Author: Shaun

Rebuilt the Utility Room and Its Shelves

Whilst tidying up the house of the insulation foam rubbish, a new set of shelves was created to provide more room for tools and parts to be on hand for this phase of working inside the house. We moved the Ikea shelves over to beside the new wall between Bedroom 3 and added an extension upwards plus also we sliced up two more 500mm wide OSB 6foot strips and used several 63mm CLS pieces to act as shelf supports, so we sub-divided the larger gaps to provide more capacity.

New-tool-storage

The smaller Ikea shelf system was also extended upwards and moved into the corner beside the electrical consumer units and sockets and this became our electronics stack.

The new shelf system is 8feet from left to right, 8 feet tall and 400mm deep, made using four whole sheet of 18mm think OSB boards. We sliced three of them into 9 400mm 8foot strips and the fourth sheet had eight 100mm wide strips to form the legs (four on each side of the shelf) with the final 400mm strip to go right to the top of the larger Ikea set of shelves where the overhanging piece was anchored to the wall with an angle bracket.
The new shelves were screwed together with just screws into the edge of each 18mm OSB strip (we recognise that much of the materials and ironmongery parts are relatively lightweight (apart from the huge collection of screws where we did use several more angle brackets to reinforce the shelf!). We decided that we would fix the position of the shelves and looked at our shelves in the garage to see what sort of sizes and gaps we would need and settled on 300mm for the gap at the bottom on the floor, followed by 400mm, 500mm, then four 150mm shelves and finally a 300mm gap to the final top shelf.

New-parts-storage

We dragged it into the corner (weighing about 75kg at least!) and shoved it up against the E wall, and slid it along to meet the electronic shelves.
We can now see what we got and keep things tidy!

15 April 2021
Massive Tidy Up of Mountains of PU Foam left-over Cut-Offs!

In the course of filling our exterior walls with rigid foam boards, which get a huge “mountain” of left-over cut-offs pieces, some fairly regular in shape but many just simply rubbish.

Insulation-rubbish-Pile-1

Insulation-rubbish-Pile-2

We had to strip off the paper foil off both sides of the board (sometimes, it is a glass-fibre impregnated paper and others are shiny aluminium foil coated paper) so it could go into our shredder machine.
Here are some examples of the wide range of variability of these “seconds” that had been thrown out by the manufacturers and amazingly, some of the boards had dates on them and these dates indicated that some were only a week old when we got the delivery!!

Foam-shredder-Mk1-2

The shredder dealt with the pieces that are not long and regular in shape and size, the cuboid and badly formed rubbish bits were crunched and shredded. One might had expected that by shredding these solid blocks of foam into a random chunky pieces would have generated extra volume but it turned out that it is not so bad after all. We did a couple of ton bags of cut-offs we had already collected a few weeks ago and when these were shredded, they virtually occupied about the same volume as you can see ..

Two-bags-of-insulation-shreddings

Shreded-Insulation

But we still had to make room to store this mountain of rubbish while we build the interior framework of our rooms so we elected to use the alcove outside, formed by the L,M & N walls and built a very large tarpaulin “bag” to hold this fluffy material.

Large-foam-storage-bag-1

Four corner stakes were bashed into the sandy soil and, using dismantled left-over pallet materials, to reinforce and build a box like structure. One of our 10metre on a side tarpaulin that have several holes in it (due to the covering up of the stack of OSB sheets), was used to create a bag, laid inside our new frame and weighed down with concrete blocks in the corners and stretched out upwards and clamped down around the top edge of the framing.

Large-foam-storage-bag-2

Now we got this outside storage, we proceeded to shred up the remaining irregular pieces and transferred the fluffy lumpy bits to the new super bag outside.
We then bundled up the more manageable pieces of rubbish with duct tape and move this outside too, to join their cousins, the fluffy bits.

Larger-pieces-stored-behind-the-bag

The only upheaval to this process was the demise of our shredding machine. We had overworked the motor and it got too hot and burnt out several windings inside the electric motor itself (we believe!) so the last couple of days was spent breaking up the greatly reduced pile chunks using our hands and fingers instead. It was very tiring and long winded! We probably will buy an replacement machine, later on to be ready when we tackle the insertion of more insulation board bits up into the roof rafters, but it was quicker (just!) to get it done now, rather than waiting for a delivery!
Anyway, all this material will be used in the long run, to act as more insulation under our suspended flooring on the ground floor. Nothing goes to waste!
Finally ..

The-bag-is-full-of-bits

Bag-all-covered-up-waiting-for-later

We now have our house looking much tidier and ready for the next task of building more walls for our internal rooms on the ground floor.

