September 2007

September was an interesting month too!


Following on from August, you would expect the floor joists to have gone in and off we go with the next floor. But oh no, that would be too easy for the house that mark built!.


Upon checking the gap between the two skins of the block wall, I discovered that the builders had in some places 130mm gap at the top and 90mm gap at the bottom. In fact not one of the end walls was straight! The regulations called for a 100mm gap throughout and basically this was not going to pass inspection, so, you guessed it - yep it all had to come down again and be re-built.





Obviously, as a result the builders brought in the first place specially to do this bit of the build were sacked!



This month also saw the first of the steel lintels going in! But even then the lintels defined on the building plans were difficult as the ones specified were no longer nade by Catnic - the specified supplier. So I had to get a variation agreement confirmed with the Council building control before these could be purchased and installed.







It also saw the first of the steel beams arrive. The ones shown are 4m each in width and will support the whole of the first floor extension wall. As you can imaging quite heavy to deal with!

Plus the new foul sewer pipes were put in place and connected up. As the manhole in my front garden is actually the last one on the run (much like the rainwater sewer at the back of the house), the manhole contains the interceptor into the main sewer in the middle of the road. So, rather than have to deal with this (you can imagine the state of it!) we decided to break into an existing branch of the sewer from the manhole to the house - therefore meaning we didn't interfere with anyone elses foul water. But this meant that, as this was a variation from the plans, the Council building control people needed to approve the variation first!

Whilst all this is happening, the outside walls are completed again, are inspected and accepted. This means they are ready to take the load of the beams mentioned above. This involves 4 beams held togehter with a variety of bolts as shown here. But the beams sit on padstones, and the sizes specified in the plans are not made and will also cause part of the padstone to overhand either outside the wall or inside the wall (in the gap between the two skins of wall). Again, this needs agreement from the building control, again, a further delay!

But eventually the beams are in, they are inspected and again are accepted by building control.

Also, as the picture here shows the 3.5m lintel over the opening for the sliding folding doors which lounge side of the extension is now installed with the relevant blocks above it.

The engineered brick pier is growing in size too! everytime more and more of the outside wall is being ripped out to make way for it (PS sorry forgive me for the internal decor - but the wall was being knocked down!)

With the beams that will support the first floor wall now in, the floor joists go in. Also, the french windows also go in and a temporary roof is installed made of a tarpaulin to try and keep the rain out (as of course - it's raining again!).

Finally the new kitchen door goes on to complete the month!