The moment the world has been waiting for:

Oh boy, oh boy - a house has appeared in our garden - from behind a pile of scaffolding. Two blokes came in the morning and before you could say monkey wrench the scaffolding was in neat piles in the garden.

Photos of the transformation. It was a really exciting day - I did no work at all, just kept dotting in and out of the caravan getting in the way.

The













Another very exciting thing happened while I was away today, inspecting my new job at Norwich City Hall - I came back to find a front door! Screwed onto the house! I'll take a picture tomorrow morning. That'll please my mum! Also Mo, as I can now do the much heralded video walk-through of the house and put it on YouTube with a link from the blog.

Rendered!

Oh yes, we have a whole house which is the colour of sponge cake mix. Victoria sponge that is. There are some darker places where the last bits haven't dried yet - takes about a week. It goes on a bit like cake mix too - they put it on like a small child would plaster the nursery wall - a lot drops off. We will be able to grow a lot of lime-loving plants round the house.

Plus this was the second day of the Warmcel brigade shovelling finely shredded newspapers (and apparently Yellow Pages) into the walls. Here's a picture of it as it comes out of the bags.

In the back of this van

there is a piece of kit that you shove the stuff into, one bag at a time.

The POK sort of rubs the compacted stuff between its hands, as it were, and fluffs it up, then it goes down a very long elephant-trunk-grey hose

into the walls through the holes which they cut earlier

There's a lot of standing around waiting for each panel to fill up. These are very big walls.

I am a little concerned to be certain that all the panels really are completely full and I want to be able to check that there has been no settling. I think the best thing, in a couple of days' time, is to put a small hole in the top of each panel and stick my finger in to make sure they are all still full right to the top.

I think they'll be here for a few days yet - they have been here two days and done most of the upstairs. Still got the ground floor walls and the ground floor itself to do.

The house was full of a faint greyness with little piles of fluffed-up Warmcel which had escaped from the elephant trunk

looking like an old lava flow. The chaps like using it because it is completely benign and non-toxix, unlike the mineral wool or glassfibre which they also install.

Anyway these guys were buzzing about inside and Lee and his mate were buzzing about outside - stereophonic, non-matching music from different boom boxes. And the second electrician came too - he spent an hour or so talking through what we want. Gosh and golly electricianing is complicated stuff - all the rules and relgulations, the special fitings for bathrooms, installing TV and satellite and telephone cables, cables to the shed underground, specified minimum and maximum distances, requirements for low-energy fittings, and so on and so on. Anyway we should have a quote for all that stuff soon. Oh yes, AND we want shielded cable to protect from electromagnetic stress if possible too!

R spent the little time he had when not running around after everyone else altering the head of the front door opening to be able to fit the door and a timber door sill it - this involved taking the frame apart and cutting bits off and putting it back together.

My hero!

Oh and it poured down most of the day.....

Me? I made the tea

One last view of the front wall being rendered

Plumbers, Plasterers, Paper Insulation and Pendant Lights

The rendering of the outside has been held up a bit by the weather but Lee and his mate Woody were here again today. R took some nice photos of them, as follows. The pink stuff in the walls is a very strong plastic (?) mesh which stops the render from cracking. The render has to come from France and we need a few more bags, so the last bit of wall will be done next week. But Lee still has some fiddly work to do to make a 'ring' around the middle of the house. This mid-wall detail is a sthapatya veda feature which marks the place where the first floor is. Don't ask me why, but it does look nice. Ours will be plain and simple (the theme of our house) and will take Lee a day or two to install.


The likely lads





R is sorting out the battening for the last bit of house wall, brickwork for the last bit of garden wall and what needs doing before the plumber comes next week. Next Monday in fact. This is an exciting milestone with actual pipework going in. We are trying to pin down the timber frame company to come and put the insulation in too. I am drawing up the final plans for the electrician - we have asked half a dozen to give us quotes and the first two will be coming to have a look at the place this week.

Plumbers and Plasterers

The rendering of the outside has been held up a bit by th eweather but Lee and his mate Woody were here again today. R took some nice photos of them, as follows. The pink stuff in the walls is a very strong plastic (?) mesh which stops the render from cracking. The render has to come from France and we need a few more bags, so the last bit of wall will be done next week. But Lee still has some fiddly work to do to make a 'ring' around the middle of the house. This mid-wall detail is a sthapatya veda feature which marks the place where the first floor is. Don't ask me why, but it does look nice. Ours will be plain and simple (the theme of our house) and will take Lee a day or two to install.


The likely lads

Sunday morning and I'm looking out of the caravan window at the east side which is completely ready to be rendered. R has not only put Heraklith all over it, but also timbers to attach the porch roof to, when we get round to building the porch, and also a lead flashing. He was at it till about 8pm last night, with arc lights. My hero. He's away today so he had to get it all done because Lee-the-master-plasterer arrives tomorrow morning to finish off.

