Throwing Light on the Subject

The plaster was drying out very nicely and my wife was champing at the bit wanting to get some paint on the walls so I had to let her have her head. After one of our regular visits to B&Q and Wickes we had sufficient paint and materials to get a primer coat on the walls. Let there be light !! its amazing what one coat of primer can do to the light values in an otherwise dark interior. However I think we got the cart before the horse here as a coat of primer prevents any regular building adhesive from sticking to the wall so all skirting and architraves had to be mechanically fixed rather than using the modern way of sticking them.

White walls but no light fittings.

Without electric light indoors at any time of the year it can be too dark to work long hours so the lights were next on the agenda, however the mains were not connected to the consumer unit. Yet!  All the wiring had been provided by yours truly during the first fix and now it was time to fix sockets and switches, lights and controls. At the earliest stage of design we decided to opt for chrome hardware through out the house so all our switches and sockets are of the chrome variety all courtesy of Screwfix. Screwfix opened a business account at the early stages of our build, as did B&Q trade and our friendly local builders merchant. Anyway I digress, having fixed all the electrical fittings we had to dig up the driveway ?? That's right, the electric supplier will only excavate in the public highway so as we were the builders it was up to us to lay a pipe(a genuine article supplied by a builders merchant) to provide a connection to the consumer unit.

Me doing some basic testing whilst connecting sockets in the loft.

Hand digging through road stone to lay a pipe for the electricity supply

Not great pictures but you can see a couple of the sockets I fitted. I am not qualified to certify a mains installation so my friendly local electrician did that for me. He quipped that he had tested a grand total of 54 double socket outlets. I know I said ' I fitted them! '

Anyway after he had completed his testing and the mains had been provided and connected to the consumer unit, Eureka! we had light.

Kitchen Lights On

Temporary Lights in the Living Room pending some nice fittings.

The house was coming together now and with each stage the prospect of moving in permanently was becoming closer and more exciting. That was a relief because not surprisingly we had spent three years getting to this point!! However there was much left to be done, not the least of which would be the plumbing. Water is a prerequisite of  a modern home, baths and all that. So that is the next topic for 'TheRealSelfBuildBlog'

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Getting Plastered

The big day arrives and this is where the shell of our build begins to look like something resembling a house, 'THE PLASTERERS ARE IN'

Six big young lads turn up, trowels at the ready and are straight in, sheets of plaster board everywhere, mixing buckets and baths in every room, materials in every corner. These guys mean business!! The first day sees all of the top floor boarded out ready for the skim coat. The second day the boss takes over fixing plaster board with the dot and dab method whilst several of the others start the skimming on the top floor. A sight to behold, the way these guys handle the plaster, rapidly mixing, skimming the plaster evenly onto the plaster board and after a ten minute break for drying, polishing off to a fine finish. A wondrous sight!

Two days work and the second floor is boarded and plastered

 Preparation is everything. Boarding out the landing on the first floor and covering up the banister. Notice the pink fireproof plasterboard for the ceilings, part of building regs for three floored buildings

 Master bedroom boarded out ready for skim. Boy do these guys work quick.

 Another room skimmed.

Of course the downside to this onslaught is the mess. What was once pristine chipboard flooring was now a patchwork of plaster stains. Next time (if there is such a thing) a proprietary protective floor covering will be applied. Lesson learnt?

Meanwhile whilst all this pandemonium was going on my wife and myself were demoted to tea boy and assistant as there was little else to get on with, however we were already planning the next phase, 'second fix'. 

Ground floor preparation

A week later and all the plastering was done, every room in pink, well not quite! the plaster is very dark and has to dry thoroughly which may take days if not weeks, meanwhile my wife was dying to put on a first coat of paint.

The finished product. Very neat.

This part of our build was the largest item which we did not do ourselves (for good reason) however it was also the most expensive single item in the build amounting to approx £12000. So to all you would be self builders out there, be aware!

Anyway that was a major milestone in our build and as I said the next phase would be second fix, however that's for the next time on 'The Real Self Build Blog'

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Prep for Plaster

Now I can do a good job of most things when it comes to building and I can do the odd repair job when it comes to plastering but I have to draw the line when it comes to plastering a whole house. The process of plastering may not be particularly technical but the skill level has to be admired, so I cheerfully handed this job over to the experts, but there was a range of other jobs to get done first. 