15 April 2021
Rain Water Filter Module Upgraded With Stainless Steel Mesh

We postponed the insertion of the PU foam board into the Great Room walls, because the freezing temperatures that has just arrived with the icy northerly weather, would not allow the gun foam to properly expand and cure in the correct way. So, Tuesday, we switched over to doing another task that has been waiting for months for us to complete. This is the upgrade and repair of our rain water filtration module, specifically, the main large mesh filter that provide the final sieving and removal of larger bits from off the rooves, like moss and leaves. Originally, we used a geotextile cloth like material to provide this filter barrier but we found, unfortunately, the fluffy texture of the cloth made it a good environment for bacteria and fungi to grow, which in turn blocked the last six inches of the filter and we had virtually a permanent pool of water sitting in our filtration module and in turn, in our 100mm pipes that runs right around the whole house.
Last year, we bought some fine mesh stainless steel woven mesh which a 2mm size holes so it will still do the job of stopping the moss and leaves from getting into our underground rain water tanks but the larger and much simpler mesh design would stop any bacteria and fungi from growing.

New-mesh-for-rainwater-filter

(here is our roll of the mesh)
But first, we had to drain the filtration module using our built-in little pump which took well over an hour to pull out nearly seven hundred litres of water, pull out the old filter, cut off the old cloth and then give it a thorough scrub in strong detergent to remove the slimy yukky mess.
We discovered that the resin we had coated the mild steel bars with, is showing signs of being chipped and this could be letting in water to oxidise the metal, i.e. rust. We may have to go all stainless steel in a future replacement but for now, we dried it all off and smeared copious amount of grey PU sealant when we put on the stainless steel mesh.
The mesh was cut down to size, 380mm wide by 1100mm long, trimmed around the handle and the extra sticking out tongue piece at the bottom. We then cut several lengths of wooden 2by1 battens, put on parcel sticky tape, wound around a thick wire and cover that up as well with Sellotape (so the PU sealant doesn’t stick to the wood nor wire) and clamped around the edges of the framework to press the engulfed mesh into the PU sealant. The wire is there to try to ensure that we had a little extra amount of sealant above the mesh to provide extra bulk to encapsulate the mesh for long-term strength and stability.

Clamping-batten

On the following day, we discovered that the grey PU sealant was taking a long time to set, we surmise that this was being caused by the lack of water vapour reaching the sealant to aid in the chemical reactions to set it. So we rigged up a “tent” over the filter and directed our fan heater to blow in warmer air to raise the temperature to speed up that chemical reaction. We had to wait another day and then carefully peal of our battens off. The sealant was just about set but still sticky to the touch so yet another day was required. This is ok as we got on with doing the insulation filling task in the house (the outdoor temperature has warmed up enough to allow us to carry on using the foam gun) and also we performed a test of several different kinds of glues to examine which will work best on naked rubber. We used Stixall, neutral silicone and PU sealant by smearing it hard into the rubber surface.

Rubber-gluing-test

The conclusions were that the stixall and neutral cure silicone worked very well but the PU one literally rolled off with no difficulties at all.
After several more days of neglecting this task, we finally got bac to finishing off by sticking down a line of glazing rubber strips on the underside of the metal bar. These original rubber strips were left-overs from doing the Skylight and they are 50mm wide but we only wanted half that width so we sliced them down the middle. We then used a Stixall glue (we had several tubes of that left) to glue down the rubber strips onto the metal bar and waited another day again.

We finally installed the repaired and upgraded filter back into the rain water filtration module and we will wait and see how well it performs over the next year or so.

Mesh-glued-to-filter-frame

Rubber-seal-on-filter

Filter-installed

13 April 2021
Artificial Grass Stitched Down Middle Of Loke

Over the last couple of days, the two rolls of artificial grass we bought, which are left-over pieces from the supplier at half the normal prices. They were 4metre long rolls and about 1metre wide, the plastic grass itself are 30mm long strands in a very dense weave.

Artificail-grass-closeup

We chopped 640mm pieces off each of the rolls which allowed us to get twelve in total, which meant that we could cover just over 12metres strip down the middle of the Loke, between our neighbour’s entrance ways.

Grass-center-of-the-loke-1

Grass-center-of-the-loke-2

The method we decided on, to hold down the material, was to dig out the recycled asphalt material out of the grid cells that runs either side of the 500mm centre strip. Then, each grass section was draped so that the 666mm direction covered across the 500mm width and the ends dropped down into the empty cells. Of course, we had to snip the material at every cell boundary to let it in and then used a cable ties to lock down the flapping pieces to the plastic grid modules themselves and finally, the asphalt granules were pushed back in on top of the excess material to provide more clamping force. Another line of cable ties was used to join the grass sections together, which was repeated as we moved along the Loke.
This is an experiment and we will see how well this style of creating a “green” splash of colour for our Loke will survive over the short and medium terms, before we decide how to continue upgrading and resurfacing the rest of the Loke later.

