Window Hunting

Above: Example of a recent house!


Any of you readers from AAM will know the story here, went to meet Margaret Sheeran of Sjodalshus this week and had a look at her sample windows. She has varying types Timber windows with a u-value of 1.3 window and frame, she can also do a timber window with a Low e glass that can bring this down to 1.0 and the same goes for their alu-clad version and all these windows are triple glazed!
I brought a sample from her office to my brothers architecture office he had there technicians look at them, they deal with windows all the time and are very impressed with the alu-clad version. They can finish the outside in a full range of the RAL and NCS colors and the inside can be painted or stained to any color you wish from RAL. I looked at the timber windows in her house (installed 8 years) and they looked immaculate with the original painted finish.
They do the Bi-fold door also and these look amazing, going to put one in our sitting room glass gable wall!
You do have to get someone to measure and install these windows for you but at the price and value for money that is no drawback to us!

Check the Google pages link item 12 for details on costing of the windows!

Margaret imports all her windows from Sweden.

In built Fish tank Corridor wall between entrance hall and Office

I must mark out the ope for this tank the weekend have always wanted one of these i reckon it will look great. Have built the wall as a block on flat specifically to serve the purpose of taking this tank, the wall in the hall will also be clad with a limestone type of slate it should look very well. These are items that are easily incorporated at the early stage as long as you know what you want.

Check out the links!

http://www.walltanks.com/tank_4.php
http://www.kooltanks.com/instructions/jumbo_inwall_instruct.html

Picture of the ope now added!!!

On going works

It has been unfortunate that i have had to take the blog off line, but it has been necessary, was contemplating deleting the entire thing, except that i have put so much work into it.


Anyway progress on site remains good the weather slowed the lads down slightly yesterday but today is looking good again. The ESB are coming to site today to agree the new proposed location for their pole and give us the location of the meter box. The lintels and cills and flu gatherer are due on site today and i must measure for the steel girders to the bigger opes in the sitting room to act as lintels and also two steel girders to act as purlins in the sitting room. Hopefully i can get a reasonable price on these!

Updated Photos Blocks

Have added photos to the slide show, things are progressing well at the moment hope the weather will stay good for us! Should be a lot of blocks completed by next Friday!

Photo Slideshow toolbar

Guys was just flicking through the slide show on the tool bar and you don't get all the photos unless you actually click into it for some reason and view it that way just to let ye know :)

Added some night time photos of the radon and insulation! Must get some pics with the concrete slab in and update it!

New Blogs on toolbar

We have some newly set up live blogs on the tool bar now under the heading of check these out, they should be interesting to follow!

• Watergate-house (AKA Bauderline)
  
• Selfbuild Cork (AKA Claire)
  
• Livebuild (AKA Villian)
  

Along with these new ones we have some very useful old ones that are not long completed from the likes of Yop and Dolanbaker.

Site Progres Procuring Materials

The lads are back on site since yesterday, i don't think that it had rained in the two weeks they were away and it started raining again yesterday just as they came back!!! I have ordered the Window cills going for the chunky concrete ones as we prefer the look of them have used them many times before and they make a much bolder statement with the window am getting them for €6/foot which i reckon is great value also ordered the 6&4" lintels at €1.45/foot which are also very cheap delivered for free from Middleton. They are also bringing down a flu gatherer at €30. Ordered Flu liners today from my hardware man 12 straight and 2 splayed to help achieve a draft and prevent air coming down the chimney! Have a meter box ordered and a hockey stick to suit!

Still have prices coming in for plumbing and roofing, and at the moment there is very little between them all! Hoping to have the block work complete in two and a half weeks get a roofer on board and get the windows measured!

Site hits yesterday...

Had 144 hits yesterday looks like people were looking for some news, work was hectic so never got to post. But I'm glad to see there is a lot of interest out there in the blog! Posts were updated today.

Paying Contractors/Suppliers

Have been going around for the last few days with my cheque book paying the various suppliers and contractors, they are all up to date now so it allows me track the actual spend for each stage of the build. i have an A4 lever arch file going split into five sections and each section within that split into the different suppliers. I have section for

1. Upto floor level
2. Upto Wall Plate
3. Roof
4. External & Internal Completions
   
5. Finishes

Each section within these five have the suppliers and all there dockets at the front of each then are there invoiced costs and receipts of payments for each.

Progress/Lack there of...

Well its been a week and a half since the floors were poured and I'm finding it hard to get the father back, the frost yesterday morning put them off once they looked out the window! At the moment there is nothing happening they are supposed to be back tomorrow morning and i have everything they need on site insulation blocks cement wall ties dpc and so on, i must go scudding my uncles house for him this Saturday and hopefully will finish painting the post and rail at my own place on Sunday with Jolly lady!!! Have the blocks laid out and stacked for the lads starting tomorrow and the father will set out the block on flat sitting room wall for me ill build this at the weekends and leave them concentrate on the fast work. More progress pics with floors in will be posted soon!
Still receiving prices from carpenters and plumbers will post a spreadsheet on the results once all received.