I have mentioned before about the choice of a suspended block and beam construction for the first floor, how solid it seems and how it provides a stable platform to work on, but it has it's downside, there's nothing to fix the plasterboard ceilings to!! A matrix of  timber was required across the whole of the ground floor ceiling, easy and quick to say, but time consuming to provide.

Timber Matrix fixed to beams

The matrix consists of 2x2 timber attached to the concrete beams with a steel bracket, bent over and secured with nails, then timber noggins at appropriate spacings fixed between. The brackets are only hooked over the beams and trapped under the blocks, is this going to hold up the weight of the ceiling?? Well its still up there!.

Another job to get done before plastering was to screed the floor. I did not expect to have to do this one because as we would be tiling or timbering(is that a real word?) the ground floor it would not be necessary for it to be perfectly smooth,  but the unfortunate circumstances at the beginning of the build ( see 'Getting on with it') rendered the floor like the ocean waves, so screeding it was.

A young chap just starting out on a new business adventure, popped his head in one day and offered to do the floor with a flowing gypsum based screed, the price seemed good, a quick job(one day) and a perfectly flat floor was the promise. It looked good and offered a great solution except that, it was twelve months later when I asked him to do it, he had established his business and the price had gone up. However it was a great job, another layer of insulation, dpm,and 40mm flowing screed and it was done. No one said to me that it would be necessary to scarify the finished surface in order for anything to stick to it though, more of that later!!

Polystyrene laid prior to DPM and screed

Kitchen floor showing completed screed. Lovely finish

The trouble with having bedrooms on two floors (amongst other things) is that at least 100mm worth of sound deadening insulation is required between floors. Not too bad a job I hear you say, until you consider how to hold it up there until the plasterboard is fixed. A lot of pondering then several bundles of string and a good stapling gun is what was required! plus loads of suitable insulation. (Wickes do bats of suitably stiff insulation, which we bought rather a lot of). It was a good game for a few days, my wife holding up the insulation whilst I stapled a criss-cross network of string to hold it in place. Job done!

Insulation between the joists held up with loads of string!

Of course there was quite a bit of first fix joinery to do before the plasterers arrived and that involved fixing door linings to all openings, constructing a false chimney over the planned kitchen range(see above picture), fixing the remaining stair spindles (although in hindsight this would have been better left until later) making false ceilings in the sun room to accommodate lighting(see below) and constructing false walls in the bathrooms to conceal the cisterns and piping.

Because the ceiling was sloping we had to provide false bits along the edges of the sun room to accommodate the lighting

I hate boxed in pipes! so I was determined that all pipework was made as discrete as possible and to this end we decided to conceal all the cisterns and soil pipes behind false walls in all the bathrooms and to have suspended basins and loos. This decision involved considerable timber framework strong enough to support a wall mounted loo with someone sitting on it!

I'm getting the cart before the horse here because in this picture the plastering is done, but you can see the framework provided for the false walls.

Substantial timber framing to provide false walls where cisterns, soil pipes and water pipes could be concealed and provide a cleaner look to the bathrooms.

Framework for Luxury Bath. Don't look much now but I assure you it will

We don't have much thievery around hear being a remote little village, but during this period I was aghast to one morning to wake up and find my Landrover had walked, off the driveway!! Security suddenly became an issue and as we stored much of our building materials in the garage we thought it high time we fitted the garage doors.

 Beautiful garage doors with well engineered Hormann Frames and Cedar cladding. 

Supplied by The Garage Door Company

I then had to find a new car and spend precious cash

I have only included here a few of the many jobs we did in preparation for plastering as they are too numerous and basic to mention so it's on with the next big step, plastering.

