I have started a labourer on site as I just cannot keep up with the “little jobs” that I have been trying to do but that seem to end up taking up most of the day and just never seem to get finished so the sensible thing to do was take on some help which will give me the extra time to get things organised.

Today I have had him treating the Oak facias and barge boards that were delivered on Friday, as with the rest of the external Oak we are using Osmo UV protection oil.

Bricklayers have been continuing with the chimney’s  which are starting to take shape, I really need them to crack on as I want the roofers to start ASAP and they can’t until the chimney is on the roof .

At lunchtime I drove down to Bob at the joiners to give him a tin of the Osma so that he can give the frames a coat to seal them before they install them in the next couple weeks, I also had a sample of the Vale trickle vents so that he can router the holes in the Oak frame. While I was there we went through the sizes of the frame openings so that Vale can get on with the manufacture of the casments.

Having looked at a few of the underfloor heating companies out there I decided to order ours from Robbens Systems although they are based in East Sussex they have visited the site twice to make sure the quote given was correct.  Although it is designed as a self build system I have decided to use one of their registered installers so delivery to site will be in about 3 to 4 weeks.

I also ordered the guttering from Rain Clear Solutions, we have chosen the Evolve rainwater system made by Marley. I considered going down the cast Iron road but thought better of it when I considered both the cost and the maintenance cast iron would need.

The Marley Evolve guttering has the appearance of cast Iron but with the benefits of modern seals in the joints backed up with a silicon compound which is also supplied, made of a coated aluminium it will not rust and will hopefully give us many years of maintenance free service also I felt comfortable with it being manufactured by such a well known company as Marley.

Bed

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The crane was on site yesterday and today lifting some of the huge chamber beams in place.

I have ordered the Tudor roof tiles today, I have looked at others including Keymer which I thought just worked out to expensive and Midland Tile and Slate which I woried about the quality and as I have already had the Tudors on the garages and garden building I stuck with them.

So it is all coming together now but I still have to decide on heating, I know we want underfloor heating but I cant make my mind up between conventional gas with a condensing boiler or a ground source heat pump. My heart says go for the heat pump but the wallet can make the sums work and to cap it all I had a guy out from www.skuddair.com who specialise in Air Source pumps which sit in between both in terms of initial outlay and recoup time.

Ahhgggggggg!!!

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The visit gave me a good opportunity to get some advise on problems I will probably come across once the frame is up, I have to say if I thought it had been easy so far I think I might be in for a wake up call over the next few months and I really need to keep my wits about me as costly mistakes it would seem can be made pretty easy.

One important thing that I realised was the underfloor heating I was looking at from nu-heat in Devon could not be fitted in an Oak Frame because as their drawings showed it should be fitted to the underside of the first floor, this is not possible with the exposed Oak of the ground floor ceiling because there is a layer of Fermacell that layes on top of the Oak beams forming the ceiling meaning the first floor underfloor heating will have to be fitted in trays between the joists before the first floor is finished.

A quick call to Nu-heat and they confirmed they have the tray system and are amending our quote, I would be interested to hear of other peoples experiences or reviews of Nu-heat – good and bad.

The first costly mistake averted!

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