Nothing to see

It's been a while since my last post.  This is not because nothing has been done, its just that nearly all the work is to do with the ground works and will eventually be covered up.
We now have reached the stage where all holes dug have been filled with concrete and there has been talk locally of a change in the local gravitational conditions as a result of all the concrete!

With a digger in our kitchen, it still looks like a building site

The various electricity companies have finally managed to provide us with a power supply, meaning that we are no longer depending on our very generous neighbour next door for power, and there is no longer an extension lead draped across her garden.  Although we are 'in the system', we are still waiting for a date when Thames Water will come and provide us with a water supply, so we are still relying on our neighbour's generosity for that.

Nearly (but not quite) at the level of the ground floor.

The next stage is to start construction of the ground floor.  This will then be followed by the delivery and erection of the SIPs next month.  'Structural Insulated Panels' are a fast and efficient way of building a house with very high insulation performance and low energy consumption.  They consist of accurately made wooden panels pre-filled with high performance insulation which are bolted together on site.  We will then face the external side of the SIPs with traditional bricks for the walls, and slate for the roof.  The resulting building will be pretty well airtight and therefore we have had to include a Mechanical Heat Recovery & Ventilation System (MHRV) to avoid being asphyxiated!
The next set of decisions we need to make refer to the garage.  More on this in future posts.

Another view of the building site.  Just look how neatly the willow has been trimmed though!