Category: House

Most of the Doorways Are Lined

We finished off doing the Hallways over the last four days, or rather three days and a morning. We went around putting in liners in almost all of the doorways. We used our 18mm OSB boards to line the left and right edges of the door hole, plus a horizontal piece going over the top. But we wanted to make sure that we finished off with nice square and level sides so when the door is hung, it will swing smoothly and not twist out of alignment. So in order to achieve this, we built a solid frame using some nice straight 89mm thick CLS timber and anchored it all together using lots of triangular plywood pieces to provide a solid perfect rectangle to align to.

Doorway-Framing-jig-1

Doorway-Framing-jig-2

Two of the Bedrooms, number Two and Three were relatively simple to do, putting in 270mm wide pieces of the OSB boards, cut to a height of 2080mm, plus a 876mm wide piece for the top one going over the top. We liberally put a whole load of PU construction glue on all the surfaces inside the door frame and then put in some locking screws to keep it place while the glue dries and cures.

But for Bedroom One, we had to trim and plane the door frame a bit, to get it straightened up. We also inserted additional timber pieces in the utility rail space, all glued on all surfaces, to provide a much stronger load bearing anchorage for the hinge side of the door. We then inserted the OSB liner pieces and got that doorway all square and vertical as well.

The other doorways were the various cupboards and they were only 150mm deep as cupboards do not have the extra layer that forms the Utility and Air Channels and also are only one frame deep instead of two posts. We did the same trick of inserting the extra CLS timber pieces into the utility rail space, again to reinforce the hinges, and slid in the liners as usual.

All these liners are too wide, deliberately so, and we went around trimming the excess off using our router with a ball-bearing straight cutter. If there was too much overlap, we reduced it down first using the jigsaw as it reduced the work load on the router.
Oh yes, we also inserted little pieces in our sliding modules like the Kitchen, Cloakroom and Bathroom, this was also trimmed too.

Some-finished-door-liners-1

Some-finished-door-liners-2

That pretty much completes all the basic structure for all the Hallways downstairs and the only doorways that were not done, was the Linen cupboard and the Entertainment room, and also the Utility room too.
We are going to get on doing the Great Room next, we have decided that we cannot wait for our building insulation foam rejects, we made enquiries again and still no news. But, doing the Great Room, does mean that we will have to move our huge pile of timber upstairs, most of it anyway, ready to start building the upstairs framework and rooms later on. It would be good to see the floor all complete in our Great Room and feel that we are still making progress.

10 June 2022
Installing All Conduits and Pipes to Serve the Upper Floor from Hallway’s Services

While we wait for more insulation PU foam boards to come from the scrap material merchant, we got on with the next task to do, to get the walls insulated and boarded on our various Hallways on the Ground floor. But, before we can cover up everything, we need to install all the conduits and pipes that needs to go upstairs or up to the hall ceilings.

To aid in this task, we decided that the Cloakroom and Linen cupboard would have their floors built so we could route any pipes etc underneath. We did our usual procedure of using the green laser level to give us the height of the flooring, nailed the framework around and across the floor and cut to size loose 22mm chipboard floorboards.
The floorboards are not glued or screwed down so we can lift them up easily for doing our routing of any Utility pipes, ducting or conduits.

One of the first utility we did was the vacuum ducting pipework, to extend the capability of providing a vacuum cleaning service upstairs. It was going up inside the wall just right of the Cloakroom sliding door module and it needed two junctions at the top, one for the “port” for the mini hallway upstairs and a second pipe run going off to the work room to provide local vacuum facilities for plugging into various machinery. Each junction needed two 45° fittings joined together to make the right angle turn. We wanted to have more gentle turns so we avoid encountering blockages hidden inside the network somewhere. But having two 45° units fitted together, they are quite bulky so we had to wiggle, twist and trim down various joints before we had our solution.

Complicated-vacuum-pipe-junction

From-the-joint

Vacuum-pipe-for-upstairs-hall

And-down-the-hall-towards-the-utility

But we did realise that we had missed a shorter connection, to provide a port for upstairs in the workshop room. We already had a vacuum port downstairs next to the Utility Room, on the end wall of the hallway! So, we made some adjustments and removed a long straight section. Then we extended the new location upwards instead, making it come out upstairs that will be the workshop.

Shorter-route-to-Work-3

Vacuum-branch-sealed-off

The other location for another vacuum port is all the way down next to the Great Room entrance so that we can plug in the hose and do any cleaning jobs in the Kitchen, Bedroom One, or indeed the Great room too.

