We walked up our local hill the Dumpling this morning which is always a pleasure, the view of Loch Lomond is awe-inspiring every single time. We've had lovely weather this weekend with tiny specks of dry snow sneaking in from the east. Yesterday was tiring as it was spent in town at various furniture/plumbing/DIY places so everyone was grumpy and fed up. Today has been filled with fresh air and sunshine with walks and outdoor activities. This afternoon we used some spray paint to mark out the areas immediately outside the house which will be hard landscaped for footpaths and patios, it wasn't too difficult (away from the cold easterly) to imagine summer evening barbecues. We then salvaged trailer-loads of wood from the site which are surplus to the build but will provide fuel for the wood burning stove for many years to come.
This week is massively busy with the kitchen and utility room fit-outs starting tomorrow, the external hard landscaping including sorting out the levels around the house will be underway, lighting is being fitted and the tiler continues with the ground floor slates.
There's no staircase yet, the design was in theory signed off in December, delivery 5 weeks thereafter, some apparent communication issue between architect and timber frame manufacturer whereby one expected measurements from the other which didn't happen, builder expecting delivery, calls not being returned.

local wildlife

Its noisy here tonight - half an hour ago there were 2? foxes shrieking outside, I haven't heard that noise before and thought someone was in trouble or an animal was being killed, it being such a piercing shriek. I managed to catch them in the beam of the big torch so they scamped off. An amazing and most unpleasant noise. Then a barn owl has been hunting and there's a whole lot more shrieking going on.
There is some woodland 100metres east of the farm which provides plenty of cover for foxes and deer. Two weeks ago a young deer was killed by a vehicle just past the farm entrance, 20 minutes later it had been reclaimed by a neighbour for lunch and dog food (sorry are you eating?).
The huge greylag geese population we have locally over winter has significantly moved on to pastures new, the curlews are here with their wonderful call and a 'swarm' of starlings were doing that fabulous sweeping dance through the sky.
A magical sight yesterday was watching two brown hares boxing in the field below the house and caravan. There is a big population of brown hare here, they are beautiful creatures. Springwatch here we come, I'll be Kate Humble rather than Bill Oddie though!

Hens eat fries!

The apple trees in position - if you look closely you can see 2 McDonalds fries on the cardboard, the scaffolders thought the hens might like a snack

The exterior revealed

The scaffolding is just about down after a day and a half of disassembly and the render is dazzingly white. The polythene over the ground floor windows will be removed after the renderers have finished covering the grey you can see at the bottom of the house, this may happen tomorrow depending on the extent of rain forecast. We haven't had rain for a week now I think.

Feel Good Day

We're back in the caravan now and love being at the heart of it again. Glorious weather here at present so I spent the early morning putting cardboard 'mulch' circles around the newly planted apple trees to keep the weeds at bay. There was no wind so it was really beautiful being out in the Spring sunshine and I was thinking of putting a bench seat in the new orchard. It's a bit rich calling it an orchard yet but Steve and friend Allan planted 12 apple trees yesterday. I chose mainly Scottish heritage varieties from Butterworths organic nursery who are renowned for the quality of their stock and for the range of species they grow. Very kindly the nursery added an extra tree to the bundle but I haven't worked out where that should go - should I just pop it in with the others and ignore the separation distance they're meant to be or put it in the ground elsewhere and hope it pollinates, ether way its temporarily heeled in nearby.
Here's my list of species:- Dessert Apples are White Joaneting which dates from before 1600 and produces early fruit from August, Thorle Pippin (2 of) a Scottish apple first described in 1831, Charles Ross which fruits from Sept to Dec and is a cross of Peasgood Nonsuch and Cox's Orange Pippin, Golden Pippin (2 of) which was described in Scotland's first gardening book in 1683 as the 'best variety for Scotland', Wheeler's Russet which is originally English but was grown in the big Clydesdale orchards in the late 1700s and is a late cropper from Jan to March, Maggie Sinclair is also probably from Clydesdale and finally for the dessert apples is the Ribston Pippin which I chose as it heralded in 1707 from Knaresborough which is the nearest apple connection to my place of birth. Culinary apple choices are Stobo Castle which is an early cooker from Stobo, Golden Spire which originally hails from Lancashire (as does Steve) and is a good cider variety so we can dust off our apple press in seasons to come, Scotch Dumpling which has particularly attractive blossom apparently and is another Clydesdale species, Scotch Bridget which dates from the 1850s and crops from Oct to Dec.
I've spent quite a few hours reading up on the subject and working out the best species for our site (wet and windy west), its conditions (fairly shallow soil with rocky strata), the pollination days of each species to ensure they remain fertile and cropping times so we that we don't end up with too many apples at the same time. Obviously we'll have far too many apples but it'll be fun to see it all grow over years to come.

