Well, what do you expect when you have a traffic cone left out over New Year?
As it was covering the hole where the end of the subterranean ducting is, now without its pull-through, I hope that BT pull their finger out and get their line in so that I can fill the hole up again before somebody puts their foot through the board that's covering it and breaks their ankle.
In other news, the bedroom wardrobes are now in, slightly dwarfed by the size of the bedroom itself. 'They're a standard wardrobe width', I asked the cabinet-maker. 'No,' he said, 'I like to make them slightly undersized', as we will attest to as our clothes now get caught in the doors.
Why? Why?? Why???
Friday, 2 January 2009
Tuesday, 16 December 2008
Another first
Yes, the last post was the first to be made using our new surface-run Virgin cable, and this is the first to be made via the Delta 8 data cabling which in a change to normal procedure took about thirty seconds to get to work. (I wonder why the TV and data bits work but the telephone doesn't...)
That's about where the good news stops as a combination of 'normal work' and what I hope is just an ordinary virus rather than ME or total nervous exhaustion is making me feel like I'm wading through treacle. But, at least I'm wading forward:
That's about where the good news stops as a combination of 'normal work' and what I hope is just an ordinary virus rather than ME or total nervous exhaustion is making me feel like I'm wading through treacle. But, at least I'm wading forward:
- The shed is up, sort of
- The study is almost clear in preparation for the fitting of bespoke office furniture
- The sunpipe towers have been stripped out, the holes in the ceiling have been filled with insulation, and I've stuck cut out bits of plastered plasterboard across the holes. (These will, of course, fall off as there's damn all to attach to - read all about it in a later blog.) The idea being that I only have to plaster the gap between the stuck on plasterboard & the original plasterwork. As an aside, the effect of the uninsulated sunpipe domes was brought home to me a few days ago on a very frosty morning when I could see how, around the sunpipe dome the ice had melted on the roof due to the heat leeching through the roof...
We will, of course, be miles off finishing the place for Christmas. In fact, as smooth edges get knocked and perfect paintwork gets smudged, will we ever be finished?...
Monday, 1 December 2008
It is with great pleasure...
I now realise how utility companies work, digging up the road the day after a gang of men with the same dayglo company name on the back of their donkey jackets have laid a layer of tarmac over the previous day's hole.
The day after I made good the hole where the Virgin cable disappeared into the Openreach ducting (but, luckily the day before I was to dispose of the leftover Virgin ducting) I had a call from Openreach that resulted in a, to put it mildly, very difficult conversation. Basically they're very, very pissed off. Legally pissed off.
My view that there wasn't a service involving a BT line that we wanted, so why don't you wait until we go for one, and in the meantime what's the harm of having a Virgin cable running up there? didn't wash. They gave me until the New Year for the cable to be removed.
So today - sunny, dry, although bitterly cold - I've dug up the cable. I thought it would be a half hour job. Disconnect cable - a simple co-axial connector, bag it up for safety, tie the pull-through to it again, dig up the cable near the surface, pull the whole baby through.
First problem - the TV & broadband is connected by a simple coaxial, but I hadn't spotted that the telephone is another set of wires going into its own little connectors which I had to prise apart. No damage done, me thinks. At least, not much.
I then bag up the wires, tie twine to it and then the pull-through to the twine. My thinking is that the combination of pull-through and cable may get stuck whereas joining them with twine will allow smoother passage. Having exposed the cable at the road end I start to pull, only for the twine to snap a couple of feet into the ducting. Bugger. So there'll be no pull-through for BT to work with. Hope they bring their rods.
The day after I made good the hole where the Virgin cable disappeared into the Openreach ducting (but, luckily the day before I was to dispose of the leftover Virgin ducting) I had a call from Openreach that resulted in a, to put it mildly, very difficult conversation. Basically they're very, very pissed off. Legally pissed off.
My view that there wasn't a service involving a BT line that we wanted, so why don't you wait until we go for one, and in the meantime what's the harm of having a Virgin cable running up there? didn't wash. They gave me until the New Year for the cable to be removed.
