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The latest state of play (July 2008) is as follows.
It is in reverse chronological order - latest news first and earlier stuff later.
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July 2008:
I’ve not posted many pictures of the inside of the house so far have I? We’ll here are a few just so you can see that this is not like one of the sets for a western movie that is all facade and nothing behind!
I’ve spent time recently trying to make progress on the interior fit-out. The pictures below show the wall panelling to the downstairs area. This is now about half done. What you cannot see is the LED lights in between the panels that provide lighting for the staircase (hidden in the vertical gaps between panels). But check out the “hidden” panel next to the stairway that flaps down to reveal the electric consumer unit and other unsightly stuff like the thermostat for the heat pump.
By the way this is three separate views, not one view of massive hallway with staircases on all sides!
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The next two pictures show the shower room, downstairs in the main house. The tiles are difficult to photograph well since they are a mix of highly reflective (and 85% recycled) glass and slate squares with a high quartz content and hence a lot of sparkle. These tiles cost a bomb and were a real pain to fix and align. I’m sure they’ll also be a real pain to grout, when I get around to that job. The room is nowhere near as well finished as this photo makes it look - it still needs a door and a ceiling over the shower area and a cupboard under the basin for example. But you get the idea as to what it will look like when I do finish it.
The last of the three photos shows the new door to the bathroom in the guest annex. I struggled for a long while to find a door in a metric size and with a walnut finish to match the rest of the woodwork in this building. For some reason metric sized door have not taken off in this country, despite the fact that they are a good 2 to 3 inches taller than the standard UK door and we are a population that is getting taller with every generation. Anyway, the final solution was to buy a board made up of thin staves of solid timber - intended mainly for kitchen work surfaces and the like - and cut it to size. It looks lovely (as does Sally in the same photo!).
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And here are some pictures of the upstairs area of the annex building - which is my study/office. It has had its walnut floor laid for some time, but now has a full set of cupboards and desks.
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Early June 2008:
A few more pictures below. Having had some good weather in late May, I committed myself to getting the exterior works done in a couple of weeks of concentrated effort working in the sunshine to come. And then it rained. And rained some more. But since I had hired a cement mixer and a “whacker plate” to settle the sub-grade under the paving we went for it anyway. Much of it is done, although we are still far from being finished. Since we are away in Scotland for a week and then I have work that keeps me in London, not much will happen for a few weeks now. But I have got a bunch of jobs to do inside the house and that will be the next task (for which no doubt I will get consistent and unbearable sunshine....)
Anyway, below are pictures of (a) the courtyard leading to the garage; (b) the walkway in front of the house and the newly laid gravel drive beyond it; and (c) the lovely green stripy lawns around the house.
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And a couple more pictures of the outside works. The first doesn’t look much but this is a levelled area just inside the gateway for use as a place to sit and have breakfast (facing East) or to park the car. It has been seeded and will become a lawn area in due course. The clever bit is that it is covered with recycled plastic grid through which the grass grows, which makes it structurally strong enough to cope with parked cars and vans without ripping up the grass or churning up the surface into mud. And the second is the terrace outside of the dining room (laid earlier today and still with its plywood spacers to keep the tiles in position). The stones are laid so that the pattern is continuous from inside to out - the theory being that the glass gable wall will just “disappear” and the dining room will look much bigger as a result. I even went so far as to cut some of the stones in two and lay half inside and half outside. Its a shame that you cannot see the effect in the pictures. The next job is to cut the concave circular bit out to fit around the tree - a fun job to do as I found when I did a similar thing for the doormat cut-outs in the Annex building (although I see my see pictures from July 2007 when I did this work do not show this artistry - so you’ll just have to imagine arcs tracing the path of the door as it swings on its hinges, with doormat material on the inside of the curve and quartzite tiles outside)!
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Late May 2008:
A few more pictures below, as an update to progress on site.
We now have a fully fitted and fully functioning kitchen ion the main house - see Sally cleaning the glass work surface in the picture below left. It took John Lewis some five months to from initial visit to fitting the final missing parts. Just as well we were not relying on it as the place to cook our meals! The kitchen does look very nice though. And next to it is a picture showing the view we’ll get from the kitchen / dining room, looking over the lawn to the pond beyond.
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Below is a picture update on the external works now underway.
We finally bit the bullet and had all the nylon wrapped panels which covered the inside of the sliding roof ripped out. Now there is 250 square metres of board covered in such fabric sitting in our garage waiting for us to decide what to do with it. It its place we have simple planking in a gloss white finish (see below far left). It is tacky PVC I’m afraid but it has the merit of being a smooth surface with good light reflective properties and with no unsightly joins (thanks to a tongue and grooved system similar to that used in wood panelling).
We have a tree planted in the terrace - a Prunus Serrula Tibeticus or Tibetan Cherry Tree - see second photo below . It has a lovely glossy brown bark in winter and green foliage in summer and flowers in spring and a good colour in autumn. Given how much it cost we hope it survives the East Anglian winter.
I have also laid some of the stone terraces outside the house. Picture 3 shows the walkway leading to the front doors of each building. The quartzite slabs are laid up to the steel rails and, in due course, we will have matching slabs covering the rainwater gutter on the inside of each rail. For the moment it is good just to be at the stage where we can walk outside without needing welly boots on! Since taking these photos I have laid a mortar screed to provide the necessary slopes to enable rainwater to drain from the courtyard and from the terrace and have starting laying quartzite slabs there also. The final picture shows the elaborate means of covering the rainwater gutters. Since there are no gutters at eaves level, rainwater just runs down each building to the ground level and then into gulleys which direct it to the underground drains. All of this lot is hidden underneath the quartzite slabs and these slabs need support underneath them as they span the rainwater gulleys, which is what those galvanised steel plates are for. An awful lot of effort went into doing this given that the whole lot will be hidden when the final slabs are laid.
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And here is a picture of the site with the new lining to the sliding roof and with the quartzite tiles covering the vertical surfaces around the outside of the concrete slab.
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Early March 2008:
We now have new entrance gates (I cheated and not only bought them ready made but also had someone fix them for me!) And we have got a bunch of new carpentry done on the main house - skirtings and architraves and the like.
Oh and our crocuses came up - looks lovely!
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February 2008:
The cladding is now complete on the main house. Previously it stopped about a metre above ground level, but now we have cladding down to the concrete slab. The bottom sections are all hinged to that they can be raised like the bonnet of a car to access the wheels and motors etc. You wouldn’t believe how much hassle it was to do this without any visible joins!
We have second fix electricity in the main house - well downstairs at least. It means that I can work in the evenings without rigging up halogen lights on tripods. This includes up-lighters built into the slate tiles downstairs and lights in the dining room (built into the steel beam supporting the glasshouse) and the kitchen (shining down through the perforated plasterboard in the ceiling). Good work William and Matthew!
