Roselea

Author: Shaun

  • Clearing and Leveling area ready for Floor Slab Day 1

     Today, we carried on with the tidying up task of removing the batter boards, disassembling the unused concrete shoots, collecting up all the rubbish and any other miscellaneous items left lying around the area inside the boundary of the house.

    Site-cleared

    Site-cleared

    Then, we started scraping and leveling the surface in the Entertainment Room and the Utility Room alongside it, by using a four metre long timber piece, supported by the concrete foundation strips down each side, to drag the soil away and leave a leveled surface.

    Entertainment-room-leveled

    Entertainment-room-leveled

    2016-09-15

    2016-09-15


    Tomorrow, a short day (just a couple of hours in the morning), we will bring up the level in the Utility Room using the soil in the trolley and then empty the rest from the trolley, by dumping it over the Perimeter Wall somewhere, before our appointment in the afternoon and predicted rain too!

  • Clearing the Site Ready for Floor Slab

     This afternoon, we continued with the clear up operation on the site, removing concrete “homemade” blocks, removing the Batter Boards around the outside and repairing the kitchen sewage pipe that got caught by the mini-digger bucket several months ago!

    2016-09-14

    2016-09-14

    Tomorrow, we will continue with this tidy-up operation to remove last of the OSB boards and pre-fab shoots (we never used!) and  remove the excess soil and level up the areas between the foundation strips, giving each a good old run over with the petrol compactor plate. Then insert the last remaining temperature probe conduits and heat pump water loops too.

  • Day 3 – Completion of Bitumen Waterproofing of Perimeter Wall

     This morning, under a baking sun (temperature reached almost 30°C in the shade), we finished off the 2nd coat of the Bitumen waterproof treatment of the Perimeter Wall, around the Great Room and along the front section. We used just over 2½ barrels (65l) of the paint in total which is not too bad, as we should to have used 3 barrels but the 2nd coat went on easier and quicker but almost as thickly as the 1st coat. The coverage looks good and solid.

    We can now, at last, allow the uneven “piles” of sand and soil around the outside of the footprint of the building, to be levelled out and flattened to make a smooth surface for walking around and moving wheeled equipment around much easier!!

  • Day 2 of Bitumen Waterproofing Treatment on Perimeter Wall

     This morning, under a blanket of white clouds, we carried on with the bitumen painting of the Perimeter Wall, from the back corner of the Great Room and along the front of the house. We finished off the 1st barrel and started on the 2nd one.

    After lunch, under a very strong sun (phew!), we started the 2nd coat along the garage side and all the way along the back of the building to that far corner of the Great Room we started from this morning. We were much faster on the 2nd coat as it didn’t seems to need as much, but on the other hand, we have used up the 2nd barrel and we are now on the 3rd container!

    Painting-the-walls-Day-2

    Painting-the-walls-Day-2

    We couldn’t carry on because the bitumen had only 5 hours and less to dry since the morning so we stopped early for the day. We will continue tomorrow to finish off the 2nd coat and we will be all done!! We then can start leveling out the sand and soil inside and outside of the house, up against the wall and pull out the last of the shuttering and remove all the batter boards as well since they don’t provide any function any more – it will be neat and flat at last!!

  • Waterproof Bitumen Paint Job Started – Day 1

     Today, we started the task of applying  the bitumen paint to the outside surface of our Perimeter Wall to make it waterproof against damp and floods.

    The morning was spent trying to use compressed air and a spray gun to splatter the black thick heavy liquid from a tank to the wall, but unfortunately, it didn’t work! Even after we tried “Pushing” the liquid down the tube using more compressed air in the top of the tank to help the thick liquid to get into the air spray gun. So that was abandoned and spent the remaining time cleaning the tools with petrol to lunch time! We did do some more tidy up of concrete blocks cut-offs and OSB sheets etc. too! Just to conclude this experiment of spraying, the manufacturer stated on their web site when we stopped for lunch, said that the best way was to use a direct pressurised spraying system like those high pressure washers we used for cleaning cars and patios, but even stronger at 2000psi (pounds per inch or 133 bar (a bar is normal atmosphere pressure) !!) and we were trying to use our 10bar air compressor – no wonder it didn’t work!! Grin!

    So this afternoon, we went to the old fashioned method of brush and a tray and even a roller to apply the bitumen paint (which has rubber dissolved in it too) to the wall. We started on the garage side of the building, in the Utility room and went around towards the swimming lane, along the back of the building and arrived at the far corner in the Great Room. This is just over half way and we have used about ¾ of the first barrel of the paint. This is just about on track to the required coverage as stated in the instructions on the barrel, which we calculated to be 1½ barrels of the bitumen paint per coat for a complete circuit of the wall!

    Painting-walls-day-1-2

    Painting-walls-day-1-2

    Painting-walls-day-1-1

    Painting-walls-day-1-1


    We are going to do 2 coats so tomorrow, first we will finish off the long loop around the Great Room and the front section and then start the 2nd coat in the afternoon and hopefully finish off on Wednesday!