Vacuum-port-for-Great-room-and-Kitchen

We also bought some adapters, to reduce the 50mm diameter down to the 40mm size because we discovered that the manufactured “pretty” vacuum port themselves can plug straight into a 40mm socket without any other items or adapters.
We now have three ports downstairs (plus another one to do across the Great Room near the Conservatory later on) and two upstairs minimum and maybe a third one for connecting to various equipment like a band saw or drill press in the workshop.

Then, the next utility to deal with, is the compressed air supply. We inserted a 22mm plumbing pipe up near the cloakroom and ran a line all the way down the hall up in the ceiling space, to give a local supply up in the workshop somewhere. All the sliding doors will have compressed air cylinders to provide a powerful and quick motive force to opening and closing the doors. We have seven sliding doors in total, not including the sliding door we got in our Garage already. So we inserted 20mm black conduit pipes at each of the sliding door modules, the Cloakroom, the Bathroom and another one for upstairs bathroom too. The ensuites already have these conduits installed. The final two, the Kitchen and Great Room also had been installed too.

We are thinking of extending the compress airline, all the way across the Great Room and put a connection in the Conservatory, alongside a Vacuum port as well.

Another set of conduit pipe was installed in various locations from the Hallway, this time it is for routing a fire suppression system up to the ceiling, to enable a nozzle to be placed in the middle of the ceiling in each large room. These nozzles will generate a water vapour “fog” to reduce the heat and severity of a potential outbreak of a fire. We have been researching on the web for the different suppression and there were several types of nozzles, some spraying droplets of water and others producing a mist or a fog. The empty conduits will allow us to thread a thin water pipe up to the ceiling so we can install such a system later on when we are satisfied with the appropriate design. The conduit is a black 25mm diameter polyethene pipe that we had purchased 10 years ago and it is big enough for us to thread water pipes up to 15mm in diameter.

Now, after we had finished checking our list of connections for the walls and halls, we got on with nailing up the various utility horizontal rails on the walls as per standard design.
One section of wall had to be extended to form the understairs cupboard, the Kitchen wall, coming out another 1260mm and then turning and heading towards the edge of the stairs.

New-understair-cupboard-1

There is a standard 800mm door entrance, which is nicely aligned with the Cloakroom’s own entrance, which provides access to this small cupboard, going only a few feet under the stairs. The rest of the space underneath the stairs will be divided up into a set of sliding modules on wheels that will provide additional storage facilities, we can never have enough storage capacity in a modern house! The cupboard is a bit over 1300mm deep and we decided to build the back wall with short length of our Utility Channel, which will take a spur off from the Kitchen, and this will provide access to mains and other cabling, to charge up cordless equipment and the like.

New-understair-cupboard-2

Also, as part of putting up the horizontal rails, we have been stuffing in lots of glass wool into the walls cavities to both block the sounds but also provide better fire protection. This is a very yukky job and we were wearing our dust masks with great relief, to say the least!

The Utility Channel was created as per normal, being located at the 800mm to 900mm position up the walls and we put in more conduits to make sure every section is accessible. We also built the “control box” near the Front Door to house the touch display panel but we won’t have any of the other bits and pieces inside (like fuses and audio amplifiers etc), mainly because it is not in a central location and would have meant long cable runs. So we are having a underfloor “control box” instead, located in the central part of the hall, where all the arms of the hallways meets together.

One of the other jobs we had to do, was to drill several holes through the concrete block walls of the Entertainment Room, to provide more access to the Utility Channel inside the room later on. But, because the solid nature of a concrete wall doesn’t allow us to fit the conduits and pipes in where we want with simple ease, hence why we had to drill through the concrete and insert a couple of 32mm diameter and 20mm conduits, going down into the underfloor space in the hallways next to the entrance.

The Air Channel, running around the bottom of the walls was created. We made four more air distributor modules, using the 40mm diameter plastic plumbing pipe parts but this time, with a right angle extra piece so the air ducting won’t stick out into the crowded space under the floorboards. We located one down Hall Three (near the Utility Room), another one along Hall Two section, outside the Kitchen and the final two are down by the Front Door, to provide both fresh and warm air to the coats and hats but also to give a boost to counteract any chilly air that rushes in when the door is opened. The 150mm high MDF 6mm thick strips were stapled and glued into place on all the wall sections, including the one going down to the Great Room where we had to finish off the floorboard, the last 420mm strip to reach the entrance.

