General progress report - May 2015

It's been a while since I did an update, so in no particular order, here are some of the activities we've been working on, with the trials, tribulations and successes!

We have a driveway! We now have a driveway and parking area, with about 300mm hardcore down. This is good news as it now gives us somewhere to store materials as well as park the cars when on site. The parking area is on the site of the old filter beds, which had a topping of slag ash on is, meaning that we didn't have to remove too much as it was ideal as a base.

Starting to cut back vegetation

During

And we have a driveway!

Cutting Concrete

This  task has turned out to be rather onerous - not because cutting through up to 450mm of reinforced concrete is in itself difficult, but due to the challenge getting the right, good quality tools. We had three quotations from companies who specialise in this with massive variations in price. We decided to tackle it ourselves. Here's what we tried.

Stihl Saw with diamond disc - cuts through concrete no problem, but can only cut 100mm deep, meaning for the external walls, we had to cut from both sides. This was tricky as you had to get the lines to match, but even then, the cuts didn't meet, so you had to double cut, break out the concrete and then chip it all away.

Concrete Chainsaw - this cut through concrete pretty well, but the copious amounts of rebar in the concrete killed the chains.

Husqvarna Cut n Break - this tool is perfect - it has twin cutting discs and cuts easily through both concrete and rebar. It makes two cuts, leaving a section that you break out, then plunge the saw back in and repeat until you are through. No double cutting, lovely clean edges and safe cutting. Except the hire saw has a broken tensioner and we had to quit after half a day. Hopefully it gets fixed and we can continue. Here are some pictures of the progress.

Planning conditions progress. 

There were two conditions attached to the planning application. The first was that we had to submit details of the materials to be used to the planning officer for approval. This has been completed. The second was more complex - we had to complete a Desktop Contamination Survey, in light of the site being formerly commercial. Our initial approach was to pay a consultant to do this, something that would have cost in the region of £700-£1000. The planning officer put me in touch the the Contaminated Land Officer at North Ayrshire Council who was very helpful and gave me some really good tips. Provided we had the right level of detail and content, we could produce our own, and he would help us by reviewing and providing feedback. As my day job is an analyst and I often write reports, I set to it. On submission of the first draft, the feedback was on some fairly minor points. The officer has now advised he has recommended that planning can now discharge the condition, so we're just waiting on final word back on this.

Building Warrant

This has been a slow process, for two reasons. Firstly, our engineer and his supporting team have taken some time with the engineer drawings. Secondly, Building Control have been very busy and it took them a good number of weeks to respond to the initial documentation. All drawings have now been submitted, so it's just a case of waiting for the approval to come through, which we hope will be soon because...

Building Works planned

...we have started planning and organising contractors to start some of the build work. The first task is to get the walls for the flooring build. This will be a series of 'dwarf walls' built off of the floor of the tank. These will be carrying heights, and will eventually carry the floor beams.

Once we have the walls, we will start the task of laying the beams, and then the insulation to go between and over the top of the beams. At the same time, we need to install the soil pipes (poop pipes!) through the walls before we actually pay the floor. These will stick out the side of the building ready for when we do the drainage outside. We can then lay the insulation and get contractors in to lay a screed on top - which will give us our finished floor level.

We have also appointed a contractor to build the steel frame for the upper section of the house, something we hope to have erected fairly soon after the floor goes in.

Detailed Costings

At this point, a confession has to be made. We've never really budgeted for the build. We've always had a figure in our heads for the build, based on reading from various sources, rough estimates and so on, but despite best efforts, we have never spent enough time planning out the costs for each stage,. Now that much is happening, we've really started to get into the nitty gritty and doing our cash forecasts and material/labours costs for the rest of the year. Fortunately Craig is a Project Manager in charge of the finances for a multi (hundred) million pound contract, so he's taken to this like a duck to water. We hope to get a good chunk of the work done this year, with a break until spring to replenish funds and then go for wind/water tight early next year. We do want to build on as low as budget as possible, but at the same time, this may be our forever home and so there are some things we do not want to scrimp on. Examples of this would be  windows and doors, the floor insulation and the walls. For all of these, we're going for what might appear to be expensive options, but they will result in a highly insulated home, well beyond that required by regulation, and this will reap rewards in terms of the long term running costs. The building will be so well insulated and air tight that we may not even need any central heating.