Been a long time.....

4 months have gone past fairly quickly, with quite a lot done on the build to look at.
Pictures are more descriptive then I could ever write, so thankfully we've taken plenty.

Some things have changed slightly during the build, and I'll outline them below, but overall, its essentially how we envisioned the house.

First off, pipes laid for radiators. Hot water tank will have to go downstairs as the location we planned upstairs would not have been structurally sound for the size of new tanks. Because of this, the adjoined garage is instead going to be utility room/workshop, and the hot water tank is going in there. We're getting the plumber to chase the supply and extracts for the rads so we wont have pipes sticking up from the floor. Nice and tidy.

Blockwork begins!! Didn't actually take any pics of the finished floor, but it was a very smooth even finish, in fairness to the guys that poured it. Should be no problem flooring straight on to it.
We were blessed with the weather for the blockwork. Great to see how much progress the lads could make so quickly.

Steel for the sunroom goes in. Unfortunately, a small mix up was made here, and the steel was placed as if a standard cavity was being used, ie. to near the inside leaf. This was gonna cause a problem with fitting the windows in relation to DPC, at the point where the steel meets the main body of the house. We didn't spot this until it was roofed. Only solution, and it worked out quite handy, was for the blocklayers to cut a slice of blockwork off, and key in the opposite side and build it to match.
View from inside after joisting and upstairs flooring was done. Starting to get a feel for the inside layout. You can just make out the door from hallway into living room. We decided to block this up after. Gives more flexibility for furnishing, and it was a door that would have rarely been used anyway. But, with the lintel in, we always have the option to revert back.

Plans didn't quite match up to reality when it came to the porch roof's relation to the window above it. Had to reduce the height of the window, but not a huge loss as they are fairly large windows to begin with.

Unfortunately for the roofers, the weather eventually broke!

So, this is pretty much where we are at the moment. We have fascia and soffit put on, just haven't got a pic of that yet. The entire house outside and in has been scudded. All the freezing weather lately has put off any more plastering, so some slating still to finish also.

We have the majority of window frames and glass, just waiting on some last bits to fit them. Went with triple glazed PVC in golden oak. Whole window u-value of .9, so hoping they'll be efficient enough. Returned the inside leaf for windows using L blocks, so ended up with a cavity of 135mm for these. Using Xtratherm cavity closers. Straps for solar panels fitted nicely while slate was going on, going with Kingspan's evacuated tube system. Hopefully its not so long before I have something substantial to throw on here again.

Flooring

Got our Quinn-lite blocks, so they were laid just before the block on edge along all walls. Things are moving along a bit now. all ground floor waste pipes in place, water pipes including for American fridge are in place in two locations for flexibility.
All hardcore and blinding in, radon barrier down, and 100mm xtratherm insulation down with 25mm perimeter insulation against all walls, inc internal.
Just waiting for rad pipes to go down, then in goes the concrete.

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Things have progressed a little in the last while. Cavity size has been increased from 150mm to 200mm. We now have concrete poured and a couple of courses of blocks laid. Just waiting for some Quinn-lite blocks to arrive before we can go any further (tomorrow, fingers crossed!). We're putting in one entire course of these as a kind of ring of insulation, hopefully to reduce heat being lost from the walls down into the foundations. Block on edge will go on top of the Quinn-lites, and the floor will be poured inside this.

We've acquired a 20ft container so that gives a little extra security.
Got our wall tie's, going with Qwik-fix glass fibre ones, http://www.qwikfixings.com/glass-fibre-wall-ties.aspx. Trying to cut cold bridging wherever possible.
The well has been bored too. All 240ft of it. Great lads doing it, http://www.crosswaterdrilling.ie/
Done in one day, and a tidy crew.

We also piped off the southern and eastern sides of the site which had big gulleys running the length of them. We used 9" Corripipe and covered with stone. We'll cover with earth eventually, and you'll never know there was gulley's there in the first place!

Just a little flick of the view.
Starting facing West, through North to East.
This is what we'll be looking at from the rear of the house.

Just going to stick in the plans here. Hopefully the house will resemble these when we're finished!

This has been a long time in the pipeline.

This is (hopefully) going to be a 2300 sq/ft story and a half traditional concrete build, with some up to date features. Hopefully this will strike the balance between a sturdy well built home with good energy efficiency, at a reasonable cost.

Ideas and methods are constantly being refined. There are so many options and routes to go with building a house at the moment, its very easy to get overwhelmed.

I'm just hoping to do as much as possible towards energy efficiency, without making investments that will never pay back within my life.

At the moment its going to be :-
-100mm of Xtratherm in the floors,
-150mm cavity in the walls full filled with beads,
-45/50mm(insulation) insulated plasterboard on interior of all external walls,
-Xtratherm Rafterlock for the roof,
-Vacuum tube solar panels,
-HRV unit for ventilation,
and as airtight as possible!

Also obviously insulating between all dry walls and in ceilings but not sure on best practice/products for this yet.

This is the view from the rear of the house, with the machine on site for the first day.
Job one was break through the ditch for an entrance. Taken care of in minutes!
Followed closely by clearing the gulley running the back of the site, and erecting fencing and sheep wire along the 75m length.



Next up, clearing the footprint of the house to get a better idea of the ground for foundations.

After that, there was the small job of clearing the gulley inside the entrance to the site, laying 2 lengths (joined) of 6m corripipe, and 4 loads of fill on top of that to get a temporary driveway. Not bad for 1 days work.

Day 2 was tidying the footprint along with exposing any rock that needs to be broken. Fortunately, the ground is solid with only 2 significant pieces of rock.

Very lucky with the guy doing the clearing and foundations, knows his stuff and is a wizard with the machine.

Overlooking view of the site.

This build will quite likely take a long time, so updates might be far between, but hopefully people might get some ideas from it like I have from other blogs on self builds.

I'd appreciate any comments or alternative ideas on how to go about the various stages.