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.

Monday 2 August 2010

Fresh progress

It is lovely to get to the details... Ebi has installed the skylight blind in all its blueness!
Ebi has continued to make amazing progress starting with the beginning of the bamboo flooring installation. He has now finished all four bedrooms! The flooring is more sustainable than oak and no pandas were starved to make it!
The first of the doorframes is installed too. My daughter is very pleased that her room is getting ready first.

The family bathroom now has its own bath! Paul and Joss were busy installing that today. The rest of the sanitaryware is going to wait until the decorating has been finished above the tiles.

Brian is back; helping to touch up the paint job (that we started) in the sitting room. It looks much better now, thanks Brian!

Meanwhile, the whole house mechanical heat recovery ventilation second fix has been going on. Here the plastic pipe is prepared to take its vent.

Ebi lends a hand, ensuring that the whole to the outside of the house for the exhaust air duct is just the right size, keeping the house as airtight as possible. The duct for the exhaust air is then pushed out the gap and everything is sealed in sticky tape.

Here the fresh air duct is being istalled. Apparently the lagging on the pipe is very sensitive and doesn't like to be squashed to fit. It was a difficult job to squeeze the pipe through but the guys managed it without even a bad word!

When the system was installed, the vents were then checked to ensure the optimum airflow was being achieved. That is what the large cone is for! The system is now ready for operation, so the house should always be fresh and the heat maintained within the house envelope. It has a summer bypass so we won't overheat in the summer and filters to extract the pollen; fantastic for the likes of us with allergies!

 When it was all finished, Brian gave Ebi a hand doing what was Charlie's job before - filling the gaps in the plasterboard!

1 comment:

  1. Flooring is one of the important part of the home and I have seen that most of the people prefer to use wood flooring. I was reading some article back and I came to know that Canada is one of the famous city to provide the home owners with wood flooring.

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