Category: house build

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ASHP and micro-harvests

When it comes to plumbing, electrics and heating in the home it may all be in Mandarin for the level of understanding I have. Husband makes it sound very logical and simple, and clearly finds it amusing that I either panic or glaze over when he tries to explain how electrical things work.

Yesterday we had the plumbers in to install the Air Source Heat Pump system for the house. This is a core element in heating the house as economically as possible, something that is becoming increasingly essential.

We now have a plant room with hot water tank, expansion vessels, underfloor heating pipes and outside, mounted on a concrete slab, the ASHP unit.

To me the assemblage in the plant room looks like something out of a gothic horror novel, all those pipes and valves and control panels. A local friend described it as looking like “a steam train mated with a brass band” which made me laugh out loud.

The electrician needs to come next week to complete the installation before we can crank it up and start testing it.

But it’s progress! Once it’s in and working we can lay the rest of the flooring, which will be another major milestone.

Whilst the install operation was underway I hid in the Polycrub.

There’s always something happening in there at this point in the growing year and the tomatoes and squash are now so large that I can hide amongst them quite effectively.

Every morning when I open up the tunnel to water the plants I pick as I go, a sort of micro-harvest. A few ripe strawberries, a handful of peas, a few bunches of coriander, dill , parsley, some lettuce. It doesn’t seem like much, but soon it will mean that we won’t have to buy those things.

Once the freezer and dehydrator are up and running, we’ll be able to store surpluses. At the moment we share any excess with our friends and neighbours.

It’s like receiving a gift every day.

It’s so satisfying to feel that you’ve grown this yourself, and that it will be on the table by supper time. Small steps towards self sufficiency.

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Painting underway

We’ve spent the last few days (and will no doubt spend the next few months!) painting the walls in the house.

They’re all white, which we decided to live with for a year in order to assess the light and decide which colours would work best for us.

After first living with silver walls with the foil, then terracotta walls with the plaster (which I personally loved, although it’s not designed to be left unpainted), white seems remarkably bright. We’ve both got snow blindness after painting it for two days.

Plaster walls in the entrance hall
Trade white paint

The first coat, a mist coat, has just gone on in this picture. You can see that it’s a bit streaky and blotchy where the raw plaster has sucked up the thinned paint. It’s much better now that the second coat has gone on.

The first coat of white

For a slightly dark, north-facing entrance hall, with this picture taken on a grey and rainy day, the white really reflects what daylight there is and makes the most of it.

Interestingly, having brilliant white on the walls just reinforces that I love colour! I just need to get it right!

It’s increasingly starting to feel like a proper house now!

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Woodburner in the house!

I’ve always had a woodburner in my previous homes. I’m drawn to flames and the smell of woodsmoke. Some would say I’m just a socially well adjusted pyromaniac… maybe not even that well adjusted.

There’s nothing more relaxing on a cold winters day than curling up on a comfy sofa with the woodburner softly glowing and crackling away in a corner.

A SIP house with as much extra insulation as ours and underfloor heating to boot isn’t really in need of an additional heat source.

However, electrical outages and power cuts are common here in the islands during the colder months. Suppliers can take days, and sometimes weeks, to restore power to these remote areas.

The logical part of me reasoned that a secondary power source not dependant on the grid would be sensible for such times, providing warmth and the ability to heat basic food on the top, or potatoes in the body of the stove.

The wildly romantic and emotional side of me admitted that this wasn’t the main reason to have one at all.

The woodburner arrived with the installers yesterday afternoon. It’s an Opus 5kW stove, DEFRA approved and Eco design ready, meaning it matches the European regulations being brought in to clamp down on emissions of wood burning stoves that’ll come in later this year.

A day of hard work by Mathew and Kev and she sits resplendent in her corner ready for action. We need to repair the plasterboard on the ceiling where the flue has been cut through, but it’s nearly there.. We have a wee chimney too, firmly braced and tied into the roof against the prevailing winds. We will have fires this winter.

We’re receiving threats of visits with marshmallows on sticks…😊

One more step towards this house becoming a home! 😊

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Spring contentment and progress

I can’t remember how long I’ve nursed the fantasy of potting up plants in a warm greenhouse whilst sipping a mug of tea. Maybe listening to an audio book, or a podcast.

I’m such a party animal. I’m not ashamed to say that the quiet life is definitely for me.

Potting up

This morning I took my mug of tea out to the polycrub. I sat there in the warmth, perched at the camping table surrounded by the smell of damp compost and the sound of skylarks rising over the moors above us, and felt content. I even managed to pot up a few trays of young seedlings.