The heat pump is fixed. It took four visits from the commissioning engineer but we are finally there. We found the leak (well in fact the whole of one pipe of the ground loop was severed) and put in a loop to bypass that section. And then we found the areas where the plumbing leaked under pressure and fixed them. The result is that the house and annex are toasty warm (probably too warm overnight) and our heating bills should fall by 75% as we start using the heat from the ground rather than purely from expensive electricity from Sizewell B. The lawn is a mess, but I’m sure we’ll sort it out over the spring and summer.
We also have a nearly complete kitchen. I have no pictures of this (I forgot!) but we have a new glass splash-back and new glass work-surfaces all lit by LED lights to make it look like John Travolta’s dressing room. John Lewis want to take photos for publication in Good Housekeeping magazine or similar to advertise their service - although frankly if they do not get the last few missing bits sorted within three months of the main installation job, we’ll withdraw our goodwill and say no.
The timber arrived on site last week to make skirtings and architraves for the house and cupboards/ballustrades for the upstairs living room. All of this is lovely European white oak. There’s a few weeks of carpentry work required to knock that lot into shape. Meantime I’ve been working on the fitted furniture for the office/study room upstairs in the annex - making desks and fitted cupboards (lots of birch plywood, laminate and aluminium tread-plate) and getting ready to fit the Walnut floor. And we have a master bedroom and dressing room that is painted and even has a couple of doors fitted.
Oh and we had some frosty weather, which I think merits a photo, even though at that stage there was nothing visibly new in the house.
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December 2007: I’ve not got many new pictures to show, but I thought I’d give an update anyway.
We’ve finished the internal plastering work for the main house. All the walls are plaster-boarded and with a skim coat of plaster. All the ceilings have the expensive “Apertura” acoustic plasterboard fitted. Most of it is now waiting for a coat of paint. Gordon, who did the plastering, mentioned that there were no pictures of his handiwork on the website so one is shown below!
Sally’s kitchen has arrived and is mainly installed. We are waiting for the glass work-tops to arrive and to be fitted, which will be after Christmas. See photos below. Before this was done Ross laid and grouted the quartzite floor to the dining room and kitchen area and we got organised with the laminate panels which will make up the panelled walls to this part of the house. The laminates are proving to be something of a headache. In accordance with my unintended trend to take the path of most resistance we are not buying panels ready made, oh no that would be too easy, we are buying the decorative laminate panels, bonding them to plywood substrate and then sticking the plywood composite panels to the prepared walls. The only trouble is getting the laminate to glue fully without distortion. A good few from the first batch were glued in the courtyard where there is lots of space and then brought inside to fit. That meant bringing them from a cold to warm environment, and since plastic laminate expands by far more than plywood, I’ve had a few bubbles developing. So all my clever plans to minimise wastage by using every last offcut of the laminate boards have gone out of the window!
The big problem has been getting the heating sorted. You will recall the the ground loop for the geothermal heat pump was laid over two years ago and pressure tested to ensure it was intact. Then the foundations and drains were laid over the top of this pipework. Only recently has the internal underfloor heating and hot water been finished and the heat pump commissioned. And only at this point did we find that, somewhere in the 360 metres of ground loop there is a sizeable leak. This means that, for the moment, we cannot finish setting up the heat pump so it can only run on expensive full-price electricity using the back-up heating element. On the plus side we have identified where the leak is (by connecting up an air compressor and then listening for the hissing and bubbling of escaping air through the clay soil) with and even better we find that it is not buried under the foundations where it would have been wholly inaccessible. But on the downside it is in the middle of one of our newly laid lawns. I looks as if someone put a spade through the pipe while fitting the connections from the main drainage to the Klargester sewage treatment plant. I’m waiting for better weather before we dig further to repair the pipe.
Oh, and Ross has nearly finished making his third staircase - this time an oak one for the main house. I’ll show a picture of this when it is complete and lacquered and looking all shiny!
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October 2007: A couple more pictures below:
The first was taken by Dave Avery, the guy who erected the steel frame for the sliding roof. It turns out that he is a micro-light pilot who flies from Beccles way and has taken a few trips over the site to check out the project. He’s been kind enough to send a few photographs through to me and here is one of them. This is after we had some landscaping work done - note the newly planted (but still very bare) lawn areas.
The second is a group photograph of the team from dRMM (Alex’s architecture practice) who came up for a site visit / works outing last weekend. It was good to see them all there, especially the two that I have worked directly with. Alex is on the far right and Joanna is second from left.
So what is new in terms of progress on the build? Well we have completed most of the plastering work downstairs in the main house and much of this is ready for painting. There is no picture of this - frankly one newly-plastered wall looks very much like another! We have done most of the plumbing work so that the geothermal heat pump can be commissioned and we can have running hot water and heat throughout (but more urgently in the annex where we are spending many of our weekends). And we now have most of a quartzite floor laid in the main house.
Beyond that, and strictly out of cycle for any serious build, we have done some more work in the garden including planting some 4000 crocus bulbs (laid before the lawns were seeded) and making the raised beds for the vegetable garden ready for planting. Sally has been very busy looking after the garden and making good use of the crops it provides -we have shelves full of chutney, jam and jellies and even blackcurrant gin. Not a bad output for what is still after all a building site!
I
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September 2007:
We’re on holiday shortly so I’ve updated the site with a few pictures before we go. It’s been quite a slack period - some work in the garden (to get lawns set-out and seeded while it is still warm enough) and some internal work. Also most of the cladding is complete on the garage and all of it is done on the annex (the black building).
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August 2007:
New this month:
Most of the wood cladding is up - enough that we have been able to get rid of the scaffolding. I still have work to do at the ground floor level (not least to make up panels to cover the electric motors and drive wheels) but that is less time critical. I guess that means we have far enough to justify a “topping out” ceremony, although we missed the occasion.
We have nylon covered boards on the inside of the sliding roof. This has turned out to be something of a problem in terms of the quality of the finish and supply of materials. It is pretty hard to have the boards covered and laid flat so that the seams look neat. And it is easy to damage the nylon when doing so. And to cap it all we are a few square metres short of the nylon material and we can only order more in 200 square metre rolls at a ridiculous price. We are considering our options.
And the motor drives are all in place and working well apart from one battery charging circuit that needs replacement. Hence the photos on the front page showing different position of the roof (with my lovely assistant holding the manual control box)! Sometime we will make a short movie clip of the roof in motion, although I am not sure I know how even then to load such a thing onto the web site.