Plastering Supplies arrive courtesy of B&Q

A good price matching deal from B&Q provides all the materials required for the next job, but that's for next time on the 'The Real Self Build Blog'

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Water Works

First fix electrics were in and it was time to do first fix for the plumbing. I have always enjoyed plumbing work, soldering joints etc there is something satisfying about cleaning up the ends of copper pipe, the inside of Yorkshire fittings, coating with flux and heating the joint so that the solder flows uniformly around the joint making a neat water proof seal, sad or what? Anyway I originally started off intending to do all the plumbing in copper but ease of use and cost soon put paid to that. Before long I was using plastic for all pipework where ever it was supported throughout its length.  Unsupported plastic pipe set into pipe clips looks awful where they are exposed and I suspect have the potential to fracture over time due to the drooping effect of the pipes as they expand with the heat. Although individual copper fittings are generally cheaper than plastic a joint of some kind is required at least every 3mtrs (standard length of copper pipe) so plastic tends to cost in over longer lengths. It is also easier to produce a watertight joint with plastic first time. So it was with these factors in mind that a mixture of copper and plastic was used throughout the house. 

   Providing hot and cold feeds to all sinks and baths is not particularly difficult but guidance can be sought with regard to the regulations from the the Water Regulations Advisory Service(WRAS) who will provide you with a copy of their booklet, a very descriptive and helpful guide.

First Pipework

 

Pipework in Place

   First fix cannot be completed without knowing what and where all the components of the system will be so a few decisions were required. Like all good self builders I like to be unconventional (hence block and beam for the first floor) so in true fashion I decided on a thermal store to provide hot water and space heating. Not the first choice for heating engineers and plumbers and probably due to their complex electronics, however there was good reason, 'I like a good shower'.  That means more than a trickle, so as the water pressure appeared to be very high in this area, (I had several burst hose pipes during building) the choice of thermal store was a good one as (similar to a combi boiler) it heats the mains water as it comes into the house. Hot water is fed direct to the taps and showers giving mains pressure at the head with the ability to supply large amounts of hot water and with two en suites and two bathrooms, boy do you need it?Gledhill Water Storage were the manufacturer of choice but unfortunately they have since stopped making them, a victim of the recession!!

   The choice of boiler was on recommendation from a local service engineer and as I presumed he knew more about it than myself we chose his recommended Grant boiler with the size determined by the accumulation of the radiator sizes plus a bit for good measure, all guidance which can be found online.

   Central Heating is something I have never designed or installed before but there's always a first time for everything. How big should a radiator be? How many radiators does a room need? Where should they be sited?How powerful should the boiler be? There are a lot of options and decisions to be made and no doubt everyone will arrive at a different solution but in my case using what experience I had and the use of the Internet I designed my own system. Its amazing how little heat output is required in a modern house with all its insulation. My previous 1970's house had radiators the length of some walls but using an online design aid which took into account heat loss through outer walls, loss through adjacent rooms, ceilings and floors all the radiators turned out to be very small, some equivalent to the output of a single bar electric fire. I checked the results several times!! Radiators I here you say! yes we fitted radiators throughout the house despite protestations from me the better half won the day on this option.  We used ACOVA column radiators on special offer from B&Q for the aesthetic effect.

After plastering this is the room that I

put this radiator in. Small ain't it

                                                        

Since all the walls in the house were solid block work there was no stud work and modern construction methods involve small bore pipework in the stud walls, therefore I had to find other means to feed the pipework to radiators, taps and showers. 

    On the first floor there was a false floor of  2x2 timber battens and chipboard flooring so a cavity was formed under which pipes could be laid and as all basins and cisterns were wall hung or enclosed there was no problem concealing pipes behind false walls. However on the ground floor it was necessary to bury the pipes under the floor screed  and apart from underfloor heating it is no longer acceptable to bury the pipes in the screed, so they were encased in a separate corrugated flexible tube, readily available from Screwfix and placed in the insulation under the floor screed.

Of course all loo's have to have a soil pipe and again these were readily accommodated behind false walls in the bathrooms.

False walls in Bathrooms to accommodate pipework and concealed cisterns.

 
All the pipe work was in place ready for the more exciting bit, second fix, where radiators, sinks, baths, toilets, showers, boiler and thermal store were to be fitted, not much left then!! However next, just the small question of plastering, but lots of bits to do first in preparation, but that's for next time on 'therealselfbuildblog'

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First Fix Electrics

All the rooms were defined in block work and shortly we would be ready for plastering, however just a small matter of first fix for plumbing and electrics. 