This was my first taste of pottering about in this sheltered space, growing things without being blasted by the south westerlies, and it was wonderful.

We’re slowly wheelbarrowing loads of woodchip from our tonne bag on the other side of the croft to make a weed surpressant covering over the cardboard. It’s about half way there, and whereas the old me would be stressing that I can’t complete it more quickly, the new me just accepts that it’s slow but that it will eventually get done.

There are several trays of young seedlings that will need potting up into my canvas grow bags over the next few weeks. It will happen.

The house is progressing well.

We have plasterboarded out some of the roof space walls upstairs now, so I have a much better idea of the bedroom dimensions now that the eaves have been boarded out.

A friend suggested a clever hack for extra storage in the often somewhat wasted space in the eaves. Most people put a cupboard door in the eaves, but it’s still a bit inaccessible.

Drawer units either side of the headboard space

We’ve bought a couple of drawer units and are building the eaves around them. Once finished, this will be plastered and painted white, leaving the two drawer units embedded flush in the walls. Easy to access, one on either side of the bed, and useful space.

I think it’s going to work well.

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Plate Spinning

It’s all happening on all fronts at the moment.

I feel as if we’re spinning lots of plates and at any time they’re going to come crashing down and make a proper mess of the floor.

Let’s hope not.

Whilst the plasterers continue strapping, boarding out and plastering upstairs, the plaster has now dried fully downstairs, and husband has started painting the first of the rooms.

Large tubs of paint

The walls are going to take three coats of paint, as the new plaster sucks up the pigment like a sponge. I suspect that we are going to be heartily sick of decorating by the time we’ve painted the whole house. Painted the whole house three times.. I’m not sure how well the plan to live with it for a year to get used to the light then redecorate with colour is going to hold! We may never feel like painting again 😊

I’m trying hard to focus on how much money that will save us and not the stiff backs, sore arms and paint splattered hair.

Whilst final ducting and plastering goes on upstairs we’re ordering the bulk of the things needed to finish the build now.

We always knew that the costs for flooring, kitchens and bathrooms would all come out at the same time, but it is a bit terrifying to watch thousands of pounds disappear like smoke from the bank account. The joys of self building, eh. And prices go up every time you look again at an item. Craziness, at the moment.

We’ve ordered the kitchen and utility room cupboard carcasses and are just about to do the same for the cabinet doors. The cabinet knobs all arrived last week. The external lights, spotlights and plug sockets are all here. The sinks, taps and bathroom fittings have all been ordered and will start dribbling in over the next few weeks. The floor and bathroom tiles should be here shortly.

Kitchen sink arrived!

We’ve still got doors, skirting, architraves and a staircase to order, but we’re getting there.

Plate spinning will continue for the next few months. I can’t say when, if ever, normal service will be resumed.

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Plastering progress

Our lives seem to consist of plastering and ordering at the moment.

The downstairs of the house is all nearly plastered now. Just a cupboard and the light well to finish, then we move upstairs to do the bedrooms. It’s drying well.

Drying plaster on the big walls

We’re really pleased with the quality of the finish. I’m glad now that we didn’t go with tape and fill. I secretly like the colour of the raw plaster, which reminds me of the sun-warmed walls of dusty Tuscan cottages. It smells like damp mushrooms as it dries, though.. not quite so romantic 😊

I’ve made a half hearted bid to keep it as it is, except I know it wouldn’t stay looking like this. Husband and Cornish Jeff have counselled me against this, sensibly, I know.

Painted it shall be.

Dining room end

I strongly suspect that it’s looking so attractive to me at the moment because the alternative, which is many, many weeks with a paint roller, is next on the cards. The paint and rollers have arrived. It’s going to be a long job.

Linen cupboard

Back to the ordering. We’re working on bathroom fittings at the moment.

Who knew that there were so many variations on a tap? Who knew that everything was going to skyrocket in price as it has? What a time to build 🙈…

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Let there be light

One of the challenges with the design of our house is that the kitchen was quite small and potentially a little dark.

All of the Hebhome designs for longhouses have kitchens that are small and minimalist. This was one of the bigger ones!

We figured with the addition of the utility room and the pantry, however, that we would be absolutely fine. We’ve just carved up the functional areas differently.

Big, seldom used appliances like a dehydrator or bulky, noisy appliances like the washing machine and tumble dryer go into the utility room, and dried or canned goods storage that I’d normally have in the kitchen go into the pantry.

The kitchen space also faces an internal wall without light, except the light that the large, double floor length windows in the dining area provide.