The main house has not moved much internally. But we are last ready for the plasterers to do their work which will make it look much more like a finished house. I have been concentrating on the annex building which is now inhabitable (running water, electricity, flushing toilet, etc) and indeed is being periodically inhabited.
Two new photos below - although I cheated on one (the picture of the kitchen) by just updating the previous July version.
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July 2007:
So what’s new? Lots of progress on the guest annex, rather less on the house and a whole bunch of problems with the railway / sliding roof mechanism.
The guest annex first. It is now fully plaster-boarded and plastered. It even has two coats of white paint on the walls. We have clever acoustic plasterboard panels in the ceiling (to stop there being too many echoes). The quartzite floor is laid and grouted. The staircase (made of expensive and incredibly heavy engineered walnut timber) is partly made and in process of being assembled in-situ. And we have a kitchenette and bathroom partly fitted and waiting for me to do some tiling work and carpentry to finish the jobs. There are a few photos below, although even these are not fully up-to-date.
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As for the main house, I have concentrated on getting the cladding fitted inside and out. Outside the cladding is Siberian larch rain-screen in a natural, unfinished, state. The pitched roof sections are mainly done (using contractors - it is definitely a two man job!). I am doing the vertical panels myself when weather permits.
On the inside the cladding is a nylon fabric stretched over large plywood boards. There will be over 100 large sheets of board and 300 square metres of nylon in there! Again there are a few photos below.
The other thing I’ve been working on is the motors which open and close the roof. These have proved to be temperamental. After fitting and commissioning the motor/gearbox units, the first thing that happened was that I destroyed three of the gearboxes. The motors are not that powerful (24 volt DC motors, each of about a third of a horsepower) but the gearboxes have a huge ratio so the torque fed through to the final gears of the system proved too much. I have had them fixed under warranty and we have since been very careful about electronically limiting the power fed to them. The next issue has been how to set those controls so that the roof works well but with limited power being used. I have had several days when it seems I am permanently on the phone to Rob, the engineer who designed and built the control system, having instructions relayed to me so I could do on-the-spot diagnostics and repairs. It does now work, but still with some snagging to do.
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May 2007:
Here are a few more pictures as an update. The red membrane is on the roof now, with all the rain gutters and the like in place. See photo below. We’ve also got some landscaping work started so the whole place looks more like a muddy field than ever before. And the results from last summers’ sowing of wildflowers in the meadow is apparent!
And I’ve been insulating the inner structure with high specification foam and foil panels. It’s a horrible job - the insulation boards make dust when you cut them and it gets into your lungs and eyes. But boy will it be warm when done! Work on plaster boarding the inside has started with a view that when we have the annex building complete we can move into it.
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April 2007:
No time to draft many words but here are some pictures. The roof is up and infilled with timber and boards and being weatherproofed. The leak in the annex is fixed. The larch cladding which will cover the sliding roof arrives on site next week. And you can see several tons of quartzite tiles newly arrived from China and waiting to be laid on the concrete. The landscaping work started last week also, so pretty soon we’ll have lost that pile of spoil and topsoil that has dominated the last few months pictures. No rain for the last few weeks so we are making hay....
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March 2007:
Well, progress is beginning to get more rapid as the weather improves. So far what we’ve done this month is this:
We’ve done much of the wood cladding on the main buildings - from the first floor upwards including the roofs. I got some help in for this part of the job - the bad weather put me so far behind that it was getting more costly to do this myself than to get an expert in to do it for me. I’ve left the areas which can be reached without a scaffold until later - it’s a job we can do when the weather improves. Meantime, like a nudist on a cold day at the beach, the house is naked from the waist down.
The scaffold has been removed and for the first time we can see the shape of the buildings without obstruction. All of Alex’s fine work on proportions can be seen. It looks good!
Having got shot of the scaffold we have been able to take delivery of the steel structure for the sliding roof. This went up in four days flat, including fitting the motor drive units and wheels. This was a big test - there has to be reasonably consistent space between the sliding roof and the buildings underneath - planned to be 50mm throughout, but because of manufacturing tolerances and movement in the structures it actually varies from about 30mm to about 80mm. But I am very pleased to see it in place and very pleased that it does actually roll as it should, albeit that it takes several people to push it along its rails. I hope that the electric motors will do the job more easily, although they look far too small do any serious work at all.
You’ll see from the picture below that we have also made a start on the timber infill work. This is to support the boards inside and outside that takes the wood cladding. the chippies I am working with had a couple of weeks free in their diaries so I have grabbed them and asked that we push ahead at speed.
And finally we have the Klargester sewage plant in place and ready to connect. I’ll be glad to get rid of the smelly temporary toilet on site and connect up our own bathroom to the drains, even if this is done as a short term fix while we do the interior fit out
The only bad news is that the black annex building leaks - I think when fixing the cladding on the roof I must have put a screw straight through the batten and through the membrane underneath. I can identify where the leak is, but it does mean that I have to remove many of the roof boards in that area to get at the membrane to repair it, and that means more scaffold. I will have spent a fortune on the scaffolding by the time I finish - I really should have just bought all the scaffold I needed outright and employed people to put it up (and then sold it on e-bay I suppose!).
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February 2007:
Jobs done this month:
Most of the first fix of the electrical wiring has been done. I have a working supply in each building and nearly all of the wiring for lights and sockets etc. The only outstanding jobs in the first fix relate to kitchen appliances - we need to decide where things go in the kitchen and despite being at this for over a year, we have no final plans yet. We’ve also got the supply changed from single phase to three phase so that the power surge from the heat pump does not dim everyone’s lights for miles around.
The concrete slab has been fully tanked to make it waterproof. This was supposed to be done by painting on two coats of thick bitumen sealant (brand name Aquaseal) but in the end I didn’t have a long enough dry spell to enable me to do this fully, so some of the house has a plastic sheet damp proof membrane instead. I was then able to get 90mm of insulation onto the floor and pour the floor screeds - 90mm of expensive self-levelling cement screed. The house looks much more finished now that the floor is at the right level. Pictures shown below.
The first fix of plumbing is also mainly done, including all of the underfloor heat pipes throughout the buildings. Again there are some small matters to be decided upon before they finish this work, not the least of which is the exact make and model of bath and shower so that we put the drains and taps in the right place.
And I started work on insulating the walls with Celotex panels - an awful job given that cutting each sheet creates lots of irritating dust. But it does look very pretty with foil backed panels lining the walls!