Now I am one for having a go at most things DIY but for the novice a word of caution. Electricity can kill!  I have a background in electronics, a good understanding of the difference between Volts, Amps and Watts, I have studied Ohms law and my training in the telecommunications industry encourages me to use best practices in all things electrical. If I sound like I am talking gibberish then its best for you to leave this part of a build to the professionals, however if like me you have the knowledge to undertake some of this work then it is not beyond the self builder armed with a good guide book to do so, with the proviso that a qualified electrician carries out the final inspection and tests and connects to the mains supply. 

So armed with my Collins complete wiring and lighting guide in hand I set about installing the mains and lighting circuits. Unfortunately my wife did not find taking photos of bits of wire very interesting so I am a little short of pics for this post.

Anyway, in simple terms a ring main starts at the consumer unit and runs around the house passing in and out at each socket outlet and finally returning to the the consumer unit. In theory the number of sockets is unlimited but in practice a limit is placed on the number by the floor area that one ring main can supply and that is 100 sq mtrs also generally each floor needs it's own ring. That's how I came to provide four rings as there are three floors and the ground floor is greater than 100 sq mtrs. Lighting circuits are a different matter and in their simplest form start out from the consumer unit and run in a radial circuit out to the last light with the limit being the maximum wattage of 1200watts ie:- 12 x 100watt bulbs. With fancy lighting this limit is soon used up hence I ended up with six radial ccts excluding the garage. Cookers, storage heaters and immersion heaters which draw rather more current than either lighting or ring mains all require a dedicated radial feed from the consumer unit and much heavier cable. 


Running cables is a case of finding the best route through the house usually in the loft, in the floor space between floors, in studded walls or chasing them into solid walls. Because I am anal, I had to have a more sophisticated solution and that involved providing cable runways and risers, which were born out of my communications background. So all my cables rise (on a vertical runway)from the garage, through two floors to the loft and then across the loft on a cable runway to a riser where they would fall to the floor voids and start running around the house, dropping down walls to the various sockets. Large numbers of cables running alongside each other tend to develop some heat and and this was another of the reasons that I provided the runway to take the cables above the insulation rather than on or under it. Similarly where lighting cables drop to lights in the loft the cables where attached to battens fixed to the rafters above the insulation then dropping directly to the light fittings, in this way any heat generated by the cables easily escapes reducing any potential fire risk.

Typical Riser, this one in the Utility Room mainly for pipe work

A drawback to having solid internal walls is that all cable drops need to be chased in to the wall and protected and this turned out to be a very long and messy job. Best practice for cable drops dictate that they should be vertical ie:- no diagonal runs to save cable, however where sockets are reasonably adjacent to each other short horizontal runs are permissible. This  practice ensures reasonable confidence as to where cables are located after plastering and hopes to avoid fireworks with a wayward drill. Wall boxes of varying types were provided at the end of each drop and the punch out holes in the metal types protected with a rubber grommet. Cable tails (ready for second fix) at the wall box were left 150mm to 200mm long to help with termination later.

There are several fittings which require a spur off  the ring mains and these included extractor fans, auxiliary lights over bathroom mirrors and fixed appliances all of which require a fused outlet. Smoke detectors however must have a separate feed from the consumer unit and be linked to each other. The regulations with regard to bathrooms are very strict and need to be observed closely but in any case any electrician worth his salt will not pass any installation not up to the regulations, so I say again the system needs checking and testing by a qualified person before connecting to the mains. 

A loop of the ring main rises under the island unit. Kitchen ring shown running around at floor level no more than six inches from the floor is permissible.

Regulations and practices change so it is with some concern that I have written this post. I have not given specific details about providing mains electricity in a self build as it is not intended as a definitive guide and should not be taken as one, moreover reference should be made to a good guide and IEE regulations if necessary.

In the event fortunately for me, my installation passed testing and was duly connected to the supply by my friendly electrician without any problems or rework. There are many electricians out there quiet willing to undertake the commissioning of a domestic system like this as it is the more intellectual part of the job and removes much of the physical effort whilst still being profitable. It is also worth noting that a completion certificate issued by the electrician is required by the BCO before they will issue a completion certificate for any build.

