Category: Great Room

We started the second stage of building the flooring for the Great Room by fetching down from our upstairs timber storage, 10 nice straight pieces. We then marked the 600mm markings on eight of them which will be where the support legs will go. Then, we laid out these eight lengths, ready to be our joists for the framework, putting them down on the concrete itself. We did this because we needed to get the air ducting laid and positioned so it connects to the exhaust air from the Conservatory and routed diagonally across the room and up to the First Floor to join into the main Air Duct that will travel through the house towards the Utility Room. This bridging section going underneath our floor needs to fit in between all the support legs, hence why we had marked out those positions and we soon realised that we had to shift things around a bit. The set of eight joists were spaced so that the bigger gap was next to the Kitchen side of the Great Room but we discovered that one of the joists and its support legs landed right over a joint in the concrete itself. So we moved everything over by 300mm so that the bigger gap is now over next to the Conservatory side of the room and that made it much neater. Then we could see that the metal ducting, two joined together making four lines stretching diagonally across the room was going through the support legs locations too. This meant another adjustment in our arrangement but this time, we shifted the support legs positions along the joists by 300mm which also turned out to be an advantage by avoiding another joint in the concrete slabs but in the other direction this time.

So this allowed us to then construct another Air Splitter module that joined to the chimney that is coming down inside the wall between the large window and the Conservatory French doors, bringing the old exhaust air from that room. It was a case of carefully cutting and slicing several pieces of our chipboard pieces and shaping them so that we could plug in the set of four metal pipes into this module and draw the air away. It was quite fiddly but we managed it after a couple of days of work.

Then of course, we had to remove all our CLS planks out of the way so we could lay down properly the eight metal pipes, join them to the four purple flexible pipes coming down inside the Kitchen wall and four double length joined and trimmed with small pieces of short pipes to finally connect to our new splitter module. We sealed all the joints with aluminium tape and Stixall glue.

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We now have that particular air ducting completed and we can continue to build the floor framework over the top of it. It took us the next two days to complete that wooden structure, putting in eight joists and a collection of posts and noggings and it went in quite well. The metal tubes were successful in their location, only had to move a couple of legs a centimetre or two to avoid them.

GR-Floor-grid-complete

Next, we put in the conduits for the temperature probes that surrounds the Energy Module, another six of them, to add to the other four plus the other local ones already in place so we can put in sensors to monitor the performance of this large tank. Then, all the water type pipes were laid in, four of them using 15mm direct water connections going to the external world in various forms and then two more thin irrigation waterlines going up to the Eves, so these were 20mm conduits to help feed this pipe through. Next, was the hot water twin pipes, travelling on its last stage of its long twisty journey around the house, to go diagonally across the room, next to the metal air ducts, poke through the kitchen wall and arrive inside the plumbing box located in the Kitchen where the sink and other water related services are.

The cold water, the 32mm header tank water supply, then came across the room and join alongside the hot water to enter the same plumbing box and then finally, a single 15mm mains water pipe coming all the way from the Utility Room and also coming around to enter into the plumbing box too. This will provide fresh drinking water for the Kitchen.

Finally, one more 15mm water pipe was inserted into the Energy Module, threaded down a sticking up 25mm pipe coming through the concrete and going back to the Utility Chamber to join with its twin, to get married to a larger 22mm pipe going off to the Utility Room. We also inserted a second 22mm water pipe alongside this one, but starting slightly further down the hall where our second largest Energy Module is located under the Kitchen and Bedroom One, both going all the way to the Utility Room.

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The last job to do under the floorboards is to put in the air pipes to provide fresh air for this half of the Great Room, another eight air distributors located around the edge of the room, two along the Kitchen wall, three along the “A” wall and the final three along the Conservatory wall. These outlets are fed and grouped into four separate 50mm conduits that goes back to a splitter module which has a 100mm conduit connected to it and the other end coming from the Utility Chamber, ready to be connected to the main Air Duct.

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Finally, we carried on laying down the floorboards for the rest of the room, again, not glued down, or screwed either. We knocked each row securely against the rest of the floor, to encourage the joints to close up nice and tight. But the last row is only a half width piece and we have not cut an accurate piece to go into this space, but just laid down a couple of left-over half boards to fill the gap, to make it safe.

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One of the last task to do while we remembered, was to insert a collection of conduits and pipes around the windows so the wires and cables can carry on along all the Utility Channels. We did also the conduit that goes down into the bottom module underneath the window where the blind mechanism is to be located.

GR-Window-conduits

This concludes the work for the Great Room for the time being!! We won’t get back here until we have fully finished filling in the Roof Rafters and putting up the ceiling panels etc. After that, we can lift the floorboards and “throw” all the PU foam rubbish under it! Next, we will make a start on the Entertainment Room while we wait for this insulation PU foam pieces to arrive.