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January 2007:
Well, we have at last finished the weatherproofing work, which means I have two buildings which (apart from the fact that one of them is open to the sky where the bathroom will be) means that I am nearly weatherproof. When it rains the buildings still leak, pending fitting the cover flashings to the skylights and I still get rain in the main house via the bathroom (which will not be sealed until the sliding roof cover is in place)
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December 2006:
Progress is painfully slow. A combination of rain, high winds, fog and lack of daylight hours are slowing progress to a crawl. My plans to be weatherproof before the bad weather set in have not come to much. If it were not for the fact that the scaffold is costing me cash every extra week I have it, I would have closed down the site for winter and started again when the weather is better. As is it we are trying to get the weatherproof membrane finished on all of the buildings. I am making progress with battening the buildings ready to clad with timber. And you’ll see (if you look closely) that I have some of the skylights and windows now fitted.
Global Timber Frame (who made the timber structures for me and deserve to be named and shamed publicly) have let me down again with failure to correct an inadequately strong supporting wall supporting the mezzanine (despite having ten weeks to do so and promising that they would do so). I have fired them and banned them from the site and I am now withholding payment of the last sum I owe them. It does mean that I now have to find new contractors to do the work they have notched, which won’t now be until January.
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Late-November 2006:
There is not much to report since the last update in November. The glasshouse is tantalisingly close to being complete, But there are a few trims to fit, a broken pane to replace and some glass still needed in two of the opening windows. The bottom panes of glass in this structure are currently some six inches above slab level (they will be in line with the finished floor level which is higher as a result of insulation, underfloor heating, and slate tiles). I have in-filled with concrete blocks to make the place watertight - at least it will be watertight when I get the chance to “tank” the block work to make it waterproof.
The rails and wheels have arrived from Swindon and are stored on site. I have reassured myself that the bolts which hold the rails in place are indeed accurately spaced (to within a couple of mm) so the rails do fit! I have contractors lined up to drill into the concrete for the remaining bolts and then level the rails each side.
The weatherproofing is coming along, but very slowly. And until this is done I cannot start on the wood cladding, and hence cannot get rid of the expensive scaffolding. I hope at least that I will have the buildings weather-proof (including doors and windows fitted) soon so that I can start on laying floor screeds inside each building.
One major hold up has been the engineering of the timber frame house. If there is a gale blowing and if the sliding roof is open, then the wind-loads from the glasshouse are transmitted to the concrete slab via the timber mezzanine structure (the bit underneath the floor to the living room in the picture below). This has “K-braced” walls which the timber company has been telling us for months are adequate. When we finally go the calculations for this aspect, it turned out that they are nowhere near strong enough and have to be replaced by steel braced walls. The company has at last admitted that it is their error (or at least an error by their engineer) and will do the remedial work. But no sign yet of when this will be!
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Early November 2006:
I last saw the site on Tuesday at which point:
- the glasshouse was nearly complete - it is fully glazed but still awaiting some detail work;
- the timber frame has been amended to raise the roof level by 50mm - an error by the company concerned but one they have now fixed;
- the weatherproof membrane to the timber frame buildings has stated to go up - the garage should be complete by now (and looks very, very red!);
- the electrician has started the “first fix” work, with the main supply to the garage to be connected this Friday.
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I have a few photos and moving images from my visit to the factory in Swindon which has made the wheels and motor drives for the sliding roof. But I cannot work out how to get the movie pictures onto the site, so you’ll have to wait to see this kit in action. Meantime here is one of the main drive units for the roof - 24 volt electric motor at top right, attached to square looking gearbox unit and driving a MASSIVE steel wheel to the left of picture.
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Late-October 2006:
Well we are above ground and suddenly it looks like we have the makings of a house! The timber frame itself was finally delivered and erected, starting two weeks after the delayed plan. So far as I was concerned it was all on track right up until the Monday morning when the team were due on site. Only then did they tell me that the frame was not, as previously advised, already manufactured and sitting in their workshop - it was all still being made. Oh and the team who were supposed to do the erection work had had a better offer and were hence off putting up someone else’s house. So a different team started two weeks later and added another week of delay to the process while sorting out manufacturing problems. The product is good quality and the guys putting up the frame did a great job, but the company’s back office support is dire. We still have an outstanding issue on the engineering reports (to confirm that the mezzanine area can take the wind loads from the finished glass house) and there is still one skylight opening which is too small for the skylight, but basically the timber structures are complete.
The glasshouse company started on site on Monday last week. You can see the results below. The main sections of the aluminium structure arrived on a single lorry and were quickly lined up ready for assembly. Over the week nearly the the whole of the metalwork has been put together although left “loose” so that it can be positioned correctly before being bolted to the slab. We are missing a few bits (either made the wrong size or damaged in transit) but nothing that throws us too much off track. The glass arrives on Tuesday next week and they need another week to fit it. And I’ve also had yet another section of scaffolding set up, as a “birdcage” within the glasshouse structure so that they can lift the glazing panels into the 45 degree pitched roof. I hope I am not on site to see them disassemble all of those poles and boards and take them out of a regular doorway without breaking any of my expensive glass!
I have the roofing guys on site from Monday. All of the external timber work is being wrapped in a “Flag” weatherproof membrane. This was delivered to site on on Saturday and the fitting team start work on Monday. The race is on now to get as much work done as possible on the exterior of the building so that I can get rid of the scaffold. before I run into excess charges by exceeding my 10 week hire period. I hope we can have the outside of the house finished relatively quickly so that all of that part of the scaffold can go - which means finishing the glasshouse, the weatherproofing and the wood cladding to one gable wall. I can then spend a bit more time doing the cladding on the annex and garage buildings.
I am off to Swindon this week to have a look at the mechanisms for the sliding roof - the rails, the wheels, the motors and the electrical control system. This is to be set up within the workshop with 8 metres of rails and two motor drive units ready for us to play at train sets. Assuming that this goes to plan, we then get the whole lot shipped up to Lowestoft, to meet up with the steel roof structure itself, before coming to site for assembly. And this can only happen after I have got rid of the scaffold, so it gives me another reason to want to press ahead quickly.
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Mid-October 2006:
No time to draft words at the moment. But the timber frames for the house, annex and garage are all now up. The glasshouse will be delivered next Monday and the weather-proofing of the buildings will start at the same time. More details when I find the time to do so....
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Early September 2006:
Well, the foundations are finally in and the site cleared ready for scaffolding and then timber frame to be erected. I’ll give a fuller update when time permits, but meanwhile here are a few photographs of the slab and the bolts which will hold the rails in place. These are the ones that needed to be set to tolerances of 3mm or so - which I think we have probably achieved, although we won’t actually know until the rail is delivered to site and fixed in place.
Meantime the wheel and motor units for the sliding roof are being manufactured (I hope to visit the workshop in Swindon soon to see for myself) as is the metal framework for the sliding roof. I’ll include an update on these elements as soon as I have anything to say.
