Another planning/build thread

[chrisga]

More boring pictures of progress:

Kitchen, underfloor heating overlay floorboards down (someone coming to fit kitchen floor this afternoon hopefully), and a bit more tiling done:

2015-10-03 11.34.10 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

2015-10-03 11.34.22 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

Upstairs is coming on now too....

Floorboards up for new wiring:

2015-10-04 11.27.04 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

2015-10-04 11.26.52 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

2015-10-04 11.28.01 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

(Current) Master bedroom underfloor heating underlay down:

2015-10-04 20.32.26 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

2015-10-04 20.22.50 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

Underfloor heating pads installed:

2015-10-04 21.11.29 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

2015-10-04 21.11.39 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

Proof that the sofa did eventually go in the lounge:

2015-10-04 20.54.01 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

And probably the bit I like the most so far (for no real reason), the new front door light with PIR. There are no street lights in our close and it was pitch black and I can hardly see anything in the dark so always had to fumble with the key. Apologies for cr4ppy iphone pic:

2015-10-04 21.22.54 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

Edited by chrisga on Monday 12th October 08:46

[chrisga]

Bit of progress today.

Dining room flooring down:

2015-10-05 17.58.40 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

2015-10-05 17.58.43 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

Kitchen floor down:

2015-10-05 17.59.04 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

2015-10-05 17.58.51 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

Main bedroom laminate nearly finished:

2015-10-05 18.00.23 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

2015-10-05 18.00.36 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

Edited by chrisga on Monday 12th October 08:46

[Gingerbread Man]

Coming along. You'll have cold patches on the floor in rooms if you keep spacing the UFH wire out like that though.

[chrisga]

Thanks, yes I have tried to err on the side of caution sizing the heating elements as you can't cut them down. I could perhaps have got another half metre on a couple of them so far, but its difficult because when you are laying them out you have a huge roll and i'm always paranoid there will be loads left at the end so i try to be as efficient as possible at the beginning of the roll then spread it out toward the end. The larger patch with no heating element in the bedroom will be under the bed so hoping it wont be too noticeable.....

[Hard-Drive]

That's quite a transformation and looking really good!

[chrisga]

Thanks, it's getting there but the list of jobs seems to be getting longer not shorter....

[Dave_ST220]

Sorry but I really now have to ask, who the fk is chasing the walls for your electrics?!

[chrisga]

Myself and a friend. How come?

[Dave_ST220]

chrisga said:

Myself and a friend. How come?

I've never seen channels so big and untidy. No offence but looks like you are using a grinding wheel to do it? The mess must be unreal.

[chrisga]

None taken. Yep we've made (and tidied up) a lot of mess....

[Dave_ST220]

To be fair it was the one upstairs next to the light switch that caught my eye! I fully rewired my place but thankfully had no chasing to do, mainly because I took off every singe piece of plaster/board/dabs. Good luck with the rest, you may want to stick some insulation (dunno what the proper stuff is called) on any copper pipes that are resting on the joists, avoids noises as they heat up etc.

[Dave_ST220]

ps, nice to see the milk crate, best tool available

[chrisga]

Yep, I guess the chasing we did on page 1 of the thread was a tad neater.... But at least we're good at covering them over now as well as we've had lots of practice..... The ones for the underfloor heating have quite a few wires in them, they aren't just for a single 2.5mm twin and earth cable. They have power in cable coming up from the fused spur below to the thermostat, then power down from thermostat to heating elements, and also the floor heat sensor cables. One of the downstairs ones had two power cables going from the thermostat to the heating elements as well as there were two mats in the lounge.

[chrisga]

So, a quick update. Underfloor heating and floor coverings are now down in every room. Small bedroom:

2015-10-08 18.07.32 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

Second bedroom:

2015-10-11 17.04.53 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

As the bathroom suite is due to arrive today, we decided we really should knock the old bathroom out and get it ready for new installation. As with everything we have done so far it seems we need to do more work than we anticipated. We hit the first real snag of the works so far. The original shower was mounted to what we assumed was a boxed out piece of the wall only to hide the shower pipe and electricals, but when we removed it we discovered the soil waste pipe breather. Bugger. The bath we ordered won't fit. So we have decided we need to do something with the pipe rather than send the suite back, so that's an ongoing project. Oh and then the plastic panels, tiles, and plaster fell off the wall so will be off to B & Q later for some plasterboard:

2015-10-11 14.47.16 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

2015-10-11 17.05.07 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

2015-10-11 17.05.15 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

The offending pipe:

2015-10-11 17.05.42 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

About half of the tiles and plaster that came off the walls of the bathroom, the rest is in the trailer:

2015-10-11 17.14.52 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

Oh and the new shed has just been delivered to replace the old asbestos one behind the garage:

2015-10-11 16.58.39 by Chris Ga, on Flickr

[Hard-Drive]

Not sure if your s/s sink in the garden is going begging, if it is I'd welcome it into my man cave! If not, no worries!

[chrisga]

Saved for ours if/when we do the garage extension I'm afraid. Soz.

[Hard-Drive]

No worries. Just checking! Looking v good by the way!

[chrisga]

Ok so a bit more progress this weekend, didn't sit down all weekend but we've reached the point where every little job either seems to take a couple of hours or a £50 trip to screwfix/DIY store and doesn't look like anything is progressing.

So, mantlepiece mounted. It is central, just the photo seems to make it look like it isn't:

2015-10-17 12.51.16 by Chrisga, on Flickr

Two walls of the bathroom plastered, battens on one wall:

2015-10-17 18.03.12 by Chrisga, on Flickr

Fixed the large hole that was commented on previously for underfloor heating power cables:

2015-10-18 18.05.35 by Chrisga, on Flickr

In other news we have dug through the tarmac to the rear of the house and laid an armoured cable for power to the garage. Electrician is coming tomorrow to check everything we've done, sign it off and hopefully restore power to all disconnected items, including the heating. Hugely looking forward to playing with that. Hopefully it will be ok as we have now made the decision that the other opportunity presented to us wasn't really a goer so we will be moving in after all. We have given our landlady a months notice to hopefully really focus our efforts. Once the bathroom is in I think its habitable and anything else will be cosmetic, internal doors and skirting shouldn't take too long to finish off. Looking at quotes to tarmac the front garden as well at the moment, hoping that can be done before we move in as a parking dispute is the reason we decided to move from our old house in July last year.

Edited by chrisga on Monday 19th October 11:14

[chrisga]

Not a vast amount to report. Bathroom has been plastered and started to install the bath yesterday. Tiles are being collected hopefully today:

2015-10-25 14.31.44 by Chrisga, on Flickr

2015-10-25 16.43.20 by Chrisga, on Flickr

Heating seems to be working a treat. We didn't notice it was on until we went outside, which sounds dumb but it sort of must mean the heat is spread evenly round the house if that makes sense. Probably not having any internal doors on at the moment may help that. We didn't go for the smart phone controllable thermostats as they were another £400 or so IIRC. I have set each room to be on its own individual timer program and all at their own temperatures. I really don't think we'd need to control from our phones, as I don't think we'll really need to touch the thermostats very often now that they are all set up. The only time I can think it would be useful would be if you're out and coming home when they wouldn't be on normally (during the week) but that will be very rare.

2015-10-25 16.43.48 by Chrisga, on Flickr

[forest07]

Looking good. What's the total Kw input for the underfloor heating.