That was all the cables in for the first fix, fitting of all the electrical goodies was to come after plastering. I now needed to get on with doing first fix for plumbing but first to design the central heating system. That's for next time on the 'realselfbuildblog'

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The next steps

After the milestone of installing the windows it was back to the less rewarding chore of more block laying. I know most modern houses have stud walls and the later ones are only very narrow so they appear very flimsy, but we were  determined to make ours look substantial so at the early stages we choose to use block work for all internal walls. It makes for a quality feel to a building but it needs the upper floors to be rigid and that's one of the reasons why we opted for block and beam upstairs. Laying the first few blocks on the upper floor started to show how the rooms fitted into the shell of the building and for the first time the internal layout started to appear.

Rooms start to appear

  Once we had finalised the boundaries for all the rooms the stairs could be fitted. We had previously ordered the stairs which consisted of one straight flight and a double flight with quarter landing from a local manufacturer called,  wait for it!  'The Timber Stair Manufacturers Ltd' original isn't it. However they were very good, their designer came to site to measure up and as I had never fitted a set of stairs before he was very helpful and gave me lots of guidance.

The kit of parts arrived soon after placing the order and were extremely good quality with Hemlock strings and spindles, Oak base rails and handrails and MDF treads. The solid oak option was prohibitive!!

Kit of parts arrive for the stairs

 Now to get them in place, a job for more than one man and his wife so the regulars popped over to help. Not to worry though the straight flight went in first and after constructing the framework for the quarter landing (not supplied) the flight was lifted into position. The newel posts and strings were already mortised and tenoned so it was just a case of gluing them together with the handrail, lifting into place and fixing the top newel post to the joists. It was almost like building with Lego, each part slotting together easily, the only bit of real joinery was cutting the handrails to length and cutting the tenons on the ends.        

The regulars on site to help install the stairs

Initial installation complete. Newel post bolted to trimmers between joists

 The other set of stairs was less simple, with a quarter landing half way up (not supplied) the framework for the landing had to levitate somewhere in the air. I decided the most solid means of achieving this was to build a tower of blocks in the corner on which to stand the frame and also create a useful cavity under the stairs accessed from the little room.

 

My wife thought this was funny

Initial installation of the lower stairs complete. The newel posts at the top were bolted to a steel beam which supports the landing. A very solid fix.

 That was the stairs in place so it was no longer necessary to climb ladders between floors, suddenly a flash of inspiration !!   Why not move into the loft? (temporarily you understand) just one problem, no insulation, so that was the next job.

I mentioned in an earlier post that we had designed the roof as a sealed roof and part of that design was that there should be an air space between the insulation and the roof membrane, so it was now necessary to provide the insulation and maintain that space.

The 100mm polyisocyanurate(I hate that word) needed to fit between all the rafters in the loft and should be cut to a snug fit and pressed into place without going in too far and compromising the air space. To prevent this, battens were fixed to every face of all the rafters 100mm in from the underside.

Fitting the insulation by cutting with a standard timber saw must be the most messiest and  uncomfortable job I have done to date. The cutting generates clouds of choking particles which stick too your clothes with static, and spread everywhere. A second layer of 30mm insulation had to be fitted over the first to meet building regulations and this was fixed with screws and washers but thankfully in the last minute before fitting this layer which covered the rafters we remembered to mark the floor with their position or the plasterers would have cursed us.  A few days later we had an insulated loft.

Insulation ready for installation, lot of it isn't there

In Progress

First layer finished

 Just a lick of paint and building the only stud wall with a cheap door in it and we moved in!!

Bed from the caravan

Must have a tele

Xtratherm, Xtratherm, Xtratherm dreams are made of this.

 Home from Home! It was good to get out of the caravan,  a couple of winters did the trick but we still had to cook in there.

Insulating the kitchen and garden room ceiling

More insulation, phew!! its getting warm in here

Well that's it for now but next time on 'therealselfbuildblog' I will tell you how we started the plumbing and electrics and prepared for plastering.

If you have any questions about my blog or self build in general please email me. You can find my email address in my profile (top right of page). You can also become a follower of my blog by pressing the follower button or click on 'Comments' below to leave a message.  

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