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Part Two of Great Room Floor Construction with Air, Sensors and Water Installed and Floorboards Laid but not Fixed

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.

Cold-water-connections

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

We need a total of sixteen outlets for our Great Room, making sure that we had fresh air coming in easily and be able to cope with all the solar gain we would get from all the sunshine pouring in our five windows. The other eight modules will be done later on.

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.

Air-distribution-to-Bedroom-side

Air-distribution-to-Patio-side

We tested each quadrant with our portable air fan and turned it up to maximum speed to make sure that we didn’t get any resonating noises whistling down our tubes. We were able to get approximately 16metres per second of air flow from each distributor, which works out at about 20 litres per second, or a grand total of 320 litres per second for the whole room, without making too much whistling noises. This will achieve about five changes of the volume of the entire room per hour. This is very important on those very hot and sunny days during the summer!!

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.

Half-the-floor-boards-loosly-laid

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!!

11 July 2022
Built Half the Flooring Framework and Most of Wall Rails While Waiting Building Supplies

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!

Great-room-empty-and-clean-1

Great-room-empty-and-clean-2

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.

GR-Vapour-barrier-all-fitted-1

GR-Vapour-barrier-all-fitted-2

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!

Conservatory-waste-air-going-up-the-wall

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.

Gr-Utility-Channel-installed-1

Gr-Utility-Channel-installed-2

Gr-Utility-Channel-installed-3

Gr-Utility-Channel-installed-4

Gr-Utility-Channel-installed-5

We also discussed putting in hanging lamps of some sort, down the middle of the room to provide a “feature” for the room but also plenty of illumination too. We need to install an empty 20mm conduit from that high point and terminates inside the triangle voids up on the First Floor.

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.

GR-wall-rails-1

GR-wall-rails-2

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.

Air-Duct-Framing-across-GR

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.

One-half-of-GR-floor-framing-done

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!

2 July 2022
Deep Analysis and Simulations of Green Solutions using Real Weather Data

As everyone knows, we are facing a future climate of massive energy price increases and we are particularly at a disadvantage with our current setup, with the way our Temporary Living Quarters are constructed. Since they were only temporary, we had originally put in minimal insulation into the walls and ceiling, but the Sun Corridor is the main culprit in terms of energy losses, especially during the Winter and Spring months.

We have plans to reduce this loss for the next Winter / Spring periods, by shutting off half the Sun Corridor and also insert additional insulation into our bedrooms and living room too. This will hopefully reduce our running costs.

But, this really made us think about the whole world of renewable energy, capturing the solar energy in both electricity and thermal forms. Plus, also, what to do with this energy once we have caught it. This means some form of a storage system like batteries or underground water tanks. We have already explored the Thermal capturing and storage side of things, after all, we have five very large water tanks buried underground and they are ready to store the Sun’s energy once we have assembled the thermal solar panels on top of our Garage roof.

So, Stephen has been analysing and running simulations of what our house needs to keep it warm, what sort of electricity we might need to keep the “lights” on and what values of sunshine and temperature we get here. He found both NASA and ESA datasets describing the last ten years of recorded temperatures and sunshine falling on our corner of the world. He calculated the building’s energy losses, the solar gains via the windows and Skylight (as the Sun moves around the sky in the different times of the year etc.) and looked at our historical electricity usage. He then calculated the energy usage (heat & electricity) and generation for each hour of the day and night for a least a year.

Then, we started adding various combinations of Green solutions to the simulation runs. Like for example, our built-in solar electric panels in the Skylight (2200Watts over 11 panels), then extra panels on our P roof (faces slightly East of South) with various sizes, then did the same on the M roof (faces slightly West of South) with various number of panels as well.

All part of the simulation runs, are the calculations of how much money we would save on our electricity bills, and changing to combinations of different Green Solutions.

This includes our buried Energy Modules and also the Thermal Solar that we will have on the Garage roof too, all this got into the mix too.

So far, we have not looked at batteries yet, but we are getting a turnaround time of about 3 to 5 years to pay for the cost of the solar panels and the associated electronic control gear to handle it and that is assuming today’s prices of 20p per kiloWatt Hour. Just imagine how quickly we could pay off the investment if the price of electricity goes up even more, like 30p or 40p per kiloWatt Hour!!

But, this setup is purely a daytime only solution, and only when the Sun is shining too. We recognise that there will be times, perhaps quite a lot, where we don’t get enough sunshine to cover the basic energy requirement of our household. So, Stephen started investigating batteries, in particular, lithium-iron-phosphate (LiFePo) batteries that are designed for more robust applications and there is a growing market for these types. We can get hold of large batteries that has very good long life cycle times, in the order of six thousands (6,000) deep discharge and charge cycles. And, if the size of the battery is such that we only need one cycle for each day, then we would get about 18 years of life out of them. That is plenty of time to pay back the cost of buying all the batteries, with the money we would also save.