Loke-before-resurfacing-Mar-2021-1

10 April 2021
Exterior Walls All Fully Insulated with PU Foam Boards

By Thursday, after a couple of delayed days due to icy cold weather that would have stopped the gun foam from working properly, we finally finished installing the 200mm (on average) thick layer of polyurethane (PU) “seconds” foam boards. The last section was around the Great Room, in the west end, finishing off the Patio section, then the O section and finally the N little section around the corner.
We had to first dismantle the upper section of our indoor timber storage area, see Spare timber Store Moved Outside to Swimming Lane and move the timber outside, to gain access to this segment of the exterior walls. It is our very last section to get done and now we can say, for real, without this task hanging over our heads, that we really truly finished this job. Although we have not finished putting insulation in the walls because we will be adding further layers of Mineral wool insulation to finish filling the rest of the wall up to the 380mm depth for the complete wall.

Foam-Insulation-in-the-last-Wall

The other job that took several hours was to glue a piece of 11mm OSB board to go over the “O” window to improve the structural integrity of this section that is supporting the extension and its roof.
We filled in the space with foam, gluing each piece to the wall and each other and then screwed the OSB to the timber framing, using plenty of PU glue to ensure the whole thing is solid.

Reinforced-Header-over-O-window

So that is it .. except, we now have to tidy up the mountains of rubbish generated!!

Insulation-rubbish-Pile-1

Insulation-rubbish-Pile-2

8 April 2021
Spare timber Store Moved Outside to Swimming Lane

Today, we decided to move the heap of timber planks we had stored inside our Great Room, on a raised shelving rack system.

Timber-storage-rack

The main reason for tackling this job now, to move the timber outside, was because we needed access to our external walls to insert the insulation foam boards. We knew that we had to move this pile of various sized planks anyway, sometime in the future so we felt that if we did it now, then we would finish off the insulation task completely and not have it hanging over us.
So the first job was to have a look at our swimming lane outside, to rearrange some of the items so we had enough room for the 4.8metres long planks.

We pushed this and that bits and pieces around and was able to transport a collection of planks, ranging from 89mm by 38mm planks, some 100mm by 50mm ones and three big 100mm by 75mm planks to their new storage location, under cover in our Swimming Lane.

Moved-to-swimming-lane-storage

The shelving system in the Great Room was dismantled and we now got a cleared area to allow us to gain access to the walls for the installation of the insulation chunks.
The rest of the timber, the 63mm by 38mm type, is staying indoors because they will get used up to build all the internal rooms for both the ground and upper floors.

Tidied-the-CLS-stacks

4 April 2021
Utility Room reorganised and First Solid Wall built

We needed access to the sections of the exterior walls in the utility room to get the insulation boards in, we are currently storing tools there. So today, Thursday, on April fools day, we built the first solid wall between Bedroom 3 and the Utility Room to give us more space to store tools. This wall is the usual 63mm thick but we had put on an additional fermacell plasterboard layer on the interior side of the wall, then filled up the hollow space up with 100mm thick glass wool we had lying around in our garden shed, some 10 years old (and perhaps too old as the material didn’t seems to spring back into its full 100mm thickness), to act as another sound absorbing layer. The whole thing was covered up with a layer of 18mm thick OSB board to provide a good solid first layer of sound reducing wall, between Bedroom 3 and the various noisy equipment that will live in the utility, like the washing machine and drying cabinet and the other pieces of equipment for running the air conditioner etc.

First-solid-wall-1

First-solid-wall-2

Then we moved the Ikea wooden shelving modules over to sit in front of this new wall and unscrewed the electric switchboard off the wall. We then installed the insulation in the walls and re-installed the (temporary) electric switchboard.

Utility-insulated-and-re-arranged

1 April 2021
Cosicot Fencing Replaced As Barrier Against Mount Sod Movements

The last two days has been spent on replacing an old tumbled down fence, the most of it anyway. The boundary is between us and Cosicot, up the hill from us a little bit. The old fencing was a mish mash collection of wooden fence panels, slotted into concrete posts at various distances. These are what we inherited when we bought the whole Roselea plot almost 20 years ago now.
But also, our lovely Mount Sod has done its usual thing of collapsing in some places around the edge and have pressed into the old fencing too.