Putting the last bit of the jigsaw in


All done

This has been a week of contrasts. This time last week we were doing budget control, a kind of reality check: where are we at, what bills are outstanding, what's the running order of operations for the next few weeks, what can we save money on by doing it ourselves, or putting it off for a while, what has to be done immediately, what do we have to have professionals for??

Etcetera.

One week later, we have:

The plasterer finishing the outside in the next ten days (weather permitting)
The prospect of the scaffolding coming down as soon as he has finished, thus saving us money in hire costs and allowing us to see the building properly for the first time.
A plumber signed up to put our (very basic) plumbing system in. Starting in two weeks.
A front door threshold ready to be put in place. R will put the frame up and then only needs one helper for a few minutes to hang the doors, and Lee, being on site anyway, has agreed to help with this.

Oh, yes.... and the timber frame company is coming to put the insulation in.
I anticipate a photogenic event. The main part of the insulation is in the external walls but there is also some in all he internal walls and we had thought that they would charge extra to make two visits to do the internal and external walls on separate occasions. Therefore we would have had to wait until the plumbing and electrics first fix (wires and pipes behind the walls) were in and the plasterboard on the walls, which will be a few weeks yet.

This apparently is not the case and so we have booked them as soon as possible to do the external walls. I haven't seen this done but I believe it involves large noisy blowing-in machines, vast amounts of shredded newspaper and holes in the inside of the external walls. The stuff goes in like a giant grey snowstorm. It is all recycled newspaper and I am a bit worried about this. Supposing it is all the News of The World and The Sun? Will I live down the shame? I am hoping to see traces of pink, indicating the Financial Times (oh but isn't the Racing Post pink as well?) - oh, well - I will pray for the Grauniad and the Indie.

Here is a good link to Warmcel: http://www.greenspec.co.uk/html/product-pages/warmcel500.php
Click on Downloads: Product brochure and you'll see pictures of what installation will look like.

The thing about the insulation is that with that and the front door we will have a sealed, warm and cosy house. and we'll start to get a feel of whether this whole passive house business is going to work. We can get our pressure-test ordered to check on leakage, and start making dicsions about heating.

Having thoroughly Heraklithed, R can now settle down to his Wall and is approaching the interesting bits at the top. Here we recycle the garage roof (remember the garage?) into a tiling crease with brick soldiers on the top. You'll see it in the next couple of weeks, and also another very fine curve.

We are planning to move into the house before it is completely finished. Even then it won't be till March I shouldn't think. We'll finish the ground floor and then do the upstairs bit by bit after moving in. We have to work out what needs doing to satisfy:
Building Regulations
Our own needs
Maharishi Sthapatya Veda regulations

However, I am happy to be even thinking about Moving In. Must buy a new floor mop, in anticipation....

Sunday, the south side in the late afternoon sun, bare tree shadows


This is the north wall with the scaffolding poles and the underneath of the scaffolding boards on the left; and the underside of the bargeboards, at the edge of the roof at the top. The strip of stuff with hexagonal holes in it to the right is the beading which the plasterer puts up all round the wall and which gives him even depth. The plastic circles are the special gizmos for holding Heraklith on. You can see the neat edge of the ground floor window. and the underside of the first floor windowsills.

Mum and Dad - if you want to see pictures in more detail you can save as separate photos on your desktop. Put the cursor on the picture and right-click on it. Then Save To the desktop. You'll get it much bigger and easier to see!


This is the bottom of the North door. The doorsill is held up by temporary wooden shuttering. The blue stuff is the housewrap put on by the timber frame company and which is still under all the render. The black stuff is the special Visqueen which surrounds the ground floor panels and protects them from rain, and also keeps the air out of what is a vulnerable point between the ground panels and wall panels. That will all be covered up by the brick plinth between the ground and the bottom of the render. Then there are steps up to the door from the ground.

I've discovered how to get videos of a tour of the house onto the internet - via Youtube. Once they are up and running I'll put a link on this blog.

In the meantime, R is not only soldiering on with The Wall but making a wonderful curve. Admire the following!

Clive, the first living thing to move in. He was getting a bit cold in the garden and he's too big for the caravan


The house is wrapped up like a Christmas parcel.

Obviously I didn't allow Kate enough sellotape in her youth - she and J-P have done amazing work today, sealing all the cracks with high-class German tape. They each did the work of three normal people or, in the current circumstances, 6 to 10 Lizzies. Here are some pics of our Local Heroes. They have wrapped up almost all the whole of the first floor. Lots of leaping up the scaffolding tower and tucking themselves away in the apex of the roof. They have so much energy!! I, on the other hand, have been involved in the very intricate technical work of sweeping up and making a large Sunday lunch.








This picture is NOT turned on its side.