So today - sunny, dry, although bitterly cold - I've dug up the cable. I thought it would be a half hour job. Disconnect cable - a simple co-axial connector, bag it up for safety, tie the pull-through to it again, dig up the cable near the surface, pull the whole baby through.
First problem - the TV & broadband is connected by a simple coaxial, but I hadn't spotted that the telephone is another set of wires going into its own little connectors which I had to prise apart. No damage done, me thinks. At least, not much.
I then bag up the wires, tie twine to it and then the pull-through to the twine. My thinking is that the combination of pull-through and cable may get stuck whereas joining them with twine will allow smoother passage. Having exposed the cable at the road end I start to pull, only for the twine to snap a couple of feet into the ducting. Bugger. So there'll be no pull-through for BT to work with. Hope they bring their rods.
The vast majority of the cable emerges. Then it sticks. It's that bloody bag. I dig down. And pull. And dig down. And scrape out with my hands. And pull...
An hour and a half later. I'm right down to the ducting. I can get my fingers - scratched, muddied, bruised - down into the duct. But I still can't shift the bloody cable.
I give it one last heft and it comes loose, the TV/Broadband end a frazzled mess, totally sans it's coaxial connector with a good extra six inches of copper core suggesting that it's broken internally and has started to pull out.
I pull the cable to the house, covering it with my 16 and a half tonnes of gravel (I knew that would come in useful), make good the new hole - thankfully I'd left the Instant Road Repair out in the frost before laying it so the tarmac just peels back allowing me to part bury the cable up the drive, clever me - and connect the telephone up, reassembling the slightly mangled wire connectors. The phone works. Miracle no. 1.
A few snips and cuts later and the coaxial connector from the terrestrial TV cable is attached to the Virgin cable and the whole caboodle rebuilt. After a half hour job that's become most of my daylight hours, we have Broadband and TV back. Miracles nos. 2 & 3.
So, you see, it is with great pleasure that I even post this blog...
Friday, 21 November 2008
Snagging snags
As we're now in the new house any time I have to update the bog is just as well spent on sorting out the snags, so time tends to be spent sorting out the snags, so apologies for the silence. But, having woken up in advance of the rest of the household, here's a quick glimpse into the state of play with various farces.
Sunpipes
They are no more. Not only do I have to count the cost of the sunpipes themselves, the material and labour cost of putting them in, the additional roofing costs of flashing the domes on the roof, the time & effort taking them out and getting the waste to the dump, but I'm left with ugly holes in the floor & ceiling.
The former will be taken care of by the cabinet maker who will install the bedroom wardrobes, the latter... well, I'm unconvinced a plastering job will be perfect, so I'm inclined to get some big mirrors over them. After all, they're not exactly on the ceiling..
Openreach
Having decided to use the Openreach-provided ducting for our Virgin cable (there's still room enough to share, guys!) I wondered if I'd get chasing call from Openreach asking when we were going to confirm our provider so they could get on with matters.
No, instead I get two burly Irish navvies digging the road up to install a BT cable. I'm up at the very top of the hose cleaning the plaster & paint off the ridge beam when I hear pneumatic drills and fear the worst. I stop them having opened up half the road, which is repaired before the day is out.
I've now got a slightly irritated voicemail from Openreach asking what's going on. Haven't responded yet, but may send a diplomatically & vaguley worded text. Cowardice being a whatever part of valour...
Electricians
Thought they'd gone away, albeit with a few minor things outstanding and the small matter of still retaining our keys. But no, a bill arrived for £250 (a relatively trivial amount in the context of a housebuild, but not when you've got no money left & one house too many) to cover an amount excluded from the last bill for second fixing the kitchen & utility. Which they didn't do.
I then e-mailed to say 'surly some mistake' at which point they moved the goalposts and said it was different, outstanding things not as set out on the invoice. And, yes, it needs paying. So here, with the ease of copy & paste, is my e-mail response. I tried to remain diplomatic but may have just come across as subtle.
John,
Thank you for your e-mail, which I am very surprised at.