Then, we continued putting up horizontal rails at the eye line point and finally, at the top of the walls, ready to have the OSB sheets fitted. But before we can do that particular job, we wanted to break up the long sections of wall so we created five Niches on several section of our halls, two are located down Hall One towards the Great Room opposite the Kitchen, one just on Hall Two next to the Bathroom entrance, the fourth one is located half way down Hall Three towards the Utility Room and the final one is around the corner on Hall Four just before the Entertainment Room’s entrance. They are all the same at 320mm wide by 420mm high and the basic depth is 101mm (except for the last one on the Entertainment Room because the wall leg is 25mm wider so this niche is deeper).
We built up the box using pieces of CLS timber and then glued a back panel on the back for three of them, to box off from the glass wool material. So, when we have put on the wall boards and the final finishing layer, these niches will be 125mm deep and if we put a oak “sill” in the bottom and it sticks out another 25mm, then we could have these little spaces in our walls that is six inches deep, enough for a vase of flowers or other things like ornaments. We also routed a 20mm conduit around from the Utility Channel to the top corner to provide a possible connection to provide built-in lighting, to give these niches a lovely soft glow.

Hall-niches-with-conduits-to-utility-channel

And then, we inserted a few more conduits around our sliding door modules plus also a large conduit that goes up to the back wall of the Kitchen, aligned with the Utility channel where fatter and larger electric cables can be installed for the ovens and the hobs. Also, we inserted wooden lintels over various doorways, mainly the cupboards ones but also inserted small pieces of battens up inside the sliding door modules as well as a vertical post on either side of the entrance way, so it is ready to receive the pretty Oak architraves going around the edge of the door hole.

Finally, we layered in another load of glass wool strips, horizontally between the horizontal rails, using up two more rolls of 100mm thick wool. They are bulging well out of between the wooden rails, which is good as when the boards goes up, it will compress the wool down and improve the sound dampening qualities.

Insulation-in-the-halls

It is very interesting to how quiet and soft the sound is in our hallways at the moment, because of all the glass wool absorbing most of the sounds. This is what we are hoping for when we have finished.

And .. at last .. we have put up the OSB 18mm boards, onto the framework, to finally make a solid walls along all our hallways, all four sections are now covered from floor to ceiling!
Plus also, we have cut out the Niches too, just to show those off too!

Halls-boarded-1

Halls-boarded-2

Halls-boarded-3

That concludes the construction of all the four Halls and here is a small video showing our ground floor layout etc.

4 June 2022
The Kitchen Shell Is Created

We have now completed the construction of the basic shell that is our Kitchen. The floor and walls are now created to form the first stage of what will be the Kitchen later on.
The usual steps were executed in building this room, just like the others, building the floor support framework and all the utility rails up on the walls.

Kitchen-Floor-framing

But, the major different in here was the sheer number of conduits that we needed to have installed to provide various planned and future electrical, air and water provision. It is a busy room with lots of appliances and we had mapped out our design and layout of where these individual items will go, including providing space below the floors for custom refrigeration systems and not forgetting putting in a larger control box to enable us to have a larger display screen for showing recipes and other information. We even put in a vacuum “port” in the middle of the floor that will become part of the central spur of more worktop and work table coming out from the wall facing the hallway.

Kitchen-Refigeration-Zone-1

Kitchen-Refigeration-Zone-2

Kitchen-Refigeration-Zone-3

Kitchen-sink-zone

Kitchen-Hall-side-wall

Kitchen-wall-Left-of-window

Kitchwn-Great-room-side-wall

Vacuum-pipe-coming-up-through-the-floor

That pretty much concludes the main rooms on the ground floor, apart from the Great Room which we cannot do until we have used up the majority of the CLS timber upstairs and we cannot do that task until we have filled in the roof rafters with insulation and sealed it up with a vapour barrier plastic membrane. So, while we wait for more insulation to arrive, we will now work on the Hallways and build up the basic walls, putting in the Utility Channel and inserting many conduits etc. including lots of glass wool to aid sound insulation between the rooms. It will look very good when that is done!

9 May 2022
Completed Basic Wall and Flooring for Bedroom One

These last few weeks have seen the construction of the basic shell of the next bedroom to be completed. Bedroom One now has a solid wall and the flooring fully installed, following the same design similar to the other two bedrooms. But one of the first task to do, was to finally complete the fixing the vapour barrier layer up on to the “M” wall, including a layer of glass wool to provide fire protection and more thermal insulation too. This was a job hanging over from last year where we couldn’t finish this job as we needed access but was blocked for a few months. We got an electrical mains socket poking through the wall plus also underground water pipe and a couple of electrical connections too.

