Turning Chillier part two

A continuation of the previous blog - the technology sometimes prevents such things.

The step shown left was finished on Friday. The stone for the whole wall and the step has been recovered from the demolished farmhouse save for the coping stones which have been bought from a nearby farm where the wall had fallen down.

The weather forecast for later in the week is distinctly cooler with daytime temps nearer zero and we have had our first conversations around the subject of 'how long can we/will we stay in the caravan'. No decisions to move out yet as most of the time its really not difficult. Naturally we would prefer more space and a lovely big bathroom but that is, quite literally, a work in progress. The office is in an old toolhouse adjacent to the barn which adjoins the house and with its high level of insulation it is a very pleasant place. Steve has been insulating the water pipes within the caravan and we need to tackle the ones outside where they are not underground.

Turning Chillier

As Steve's previous blog mentions the first floor is in place and in response to Jane's query on keeping the water out you can see the blue sheeting which is keeping the worst of the rain out. Even so I don't think we're getting as much rain as usual for this time of year .....famous last words?!

The builder has lined up the slaters to do the roof in early December which is terrific news if all goes to plan. The 'hooded man' in the photo is Davie the joiner. Today he and his 2 lads attached all the rafter shoes to the ridge beam. I spent 15 mins at the top of the scaffolding before deciding it was too chilly and retired to the office which is lovely and toasty. It is terrific seeing the room formations and the height of the ground floor rooms.



Our friend Alan finished the wall late last week with the final stretch of coping stones and a rather fab step up to the chicken's enclosure. He found a curved piece of red sandstone from the demolished house and has utilised it in the step.

By close of play last Friday - 2hrs after this photo was taken - the ridge beam and both gable walls were complete. During the couple of days prior to this, by quirk of structural engineering design the first floor boarding was glued and nailed in place, the idea being to provide a strong joint between the 1st floor I-beam joists and the binder plate (a deep beam which runs along the top of the ground floor wall panels against which the ends of the joists are butted).

In my (and our joiner's!) view this was quite an unusual detail, but a call to our stuctural engineer - "just to make sure..." - clarified the thinking behind it. The downside was that the T&G chipboard flooring had to be protected from the weather until the building is made watertight, as being merely 'moisture resistant' isn't exactly a qualification for survivablity for up to a month's battering by the west of Scotland's climate in November!

This coming week should see the completon of the 1st floor wall panels and start of work on the roof. On the 'goods inwards' front, the windows are due to be delivered this week and possibly the Pavatherm wood fibre insulating cladding board.

Ridge beams...

With the three portal frames now in place (which, by the way, fitted perfectly!) the end of last week saw the the central ridge beams lifted in place to tie the portals together at their apex and of course form the centreline of the roof against which will be fixed the rafters.

The ridge beams is made from mltiple bonded laminations of wood ('glu-lam') and is as strong as it looks! It's nice to see the height of the house now and easier to imagine how the 1st floor rooms will look.

This coming week work will start on installing the first floor joists, 1st floor walls and gables, so things should really start to take shape soon. Last but not least, a letter came though from the Enery Savings Trust at the weekend with the grant offer for the heat pump, which in Scotland is 30% of capaital cost up to a maximum of £4k; every little helps!

Dry stone dyke

With work continuing on the house portal frame, the finishing touches to the dry stone retaining wall are well underway. With the wall having been substantially completed a couple of weeks or so ago using stone from the old (demolished) farmhouse, our friend and expert wall builder came across a source of coping stones from a derelict wall at a nearby farm. No sooner as a price was agreed these hand-cut half-round stones were picked out of the ground and brought the couple of miles to ECF to top off our new wall.

Complete with moss and lichen the 'copes' are well weathered and match perfectly with the old stone from the house. Behind the stone wall is a 150mm dense concrete block wall which will do most of the work, such that the coping stones are laid across the two on a bed of mortar to tie the whole lot together. At the back of this the soil will be cultivated to form a raised bed that will completely hide the concrete blocks as shown in the photo.

Portal frame arrives

Late afternoon yesterday saw the arrival of the prefabricated portal frames along with the brackets and bits to put them together. These are more than a week overdue and their late arrival has meant a temporary stop on site for a few days as nothing further could be done without them beyond the ground floor panels which are now in place .

However, things moved along again today as our main builder/project manager and two joiners started to the erect this steel framework into the gound floor panels. By the end of the day two of the three frames were in place and secured.

So why a portal frame? Well, this 1.5 storey house is very open plan internally with generous internal room heights (2.7m ground floor, 3.5m kitchen/diner, 2.9m first floor) such that the upper floor ceilings follow the roof line almost to the ridge, with a small loft space around 1.5m high. With this internal design it was tricky to use a (more conventional) truss system, so the portal frame is used to provide torsional stiffness to the building and carry a roof ridge beam, against which rafters will be supported for the roof. In effect, this is a contemporary take on a traditional method of roof construction.

In designing the roof we have also avoided the use of roof purlins (horizontal rafter supports) by using timber 'I-beams', each of which will span around 5m from eaves to ridge at a 45 deg. pitch and carry the weight of the slate roof supported only at either end. This not only keeps the internal structure clean and uncluttered, but their 352mm depth will be fully filled with insulation and their thin shear web minimises thermal bridging. The end result is a stiff, clean, super-insulated roof structure.

The down side to this constrcution has been additional labour/time and ultimately cost, but the end result should be worthwhile.

Daily Changes

The two joiners erected much of the ground floor on Monday and Tuesday which has been really exciting. Its terrific to see the rooms take shape and we are really pleased with the size of the window openings, particularly as we spent a long time last winter working through that element of the design. The joiners can't progress further until the steel arrives, this is delayed but due next Wednesday. In the meantime the scaffolders have been taking delivery of their kit and today have erected scaffolding on the west and south elevations. This photo is taken through the caravan window.

By and large we've had good weather since the start of the build, it is very mild at present which makes life comfortable for early mornings in the caravan.....however the past 2 days weather have included a large amount of rain and the area at the back of the house is somewhat muddy. Thankfully the caravans are on a concreted area.

Final photos today - 2 days collection of eggs and a piccie of Dora; generally the hens are laying 4 eggs per day which is quite good I think for ex battery hens and for the time of year. We've no idea if some hens are not laying at all but those that are have been using the nesting boxes. At this time of year with the daily reduction in light levels we can expect them to lay fewer eggs but at the moment our hens seem quite consistent.