Your original quote was for all electrical work to the house, including the kitchen & utility room. It was only when we selected a supply & fit deal for the kitchen & utility room that you were no longer required to fit cooker & integrated appliances, sockets for washing machine & dryer, etc. Although you were always swift to add additional items to your invoices (which were always paid without query, despite the total lack of any breakdown of what these additional items specifically were), you did not clarify by how much your quote would be reduced for the removal of this work.
Your invoice 6108 explicitly states what the £250 for “works not yet complete” was for: second fix to kitchen & utility, the one element of the work for which you quoted and were not required not complete. It did not include “testing” or any suchlike, and your e-mail below smacks of trying to redesignate the work so that it falls into the scope of what you provided. If the £250 did not correspond to this work for which you quoted but was done by others, then there will be another amount by which your invoices should be reduced. Grateful if you could confirm what that it is - £250 appears perfectly reasonable to me, if anything on the low side. Suffice to say, I do not regard £250 as being outstanding.
I am also surprised at your chasing for payment as you have already issued the NICEIC certification, also implying that our account is now settled.
Grateful if you could confirm when we can expect James to carry out the remedial work already noted and return our house keys.
Robert Bagnall
Kitchen
On the subject of the kitchen, B&Q Luton have an amusing variation on Monty Python's Dead Indian sketch ('Buy a ton of coal, get a free dead Indian', 'But I don't want a dead Indian', 'Tough'). Having chased, and received, a refund for the farcical swapping over of units due to the surveyor's inability to wield a tape measure a new kitchen unit arrived, boxed,in the post. Not even one that appeared on our original order.
It made a useful hall table whilst we waited for B&Q to contact us to explain why it had been sent, but nothing.
So we took it back to B&Q Stevenage (where we had ordered the kitchen from, although the fitters came from, thus the farcical bits were managed from, Luton). After half an hour at the desk talking to four different people it transpired that it had been ordered for us by Luton, but free of charge. So, no, we can't be reimbursed, we can't even get a credit note for it. Shelf price, £175. So that'll be on eBay at some point.
(Also, the Good Lady Wife has complained that her contribution to choosing & ordering the kitchen has gone generally unremarked on this blog. Yes, dear, because it went smoothly. Nobody wants to read about the things that went right. That's why we're approaching 200 postings...)
Sunpipes
They are no more. Not only do I have to count the cost of the sunpipes themselves, the material and labour cost of putting them in, the additional roofing costs of flashing the domes on the roof, the time & effort taking them out and getting the waste to the dump, but I'm left with ugly holes in the floor & ceiling.
The former will be taken care of by the cabinet maker who will install the bedroom wardrobes, the latter... well, I'm unconvinced a plastering job will be perfect, so I'm inclined to get some big mirrors over them. After all, they're not exactly on the ceiling..
Openreach
Having decided to use the Openreach-provided ducting for our Virgin cable (there's still room enough to share, guys!) I wondered if I'd get chasing call from Openreach asking when we were going to confirm our provider so they could get on with matters.
No, instead I get two burly Irish navvies digging the road up to install a BT cable. I'm up at the very top of the hose cleaning the plaster & paint off the ridge beam when I hear pneumatic drills and fear the worst. I stop them having opened up half the road, which is repaired before the day is out.
I've now got a slightly irritated voicemail from Openreach asking what's going on. Haven't responded yet, but may send a diplomatically & vaguley worded text. Cowardice being a whatever part of valour...
Electricians
Thought they'd gone away, albeit with a few minor things outstanding and the small matter of still retaining our keys. But no, a bill arrived for £250 (a relatively trivial amount in the context of a housebuild, but not when you've got no money left & one house too many) to cover an amount excluded from the last bill for second fixing the kitchen & utility. Which they didn't do.
I then e-mailed to say 'surly some mistake' at which point they moved the goalposts and said it was different, outstanding things not as set out on the invoice. And, yes, it needs paying. So here, with the ease of copy & paste, is my e-mail response. I tried to remain diplomatic but may have just come across as subtle.
John,
Thank you for your e-mail, which I am very surprised at.