Kate spent the whole time like an owl - tucked in up among the roof timbers in a tiny triangle of space (two actually). They are at the top of the two outer bays of the house and are very important - the roof panels were a new departure for the timber frame company and they need all the help they can get to stay airtight.


J-P was leaping up towers and balancing on timbers to do the bit above where there is no first floor - lucky he's a climber.





Next time, for your delight and delectation, we have the first pictures of the completed north and south walls - and they are things of beauty! We move along.

There follows a brief family interlude. More on The House below.

Well we had a great day in London last Wednesday. It was Em's graduation, in the Royal Albert Hall so we put on our best clothes and drove to Epping, which is our current preferred method of getting into London. It's at the end of the Central Line and with good old Ken's Oyster cards it's not too expensive. You can park at Epping station for £3.50 for 24 hours. At least you usually can but last week was half term so it was a bit full.

Anyway we got there and took the star of the show out for a Lebanese lunch in Holborn. Delicious. Then to the RAH which as any parent who's done it know is about two and a half hours of sitting around and about two and a half seconds of peak excitement as the child walks past the Rector and shakes hands. But the venue helped, also the orchestra and choir and the Indie crossword passed the time a bit too. We heard 250ish medics giving the Hippocratic Oath all together which was quite spine-tingling.

Then a reception and canapes then a quick dash across London to see David Lynch and Donovan in the Institute of Education. DL was lovely - relaxed and funny and knowledgeable - people asked all sorts of questions and the whole thing was very entertaining. The place was packed. Then another reception, with canapes. At the end I just wanted a cup of tea!

Anyway, we digress.


Lee the plasterer turns out to be an artist - which is brilliant, because the outside of the house is exactly where you want an artist. R has quite a lot to do with the overall effect being so good - he with the help of Brendan-the-apprentice (see Great Crested Newt story below) have spent days and days getting the surface of the Heraklith render board exactly right to receive the render. It's a bit darker and more creamy-yellow than I had originally wanted but as my mum would say it'll show the dirt less.


The South end, almost done.

R is getting frustrated with the speed of build but I say it looks pretty good to me. But he spends all day out there in the cold with his hammer and nails and I just come back from work and admire the day's efforts.

On Sunday Kate and J-P her boyfriend came to help me on the inside of the house. Due to the Shoulders of Doom I have been unable to continue with the sterling work of making the house airtight from the inside (see previous pix of blue tape) and they came to help. I had done the ground floor - it took me about a week - they polished most of the first floor off in a day, including all the twiddly bits round the Velux windows. They were brilliant and are promising to come back next weekend to do all the difficult bits such as the underneath of the ridge beam at the apex of the roof and the tricky bit of wall that you have to do from the scaffolding tower cos there's no floor there (above the entrance hall). We had a great lunch and they were so enthusiastic that we had to rig up lights inside the house so they could continue after dark. These photos of them are some of the worst I have taken but you get the idea.





It won't be long before we can have our first air pressure test to see how airtight it is - just got to finish all this taping and put the front door on, then seal around all the windows and doors, and we can call in the Man With The Fan (you'll see.....) and then our heating fate will be decided. Keep reading - all will be made clear.

Getting Plastered.

Monday morning and the plasterers are on site. The main plasterer came last week but his assistant didn't (got stuck somewhere between Manchester and here). So we had a week's delay which was good because R and his apprentice carpenter could get more work done to get ready for them.

At the last post R was battening the walls and putting render board - a special ecoboard called Heraklith - onto the battens, ready for the plasterer. He has been having quite a time because the timber frame is not nearly as accurate as we had thought. It may have settled a bit since construction, especially with the weight of the roof. Not a structural problem and for most other houses the discrepancies woudn't be an issue, but this is a vastu house and size - exact size - matters.

Now in sthapatya veda all dimensions are crucial - both internal and external. And the thickness of the walls. So if a dimension - let's say the length of an outer wall - isn't correct, then you can alter it but you can't usually then keep the internal dimension without altering the thickness of the wall. All clear so far? So we have to compromise a bit with wall thickness. R has had to make battens of different thicknesses in order that the render board attached to the first floor is in the exact same plane as that attached to the ground floor. The priorities are to get the internal and external dimensions exact. Possibly we'll do our next house(!) with a cavity so that the two sets of dimensions are dealt with separately. Or, even better, the cost of Hemcrete will have come down a bit and we can have a solid hemp and lime house.

We live and learn. What is this mythical Next House anyway? It's the one we invoke after any conversation about how we could have done it better.

Anyway a few pictures. What is happening in the last few weeks is a gradual filling out of the shell of the house. Guttering, painting of bargeboards and eaves, plaster beading, window sills, filling in round the foundations. All work on the outside to get the place weatherproof and so that we can - as we say in the trade - offhire the scaffolding and stop having to pay rent on it. I am getting to know all the jargon.






Some very special visitors, with a very special car