So, Stephen did many more simulation runs with different battery capacity, taking the solar electric to charge them up, but, also using national grid electricity during the off-peak night-time to tap into cheap nighttime rates and concluded that we could also pay back the cost of the batteries in the same 3 to 5 years.

Remember after the payback period all further savings are pure profit meaning the house will need very little money for heat and light.

This is very interesting and there was a great deal of discussions between us all, weighing up the pros and cons, what can we afford upfront and what we needed to do right now, to fend off the future price rises. We will decide soon, very soon.

1 July 2022
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
Constructed and Installed A Pergola for a Friend

One of our friends has their old Pergola wrecked by Storm Eunice and requested us to build a new replacement one. So over a week or so, We ordered a collection of timber, four square 75mm super treated by 3metres tall, and eight 100mm by 50mm regularised fully treated planks three of them slightly longer at 3.6metres and the other five 3metres.
We also bought four bitumen impregnated plastic sleeves that are slipped onto the lowest part of the square timber to provide doubly extra protection from ground rot and everything. These are heat shrunk tight to the wood by using a hot air gun, to seal the bitumen right into the timber fibre.
We installed the four posts first into the same location as the old posts were and then took more detailed measurements of exactly where they are located so we could cut and get the upper framework constructed in our workshop before returning to install it.

Posts-Installed

We cut notches in both the three cross rails and the tie struts so that they all interlocked together and then cut angled ends to make them look more like the classic designs we have seen on the web.

Top-Frame-fabricated

Each connection is screwed together using heavy duty stainless steel coach screws with stainless steel washers too. The clearance holes were sprayed with timber treatment solution to ensure that the wood is protected for the long term.
We then took the eight pieces around and had the fun of installing them up on the four posts, getting it all level and everything. We did have to make one adjustment because we hadn’t spotted an air vent coming out of the wall so we had to trim one of the structs a bit shorter and one of the cross rails that goes on the brick wall also a bit shorter too.
But everything slotted together nicely and we glued all the joints with PU glue, tightened up all the coach screws and left it to dry and cure overnight. We were very lucky with the weather!

Half-laped-with-Stainless-caoch-screw

We finished up by scraping the excess glue away from the joints to make it all neat and tidy, and then fixed up several new stainless steel hooks that our friend bought for her hanging baskets and butterfly houses. We also reinstalled her outside camera again and got that connected back into her network so she can enjoy watching her hedgehogs playing and eating during the night.

Pergola-complete

26 March 2022
Remaining Sheet Materials All Moved Into Bedroom Two

Over the last three days, we have been moving all of our remaining sheet material that is outside in our yard area, at the bottom of the site.

Piles-of-sheet-wood-waiting-to-be-moved

We were quite annoyed to discover that the extra heavy duty so-called high quality tarpaulin was degrading under the exposure to the Sun. We had to put on extra layers to help guide the rainwater away from the splits and holes that were forming in the tarpaulin, but we ended up losing three sheets of OSB 18mm boards in the end. So this is why we decided to move all of it into our newly completed Bedroom Two room, to avoid any further damage to our expensive timber.
So over the three days, using our large flat bed trolley to help move a heap at a time to the front door, and then walk each sheet into Bedroom Two, we first moved the 18mm OSB boards, all 162 sheets. We split the quantity into two separate piles, making sure that we can access at least one of them when we need more sheets as we construct each future room.

Day-1-First-pallet-and-a-bit-moved

Next, we dealt with the 110 sheets of the 22mm groove and tongue chipboard floorboards, moving them also in Bedroom Two, putting third of them up on top of the OSB pile and the rest in a single column in front. We wanted to make sure that our wood rack will also fit in the remaining space in the room.

End-of-Day-2-all-OSB-moved-and-start-of-floorboards

Day-3-All-the-sheets-finally-moved

We have calculated that we have moved about 6 tons of wood and walked over 10,000 steps!!
The next job was to reassemble our old sheet wood rack, with four shelves, and then move all the miscellaneous sheet material that was temporary stored in Bedroom One and get it all back on the rack.

Sheet-wood-rack-reassemeled-and-refilled

This three day effort now means that we can get on with the next room, the forementioned Bedroom One and continue with the construction of the basic internal rooms downstairs., and also laying in the water pipes that are running around the whole house serving the ensuites and bathroom plus kitchen. But we also have cleared the yard of any building material, avoiding any rainwater damage and also we gain some extra space ready for the next load of PU foam insulation boards that we will need soon, to finish off the roof.

Bedroom-1-cleared

10 March 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