Your original quote was for all electrical work to the house, including the kitchen & utility room. It was only when we selected a supply & fit deal for the kitchen & utility room that you were no longer required to fit cooker & integrated appliances, sockets for washing machine & dryer, etc. Although you were always swift to add additional items to your invoices (which were always paid without query, despite the total lack of any breakdown of what these additional items specifically were), you did not clarify by how much your quote would be reduced for the removal of this work.
Your invoice 6108 explicitly states what the £250 for “works not yet complete” was for: second fix to kitchen & utility, the one element of the work for which you quoted and were not required not complete. It did not include “testing” or any suchlike, and your e-mail below smacks of trying to redesignate the work so that it falls into the scope of what you provided. If the £250 did not correspond to this work for which you quoted but was done by others, then there will be another amount by which your invoices should be reduced. Grateful if you could confirm what that it is - £250 appears perfectly reasonable to me, if anything on the low side. Suffice to say, I do not regard £250 as being outstanding.
I am also surprised at your chasing for payment as you have already issued the NICEIC certification, also implying that our account is now settled.
Grateful if you could confirm when we can expect James to carry out the remedial work already noted and return our house keys.
Robert Bagnall
Kitchen
On the subject of the kitchen, B&Q Luton have an amusing variation on Monty Python's Dead Indian sketch ('Buy a ton of coal, get a free dead Indian', 'But I don't want a dead Indian', 'Tough'). Having chased, and received, a refund for the farcical swapping over of units due to the surveyor's inability to wield a tape measure a new kitchen unit arrived, boxed,in the post. Not even one that appeared on our original order.
It made a useful hall table whilst we waited for B&Q to contact us to explain why it had been sent, but nothing.
So we took it back to B&Q Stevenage (where we had ordered the kitchen from, although the fitters came from, thus the farcical bits were managed from, Luton). After half an hour at the desk talking to four different people it transpired that it had been ordered for us by Luton, but free of charge. So, no, we can't be reimbursed, we can't even get a credit note for it. Shelf price, £175. So that'll be on eBay at some point.
(Also, the Good Lady Wife has complained that her contribution to choosing & ordering the kitchen has gone generally unremarked on this blog. Yes, dear, because it went smoothly. Nobody wants to read about the things that went right. That's why we're approaching 200 postings...)
Monday, 3 November 2008
First blog from the new house...
...although I have almost run out of time by booking Vic the plumber in for another half day to try to commission our underfloor heating properly - at present we're barely getting heat to the top floor, the Girl's room is both cold and wet due to leaking sunpipes (to be stripped out), and the playroom took a fortnight to get even remotely warm...
However, Virgin have done their bit by joining us all up. Weasel deserves a reappearance in the blog as we found that his data ducting was buried over a metre down, not the 25cm we expected. The cable guys who came on Friday dug as far down on the driveway as they felt able (they were under no obligation to dig off the pavement anyway) before saying that if I wanted it run through the duct then I'd have to do it myself. Leaving me on my belly, scooping out clay with my bare hands on Halloween.
Remember, part of the reason we got cable back in was to have a decent TV picture, having discovered the Schneider Delta 8 data cabling delivered four grainy channels and nothing else. Well, having committed to at least another twelve months of having a hundred channels we don't watch, we discovered, when I'd eventually remembered to get the remote for the Freeview box from my parents, that the combination of traditional aerial, Delta 8 and Freeview works perfectly.
So, it does actually work for TV, but does it broadcast the telephone around the house? No, just crackly static and a voice in the ether going 'please replace the handset'. Gee, thanks...
However, Virgin have done their bit by joining us all up. Weasel deserves a reappearance in the blog as we found that his data ducting was buried over a metre down, not the 25cm we expected. The cable guys who came on Friday dug as far down on the driveway as they felt able (they were under no obligation to dig off the pavement anyway) before saying that if I wanted it run through the duct then I'd have to do it myself. Leaving me on my belly, scooping out clay with my bare hands on Halloween.