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August 2006:
Behind schedule again! The foundations are proving troublesome as the ground workers try to assemble what they say is the most complex steel reinforced concrete slab they have ever seen. The five weeks they quoted is now set to be eight weeks - and that assumes that the final pour of concrete next Friday goes ahead as planned. There is no slack in the timetable before others are due on site.
Anyway the state of play is shown in the pictures below - first the overview of the site and then details of the steelwork, the annex area and the terrace outside of the southwest gable wall.
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July 2006:
Oh dear. I guess I should be more diligent about updating the site. But there has been so little happening for so long that it hardly seemed worthwhile.
The piles were completed in March 2006. The next step was to lay services (water, drains, electricity supply, telephone etc) all of which is underground. And then the reinforced concrete slab is to be laid.
The problem has been agreeing the details of services – the one part of the house that should have been easy, but for some reason was not. There is a minor complication that all services have to enter the house through the concrete slab (no cables on the roof or vent pipes through the roof – otherwise how would the sliding roof slide?) but nothing too difficult.
I had no drawings from the architect, which meant no engineering specification for where the slab needed to be pierced to get services through it, which meant no contract placed with a groundwork contractor which meant no work at all done on site for the last 10 weeks. I could have done the drawings myself in a day (in fact in the end I did the specification myself and sent it to be included in the plans). But the trouble with using architects nowadays is that they all use CAD software which ordinary mortals cannot access. So control of the whole process, including the speed at which it progresses, passes to the architect. That’s something I’ll think about if I ever do this again!
Anyway, I’ve now unblocked the log-jam and the slab contractor is on site laying steel reinforcement mesh and pouring concrete. The pictures below show the site with all its piles in place and the concrete “blinding” laid ready for the construction above and the pile of polystyrene Cordek that will be laid on it.
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To prevent “heave” in the clay soil lifting the slab off its piles, the slab is laid on top of a 300mm layer of polystyrene, which is really only there to keep the concrete off the ground during pouring, but stays under the house forever. The idea is that it will compress and break down if there is any upwards ground movement thus leaving the slab where it should be. It is another expense I had not allowed for – this stuff costs £75 for a standard 3 square metre panel and I have 250 square metres to cover!
The timetable now is this:
•28 July: concrete works complete
•31 July: scaffold erected; timber frame company on site to erect the house, annex and garage. This will take less than two weeks.
•11 August: steel box frame supporting the glasshouse delivered and erected
•13 August: glasshouse company onsite to deliver and erect the curtain walling for the conservatory. I’ve allowed three weeks for this.
•13 August: fixing of weatherproof membrane to all of the timber frame buildings ready for cladding to be fixed over the top. Maybe a couple of weeks for the house and the annex (which are being done by paid contractors) but longer for the garage which I’ll do myself.
•Late August: Skylights fitted. Doors and windows fitted. Wood cladding delivered to site and work starts on fitting it.
There have been a few more decisions to enable me to get this lot lined up.
The buildings are going to be clad with Siberian Larch timber. Larch is quite a dense softwood timber with good resistance to moisture. Siberian larch is even more so – it is very slow growing (coming from such a cold place with such a short summer) which makes it very dense. Anyway I have over 600 square metres of the stuff on order for delivery in August. As the drawings have indicated some of the timber is stained (red for the garage, black for the annex) and some is natural timber. It is possible to get the timber delivered ready stained, but I found that the staining is far more expensive than the timber itself! So I’ve be doing this myself by hand before the cladding is fixed.
And I have also discovered that I will have to lay the boards as random lengths, rather than have panels of cladding with clean joins between them. I would have preferred the latter. But the cladding fixes to battens and the battens need to fix to the studs in the timber walls. And the 1000 metre grid on which the house is laid out and should form the basis of the panels does not match the 600 mm spacing of the timber studs. Oh well!
I’ve also gone firm on the weatherproofing materials. The cladding profile is a weatherboard rather than closed (i.e. there are gaps between the planks) and air can circulate behind them. This means that the surface underneath needs to be not just a cheap breather membrane as often used with cladding, but an expensive multi-layered EPDM membrane. In this case I am buying from a company called Flag. They offer a choice of colours and I have gone for a red to match the garage cladding. Why does it matter? Well, when the sliding roof is slid back and the house is open, it is this surface which is in plain view. Using such a bold colour is the way of emphasising the transformation from traditional timber clad building (when closed) to a modern glass and metal and plastic structure (when open). That’s the idea anyway.
Doors and windows has been another headache. They are mostly sourced from Scandinavian Window Systems. They do a really chunky wood and aluminium composite product which has very high insulation properties and looks good. I get to choose the colours and dimensions and they make them to order. So I have a bunch of silver grey doors (to match the conservatory) and a bunch of black ones (for the annex), all with a varnished wood finish in the inside. And skylights come from a specialist Norfolk firm. I has asked that they be fitted as near as possible to flush with the roof surface. This means very little “up-stand” to direct water away from the glass – a non-standard fitment. Although we are sure this will work well, it does mean the manufacturer gives no guarantee on the product’s effectiveness when fitted like this.
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June 2006:
Very little has been happening on the house so let’s give you an update on the workshop. It is now rather more complete than this makes it look. The roof is now on (a rubber membrane roof laid in one piece so there are no joins to leak) and the doors and windows are now in. All I need is an electricity supply and it’s be ready for use!
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March 2006:
So what’s new then? At last we have moved beyond planning and demolishing into actually building! After a bit of argy-bargy with piling firms I picked Central Piling from Essex do do the piled foundations. They use a bored technique (rather than driving precast piles into the ground using a pile-driver). They also have a smaller sized rig than their competitors, which meant that access to the site was easier - the firm selected originally planned to use a 40 tonne rig and they just would not have been able to get it onto the site. It was planned to take four days to sink 22 piles down to 9.5 metres depth each. but in the end it took two weeks. The soil was just fine down to about 7.5 metres and then the auger started hitting big chalk flints which they had to grind their way through. However it is now done.
Before that I had to lay a piling mat of 200mm of crushed concrete - just to support the rig while piling. Having done that, I now have a heap of old crush concrete on site which I’ll use as the hard-core on which the driveway will be laid.
Pictured below is the site after the crush concrete was laid for the piling rig, but before the piling work started. you can see the outline of the house. the red stakes in the ground are the pile positions.
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On the planning front, I have (oral) confirmation that all of the planning conditions have been met. The only concern here is that I’d like to put some solar panels on the roof, but these were not anticipated in the original application and the planning authorities are taking a strict line on this - it will need planning permission. I cannot just apply for permission for the panels though - since the house on which they are to be fixed is not yet built, I cannot apply to modify it in this way. Instead I will have to apply for planning permission for the whole scheme again, with the same plans as originally except for the solar panels. this is madness and I’m planning to challenge it.