Ventilation strategies

As for living comfort at the levels of airtightness we are building to, it becomes necessary to use a whole house ventilation system. For this there are two main options; Mechanical Extract Ventilation (MEV) and Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery (MVHR).

Airtightness details

Having specified and designed a house to meet the AECB’s Silver Standard, airtightness plays a key role alongside high levels of insulation to achieve a low energy house. In our case we have followed the AECB’s Silver Standard construction details for timber frame buildings which advises the use of a continuous air/vapour control layer inside the building with all joints lapped, sealed and mechanically trapped.

Brickbats and Bouquets

Life is immensely busy so when we get great service from someone it is terrific and of course when we have to spend lots of time chasing people or doing someone else's job its a real pain. One of our future projects is the development of two holiday lets (more another time on those) so we're building up bank of people and places we'd like to use again. This list isn't exclusive, maybe at the end of the project we'll compose a list of the best products, people and places.

Internal and External Finishes

Storms & membranes

Once again, now the joiners have finished the roughings (plasterboard etc) inside the house and are ready to move on with the larch cladding outside, we’re getting battered by gales and rain. Nevertheless, despite getting a soaking in their first ten minutes outside yesterday Craig and David did one wall of the three to be larch clad and we’re delighted with the results. Ironic really, as the larch which the kit company sent was completely the wrong profile to what we specified, but we actually quite liked it and went with it!
The profile specified was ‘bevelsiding, which is wedge shaped in cross section and simply overlaps the board underneath. But we were sent a more robust tongue and groove profile which interlocks with adjacent boards, a detail which I feel adds a more robust line of defence against the weather.

Progress...

8.30am long view towards the farm from behind our local hill, The Dumpling

Tiles 'R' Us

We've now sourced, and agreed on, tiles for all three bathrooms. My able assistant is showing the accent tile for the ensuite shower. For those of you who know the Hillington industrial estate in Glasgow you will appreciate the number of tile showrooms there are available and the angst of then getting the man of the house to approve selections. I bought the tiles for the ensuite and family bathroom this morning and just need to go back with accurate measurements for the downstairs bathroom as the dimensions of that have altered recently. The tiler is booked for next week so we'll see big changes inside. The white goods for the bathrooms are all in place now. I also swapped the shower tray for the downstairs room because of last minute adjustments there ensuring the door width complys with disabled access regs. The change made the shower tray larger than plan.

Friday

Our camera has gone awol so unfortunately there are no photos again today. Its looking good though on another sunny chilly day! It seems fairly quiet on site today (only 2 white vans!), the joiners have plasterboarded the kitchen and dining room today and the electrician is tidying up/routing the masses of wiring to the consumer unit in the utility room. It looks like mission control in there. The BT cable is being fed into the house before the external render is started which is due to happen from Monday.

Hello again after another week has passed in a flurry of activity. The weather has changed significantly for the better and it has been dry for nearly a week which is quite remarkable after at least a month of driving storms. We spent a lot of time outside at the weekend, I was planting bulbs and Steve was building the climbing frame. With the advent of fine weather after such a long spell of hibernation it seemed that many of our local friends were out for walks and cycle rides so popped by for a viewing and it was a real pleasure to have so much progress to show people.
The big event of last Thursday was the switch on of the heating system and by Friday the builders were over warm and had all the windows open. We were mightily relieved and feel quite chuffed that it is already performing so well - partly because some observers are unsure of our reliance on renewable energy so its good to have an early positive response and mainly because we're desperately looking forward to living in the house. The system is being commissioned tomorrow. It will be interesting over the course of the first full year in the house to see how the comfort levels change and what running costs we encounter.
We need to have paint colours decided and bathroom tiles purchased by the end of this week for the upper floor so feel slightly under pressure. The bath and washbasin are fixed in the family bathroom and most of the other goods are in our en-suite if not actually plumbed in. I'm collecting an alternative shower tray tomorrow whilst on the way to order the kitchen and utility room cabinets.
Externally the brickwork is complete and I think the rendering commences next week. There appears to have been a change from the early days when Steve and I thought we were getting a smooth white render and the current drawings specify wet dash. I think this is being resolved but to be honest I can't remember where we're at with this..........just about sums things up as we juggle house building needs with the business and family. Plenty of evenings of work for us and lots of scraps of paper and lists here and there.

