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!

August 2007

August sees the first of the bricks laid!

These effectively build up the foundation and raise the floor level of the extension building to match that of the existing house.

As a result, suspended wooden floors are out of the question!


So this means that a concrete beam and block floor is the only answer. This appears on the 8th August.










During the interim, work carries on at the back of the house to build the central brick engineered post that will eventually carry the steel beams which will support the whole house when eventually finished. This involves some rather interesting work on the existing house wall, and leaves a rather interesting hole on the inside.












But half way though the month, the brick walls (i.e. both inner and outer skins) are completed ready to receive the concrete beams of the floor. As shown.


These were eventually joined by the blocks necessary to create the actual floor

Up, up, up we go! The block walls start to be built on the 21st August.

By the end of the month, we have both inner and outer skins of wall to ground floor ceiling level! Looks like we have the start of a house!

July 2007

This month saw the real fun start on the extension to the main house!

By the first of the month, the decks had been cleared and everything agreed with building control ready to start on the foundations to the part single part double story extension. The picture shows the prepared area where the extension will sit.

Notice the mud in the picture? As you can perhaps tell from the previous blog, the weather had not got any better and it was still very wet. But, none the less, the builders started digging the trenches for the foundations down to 2.4m as requested by building control using a special excavator with a long reach (i.e. 3.0m down).

In so doing, the builders uncover the rainwater sewer serving the 20-30 houses in the remainder of the row of houses running right across the back of the house.

They decide to break through the clay pipe and rejoin with a piece of UPVC pipe and appropriate clay-UPVC soil pipe joins. As this allows them to use the excavator rather than to dig round it manually.

But on the same day, the 3rd of July, the heavens opened with what can only be described as a torrent of water at about 5 o'clock in the evening. This deposits a massive amount of water in the area, a large amount of which flowed down the pipe the builders had been working on. Unfortunately, they did not know that they had factured the clay rain water pipe away from the joins at both ends that they had joined. Under the pressure of the rain water in the pipe the pipe was leaking and a stream of water was leaking out into the foundations.

No major problem you would think?

But you would be wrong. This eroded the walls of the foundation trenches and, as they were 2.4m deep, it also started to erode the soil from underneath the back of the house! (as the existing foundations were only 1.0m deep)

So, despite having a pump going permanently, I could not stem the flow and more of the soil fell into the trenches making things more and more hazardous. Eventually, the builders were called back to site at 11pm to try and resolve the problem. We worked through the night to repair the pipe again (further down the existing clay pipe at both ends) and eventually the rain also relented, which meant the builders could leave the site at about 3am the following morning.

By 8am that morning, the foundation trenches looked like this and that is after having a pump running continually to pump out the water that was already in the trenches which were at one time overflowing with rain water.

The 600mm wide trench turned into a massive hole in the ground 3m x 3m in diameter and 2.4m in depth. Over half of which was full of water - and becoming a major health and safety hazard!

We now had to battle the weather so, the foundations spent most of their time under cover from that point on! But still it continued to rain and the pumps kept pumping! trying to keep the water out of the foundations.

However, this time they were reinforced with boards to ensure that they stayed in place (as much as possible), and that the health and safety of the builders was assured whilst down in the trenches deeper than they were tall.

8 skips loads of soil pass by!

Eventually the Council's building control department confirms they are happy with the depth and width of the foundations and then we were off again with the next stage.

On a really sunny and warm day in mid July, the concrete lorries turned up carrying all 26 cubic meters of concrete needed for the first part of the foundation. To give some indication, this took 4 lorries the size of motorway maintenance vehicles, plus another lorry capable of pumping the concrete to the back of the house. It caused chaos on the road outside the house as it was effectively blocked for a period of time as well as the picutres below show!

But the concrete was flowing! (thank god!) and the

nightmare of the main foundations would soon be over!

That said, further work was necessary to join the new foundation to the existing house foundation. This involved digging a section for 1m x 1m x 2.4m deep under the wall of the existing house! Before, once again, it was inspected by the local building control officers and more concrete was used to fill it back up again

But this completed most of the excitment for July! By the end of it, whatever little amount of hair I had, had completely disappeared with the stress and worry!

June 2007

This month saw the removal of buildings/features from immediately outside the back of the house ready for the full commencement of the works to the main house.










So, this included,

a) Removal of the existing raised patio













b) Removal of the existing brick built outbuilding

























It also included the digging of a number of test foundation holes to agree foundation depths with the local authority. Unfortunately, plans called for 1.2m by the end of the process the Council required 2.4m deep foundations for the proposed extension. This was due to local soil conditions (i.e. clay) and the presence of a number of mature trees.


As you may remember late June early July was a very wet time of the year in 2007, the test foundation hole here is completely filled with surface water which needed to be continually pumped out!


This clearance and post commencement work took the majority of June 2007.

April 2007

This month saw the following steps to the Garden Office

a) Insulate garden office.

b) First fix to the electrics within the Garden Office and the installation of a 100amp armoured cable over 1m into the ground which runs from the main house via a separate 80amp fused supply. This is in order to provide enough peak power requirement if everything was turned on simulatenously (required by the regulations).

c) Then whole building was plasterboarded out and then plastered.

d) The floors finished, either with cork tiling or in main rooms with varnish.

e) A kitchen installed

f) The rooms painted

g) Electrics connected (2nd fix)

This took all of April 2007 to complete

Just starting - Mar 2007

First step was to clear the garden and create somewhere to live in whilst the building works to the main house were being undertaken.

Decided that rather give money to a landlord, I would create an additional building onsite first which could be used for temporary housing and then transformed into office/library space after. A garden office being the obvious choice. The actual building chosen was a Lugarde Ruben Log Cabin http://www.lugarde.nl/english/index.html This provides some 20 square metres of space (In light of the building's size full planning permission had been sought and granted by the local Council).

So, this stage involved the

a) removal of everything in the garden,










b) laying a new concrete foundation for the log cabin



















c) construction of wooden building




















d) treating the building outside against rot/woodworm

e) treating the inside of the building inside and out

f) painting the outside










g) construction of new fencing to property boundaries.










This work takes the whole of March 2007 to complete.



Hopefully the pictures do it justice!