, no one else is going to be able to work in the kitchen while he is there.
There isn’t much we can do at this point other than roll with it. But it is a pain.
We are getting quite a bit of condensation off the pipe work for the ground loops. Often the anti-freeze in the ground loops is below freezing, so this isn’t too surprising. The main issue is that the drips fall onto the electrics for the ground source heat pump, particularly the switch for the 3 phase supply. Although the switch is IP65 rated, I wouldn’t want to see it get wet over a prolonged period.
The answer has been to install 4ft of plastic guttering underneath the pipework. This catches the drips and prevents the electrics getting wet. I suspect that these drips will just evaporate once in the gutter.
The 4ft of guttering catches the drips of condensation from the pipework above. In hindsight, we probably should have thought about the location of the cabling, but we had little option at the time.
There is no point in trying to stop the condensation. We have decided to just capture the drips before they hit the electric cables.
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