M-Wall-Vapour-Barrier-complete

We built the floor support framework, then after that, we had to make sure that we had all our conduits laid in inside the floor space, like for example, the hot water circulating pipes that is encapsulated in 100mm thick PU foam for maximum heat retention. This is going right across the entire bedroom and pops out into the Great Room, ready to swing around supply heat to the Great room and finally terminates into the Kitchen. This was the continuation of the pipes coming from Bedroom Two, bending and wiggling through both en-suites.

Heating-pipes-in-Ensuite-12

Heating-pipes-crossing-Bedroom-1

Pipes-waiting-to-continue

Also, and especially, we had to install a 100mm air conduit going from the hall, cutting across the corner of the bedroom and going up the Great room wall to the First Floor. This is important because this is the air supply to bring fresh warm air to the back half of the upstairs room.

HVAC-pipe-for-upstairs-room

Other hidden conduits are the temperature sensors that monitors the condition of the buried Energy Module that stretches across the whole house (right from the Kitchen, the Hallway and Bedroom One) and these conduits all goes to the Hallway, under the liftable hatch for servicing etc.
The other under floor component is the plumbing chamber that sits just outside the ensuite doorway and this will contains the various water radiators and heat exchangers to serve the basin and shower units inside the ensuite, plus also other water connections like the outside tap for gardening and a watering system up under the Eves for any potential hanging flower baskets etc.

Ensuite-1-Plumbing-space

Next, the entire volume under the floorboard was filled in using 200mm thick glass wool insulation, folded at the pre-split point on the roll so that each piece is standing on its edge which should be much stronger and longer lasting than laying it out flat which may collapse under its own weight.

Bedroom-1-floor-insulated

The horizontal rails were then installed and the Control Box built that will serve the room’s electrical requirements etc. plus also laying in extra conduits to serve the ensuite with mains electricity for the vanity unit plus toilet itself. Also the sliding door system has compressed air and more electricity cabling that will control the mechanism.

Bedroom-1-Control-box

Ducts-around-Ensuite-1

Once all that was done, we then laid down a full covering of 22mm thick chipboard floorboards, all glued and screwed down to the framework. This then allowed us to insert our MDF 150mm high boards that forms the Air Channel around the bottom of the wall, which got sealed and then painted black. The Utility Channel was also similarly lined but using 10mm Fermacell “plasterboard” material instead, with was also glued in.

Bedroom-1-Floor-boards-done

Another yukky job was to fill in the volume inside the walls with more glass wool, two layers, one was vertical in the middle of the walls and then a horizontal layer going across between the wooden rails. This provides a double feature of providing better sound dampening properties but also better fire prevention and give us more time to handle emergency outbreak of fire.

Bedroom-1-Walls-insulated-1

Bedroom-1-Walls-insulated-2

This led to the final job of installing the basic underlying solid layer of OSB 18mm boards, all tongue and grooved together, all glued and screwed tightly onto the wall’s framework. The edges were trimmed around the window and the two doors.

Bedroom-1-Walls-boarded-1

Bedroom-1-Walls-boarded-2

We now have this bedroom completed and we can move on to the next room, the Kitchen, after Easter.

14 April 2022
Underlying Basic Wall Panelling Installed

After we reordered more glass wool insulation, we were finally able to resume the construction of Bedroom Two, doing the underlining basic panelling that will form the foundation for our walls. We finished loading in the last bits pieces of glass wool and then started working on each OSB board, to get them ready to be glued and screwed up onto the wall framework. Before we continued with this task, we took careful measurements of our control box

Final-insulation-in-wall

Bedroom-2-Control-panlel-location

And what will be the access panel above the ensuite sliding doorway (so we can service the pneumatic cylinders and valves that will move the two leaf doors).
Each OSB sheet had to be cut down by 70mm because all of them are lifted clear of the floorboard (by 38mm height) to allow the fresh air to enter into the room, and also our rooms are only 2415mm high which is just under the 8foot measure. Then, each OSB board then had a groove on one edge and a tongue on the opposite edge, cut using our router machine and a single prepared cutter bit that produces two tongues or two grooves. This allows us to join consecutive boards together on the wall and provides a smooth transition from sheet to sheet. While doing the cutting the router cutter sheared off! We had to pause whilst waiting for a stronger bit to come.