I am now trying to find someone who can lay a concrete slab for the foundations. Again this is not easy - it is quite a complex design to accommodate the rails for the sliding roof and various cast in trenches and gaps and the like for rainwater run-off. Hopefully I can move ahead on this during April.
And I have at last made some real progress on the mechanism for the sliding roof. My engineer Rutger recommended a mechanical engineer to do this design work and he is coming up with some good ideas. Of course we need to know what the rail details will be before we can specify the detail of the concrete slab, so this is on the “critical path”. The plan, by the way, is to have a design which uses 24 volt DC electric motors to do the work, driving one wheel on each side of the sliding roof structure itself. The motors are powered by DC batteries and the batteries are recharged by solar power (hence the need for panels) or by a mains electric override. I’ve spent more time than is good for me taking to various railway engineers and the like about this system, but eventually we have sources some wheels from an industrial warehouse door manufacturer, we’ll be fabricating our own rails and the motor and control kit will be sourced by the engineer suing “off the shelf” products.
And finally, I have made some progress on building the workshop and garden store. This building replaces the Stable/Workshop building on the SW corner of the site. the old one was just too derelict to rescue, but I am building on the same footprint and to a similar design so that I can avoid having to go through the planning permission loop again - planning law allows for like-for-like replacement of existing buildings.
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February 2006: Another long gap since I last updated the site - not least because Sally and I were away in Australia for most of January. But we have made some progress on a range of issues.
On the planning front, I have started the process of complying with all of the planners list of conditions. Some of this is bureaucratic (consents from the Environment Agency to discharge from the sewage plant for example). Some of it is conditions for the build process (putting protective fences around the trees etc). And some requires us to provide details of finish and windows designs etc, which Alex and his team are looking at.
On the building control front we have submitted a “full plans” application. As mentioned previously, although we can start building by only giving five days notice to the building control service, that then leaves them free to interpret the building requirements as we go along, with no certainty that they will accept any work that we have done or plan to do. For a complex design such as this we thought this was too risky. so we have gone down the alternative route of asking them to sign off the whole project in advance, which means that as long as we build the house in compliance with those plans we know we are OK. But we do still owe them information on things like the details of the glasshouse structure and the wood burning stove details. All this is to be progressed later this week.
On the “visible signs of progress on site” front, I authorised the demolition of the house and barn recently. The results are shown below. In fact the demolition of the house was brought forward to December 2005 to permit better access to a team of soil investigation engineers. They needed to get a drilling rig on site (to take a soil sample from a 13 metre bore hole) and couldn’t get their rig between the house and the oak tree by the front entrance. I wanted to keep the tree so it was the house that had to go. I discovered after the event that I needed a separate consent to demolish the house. I then gave notice on this after the event and asked the building control team to waive their requirement for notice - which they did. In fact they were wholly relaxed about this. The barn and the caravan were then demolished/removed in January.
On the supplier front, I have selected suppliers for the timber frame element and the glasshouse element of the structure - two of the biggest cost elements. The quotes for the timber frame section were very diverse, ranging from a low quote of some £32,500 from Global Timber Frame to high quotes of £63,000 and £66,000 from other local firms We have checked out the cheaper quote thoroughly and it does come up to scratch so that is the one we are going with. My budget was based on initial quotations at the top end of the scale, so that is a useful saving to make. In respect of the glasshouse we are still checking details but again the range of prices is vast - quotes have come in at £63,000 from a midlands-based curtain-walling firm called Duplus and at the top of the scale range up to £127,000 and £135,000. All of these are for high-specification double glazing (toughened or laminated glass, low-E coatings and argon filled cavity) sitting on extruded aluminium mullions and transoms. The sticking point is how much of a steel frame we might need to give structural support to the glazed elements. We are working towards retaining the glass at first floor level only - by the mezzanine floor of the living room and with a steel structure extending around double height area of the glasshouse at the same level. Again the lower of the quotes is within budget, although I expect this may change when we get a revised quote from them with some suggested changes to the details.
And the results of the soil survey are good - it may be clay soil but it is stable and dense - so we have been able to make progress on the specification for the piled foundations. We have quotes in for this work and can hopefully make a start on driving or boring the piles soon.
The main outstanding design issue is the design of the wheels and rails for the moving section of the house, where we have lots of ideas but no firm proposal, and a bunch of mechanical engineers who want to take another few thousand pounds off me to finalise such a design. Watch this space!
As for the progress to the next stage of the build, much depends on the weather. After a period of some drought through December and January, we now have heavy rain which is likely to make the ground conditions unsuitable for the work on the foundations. I am working on getting the groundworkers and piling contractors lined up so that we can start as soon as the weather permits this.
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December 2005: A long time since the last update! But at last some tangible progress on the bureaucratic front - we got our planning permission on 7 December.
I wasn’t aware until the week before the planning committee meeting, but applicants get the chance to attend to present their case. I traveled up to Woodbridge to do just that. It was an interesting experience. There were about 25 individual applications up for decision. These were taken in numeric order, except that all those where the applicant or some other person had attended in person were shifted to the front of the queue. I sat through six others before mine came up, including one very nice and very modern building in a conservation area in Aldeburgh - which got through with no problems at all. Each case took about 20 minutes, with the planning officers first giving their view, using selected plans and photographs to illustrate the development (the first that any of the committee had actually seen of what they would be voting on) and then the opportunity for the applicant and any supporters or objectors to to speak. Finally the committee get to ask any questions and they reach a decision. Like most of the applications, I had no-one attending to support or object to the plans. So after a three minute spiel from me about the quality of the design and how it was sensitive to its environment etc, they had a couple of questions and then all duly voted in favour. So that is one hurdle crossed!
I have since had the written consent which runs to several pages and has a bunch of conditions attaching. I did some initial work after the meeting itself to confirm that there are no bats in the barn and that I am not after all in a flood zone (which was blindingly obvious although there were threats that an environmental flood risk assessment would be needed which would have resulted in another few hundred pounds of wasted cost). I am left with conditions relating to the colour of the external finishes (all need to be approved by the planning team) and the methods I use to protect the trees and hedges during building and a whole raft of other stuff. But at least they will permit us to build!
We are now working towards making a “full plans” submission for building control early in January. Sally and I will be away in Australia for most of the month and I’d like to be ready to start work soon after we return. Alex has made some progress on the structural drawings element and I am working on things like the Carbon Index rating for the building to prove that it meets insulation standards and the environment agency approval for the sewage outlet.