Remember, part of the reason we got cable back in was to have a decent TV picture, having discovered the Schneider Delta 8 data cabling delivered four grainy channels and nothing else. Well, having committed to at least another twelve months of having a hundred channels we don't watch, we discovered, when I'd eventually remembered to get the remote for the Freeview box from my parents, that the combination of traditional aerial, Delta 8 and Freeview works perfectly.
So, it does actually work for TV, but does it broadcast the telephone around the house? No, just crackly static and a voice in the ether going 'please replace the handset'. Gee, thanks...
Monday, 27 October 2008
Not particularly joined up thinking
Utilities are always meant to be the most confusing part of any build, although contractor management, groundworks, design and, well, everything else runs it a close second. We remain disconnected from any form of telephone or internet media, hence only the occasional update to the blog when I return to the old house, still un-let, to work.
The story so far is that, having vowed to stop financing Branson's kids' yachting and doing lots of barking at Openreach to lay a cable, I've learnt that I have to choose my supplier first who then tells Openreach to lay the cables through the ducting they supplied but I paid to be laid. The thinking being that Openreach aren't going to pay to supply a cable that then doesn't get used for years. Fair enough.
Looking through the various options and deals we've swallowed our pride and gone back to Virgin. (Including for the TV give the aerial and Delta 8 set-up give us four slightly shadowy channel - what was that? about £1,000 plus labour?) It would also mean keeping our old numbers and e-mail addresses. At which point numerous hurdles appeared. They wouldn't normally supply a property more than 10m from the road. But there's the ducting there, can't they run it through that? But whose ducting is it?
Now, with the other utility ducting it wouldn't matter. I bought them, I laid them, and if I want to run, say, ferrets through them rather than gas pipes that's my affair. But Openreach supplied the media ducting, even if I laid it. And their surveyor has been more active than other utilities, coming to site to advise. But Openreach can still run their cable through at some later stage. And, anyway, they've also been talking about running an overhead cable, thus making the ducting redundant.
A 'spotter' came out to the property to look at the lie of the land. And that's when it got complicated, to the extent that I'm having difficulty actually explaining it. The spotter pulled various strings behind the scenes to get clearance to use the ducting and arranged to come to the house to get the contracts all signed.
And then I reminded him of transferring over the old contact details. At which point I, as an existing customer, became anathema maranatha (go on, Google it), and he couldn't do anything for me unless I got the Virgin housemoves people to ask him. He gave me a carefully considered form of words to use to counter their claim that I was moving to an unserviceable address, being so far from the road.
So I call the housemoves people who say, no, you're address is fine. Fancy being connected on 3 November? Yes please, but can you call this spotter anyway? Which they agree to, whilst being unsurprisingly unclear why they were doing so.
I then talk to the spotter who says that the engineer who comes on 3rd will probably refuse to lay cable through the duct unless he intervenes, which probably means it'll be a few more weeks before we're connected. Which is the position we're in at the moment.
Don't hold your breath.
The story so far is that, having vowed to stop financing Branson's kids' yachting and doing lots of barking at Openreach to lay a cable, I've learnt that I have to choose my supplier first who then tells Openreach to lay the cables through the ducting they supplied but I paid to be laid. The thinking being that Openreach aren't going to pay to supply a cable that then doesn't get used for years. Fair enough.
Looking through the various options and deals we've swallowed our pride and gone back to Virgin. (Including for the TV give the aerial and Delta 8 set-up give us four slightly shadowy channel - what was that? about £1,000 plus labour?) It would also mean keeping our old numbers and e-mail addresses. At which point numerous hurdles appeared. They wouldn't normally supply a property more than 10m from the road. But there's the ducting there, can't they run it through that? But whose ducting is it?
Now, with the other utility ducting it wouldn't matter. I bought them, I laid them, and if I want to run, say, ferrets through them rather than gas pipes that's my affair. But Openreach supplied the media ducting, even if I laid it. And their surveyor has been more active than other utilities, coming to site to advise. But Openreach can still run their cable through at some later stage. And, anyway, they've also been talking about running an overhead cable, thus making the ducting redundant.