Sheared-off-router-cutter-1

Sheared-off-router-cutter-2

We went around the room anti-clockwise direction, going pass the window and then the ensuite doorway and finally back on the fourth wall with the room’s entrance way.
The last job was to trim off the excess sheet materials in and around the window and ensuite doorway, using our other router that has a straight cutter bit with a ball-bearing wheel to guide along the internal surface. This method gives us a very neat cut edge that surrounds the window hole and the doorway both.

Bedroom-2-all-walls-boarded-with-OSB-1

Bedroom-2-all-walls-boarded-with-OSB-2

Bedroom-2-all-walls-boarded-with-OSB-3

We decided that was all we are going to do in Bedroom Two, as we are not using it for DIY work so we will leave the job of cutting out the Utility Channel for later. But we will use this room as a storage depot for our remaining sheet materials that is currently located outside on our yard and the tarpaulin are not in very good conditions anymore.

8 March 2022
Floor and Walls Constructed for Bedroom Two and Tech Cupboard

We started the new year of 2022, after we had our mini break, by resuming the construction of Bedroom Two. We needed to finish the floor and to that goal, we created our next air distributor module. Using more left-over floorboards, we made a triangular shape that takes in the incoming air through a 110mm wide socket and goes out four 50mm outlets. It measures 300mm deep so it has time to compress and spread the air out and we also included two manually adjustable flaps to deflect some of the air from the outer most outlets so we can balance the air flow down all four different length ducts to the dispersers locations.

Diverter-box-installed

Diverter-box-with-flaps

After it had an overnight of drying and curing, we installed the module in the doorway and then connected up the four orange 63mm flexible ducts and we tested it. Using our mobile Air Generator, we blasted air into the distributor module and out at all four wall dispersers and measured the air flow rate coming out the two sideway facing tubes. With the Air Generator running at maximum speed, we were getting values of 40km/h for the shortest conduit length and 30km/h on one of the longest lengths. We noticed that the rate coming out of the right and left arms of the disperser were not exactly the same which was curious, must be something to do with the way air twirls inside the conduit etc but it did seems to be always the right arm having the higher rates. Anyway, we turned down the fan to its minimum speed to get closer to “normal” flow rates, and then we balanced as best as we could by adjusting the two flaps so all four dispersers were outputting approximately similar air flow rates. Even this test, the air flow rate being used here, is far more than what will be the everyday background rates as for example, this bedroom is about 36 cubic metres of air and we desire about 1 complete room change of air for every hour. That means 36 cubic metres or 36,000 litres of air need to flow in (and out) of the room per hour, this means 10litres per second in total going into the distributor module but splits up into our eight dispersers which means approximately 1.5litres per second for each arm. Our test we did today actually had about 12litres per second of air coming out of each arm and that was the lowest fan speed and it was only a gentle breeze coming out. This means that to satisfy our requirements of 1 room change of air per hour, the air flow is going to be very very gentle indeed for our background flow rates but we can increase the rate when we need to, perhaps to remove solar heat coming in our large windows.
After all that mathematics, we got back to the nitty gritty work of putting in horrible glass wool insulation into the floor space to fill up the remaining air volume above the PU foam rubbish. We used all our left-over chunks of rock wool we had lying around for years and spread it out so it fills it up to touch the underside of the floor boards when it goes down.

Final-floor-insulation

Then we had to grab 14 more sheets of our 22mm thick floorboards from our outside piles under the tarpaulin but we discovered that our tarpaulin, even though it was double layered, was letting a small amount of rain water through and wetting our chipboard floorboards. It is quite annoying and it is so difficult to keep such material dry. We pulled off our 14 sheets we will need and even though it is wet, it doesn’t look too bad. we used our trolley to transport that load into the house via the front door and laid them all out all over our hallways to dry off overnight before we actually laid them down. We have two sheets that has been indoors for a few months since doing the hallways and we will compare them.
The main pile outside, we put on two more fresh plastic sheeting to try to reduce this water problem and also we laid down a sacrificial OSB board to act as a protective layer to stop sharp claws from birds and cats in making holes in our plastic tarpaulin but we have decided that we will have to move the entire stack all into the house as soon as we have finished Bedroom Two.
Anyway, we proceeded to cover the floor with these 22mm thick chipboard sheets, needing just over two lengths to do each row.
We got it all done but it was noticeable that some of the boards had small swollen sections caused by the rainwater so we will have to sand the whole floor later on to smooth it off and get it ready for the future underlay and carpets.