To counter this we asked the architect if we could install a roof window that would channel light through the sloping walls of the bedroom above down to the kitchen ceiling. It would be plastered to close the walls off from above and would be hidden in the roof slope of the upper bedroom.

Up until now during the build this has just been a square mark on the bedroom floor and a slightly odd pattern in the ceiling joists. But yesterday the plasterers cut through the bedroom floor, opening up the light well into the kitchen.

I was holding out on final kitchen finishes and colours until this happened so that I could establish what worked best in situ. The amount of light in that space makes a massive difference to the colours I’d been looking at.

So, ever onwards and upwards! We’re ordering flooring wood, tiles and kitchen units next.

It’s coming.

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Knobs. That is all.

I have been circling around kitchen choices like a lost soul for many months now. For me, the kitchen is the most important room in the house, and I’ve been agonising about getting it right.

I’ve gone through the “definitely going handleless and sleekly modern” to “definitely preferring a painted cabinet finish with handles” stage. Several times.

I could quote you catalogue page numbers from all the major manufacturers with my eyes closed. I can tell the difference between grey stone and slate grey finishes in a heartbeat. Not for me the indecision about integrated J handles and true handleless doors. Oh no. No longer.

I think I’m there now, though. A final, tortured decision has been torn from my befuddled brain.

In the end it all came down to knobs.

All the sleek, handleless kitchens had a bit of a smooth, laminated finish that I decided wasn’t for me. I also thought about how I cook, with pastry covered hands and sticky fingers. I’m tactile.

Handleless kitchens look super streamlined, and would probably be more in keeping with the open plan style of the house, but I’ve thought long and hard about the way I use my kitchen and I’ve decided that for me at least, handles are more practical as a choice. And that I just prefer a matt, textured finish on my cabinet doors (less sticky fingerprints, I’m convincing myself).

Knobs! They can look good 😊

We’ve decided to splash out on a heatproof, scratch-proof worktop in the form of Dekton, a stone-based product that is super strong. I can chop and wave my hot pans and oven dishes about with gay abandon.

We’re going with painted cabinet doors, with either cast iron or steel door knobs. The ones I’m quite taken with at the moment are actually based on an ancient Georgian design and are forged steel with a beeswax finish. I may still look at other finishes that may be easier to keep clean, but I love the way these feel in your hand. Very solid, comfortable and tactile.

I don’t think that it matters that this is a contemporary house with modern, slab door fronts but old style cabinet knobs. Does it? They add character and I like them, and that’s the most important thing. I’m hoping that if they’ve been around for hundreds of years already that they’re not suddenly going to go out of fashion tomorrow. I will not be swayed by all the shiny bar handles in the beautiful peoples houses one bit.

Knobs. That is all.

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The midnight plasterer

Our plasterer has arrived at last.

He’s a wonderful guy, imbued with a quiet energy and zen-like focus with long grey hair and beard. I didn’t notice if he was wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

He’s been here just three days and we already have four of the downstairs rooms taped, edges reinforced, sealed and the first coat of plaster applied.

Rather than travelling daily, he’s camping overnight in the house whilst he works. As far as I can tell from the depths of my cosy bed in the caravan he seems to be up and working by 6am, and as I write this at 10pm I can hear him still working away under the building lights in the house.

Our midnight plasterer is working like a Trojan. His plastering looks to be excellent. Even the basecoat that I looked at yesterday was as smooth as the icing on a wedding cake.

The rooms are slowly taking shape. It’s fascinating to watch the structure of the house gradually swallow up the kilometres of insulation, cable and ducting under a smooth skin of plaster.

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Frankenfold the Manifold

When I see internal walls start to go up, albeit without plaster, I dare to imagine that the end is in sight. It’s definitely starting to look more like a house.

We continue to move slowly towards completion with plaster boarding, wiring and ducting all now happening simultaneously.

Husband has been fitting the ducting to take the mechanical ventilation pipes (the MVHR system) around the house. These pipes all come together in an interim pit stop over the appliance wall in the kitchen before snaking their way across to the plant room to be connected to their master.

To say that our architects were optimists and highly impractical would be an understatement. Watching husband try to adapt the manifold to fit the pipes into the area allocated to it on the plans was painful.

Speaking to other Hebhome builders it seems that others give up or don’t even try, and instead site the manifold in a cupboard upstairs, but husband was not easily deterred, and some days later Frankenfold was born…

A child born of ingenuity and galvanised steel drainpipe to cap off the unused bits, the manifold was adapted to fit the space. Not pretty, but perfectly functional. Our very own Frankenstein creation.

It’s now all in position and connected, looking purposeful.

I’m very proud.