I’ve also applied for building control consent to demolish the building on site (yes you need permission to do that too!). I have a demolition man lined up to do the work in January. In fact he has already made a start on this (before I realised that consent was needed) to make way for a drilling rig to get on site to check soil conditions so that the layout of foundations can be determined. So that meannt forking out another few hundred quid to have the electric supply moved to a temporary site supply at the edge of the site and switching the water supply to a standpipe. And having lost the possibility of staying on the existing house when I am on site, I have found and bought an old two berth caravan to keep on site as a site office and temporary home for the next few months).
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Late October 2005: Well we have finally submitted the planning application. Lots of redrawing was required to get the building back to the size which we were told would be permitted (it’s funny how the dimensions seemed to creep up over time as a little more room is needed in various places and is added - all of which made the building far wider the planners would accept and too big in terms of floor area). We had a bit of running around as the planners chased for plans with the right colour of red line showing the plot and stuff like that, but we resolved it. I am told that the application should be considered at a planning committee meeting on 7 December. It will go with the recommendation of the planning team themselves, but it will be flagged as a departure from policy because the existing bungalow is being replaced with a two story building. I am considering whether and how to communicate with (lobby is such a vulgar word!) the committee members.
I also had the first meeting with the architect and the structural engineer (Rutger Snoek of MHA). A productive meeting at which we have planned what more detailed drawings are required - for building control and for me to get tenders for the main elements of the build. We have the apparently novel plan of all working from the same drawings (rather than have each professional redraw them to suit their own purposes).
Work on site burying pipes for the drainage and for the heat pump is complete. I took the opportunity to have the small and overgrown pond extended so that the surface of the pond extends away from the trees which shaded it and is now visible from where the house will be. But the enlarged pond is yet to fill with water and it makes the whole plot look like a bomb-site! Roll on winter rains!
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October 2005: Latest news from Friday. the planning officer and his boss have confirmed that they like the scheme. Alex and I will submit formal plans for the detailed planning permission at the end of this week. If they can resolve some minor issues they have (like the fact that the floor area is by their measurements bigger than guidelines) then this may not even need a formal referral to committee. So this is good news (although the time taken to get to this point is frustrating to say the least).
It is not easy to upload pictures of the scheme to the site given their format so click here for a link to the latest set of drawings, in pdf format and click here for what we took to the planners for our previous meeting.
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September 2005: Well, leaving aside aside the build project here is a sample of one days’ fruit picking on site. I could get used to this degree of home grown comestible delight!
I am just back from a meeting with the local planning officer to discuss our “sliding house” plans. Alex and I went up there on our BMWs and had a good boys’ day out in the process. I approached this meeting with some trepidation, having heard about our designated planning officer’s views on “modern” design. He had previously spoken to me about a new house in Sudbourne which I have since seen - it is a very impressive and sensitive house, also a “demolish and rebuild” job, and done to a very high standard. The planning officer used it as an example of the type of modern building which he did not like and would not have approved. He was allocated to the case and was all set to recommend refusal of permission, but he was held up on the way to the planning committee meeting and his boss attended instead - and supported it! So I was expecting some bias against anything other than a traditional Suffolk house.
In fact he was very positive about the plans. In part this was down to me and Alex the architect buttering him up and presenting what he wanted to hear in a non-threatening way, but nevertheless he heard the story about the sliding roof structure and, after a few seconds of tense waiting, professed himself to be very impressed! So we are now making ready to submit a formal application. We will actually be leaving the existing Outline Planning Permission (“OPP”) on the shelf and submitting an entirely new application for the new building - the alternative of treating the new plans as being merely a detail change from the existing ones (and hence to be decided upon as “reserved matters” left open from the existing OPP) does not really work. We’ll be working on this over the next few weeks - and hopefully I can provide an updated set of drawings or photographs of a new model for this site soon thereafter.
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August 2005: I met with the quantity surveyor for an initial cost estimate. This turned out to be a shocking experience! Without going into the detail of the numbers, my budget was initially X thousand pounds and the cost estimate came out at 4X thousand pounds. In fact the QS reckons that I’ll pour half of my budget into the ground as foundations and services, before I even start to build the above ground structure. This is a problem. A meeting with the architect reveals that he does not believe that the estimate needs to be this high. I am sceptical about the feasibility of bringing the budget for this design back on track - as I explained to him, we need to halve the projected cost and it will still be well above budget. However we agree to have had a go at identifying the expensive elements and bringing the cost back under control.
As a result, I have ended up preparing my own cost estimates and now have an elaborate spreadsheet covering all the expected cost elements from demolition to final decoration. The estimates are based partly on standard industry rules of thumb (for example a concrete floor slab apparently costs £21 per square metre) and partly on real prices for real supplies. The key elements of the design have gone for indicative quotations from potential suppliers. I expect to “package up” the elements of the house so that the major components are sourced from one supplier each (glasshouse, timber frame shell, etc) and hence can be guaranteed by that supplier and provided at a genuinely fixed cost. Some suppliers have turned out to be quite helpful in providing ball park figures in the hope that being helpful now will win them business later. And some elements of cost come straight from catalogues. So I find myself in the bizarre position of choosing what sort of floor tiles we might like (and hence what they will cost) before we even have a final architects drawing to base this upon!
The other element of change has been to the design itself. One element which has proved almost impossible to source at a sensible price has been the glasshouse element, which is hugely expensive simply because it is (a) so big and (b) unsupported at one end hence requiring massive steel portals to keep it in shape. What we have done is amended the design so that one half of the main house is made of conventional timber frame (and hence reasonably cheap) and the other half is under glass - probably more or less permanently so. This means that the glass element is half the size and half as expensive as in the original plan and it also cuts down on the volume of expensive foundations which would originally have been required. As a result the sliding outer element of the house now fits outside the glass element. This means that its function is reduced to providing shade in summer and insulation in winter, but it is not an essential part of the weatherproof structure. For example it now has no doors or windows, only openings so that the doors and windows in the main structure can open. And it means that the awkward free-standing glass gable wall at the SW end of the house is no longer freestanding - another engineering problem eliminated. I almost called this redesign a compromise from the original (which it is in the sense that the house can be made open to the outside to a much lesser degree). In fact I think it makes the house much more practical in use. Essentially the house can convert from being a conventional looking “closed” structure to a quite radical looking mainly glass structure quickly and without there being an intermediate step which has the whole house open to wind and rain.
We think that this and some other less radical changes to the design have brought the cost down to acceptable levels. We have therefore decided to “go for it” and have arranged to meet the planning officer to test his reaction - this is scheduled for early September. My ambition to get the foundations in before winter therefore looks a little optimistic. The planning office reckon that a decision takes eight weeks (which takes us to November) and even if we get over that hurdle without a hitch, we will need to allow a few weeks to draw up plans for, and get approval from, building control. So maybe I get the winter to myself and can do some travelling instead?