Bedroom-2-Floor-installed

The next job we tackled was to start building the wall finishing layers, including the air channel running around at the bottom. We inserted a line of 150mm high MDF 6mm thick cut sheets to provide a chamber for the air to flow along sideways and drift gently into the room. We did have to make some adjustments to the air disperser because it needed to sit further backwards and avoid being squashed by the main OSB boards when those are mounted on the framework. The disperser under the window was especially tight and we had to split into the vapour barrier membrane and remove some of the glass wool and even a bit of the PU foam insulation too. We recovered the slit with another layer of the black plastic and resealed it with our conformable extra sticky tape. Then we inserted two vertical pieces of plywood behind the CLS horizontal rails around the air disperser and then a 25mm thick batten piece to anchor the disperser back into place.
Then we continued inserting our MDF pieces and completed all the round the whole room, just skipping pass the two doorways, and cutting small rectangle holes to let the air dispersers through. Finally, the top and bottom edges were sealed using black modified silicone glue to both fix the board into place but also to seal it against any air leakages.

Air-channel-installed-and-painted

While we waited for the black sealant to dry and cure, we got on with the two remaining walls inside the Tech Cupboard, putting more 18mm thick OSB sheets. Then, we glued and screwed a collection of 63mm CLS timber pieces around the circumference of the little room at the floor level, then put in two cross rails going front to back and finally put in three further cross rails but this time going side to side, all glued and left to dry and cure overnight.
We nicked one of the floorboards we had lying in our Utility Room, acting as a temporary floor covering so we swopped that one with our left-over rather damp one and use the good one to put in the flooring inside the cupboard, cutting around the metal leg of the Skylight and making room for the cables running down the walls and down under the floor.

Tech-cupboard-floor-laid

We went back to Bedroom Two, continuing with the walls by applying black paint along the bottom of the Air Channel to hide any bright gleam when the carpet is laid down. Next, and finally for the week, we put up two rolls of 100mm thick glass wool insulation and inserted layers inside the structure of the walls between Bedroom Three and Bedroom Two, providing more sound insulation, followed by horizontal strips of the wool insulation to fill the gap up between the horizontal rails, to also reduce any hollow sounds too.

Final-insulation-in-wall

We ran out of 100mm thick wool so we will need to order some more rolls to finish off this room but also to fill in all our other rooms too. That will take a few days to arrive so we will get on with the next job of putting up some of the wall panels that have a complete coverage of the glass wool like on the window wall and one of the short walls or we continue with our software and hardware development.

15 January 2022
Started On Building Bedroom Two plus Running Water Pipes Under Floor

This is a long single report to cover the work during the month of December on Bedroom Two and other jobs. We wanted to get going on creating Bedroom Two so we could move the final loads of PU foam rubbish we got stored outside in the alcove in between Bedroom One and the Great Room’s windows before Christmas arrived.
So one of the first steps was to clear everything out of the room including the huge pile of sheet materials, which got all moved into Bedroom One. Then the horizontal rails, using more of our 63mm CLS timber pieces, were positioned on all the four walls, using the green laser level to ensure consistent height, the level of our flooring. Next, was putting single piece CLS timber across the room, spaced apart by a uniform 600mm distance, each piece being just over 3700mm long. Each one having a leg fixed at every 600mm along the joist for support. A section near the on-suite doorway was doubled up around the floor joist support because this will have a removeable lid to gain access to the control devices and plumbing modules that will serve the various features in the ensuite.

Floor-grid-in-Bedroom-2

Then we laid down six sheets of OSB boards to provide a temporary floor surface for us to move around more easily and we carried on nailing up more horizontal rails all the way around the four walls like before. This forms the Utility Channel structure that allows us to route wires and cables around plus also in and out of the room. A half a dozen conduits had to be inserted into the new Utility Channel to route the cabling around windows and doorways, plus also to provide a connection to various features like the shower mixer, the vanity unit and the toilet itself. A control box provision was also created near the room’s entrance and this section will contain the computer equipment and other electrical safety devices that this bedroom will need.

Bedroom-2-Control-box-location

The window’s sill was finished by creating a chamber underneath the window seat that will hold a place for the window blinds mechanism and possibly a secret storage location too. Another conduit was inserted so wires could travel in and out of the window seat chamber, to the Utility Channel.

