Welcome to our blog.

This blog will follow the ultimate in home improvement: demolish and rebuild!

This is our starting point: a 1930s bungalow. While not a bad house; it is too small for us with three teenage children so what should we do? A full storey extension versus complete rebuild - ultimately the stronger eco-credentials and more certain finances of a new-build helped to guide our choice.

For a number of years we've been trying to find the right route for us to build an eco-friendly, low energy home. We tried various architects and building companies and have eventually settled with a German prefabricated build. The new house will be nearly to passivhaus standards (but not quite due to budget constraints). In any case, the house will be heavily insulated and airtight.

As a family, we have not built a house before so everything is new and exciting but the risk of making a mess of things is quite high!

This blog aims to outline the day to day steps involved in our build.

Saturday 17 April 2010

Digging the trenches

This is a day for action.

The rainwater tank is delivered. James and Andy remove it from the delivery truck with sophisticated lifting machinery - muscle power.

Next, the essential digger arrives. It is an orange mean machine that's ready for anything.

The last essential ingredient is to check the plans and then James and Andy are ready to translate the plans into something concrete.







Finally, we've turned the tide from destruction to construction as the first of the trenches is dug.




The work progresses, is it a battle of man versus machine? Is Andy trying to tame a large orange dinosaur? Or is Andy showing James that he trusts him not to remove his feet?



And so the first day of construction ends with trenches all over the ground looking like an archeological dig. A bit of old water mains pipe was found but unfortunately no buried treasure.

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