Blog

It was a long day today working on covering up the upper sections of the walls in the Garden Room. In some ways it went fairly easily but having to contend with windows and sloping ceilings did make things more complex.

It is all finished apart from trimming the excess materials from around the windows once the glue is set. Also the Light Channel had to be accommodated with pieces of the Fermacell going around the flange etc.

The last piece of Fermacell left to do is the side of the chimney which has not been constructed yet. But that is it! No more Fermacell work until the main house is built! The rest of the stock will be put into storage (not too many sheets left).

Today the bottom half of the walls in the Garden Room was covered in the Fermacell boards. We went right around the room, skipping the doorways and jumping pass the hot water cylinder! We used up nearly 7 sheets.

Also we sliced out the window in the WC we covered up with the Fermacell yesterday and we can see what we are doing again!

The WC today has its Fermacell panels stapled up. It was a bit tricky with the smallness of the room, trying to get full size boards into the doorway and discovering the impossibility of squeezing it in, like a square rod into a round hole! So we had to cut them in half and glue them back together again on the walls! Of course the other complication was the pipes (for the basin and loo) sticking out the wall and sliding the Fermacell panels (after making the holes in the correct places .. hopefully!) and getting them flat on the walls! Actually it went well after all!

The Window has been lined also with Fermacell, ready for the Oak frame to be inserted soon, real soon!

The WC walls now have their 18mm OSB Boards nailed up!

The sliding door system is up and rolling. The two halves of the doors are hanging nicely, very nicely! The German designed and manufactured hanging roller system seems to be sturdy and rolling quite well so far!

The doors are made of a sandwich of 10mm Fermacell in the middle and two 12mm hardwood plywood as the outer layers. The Fermacell provides the fire resistance factor as required by our building inspector and we wanted to see how easy it was to make before the main house is built.

The final piece of work today was the insertion of the narrow 100mm strips of Fermacell to line the backs of the Utility channel, to cover up the final evidence of the glass wool stuffed in the walls!

We have been spending the last couple of weeks on constructing the floor in the Garden Room. Plus laying and routing all the required pipes and conduits around the edges of the room under the floor. And again inserting the insulation in places, for example, the glass wool for floor sections that doesn’t have hot or cold air flowing through it, and 50mm thick PU foam for the cold Earth Tube air supply and a double layer of 50mm PU foam for the hot air going back into the WC, garage and into our temporary accommodations.

The WC (toilet room)has three walls up now, the cistern will be placed at the top of the wall, with the cold water feed and the flush downpipe hidden inside the wall. We are using one of those pneumatic air button flush system and the button is half way up the wall. It is ready for the toilet pan to be inserted after we have finished putting up the Fermacell, painted everything and laying down the lino flooring. We have test fitted everything of course and it is fine!!

~images

The main collection of pipes and conduits coming up into the garage has been sorted out and arranged in a neat order, clipped onto the back wall. The platform for the hot water tank has been assembled in the corner and we are waiting for the delivery of the tank itself (a 400mm diameter with 35mm thick PU foam and 1500mm tall – we are planning to put an extra 50mm PU foam around tank to reduce heat losses).

we have mapped out the various pipework, cables and other conduits that has to travel around under the floorboards including a fresh air channel to connect all the Earth Tubes together and also a hot air channel to warm up the Garden and Garage Rooms themselves. We are slicing up 18mm OSB sheets into 132mm high vertical supports with a shallow groove to take short cross support to form a grid matrix spacing of 600mm in each direction. The long strips will be tongue and grooved to join them all together in one long pieces. The floorboards will be the usual 18mm OSB sheets, also tongue and grooved to form one solid integrated layer with removable “doors” to allow access to the Earth Tubes and the Rain Tank manhole.

We have finished putting up the Fermacell panels up on the ceiling of the Garden Room. The system of routing a tongue and groove seems to be working but the final analysis and possible successful outcome will wait until we have painted the ceiling to the same degree as the main front garage room. The Fermacell is only 10mm thick so cutting a groove and a tongue is tricky work and rather fragile but after being glued and pushed together, it seems to be as strong as the straight forward butt joints. We will wait and see.

The last week has been a long process of moving and sorting all the bits and pieces stored in the old workshop and moving it all into the garage. We have tidied up the old workshop, pulled up shelves and generally cleared the areas ready for the next stage of work. The Garden Room at the back of the Garage is now clear and also ready.

We have built and painted the Utility Rail modules, routed cut-outs ready for electrical sockets and other types of equipment that might live in the Utility Rail (for example speakers, compressed air connections etc).

The final insulation of glass wool is up in the ceiling in the Garden Room and we are working on the Fermacell boards to see if we can improve the finishing quality without the need for so much filling and sanding. We will try tongue and groove joints as a way to align the surfaces. All this is to avoid the need for an outside professional assistance in the form of a plasterer on standard plasterboards. We would like to feel that we can achieve a good quality finish on our own but we recognise our limits and the limits of the materials we are working with, and therefore would consider outside skilled help.