Bricks and Cameras

Who'd have thought that so many varieties of bricks are available!  Following hints about what type may be acceptable to the planning officers, we got the builders to produce sample panels using a preferred brick with different mortars

Today the the planning officer attended to review the panels, and although the mortar is still up for discussion, the man from Cherwell District Council said yes!

Since 18000 of them are on order, this is something of a relief.

Although there does not look to be a huge amount of progress since the last blog, the builders have included the necessary holes for water, waste and electricity.  None of these are yet connected, but hopefully in the next few weeks. . . .

One of the sample panels

Building site in the sun

The willow still looks good!

The video below represents a week's-worth of work on the site.  We acquired a time-lapse camera which is keeping a watchful eye on progress.  Clearly nothing much happens at night or over the weekends (filming started on a Friday), but it does seem that work is taking place during the week.

One of us has a significant birthday at the end of the month, so we are escaping for a week-and-a-half in the sun.  Therefore this will be the last entry for a couple of weeks.  We've left the camera running though!

French Takeaway

Over the last few weeks we have had a 'French' digger on site.  It seemed to spend most of its time moving piles of earth from one part of the site to another.  Over the last couple of days, the last of the earth (at least for the moment) has been excavated to our site boundary and removed from the site.  This means that our digger (and its friendly driver) is no longer needed (again, for the moment), and could be taken away.  Could these be the end of the destructive phase and the start of something more constructive?

Now you see it

Now you don't!

Excavations Complete

A rare sight - no moored boats!

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!