Sunday 22 February 2015

Light at the End of the Tunnel

January 2015

The new year brought with it the promise of very bad weather. So the electricians came back to connect the heat recovery ventilation system's pipework to the HRV unit.

This meant that what ever heat we created with the stove this would be distributed throughout the house and would help dry the house out.

The pipes coming from the different rooms to the system unit are 150mm but the units connectors were 200mm so we had to put flexible connecting pipes. This is only a temporary measure until we can get the appropriate reducers and solid piping from Germany. 



A room outlet.

The connecting pipes are flexible and they should be rigid.

The link building was next on the list of items we had to finish. During the Christmas break I sourced a double glazed patio door that we could install into the link building. This will mean we can get to the terraced garden directly from the link building. 

We insulated the floor and applied a waterproof but breathable membrane under it ready to install a timber floor. Insulated the ceiling ready to apply plaster boarded.

The new patio door.


Putting OSB into the spaces between the joists so the insulation doesn't fall out.


200mm of wool insulation in two 100mm layers


Even though the roof panels were insulated we added an additional 150mm of wool insulation into the ceiling.


Using the board lifter for the plaster board.


Ceiling done and scratch coat of render on the walls.


For a few days we have very bad weather heavy snow falls and very low temperatures. Even the pond froze over.


Nearly 150mm of snow in one day. But went away in a few days.


The ice was a good 50mm thick.

During the cold snap the plasterer carried on with the link buliding. He rendered two walls with sand/cement and then plastered it.

Ready for painting.

The plasterer than started with the bottom half of the garage, the retaining, boundary and front walls.

He first "scudded" all the faces with a strong sand/cement mix. He than applied a scratch coat then a finished coat. The finished coat was given a "napped" finish, which was the same at the house. The final coat of render had a greater amount of lime in the mix giving the coat a much whiter and brighter appearance.


The garage wall scudded.

The eastern boundary wall.

The southern boundary wall.


 A section of the front wall.
The back of the garage.
He then started the scratch coat on the garage.

The north side of the garage.


Front of the garage between the garage doors.

While the plasterer was getting on with scratch coat of the garage we started putting on the pier and wall caps for all the walls. This had to be finished before the plasterer applied his final coat which went up to the caps.

Lots of pictures of walls and piers with caps on them.


The very first pier cap going on.



The very first wall cap going on.


Retaining or west side of the wall finished.


The first section of the south wall.


The east side wall with the second section of the south side wall in the background.

A section of the front wall.



No comments:

Post a Comment