  • Started Clearing the Interior Ground of House

     This morning, before the rain came along, we started clearing the area inside our building of all the rubbish and equipment plus chairs and table etc. to get the whole surface of the ground all smoothed out, ready for the floor slab to be poured.

    We also mixed up a small quantity of mortar and went around the outside of the Perimeter Wall filling in any voids in the joints and concrete blocks to make a smoother surface for the bitumen paint to stick on nice & strongly and make a good seal.

    We managed to do about 2 hours before the rain came down at lunchtime.

  • Day 2 of Hedge Trim!

     We tackled the second half of the ivy choked blackthorn and hawthorn wild hedge that runs across the bottom of our garden between us and the school field. It was another hot day of cutting and sawing down the side branches and this time, there were some massive ones! One in particular, hanging way over our living quarters, was a big fat 6 inch diameter branch about 12 feet long!

    But we managed to get it all cleared and the whole line looks a lot better now.

    Hedge-Trimming-Day-2-1

    Hedge-Trimming-Day-2-1

    Hedge-Trimming-Day-2-2

    Hedge-Trimming-Day-2-2


    And all the smaller pieces went through the shredding machine and we have filled up a second “ton” bag .. and some!!

    Hedge-Trimming-Day-2-Doubled-up-on-the-shreddings

    Hedge-Trimming-Day-2-Doubled-up-on-the-shreddings

    The hedge will eventually be completely replaced with a proper fencing when the garden and veg/fruit patch is landscaped after the house is built, so it is rather wild with Ivy growing in it and mostly left to its own devices to enjoy nature at its best!!

  • Clearing Away Equipment and Rubbish .. but Diverted to Hedge Trimming Instead!

     We started today on tidying up the area inside the footprint of our house, winding up hose, putting up the ramp over the wall at the back door nearest the garage ..

    Back-door-ramp

    Back-door-ramp

    We loaded up a wheelbarrow with concrete block offcuts to take away to our “rubbish” bag beside the hedge boundary with the school field.

    This is when we were diverted into doing a different task, of trimming back the hedge and balancing up the weight of the whole hedge. We have got to do this as yesterday saw a huge tractor come back and forth on the school field a half a dozen times trimming back our hedge on their side! They sliced and chopped very large branches (well over 50mm / 2 inches in places!) which were hanging over their field with their massive machine, which only took them about 30 minutes to do it all! So we realised that we had to do something similar  our side!!

    The picture below shows you how big some of the overhanging branches we got growing out of our hedge and that is what has disappeared on the school field side!

    Hedge-before-Trimming

    Hedge-before-Trimming

    So we chopped and sliced using our pruning shears and electric sabre saw and then shredded up virtually all the cut-offs and loaded the shredded pieces into a large “ton” bag, filling it right to the top ..

    Hedge-Trimming-a-large-bag-of-shreddings

    Hedge-Trimming-a-large-bag-of-shreddings

    That will compost down very nicely into good quality fiber mulch, ready for our garden and veg patch when we get that done in a year or so time – smile!

    We got half way along the hedge with our efforts today as you can see in the picture  below

    Hedge-Trimming-Day-1

    Hedge-Trimming-Day-1

    And tomorrow we will finish off the remaining of the hedge and have that job done before we have an accident of strong winds causing the hedge to break and dump some of these overhanging branches to crash into our temporary living quarters!! We say “Thank You” School for diverting us when we were not planning this job just yet!!

  • Day 11 of Perimeter Wall Assembly and .. It is ALL Done!

     With the rise of the sun  (;-), we started work early today at 9am, it was a very humid and stuffy morning with no breeze to keep us cool. But we got on with the 4th layer of our Perimeter concrete block wall and did 51 blocks before lunch time at 1pm.

    After lunch, with a little breeze and clouds hanging over head, we completed the loop by putting down 56 blocks, our afternoon load of mortar didn’t quite reach the end so we had to mix a small extra quantity to finish off the very last 1¼ blocks.

    Walls-Finished-Internal-Panarama

    Walls-Finished-Internal-Panarama

    Walls-End-of-day-11

    Walls-End-of-day-11


    It was a long day, from 9am to almost 7pm and doing 107 blocks which smashed the previous record, but it was well worth the effort as it is very pleasing to see it all done! So This Concludes the block laying for the concrete Perimeter Wall which took us 11 days!

    The next job is to spray bitumen paint on the outer surface to provide that extra protection against surface water and rising damp from the soil.

    Later when we are pouring the floor slab we will also fill the hollow columns with concrete.

  • Day 10 – Construction of Perimeter Wall

     A long day of doing the 3rd course of the block wall and going onto the 4th layer with our morning and afternoon sessions. The morning one saw us doing 49 blocks and in the afternoon we laid 47 blocks – a total of 96 blocks! A New Record!! Phew!

    First-bit-of-completed-wall

    First-bit-of-completed-wall

    Walls-End-of-day-10

    Walls-End-of-day-10


    We have 104 blocks left to do in the final layer to complete the whole job! We will have to put in a little extra sand into our mortar mix to make it extend to doing those extra blocks. Tomorrow WILL be an even longer day but well worth it as the job will be done at last! We might start an hour early to avoid running late into the evening!!