Self Build/Ikea in Belfast

Well our trip to Belfast went fairly well, left at 7 o clock Friday evening and had booked a room in the crown plaza in Dundalk for €75 for the room for the night arrived there at 11! Would highly recommend the hotel is a beautiful place and very reasonably priced.
The Sat nav came in handy and brought us right to the door of the kings hall for the building expo, got some great info and paperwork there plenty new products and i have people returning quotes to me on several items. Also met a truss company truss world i must send them some drawings of the roof they will spec and price the exposed trusses for the roof in the sitting room.
Found some beautiful stairs there, think we are going to use that design and get a local joiner to make it up for us! Also the stone cladding panels looked very well and we are thinking of putting this on one of the walls in the sitting room to make a feature of it!
The prices up the north were 5 to maybe 10% cheaper than down here ans several company's were prepared to do deals down here!
Henderson garage doors had a display there got a very good price on there new insulated draught proof up and over automated door.
After the expo we headed to Ikea i had been looking forward to seeing this place with all the talk i had heard about it, we started off on the wrong foot with the sat nav bringing us to a dead end down by Belfast's docks thank god it was bright cause id say its a scary place by night! I don't know if it is Ikea's website or the sat nav that was wrong but we had typed in the postal address from their website! We eventually got there with good old fashioned sense of direction head for the airport you cant go too wrong!!!
When we arrived there, there is a four story car park dedicated to the shop and an open air car park further back all were full its a wait just to park, when we got inside i was very disappointed with the quality and design of the majority of the furniture and me and the jolly lady certainly wont be making any purchases there she was even more disappointed than me!!!! The place was busy but negotiable and it was the stuff that was more off putting than anything else, to add insult to injury we left and it took the best part of two hours to get back to the kings hall where the expo was on, it's on the road home. The traffic was absolutely crazy!

Garage Plans

The garage plans have been progressed by my brother "The architect" we are hoping to incorporate a 1 bed apt in the upstairs of this as can be seen in the plans.
Click on the googlepages link in the toolbar on the left to view. If anybody is looking for an architect he is newly qualified he would be more than willing to have a look at it! Contact me through the blog for details.

Self build home and rennovate show this weekend

Our valentines weekend away is a trip to Belfast leaving on Friday to head to the show on the Saturday we are also going to take in IKEA as part of a scouting mission.

http://www.selfbuild.ie/selfbuilder/exhibition.asp
http://www.selfbuild.ie/selfbuilder/admin/uploads/exhibitors_belfast.pdf

Be sure to get your tickets on line if you are thinking of going, will get them for half price.
Unlike the last show that i canceled to go to a stag, ill post about this one next week! :)

Update on Budget Tracker

Did not foresee all the costs to this stage and some of the problems which we ran into, it has been an experience already, with plenty more work ahead of us; floors in and complete starting to pay suppliers now our final account to this level is circa €46k!
View the budget tracker in the link in the tool bar it gives all cost details and reasons why we have went over budget and needed various materials.

Floors Poured

Well all went to plan and poured the floors yesterday ran out of radon so that caused a bit of a delay i had not allowed enough for laps and leaving it run over the walls even though i ordered 60sqm more than the floor plan size.
32 M3 of concrete to the floors and they were still being power floated last night when i got home from work so gave my dad a hand we were home for 9!
Let the site sit now until Tuesday and get two loads of blocks dropped on the base then. My dad is on site this morning finishing the block work to the garage.
I must start pricing pre-cast concrete company's for supply of lintels and window cills. Order DPC wall insulation wall ties, chimney flues and flue gatherer.

All in all things are going well fingers crossed.

The Progress in pictures

Updated Photos

Have finally updated the pictures, for the full size pics click on the slide show in the tool bar and read the captions for an explanation. The pictures do not do the size of the base justice! Its nice to see from the start all the way through to floors though, i think it chronicles the mess that it was very well!

Maybe it does justify spending €6k on stone!!!!!!!!

Umm Progress.!!!

I guess we are a week ahead of where we should be as the blocks are all laid on flat, they did not need much time to settle. The rooms are nearly all filled now with a 2to4" stone compacted and wacked and then a 2" fine stone compacted and wacked and finished with a fine limestone dusting which will prevent any damage to the radon barrier. I was out there saturday with the tracks machine and we filled the base to within 18" of the floor level, the lads are due to put down radon sumps and pipes and drainage pipes today.
My father is laying the blocks to the garage we were short 450 blocks so had those delivered this morning. Hopefully he can finish this today and it will allow us to fill it; and concrete the floors the same day as the house, and we will only have to hire the powerfloat for the one day and we can off hire the wacker also!

Subsoil is being removed everday currently 22 loads gone and plenty more to go!

I also finished off the final touches to the post and rail fencing i put on 13 no 12" pigtails with the white horse tape running through them as the landowner is keen to get his horses in!

Hoping to pour the floors on Wednesday weather dependant!!!

I took plenty photos on Saturday will post them tommorow!

Alll in All progress is going good; apart from todays foray to the coursing in clonmel by one of the blocklayers! You know who you are!!! (",)