Cladding
While waiting on many important steps to happen, there is finally some good progress on site. From Drone Flyover couple of months ago, to finished cladding on one side and some fantastic views of custom made steel stairs. .
Thermal Imaging
Exposing cold spots.. if there were any. Services being installed. Designing those to centralise plumbing in areas where sound can be controlled and allowing for electrical cavities to simplify installation.
Roof Panels
Structural insulated panels / beams, rafters, insulation, ceiling and rab, all installed in a day. Formance panels, pre-cut to suit the design, easy to handle and self supporting.
Custom made steel stairs
Custom made steel stairs. The power of 3d modeling and computer operated laser cutting, married with some real craftmanship and amazing, grinty machines in the local shop.
Formance Panels Standing Plumb and Strong
This week builders started standing Formance panels.
Strength and warmth is obvious. When standing the panels, walls are instantly made plumb. By starting with the first panels right, every next panel adjusts by it self.
Builders first time experience with panels is amazing, all the usual effort to make pre-nail walls straight, is now thing of the past. Their focus is mainly around applying foam and glues accurately, to create perfect seal between the panels, making amazingly strong, air-tight building envelope.
Foundation Second Pour
Here we decided for another little trick... mainly from economic reasons, but sometimes limitations get you to come up with great ideas. Mixing some colour from Peter Fell, into concrete, makes concrete react in to organic tones. Looking like natural stone, imported right from European Alpine quarry, cut to large sections on site.
In-Slab hydronic heating will evenly distribute heat throughout the slab, acting like a large radiator. Exposed slab is ideal for collecting all the heat from the sunlight on northern side, but with water flowing through the slab, the heat will be evenly distributed also into less exposed section on southern side.
Specifically sized European air-to-water heat pump from EcoMaster, actually heats water pumped into HWC for showers, but the lower part of the cylinder will be pumped also to in-slab pipes... system is self levelling taking heat from overheated areas and releasing heat in cold areas.
Foundation First Pour
Simple detail to avoid thermal bridging on concrete edge.. but not as simple to build it. While in Europe we would simply make a "floating floor" (screed on top of insulation), we had to be a bit more inventive, using traditional techniques with small alterations.
Week 2
While foundation boxing is coming together well, we have some major development on walls and roof, manufactured at Formance. Structural Insulated Panels SIP!
Week 1
Excavation started.
Site has been flattened and the contours of the slab are starting to show.