Meantime the garden and paddock are being restored back to some sense of order. The trouble with the local clay soil is that it is so fertile that everything wants to grow there whether welcome or not, so the whole area has been buried under thistles, stinging nettles and worse. I have had the local farmer (thanks Jim) mow the paddock back to a sensible height and I have been “finding” the boundaries around the paddock with the help of a chainsaw and brush-cutter. And I have got a local drainage contractor to lay field drains across the entire site to stop sections of it getting waterlogged in winter. At the same time he is laying the ground loop for the geothermal heat pump system I’ll use for heating the house and is clearing out and extending the pond. The garden is looking a lot more tidy now following several days of hard work in clearing the undergrowth and generally making it easier to control. I now have raised beds (made from recycled railway sleepers) and have laid bark mulch over some of the areas that require weed control and which I cannot mow regularly. And to make it all worthwhile I find that the garden produces excellent crops of gooseberries (in June - alas all now eaten or frozen); raspberries (ditto); blackcurrents (ditto); plums (several varieties - some ready to eat now and some not quite there yet); and pears and apples (more than we can possibly eat!). I also have more blackberries than I can eat and even peaches - although they will not survive the demolition and rebuild process so this years crop will be the last.
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July 2005: Well we have a reasonably well developed idea of the likely design. Two steps follow from this:
- We need to get a better handle on the likely costs - which so far has got as far as saying “wow that looks expensive” but does not include a cost estimate. I have fixed for an early stage report from a quantity surveyor to be prepared and I will see him later this week to assess the damage.
- We need then to decide whether we go for this design or opt for one of the others. If this one does not work then we rally will be starting again from scratch - this design has many features that are pretty much dictated by the sliding mechanism and which could be altered if we did not need them to be set up as they are.
If we get through that stage then we need to take this to the planners. I anticipate that this might be a challenging meeting, although we have tried hard to stay within the planning guidelines and to anticipate possible objections. but that is tomorrow’s problem.
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June 2005: As expected, I didn’t myself progress things much while I was on holiday. Alex has however come up with some radical design proposals (which he calls the sliding house). In my absence the detail of the workings of the sliding house have become somewhat firmer and dRMM have now produced a model of it so that we can see how it would look in practice. See the designs page for details.
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May 2005: I arranged a site survey to get all the levels required for the architectural drawings and a drainage survey. There is a carefully planned drainage system for rainwater (which is important when the soil is impermeable clay) but nevertheless the orchard area and some of the garden does not drain as it should and hence has stayed waterlogged for far too long after heavy rain. I await the response to this.
I’ve also had a very useful visit from the local tree nursery to make me an inventory of everything that is on site. One of their chaps has been around the entire site putting numbered tags on all of the trees and shrubs and he has since given me a list of all of the species. I’ve also got some useful advice on trees to plant in the paddock / meadow area. This will include some Back Poplars - an increasingly rare local species which the local landscape team are trying to re-intoduce into the environment.
I have got myself equipped with the garden machinery I need, including strimmer, chainsaw and ride on mower so that I can keep the garden from being overrun. There is a possibility of a dispute with the local planning authority as to the division between the garden (which forms part of the residential curtilage of the house and hence which I can build on) and the paddock (which is zoned for agricultural use). I want to keep the place looking like a proper garden so that they see what they expect when the planning site visits happen!
And finally, Joana and I had a meeting with the planners on 31 May. Generally this was good news. They seem to accept my version of the layout of the plot as per the most recent OS1250 map which shows the area of garden as being garden and hence within the residential curtilage. They are comfortable with a one and half story house. They are comfortable with the proposed new footprint of the house. The replacement on the single story annex with a new one and a half story building does not fit within their policy guidelines. Nevertheless they accepted that they would find it difficult to object to the annex being demolished and rebuild rather than being refurbished. So all in all it looks as if in broad terms it looks as if the planning restrictions will be related to the design of the building not the fundamentals of location on the plot or size.
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April 2005: Well I retired from my the partnership I worked with on 7th April and, alongside some work setting myself up to do some freelance work, I have had the time to do some planning for the build process. I am still expecting that the design and planning process will take up most of the summer, but I am hoping that I can at least get the foundations in before winter. In the meantime, such time as I have spent on site has been devoted to making the existing house habitable (for occasional overnight stays) and giving some attention to the garden. The garden definitely needs work and of course I can pretty much do what I like with it without having to get planning approval! Expect to see a bit more detail on this site as that process progresses.
I have also, after much deliberating, appointed Alex de Rijke to work with me on the designs for the house. It is a real dilemma as to whether this is sensible. On the one hand he is winning awards left right and centre for his work and I know that by working with him I will get an exceptional quality of building. On the other hand, the great dream of mine was to design my own house, which I know will be severely compromised by working with someone who is so single minded. Nevertheless we did our first site visit in April and I was inspired by some of the observations made by Alex and his assistant Joana and by some of the initial designs we worked on. We spent a day on site (in spring sunshine) making drawings and models. the “Origami Roof” house shown in the designs page is the outcome of that day’s work.
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March 2005: I booked a tree moving machine to move a bunch of fruit trees from away from where the new house will be (can’t have them growing through the floor of the living room can we)? A chap with a HUGE machine showed up as ordered - see picture left. The trouble is that with all the rain and snow snow we’ve had over the last few weeks, the ground was just too wet to enable his machine to get about properly - just one pass across the lawn turned the clay soil to a quagmire. So I had to send the chap away to come back later in the year.
This is likely to be a real problem. I should really move the trees before they are in bud (so they have the best chance of surviving the ordeal) but after the ground has dried out (so that it does not churn up as several tons of tree spade drive across it). That leaves no time in the year when I can do this! I am likely to compromise on June hoping that catching the trees early on the growing season is better than late.
Shame about the deposit on the digging machine and the delivery charge though....
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February 2005: I’ve made contact with an old architect friend Alex de Rijke (now senior partner at his own firm de Rijke Marsh Morgan). I’m not sure where this will lead, but it’ll at least be good to meet up with him (after over a decade!).
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January 2005: Completion takes place on 4 January 2005: I cannot believe that it has taken seven months just to buy the place, but we are at least there. The next problem I have is that I need to make the place secure (given that it will stand empty for a while, but still has electricity and telephone connections and would make a great place for a group of kids to have rave).
One early job is to move some of the trees that stand in the footprint of the new house. I transplanted two of them during the last weekend of January (a semi-mature morello cherry tree and an anonymous apple tree) but there are between three and six more to go which will require heavier lifting kit. My local tree moving specialist (well Hertfordshire |