Getting there....

The final window in the house has been fitted and is this triangular piece to the south west corner of the master bedroom window. This is one of those architectural details which just adds something a little more to the overall scheme. Originally it was to be 50% larger and would have been the better for it but it is still a refreshing detail. One of the balances in self-build is to order goods in sufficient time to avoid delays so we had ordered (and now own) the original 50% larger window. Unfortunately it transpired that the architect's plans did not concur with the timber frame manufacturer's and...the client picks up the tab, hmm. We have thought to use the spare window in one of the holiday lets but its not a great idea to design a whole building around one window just 'cos it happens to be spare...but we'll see if it fits somewhere.

Heat pump installation

Work started on installing our heat pump last week. We have specified a Nibe 1240-5kW - the smallest capacity they make - with integral 'tank-in-tank' hot water cylinder. It 's a very neat unit, being the same size as a 1.9m tall fridge freezer. The pipework next to it will be ultimately enclosed in a cupboard which will still have some storage space at the front, whilst allowing access to the pipes at the back if need be.
Specifying a heat pump uses the opposite logic to specifiying a combustion boiler, as it must be just undersized to operate at its most efficient when taking into account the building's heat loss and anticipated peak heat requirement. The reason for this is that heat pumps dislike being 'cycled' - switched on and off - and actually benefit from running for longer periods at a time than conventional boilers. In extreme circumstances where, say, there is significant heat and hot water demand (eg. Christmas with visitors!) then the heat pump employs an electrical element to supplement itself, but the trick is to set things up so this hardly needs to be used at all, electricity being a relatively high-carbon form of energy.
The unit is being installed in our utility room where all the pipes from the ground loop, hot and cold water, underfloor heating and 1st floor radiators/towel radiators terminate. The guys are making a neat job of connecting this spaghetti together and hopefully by late next week we should be in good shape to switch on and get some heat into the 40 tonnes or so of concrete which forms the floor slab.
As it happens one of the founders of the heat pump supply company - Ecoliving - popped round yesterday to look at our windows (he's building an extension to his own house!) and he told me that the heat pump even had a setting to dry the floor slab out over a four day cycle, this will be important before we fit engineered board flooring.
Anderson Floor Warming of Glasgow are doing all of the plumbing in the house using a German plastic/aluminium pipe system. Hot and cold feeds are fed to manifolds from which each tap is fed, thus reducing pipe runs. Also the hot water feed is circulated from and back to the hot water tank at peak use periods (controlled by a timer) such that when a hot tap is switched on, hot water appears almost instantly.
Apart from the plumbers, the rest of the guys on site have never built a house with a heat pump in it and we are all waiting in anticipation for switch on!

In amongst the quagmire, building rubble, scaffolding and general building site detritus we have signs promising the return of life to the land. There is very little planting to speak of here (so far) but the rhubarb last year was gigantic and gorgeous so its exciting to see new growth. If I get my act together I'll get some buckets over a couple of plants to force some early crop. However as its driving rain and howling wind just now and there's a huge dump of snow forecast it'll certainly not be happening this weekend.

Inside the building the heat pump is being installed. It is a heavy piece of kit and took everyone here today to move it into the utility room. We've agreed its final position and from there Steve and I can order the utility room cabinetry. In a few days time the heating will all be connected and set to work. It'll take quite few days to come through as the pipework is deep in the slab but this will help dry the concrete before we look to putting flooring down. It'll also help to warm the rest of the house. Before the electrician left earlier he switched the heat recovery system on as it is now in place. We're pleased to report it is silent in its operation.