We started the second stage of construction of our Great Room floor construction, by continuing the task of putting all the various utility pipework snaking around under the floor. We put in the conduits to all the temperature sensors that we have scattered around the Energy Module, all coming back to the central Utility Chamber, we did four that were coming in from the patio side of the room. Then a couple of cold water connections were also fitted, providing an outside tap for the Patio area plus also an underground connection for sending any water supplies further into the gardens if we want. Also there is a couple of irrigation connections going up to the Eves. Finally, a 15mm water pipe installed to the connection points of the buried Energy Module itself.

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EM-Temperature-sensor-conduits

Next was to lay down 50mm to 60mm thick layer of PU foam down the Utility Chamber so there is some protection against the warm concrete or indeed maybe cold concrete and it becomes trouble for the Air Duct and Water pipes running inside the Utility Chamber cutting across the Great Room.

We also screwed on small pieces of battens across the central two legs that will perform a dual role of supporting the Air Ducting itself, but also provide tie up points to keep all the dozens of water pipes in a neat arrangement whilst travelling to and from the Utility Room and to various Energy Modules.

Then it was the turn of the hot water system, coming around from Bedroom One and curving to the middle of the Great Room, the two 28mm water pipes were wrapped in layers of PU foam boards to protect the heated water as much as possible from losing any energy. We had to lower the levels of the twin plastic pipes so it could fit under the main air ducting that is coming across the Great Room so there is not as much insulation as we normally have, but it is only for a short length and besides that, if our Energy Module get hot then there wouldn’t be so much temperature difference and hence not as much energy will be lost after all.

Hot-water-Insulated

The next job was to construct the Air Distributors, eight of them, to be located evenly around the edges of the room. We had to make two more jigs to help, as it was taking too long for the solvent to evaporate when we were gluing the various bits together. This Air Distributor is made using 40mm waste pipe plumbing parts, with a 68mm guttering pipe to allow us to connect the 50mm flexible air ducting into these distributors.

Making-Air-diffusers

As part of this job, we built four Air Splitter chambers that takes a 100mm wide pipe and squashes the air down and splits it up into four separate 50mm pipes.
We installed two of them into the half of the Great Room we got completed, and connected the flexible plastic pipes, a purple 100mm pipe coming from the Utility Chamber and four orange 50mm pipes bending around and going off to four spread-out locations for each quarter of the room.

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Air-distribution-to-Patio-side

Then, we laid down eleven rows of floorboards, only screwed in a couple of places for each board. We did not want to permanently fix them down just yet because we will want to “throw” away our foam rubbish material when we get to populate the roof rafters and we will have loads of left-over pieces. We shred it all up into small fluffy chunks and place them under our floorboards to act as more insulation to keep our house warm but also to protect us from our Energy Modules which are likely to get very hot during the Summer months.

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Now, we can make a start on laying out the other half of our Great Room, the left hand side from the hallway, but we need to make sure that we have got the air ducting that is coming from the Conservatory lying just in the correct place. That will be part of the next blog report!!

Since we had finished building the basic shell of all our downstairs hallways, we needed to get on with something else while we are waiting for a particular type of building material to arrive. So we decided to work on building the framework for the floor in our Great Room and also put up most of the horizontal rails up on the walls too. But, we had to empty the room out as it is full of timber, well over 400 x 4.8m long planks, plus a large bench saw table double module and a long chop saw module as well, as well as a standalone planer and other pieces of equipment, all needed to be moved out. But, first of all, we looked ahead to see what we needed in terms of cut down strips of fermacell plasterboard pieces (to go in the back of the Utility Channels) and MDF strips for the Air Channels too, both uses the saw bench table module. So, we sliced up two more fermacell boards into 12 more strips which should be enough to complete the Great Room and also slice two more MDF sheets to make 16 more strips, again enough to do the job. Then, we calculated that we needed 221 legs to support the entire flooring framework at every 600mm point in both directions and 85 horizontal pieces that hold and space out the long floor joists. We used our big chop saw with an end-stop to rapidly chop up 27 lengths of our 63mm CLS timber to produce the required numbers.
Then, the 221 legs were then dipped, one end only, in timber preservative solution.

Lots-of-legs

Only after this, we proceeded to dismantle these pieces of equipment and move them out of the Great Room. The last big job was to move the huge stack of the CLS timber upstairs as most of it is earmarked for building the upstairs walls etc. We needed to leave behind about 50 planks which meant that we had to move everything else. in the end, we moved 414 planks to the middle of the space upstairs, running down the middle under the Skylight.
We moved the 50 planks into the middle of the room so we can work around the edges doing the walls but also we could do one half of the floor at a time etc.