Conduits-Bedroom-2-Window

The next job was the plumbing running along under the hallway flooring. We needed to route a couple of 15mm water pipes from the Energy Module situated under Bedroom Two and travel all the way back to the Equipment Cupboard in the Utility Room in a neat manner. We screwed a regular set of horizontal battens across the middle set of legs that will do a double role of holding up the air duct but also provide a mounting point to keep the collection of plastic pipes neat and tidy using cable ties pushed through a drilled hole in the batten.

Hall-12-Duct-plumbing-support-ties-1

Hall-12-Duct-plumbing-support-ties-2

We continued in placing more conduits, this time under the flooring for things like the temperature sensors that surrounds the buried Energy Modules plus also a watering system for routing water to any hanging baskets from the gutters outside. We had to put in extra conduits from Bedroom Three to serve the ensuite because we had forgotten to make the connections when we were doing that bedroom earlier the year. Another conduit was laid in for our compressed air, to route it up to the top of the sliding door so it can power the movements of the doors. We put in a complete circuit of conduit around above the window and doors and this will contain the hearing loop wire to provide extra audio connections for deaf people. This circuit comes in and out of the control box.
Then the load of PU foam rubbish was brought in and laid down in the floor space, to provide insulation against the cold concrete, especially near the outside walls but also to provide some insulation against the buried Energy Module which will get warm during the summer and autumn months and we don’t want too much excess heat getting into the room.
We managed to completely empty our large external “bag” of rubbish bits and pieces and we now have been able to collapse and tidy away the plastic tarpaulin we used to construct the temporary bag. The alcove, situated around the back of the house, outside the windows of Bedroom One and the Great Room is now all neat, ready for us to dig a hole to install a couple of electrical junction box plus also an external mains electric socket.
Then we created four standard air dispersers, which were fixed to the bottom near the middle of each wall, then connected to flexible orange 50mm (the interior dimensions) twin-wall plastic conduit, going from each wall and back over to the doorway, ready for the main air splitter chamber.

Bedrrom-2-Floor-All-conduits-and-ducts-Insulation-1

Bedrrom-2-Floor-All-conduits-and-ducts-Insulation-2

The circulating hot water was next, to continue the twin lines of 28mm diameter water pipes coming from Bedroom Three, going across Ensuite Three, through the Bathroom, turning into Hallway Two and heading into Bedroom Two to arrive at the access chamber just outside Ensuite Two.
But first, we needed to get the waste plumbing pipework sorted for Ensuite Three and the Bathroom so we installed a boss fitting to the sewage stack, right down at the bottom nearest to the concrete, to allow the maximum amount of liquid level drop coming from the various waste outputs like the basin and the shower plus also the bath too. The shower’s waste is the critical one because we wanted to install a heat recovery system to recycle the hot energy from the waste water and put as much of it back into the fresh clean water going to the shower. To achieve this, the module will need space and time to maximise the energy transfer from the waste water to the clean water, before the waste water flows out and down the sewage stack.
So we put in a couple of 40mm waste pipes, with a gradient to make the water flow towards the sewage stack and got three connection points ready for future installations.
After that, we laid down a layer of 90mm thick PU foam boards going across the Ensuite and the Bathroom, 250mm wide, following the path of the Hot water. On top is another layer of PU foam, this time 100mm thick which had two grooves sliced out to encapsulate the 28mm wide plastic plumbing pipes. The path is a straight line across the two rooms but also keeping tightly to one edge so to avoid the sunken bath tub itself, where the sloping ends will be. The second layer continued into the Hallway Two section, turning towards the next plumbing destination, the ensuite in Bedroom Two. The hallway section will have many different control modules and plumbing units, having to serve plenty of surrounding rooms like the Bathroom, the Cloakroom and even to the upstairs toilet and shower too. The 28mm pipes finally continued into Bedroom Two and currently terminates inside the service chamber outside Ensuite Two. The whole lot then had a third layer of more 100mm thick PU foam to cover the plastic pipes and insulate the hot water that will be circulating continuously, to minimise the time to get any warm water coming out a tap or shower. This is very similar to a traditional central heating system and its circulation hot water and using heat exchangers or radiators to “transfer” the heat into the clean cold water or fresh air.
One of the last things we did before we closed down for Christmas was to run alongside the hot water, a cold water feed. This time we are using a bigger 32mm diameter polyethene pipe, a blue one, to provide the clean water to all the various outlets distributed around the house. It ran alongside the PU foam, following the same path and it also is currently terminates in the ensuite in Bedroom Two.

