Wild Weather

Last night was a hideous experience. Scotland is suffering from a deep low pressure system with wild hairy winds which buffetted us yesterday evening, through the night and only this afternoon is easing. Gusts were 60-80mph and I didn't sleep more than 30 mins last night. The children did well sleeping til 3am and 5am before coming to find Mum (Dad being ensconsed in a London hotel!) We cuddled and snoozed, wondering if it could get much worse.

As daylight arrived there was debris all over the place but no obvious significant damage. The house has little building paper remaining and the roof sheets were off which means water penetration yet again but these are remediable. A friend phoned to see if we needed rescuing which was very thoughtful. The notable shock was that the hen house was on its side about 4metres from its previous position. I opened the door with trepidation expecting some unpleasant scene and can thankfully report no casualties. Poor devils must have got a bit of a shock. We've put the house back on its feet and replaced the bits and bobs.

This afternoon the storm has abated but there are some very active clouds with an awful lot of wind still blasting around. If it gets worse then we're staying at a friend's house tonight!


After refixing some of the building paper the joiners were inside today continuing with the roof insulation. The barn load delivered the other week is rapidly disappearing and the house is getting 'cosy'.

Saturday morning

Its just turned 9am on Saturday and we've taken a further delivery of Pavatherm Plus insulating board so the joiners can finish off the external insulation layer. There was relatively little activity on site yesterday as we were waiting for this delivery and the sliding door sets (3 off). The latter is now likely to be next week, but apparently has arrived from Penrith. I think these are around 6 weeks overdue and it's dissappointing that the windows from Norway arrived some four weeks ago and are now installed having been ordered at the same time as the patio doors! The main front door is also late and is sourced from Sweden.
The other happening this morning relates to the lame hen. Although it had a couple of better days in the past week it has now gone lame in both legs and is incapable of independent movement. So we had to wring its neck. I thought I could do this yesterday when it probably needed to be done but hen started clucking at me and I just couldn't so now that Steve has returned from working away he did the deed this morning. No, we're not eating it. There's no meat to speak of anyway but as we're not sure what's wrong with it it seems the best move....anyone with greater knowledge please advise!
We've got a fox prowling around. I need to repair/replace a bit of wire at the bottom of the gate to the hen pen before we go out this morning. There are fox prints on the top of the nesting box and on the roof of the hen house so we need to be sure to lock up quickly at dusk.I wonder if that explains the dead hares and rabbit the other week although I thought there would be more damage to the prey?
Rural living!......... we're off to Edinburgh today to see Santa, reindeer, lights, ice sculptures etc.

Wall Insulation

Thankfully we have plenty of storage space as the two main forms of wall insulation were delivered last week. The Rockwool Flexi 140mm batts are fairly standard, bulky, widely available and commonly used. The pavatex 'Pavatherm Plus' woodfibre board in the right of the picture is the non-standard element of our wall insulation. The latter is an insulating wood fibre board which is effective in reducing the U-value ie improving the thermal efficiency, in improving acoustic protection (not that we have any external noise problems!) and providing summer heat protection. It is used as an overcladding system for the timber frame in this application and will effectively 'block' most thermal through the frame and aid airtightness thus giving the best chance of this and the Rockwool insulation working at its best.

Today in the glorious sunshine the joiners made a start on the south gable. Also the suppliers of the Pavatherm board visited to discuss the product and its installation with the guys on site as well as Steve and I. Last winter when we were looking at specification/design issues for the house (that seems such a long long time ago!!!!!!) we had concern about it being an appropriate material in the wet West of Scotland as the insulation should be fixed dry but we were reassured by architects who had used it on self-builds in Scotland. The AECB also provided contacts through their forum which was beneficial in this sort of decision. The joiner had not used the product before but by the end of a very productive day he rated it very highly and enjoyed working with it.


On other matters the larch cladding arrived this afternoon but the timber frame manufacturer has sent the wrong profile so that will need to be replaced. Hopefully they will do this quickly. Also or architect has sent through revised details for the porch so that can go ahead now.

Slates have also arrived. The electrician and the chimney man are due tomorrow. Bathrooms and the 3 really large fixed and sliding windows are due on Wednesday. Bathrooms should have arrived last week but didn't...more chasing!

Portal frame arrives


Late afternoon yesterday saw the arrival of the prefabricated portal frames along with the brackets and bits to put them together. These are more than a week overdue and their late arrival has meant a temporary stop on site for a few days as nothing further could be done without them beyond the ground floor panels which are now in place .
However, things moved along again today as our main builder/project manager and two joiners started to the erect this steel framework into the gound floor panels. By the end of the day two of the three frames were in place and secured.
So why a portal frame? Well, this 1.5 storey house is very open plan internally with generous internal room heights (2.7m ground floor, 3.5m kitchen/diner, 2.9m first floor) such that the upper floor ceilings follow the roof line almost to the ridge, with a small loft space around 1.5m high. With this internal design it was tricky to use a (more conventional) truss system, so the portal frame is used to provide torsional stiffness to the building and carry a roof ridge beam, against which rafters will be supported for the roof. In effect, this is a contemporary take on a traditional method of roof construction.
In designing the roof we have also avoided the use of roof purlins (horizontal rafter supports) by using timber 'I-beams', each of which will span around 5m from eaves to ridge at a 45 deg. pitch and carry the weight of the slate roof supported only at either end. This not only keeps the internal structure clean and uncluttered, but their 352mm depth will be fully filled with insulation and their thin shear web minimises thermal bridging. The end result is a stiff, clean, super-insulated roof structure.
The down side to this constrcution has been additional labour/time and ultimately cost, but the end result should be worthwhile.

Wall plates installed


On Tuesday of this week the builders spent the morning fitting the wall plates (also called 'sole plates'). In timber frame construction these set out the plan of the ground floor layout and form the interface between the walls (both external and internal) and the ground floor slab/foundations.
The wall plates comprise timber of the same width dimension of the wall panels they support (ie. 140mm and 89mm), and are simply cut to length and laid on a bed of mortar (and damp proof course at the outside walls).
Whilst an apparently straightforward process, locating the wall plates in the correct positions is critical to the ultimate accuracy of the frame installation.
As an aside, this process also introduced a simple but effective airtightness detail to the building, in that the overhanging damp proof membrane (from under the slab) is folded back over the slab at the edges for later trimming and connection to the vapour membrane to be installed on the inside of the wall panels. Whilst not an essential detail (and usually omitted), this ensures an airtight and flexible linear floor/wall joint that should last through the first few years of the building 'settling' and drying out, a process often responsible for significant degradation of airtighness as cracks open between differing materials (eg wood/mortar) and thus worsening energy efficiency. Polythene membrane, being a flexible material, withstands this movement.
As an aside, airtightness is a key component to low energy building design alongside insulation, the minimisation of thermal bridges, orientation and glazing. Coupled with this it is essential to have an effective ventilation system to ensure good air quality inside - more on this and other airtighness details as the house takes shape.

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