Tumbled-down-boundary-to-Cosicot

We had all ways planned to replace this fence with a nice high quality one when we have finished enough of the house to move in and move mount sod to it final resting place at the bottom of the plot.
So after talking with our neighbour, we agreed that we will put up a new temporary barrier to both act as a new fence but also to act as a barrier against any further subsidence, to hold the status quo for another few years. It is all happening now because our neighbour wishes to build a new replacement garage and he doesn’t want to have to worry about our Mount Sod collapsing any further and messing up his brand new garage!
The first job on the first day was to dig out the lower section of Mount Sod so we had room to work on both side of the fence. We got the mini-digger out, drove up the Loke and into our neighbour’s property. There were originally 4 concrete posts, widely separated, being well over 2.5metres apart but it was still a careful process of digging in between these posts and “chucking” the soil back up on to the top of the mountain of dirt. The next task what to rescue three more concrete posts we had lying in the other corner of our garden, pick them up one by one up using a hook and chain dangling from the digger’s bucket and transfer them around to the area of work. We had swopped the bucket over to our narrowest 300mm wide bucket to dig three deep holes and dropped the concrete posts in. We positioned the new posts to help subdivide the larger gaps and also provide stronger support for the barrier. Fortunately, these old concrete posts were commercial ones and were over ten feet tall so we could bury them three feet down and also they had their original lumps of concrete foundations still on them, which all helps to anchor them very strongly. Finally, we ripped out the last wooden panel and wooden post as it was broken by the shifting soil and original barrier support mechanism which had rotted away.
The second day was spent constructing three horizontal wooden rails, cut to fit in between the posts, fitted into the slots and spaced 150mm below the a marked horizontal line (assisted using our laser level machine) for the bottom rail, then 300mm higher for the second rail and finally the third rail another 900mm up, to align with the top edge of the four feet wide OSB boards. We used “old” weathered 4.8metre CLS planks that we just got from our supplier (they had included these ten planks for free, one assumes to get rid of them!). These CLS timber are 63mm by 38mm thick.

Concrete-posts-and-rails-installed

Taking five sheets of 18mm thick OSB boards, we carefully sliced each vertical edge to follow the angle of each concrete post by measuring the offset from a true right angle (we used our trusty old 4feet builder’s homemade metal square tool) and proceeded to screw each piece into the back of the CLS wooden rails. We used the left-over OSB pieces together on the last section, the widest section (some 2620mm wide) and put on several pieces to fill the space. We had enough left over pieces in both CLS timber and OSB cut-offs that we could extend the fencing the other way (towards the Loke) and join to the existing wooden panelled fence.
Part of the final stages of building this new barrier, is to put on a layer of waterproof DPM plastic to protect the OSB from damp soil and extend the life of the whole structure, hopefully for the required two or three years. We had used more left-over material we had stored, like the final act of the day was to push in a line of cement panels, set vertically and pressing against the OSB and DPM plastic to provide a rot-proof bottom 300mm section and to stop the soil from creeping under the fence, including weeds and brambles.

Panels-fitted-and-protected

with-plastic-sheets-and-cement-boards

The whole thing is over 12.5metres long, by 1200mm high (plus a bit! .. depending on what the ground level is), seven concrete posts, ten CLS planks and five sheets of our OSB material, with hardly any left-overs at all!

25 March 2021
Replaced Loke’s Fence with New Green Chicken Wire Mesh

This afternoon, after we had the final delivery of CLS timber, we proceeded to put up the new replacement temporary fencing along the Loke, in front of the house. We are fed up of using the cheap recycled plastic fencing (it keeps splitting and it very brittle, this one only lasted 3 years but we had already replaced a section a year or so ago and it was very unsightly for the last six months anyway). So we decided to use steel wire mesh and in keeping with its short term need for this type of fencing, we bought chicken mesh wire, coated in green PVC plastic, rather than the more expensive and traditional wire chain-linked type. The hexagon pattern is quite large, at 50mm but it should do the job and keep things looking much neater and nicer too.

New-Wire-loke-fence

We had to rearrange and insert more frequent posts to help support the wobbly thinner material of this chicken mesh but hopefully, it will do the job for the next couple of years or five!

23 March 2021
63mm CLS Timber Ordered and Arrived

We also been enquiring about prices for CLS timber, the 63mm by 38mm size, again to cash in before the prices goes up. We were lucky to find two of our local suppliers capable of offering a price of £1 per metre against £1.30 (on average) by other builders merchants. We snapped up all they had in stock (from Norwich and Great Yarmouth) and on Saturday and Tuesday, we had two deliveries, we now have another 630 4.8metre planks. The previous price we paid six months ago was 97p per metre so that is very good, especially in this climate of popular demands!

Lots-of-CLS-delivered

We have got the two pallets sitting alongside the Loke at the moment, in front of the house but it won’t be too long before we will need them all. In fact, that quantity will do the majority of all the internal structure of the ground and upper walls and floors. We may need a little bit more later on if we had generated more waste than we expected. But we are almost using every bit of timber everywhere, whether it is just 500mm long, right up to the full 4.8metres. We are planning to tongue and groove several lengths together when we are doing the horizontal framework which will allow us to use many of the cut-offs.
It is all about minimising waste, even if it costs more time. That is our philosophy…

23 March 2021