2-Tons-of-wood-upstairs

We had to tidy up several years of dust and sand that has crept under the timber pile, plus a large heap of left-over timber pieces which will turn into something useful we thought but after this long, perhaps not! Actually, some of it will be used later on but quite a lot only ended up outside in our rubbish bag, ready for the next bonfire, or hand it over to our neighbours for their own wood burner.
We had to put back outside 15 homemade concrete blocks that were used to support our timber pile, back when we even didn’t have a roof on our house! We now have one empty Great Room for the first time in years!

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The next job was to encapsulate the last exposed bit of the concrete block walls under each of the five windows, and also glue in a sheet of 12mm plywood in the bottom of the window sill.
Then insert four rolls of glass wool insulation into ten wall segments, one roll of 150mm thick stuffed in the lower 900mm section, followed by a 2400mm piece of the 200mm thick stuffed in the upper section, going all the way to the roof rafters.

Then, the vapour membrane barrier was placed all over the walls, to seal the wooden structure from moisture generated by us humans inside the building. The black DPM plastic was stretched along the wall, joining to existing vapour membrane. We put up three 4metres pieces to complete the job. The windows were trimmed and wrapped back to the glass. We then continued with this task of wrapping the sections below and above each window in the same plastic material, encapsulating the pocket spaces so they are sealed too, these chambers to put our electronic and mechanical bits and pieces to drive the automatic blinds to help give shade from the sun or privacy at night time. We did four larger, and one smaller window. Plus also the section above the Conservatory Door too.

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Talking about the Conservatory, we modified the temporary door by slicing off 60mm off the bottom of it and mounting a new door sill onto the concrete blocks. This is in readiness for when we laid down the floorboards across the room. We didn’t have to slice an additional small piece off the top of the door after all.

Another thing that got done was the insertion of a vertical CLS timber piece on either sides of the windows and also a similar pair mounted at the front of the window opening, which was adjusted so that the side walls of the windows are a proper 90degrees right angles to the glass. We put in plastic spacers to make sure the front leg lines up with the window leg perfectly.

Now, we have started putting up the horizontal rails on the walls, starting at the bottom doing the floor support first, running right around the whole room.

But, then we thought we had better put in the four 100mm flexible air ducts up inside the Kitchen wall that will connect to the pipework running across the room, from the Conservatory so we can take the waste air out. It was so much easier to install these conduits before we put up any more wooden rails!

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And, we put in 18 strips of 200mm thick glass wool, split into 400mm wide pieces and stuffed into all the columns in the Kitchen and Bedroom One walls, to provide as much sound deadening as possible.

Next, we built our Utility Channel that runs right around the whole room at the 800mm to 900mm height level, skipping pass the five windows and two doors. The Channel is lined with a strip of fermacell plasterboard material which provides both a surface to screw hooks or electrical modules somewhere around the room, but also it is fire rated to provide 30 minutes protection and hence keep that slim chance of an electrical fire contains while the alert is raised. We put in the usual holes for both a 32mm and 20mm conduits to be connected later on, to route around these aforementioned windows and doors, but we also put in extra 20mm holes for plumbing in additional lighting at the top of the walls where it meets the roof rafters.

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We completed as much as we could do for this moment in our building of the wall utility rails, doing the two middle rails going up the wall, including the one that lines up with the top of all windows and outside door, and then completed the loop underneath the Gallery with a rail over the door and tight underneath the joists.

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Now we make a start on building the floor structure by extending the framework that supports the main Air Ducting that is coming down the hall, and duplicated the structure across the Great Room and arrived at the Conservatory doorway. As it entered the Great Room from the hallway, it bent at about a 15degrees angle to the right and travelled for about 3400mm before straighten up and going 1900mm towards the Conservatory. This section will have the usual liftable panels, three in the first angled segment and a further two in the straight segment. This will allow us to service the plumbing bits and pieces including a fair number that are going to the outside world and Conservatory, plus also the air duct connection points, four of them to distribute fresh air for the whole of the Great Room and also further air connections going off to the Conservatory as well.

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Now we got the room divided into two areas, we started building the structure for the rest of the flooring. We did the back of the Great Room first, the area to the right side as you walk in from the Hall. We marked off all the 600mm spacing and make sure that we could still insert all the air output vents and its pipework into the wall without hitting a support leg etc. It took a couple of days to do this first section.

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That concludes this stage of the work so we can publish our progress. We got another couple of weeks of work to go to get the second half of the flooring done, as well as installing the hot water pipes in their insulation, lots of cold water pipes, dozens of electrical conduits and sixteen air pipes distributed around the room. We will laid down the proper chipboard floorboards but it won’t be glued down, just lightly screwed in a couple of places. We need to lift it again so we can “throw” away all the left-over PU foam pieces that will be generated when we fill in all the roof rafters when our long-awaited supply of PU rejected foam boards arrive!