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.

Thursday 15 April 2010

It's theodolite time!

The tripods were placed over the nails that had been hammered into the tarmac when the topographical survey had been carried out. This alone was no mean feat since the survey was carried out two years ago and so lots of soil and grass had built up on the kerbs since then.
The tarmac was tenderly brushed and scraped (with car keys and a convenient bit of damaged guttering from the old site) and eventually the nails became visible, hooray! We would have had to redo the survey otherwise!
Based on the survey, lines have been drawn on the ground showing the positions for the footings.


Looking round the floorplan of the house it looks small but apparently this is quite normal for this stage.
I've heard that a digger may be returning soon....

No comments:

Post a Comment