Waste-and-water-in-En-suite-3-Bathroom

Heating-pipes-turn-along-Hall-2-and-into-bedrrom-2

Hall-2-plumbing-zone

Bedroom-2-En-suite-plumbing-access

The next job when we restart in the new year, probably about the 2nd week of January after a couple weeks of holiday, is to make an air disperser unit and put in an extra electrical conduit beside the window to have ready a connection for automated curtains and lighting if we want to have such a thing.

24 December 2021
Hallway Cavities Insulated and Mains Electric Installed

The week was spent installing a layer of insulation inside the cavity under the hall’s flooring. We wanted to make sure that we don’t have too much leakage of valuable house energy, especially we will have our main air duct running in this cavity to supply fresh and warm air to all our rooms. So we took all the thin insulation boards that measured 50mm or 60mm thick and sliced them up into various widths to fit between the leg supports. This took a few days as you had to cut each piece to fit around the legs.
We completed all the four hallway sections and glued them into place with spray PU foam.

Jigsaw-of-Insulation-laid-in-halls-1

Jigsaw-of-Insulation-laid-in-halls-2

The next little job was to install mains electric cables, using twin and earth 2.5mm solid copper wires and ran them from the Tech Cupboard and its new consumer switch unit. We screwed little cable tie saddles on each of the legs and grouped together a bunch that are going off in various directions. We laid in cables to go to the Great Room, the Kitchen, then to Bedroom One, around the corner to Bedroom Two and finally to Bedroom Three. At the end of each cable we installed a double switched socket (the Great room has already several sockets so we carried the cabling across the room to those, plus also Bedroom Three also had its collection of sockets already installed too) so we could plug in local piece of equipment without having to run our extension reel everywhere. We also sent one cable upstairs through the ceiling of the Tech Cupboard and mounted another double socket on the metal leg to serve the First Floor. The cables were then neatly connected to the appropriate switches in the switch panel.

Cables-running-off-to-rooms

Cables-enter-cupboard-and-are-routed-up-the-wall

Power-to-each-room-neatly-terminated-in-the-switch-panel

It doesn’t seems that we have done a lot this week, which is true because Shaun is still recovering from his eye operation but hopefully, things will get back to normal soon.

30 October 2021

Started on Technology cupboard and Electrical panel.

Stephen wanted a solo project whilst Shaun in resting, so he started on the Tech cupboard.
First the two walls next to the bathroom and Storage cupboard where boarded with OSB (using up a lot of small pieces to make solo handling easier and using up the accumulated offcuts). Then Fermacell was stapled and glued up on the wall next the storage cupboard. This was enough to start working on the main Electricity switch panel (consumer unit).
The panel was mounted about 1.2m above the floor and two cable trunks were constructed to manage the cables going down under the floors and up to the first floor. Then the 16mm² supply wires were pushed though the duct to the utility room, they were then connected to the main switch on the panel and the distribution block in the utility.

All the switches were installed in the panel and all the fixed internal wiring was installed. Labels have been added to RCBO neutrals to help with testing.

Started on Technology cupboard and Electrical panel.

Tech-Cupboard-Switch-Panel-closed

Tech-Cupboard-Switch-Panel-open

Front-panel-circuit-labels

RCBO-Neutrals-labeled

Tech Cupboard Panel circuits

Kitchen sockets	RCD ring	Shared RCD
Hob	RCD radial	Shared RCD
Ovens	RCD radial	Shared RCD
Great room Sockets	RCBO radial
Conservatory Sockets	RCBO radial
Bed 1 Sockets	RCBO radial
Bed 2 Sockets	RCBO radial
Bed 3 Sockets	RCBO radial
Entertainment Sockets	RCBO radial
Tech cupboard 1	Non RCD radial	Computers & backup DC
Tech cupboard 2	Non RCD radial	Primary DC PSUs
Work 1 Sockets	RCBO radial
Work 2 Sockets	RCBO radial
Work 3 Sockets	RCBO radial	General use
Work 3 Special Sockets	Non RCD radial	For Experimental use

Tech Panel also has a Surge Protection Device fitted.

23 October 2021

Hall floor hatches completed

This week we finished cutting hatches into the hall floors on Monday and Tuesday.

Hall-1-Hatches

Front-door-hall-hatches

Hall-3-Hatches-cut

Then we needed a way of lifting the panels easily. So we drilled a hole 100mm diagonally in from each corner and inserted a ‘Pronged T Nut’ into each hole from below, then we could use a bolt with a T piece as a lifting handle.

T-Nut-inserted-from-below

Hatch-lifting-Handles

This completes the hall flooring.

19 October 2021