A 'spotter' came out to the property to look at the lie of the land. And that's when it got complicated, to the extent that I'm having difficulty actually explaining it. The spotter pulled various strings behind the scenes to get clearance to use the ducting and arranged to come to the house to get the contracts all signed.
And then I reminded him of transferring over the old contact details. At which point I, as an existing customer, became anathema maranatha (go on, Google it), and he couldn't do anything for me unless I got the Virgin housemoves people to ask him. He gave me a carefully considered form of words to use to counter their claim that I was moving to an unserviceable address, being so far from the road.
So I call the housemoves people who say, no, you're address is fine. Fancy being connected on 3 November? Yes please, but can you call this spotter anyway? Which they agree to, whilst being unsurprisingly unclear why they were doing so.
I then talk to the spotter who says that the engineer who comes on 3rd will probably refuse to lay cable through the duct unless he intervenes, which probably means it'll be a few more weeks before we're connected. Which is the position we're in at the moment.
Don't hold your breath.
Monday, 20 October 2008
127a Church Street - the missing chapters
20 October 2008, 8pm - I haven't eaen for twelve hours and I've moved a piano. Here's the missing weeks of the blog now on-line, I'm off for a Chinese takeaway...
1 September 2008
I've seen the future - and it leaks
Vic did an excellent job getting the boiler in & joining up all the underfloor heating components, particularly given the bizarre and illogical places in which the electrics & manifolds had been placed by the sparkies and me respectively.
There were only two problems I found when I booted the whole thing into life (apart from failing to note the warning not to restart the process by turning the boiler off & on again, although I don't think any harms been done). Firstly the en suite flooded; partly due to not blocking off all the pipes, partly due to a genuine leak. And secondly a seep from the pump, one of the few joints that the supplier, Nu Heat, were responsible for rather than Vic.
The former was sorted in about an hour, and getting to the connections also allowed the pipework to be rerouted to the radiator (Vic was dubious whether they would get hot the way I'd set them up coming off the domestic hot water). However, I'm still confused regarding the source of the leak. It may have been a dodgy Speedfit connection, but they're normally both failsafe and idiot-proof, and I had checked them when I put them in. Or it may have been the great rent in the pipe I found which, whilst consistent with the degree to which water was leaking out, looked more like it had happened when I perforated the marine ply with a drill to get through it. I'll probably never know.
As regards the seeping pump, I've simply put a container below it to catch the drips. Didn't stop the brickie placing all the boiler manuals in it when he disconnected the hose, though.
So the heating works, and the house is being kept toasty 24/7 given that the second in command at the floor suppliers, who looked like miserable was his default setting, felt that the house was still close to being too damp still to lay the floor. The ground floor screed was sealed on Friday and the floor will go down this week.
2 September 2008
How does he fit it all in?
A question I have been asked. Partly, by managing to hijack business trips to Derby to drive around industrial estates getting quotes for MDF skirting & architrave. Who said building your own house was glamorous?
8 September 2008
The beginning of the end?
I think I've previously invoked Churchill's words about it not being the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning. Well, I think we can now tentatively declare it the beginning of the end as I'm now thinking in terms of things that have to be done, things that have to be done in order to move in, and things that have to be done to get a completion certificate.
The last of those includes getting the doors on (delivered 15 September, chippie arrives w/c 22 September); making the understairs cupboard fireproof; finishing off the overflows from the boiler; getting a ramp to the front door... and I don't think a great deal else other than the air pressure test which I'm hoping the inspector doesn't think necessary.
The other two lists are a lot longer, of course, but the kitchen fitters - and, more importantly, the kitchen - are on site, the floor fitters finishing off the engineered oak floor today, and the bathroom fitter comes back to finish off tomorrow. Talking of which, I'm going to site now to tile the wall behind which he'll attach the WC in the main bathroom.
11 September 2008
Bath wastes - a morality tale
Partially a diary entry, but mainly a lesson in choosing suppliers.
For some reason lost in the mists of time or, more precisely, Easter, we bought two baths and only one bath waste. There was a good reason for this but I'm not sure what. I think it had something to do with sourcing a simple waste for the kids bathroom but as a plug & chain will easily be knocked out by child, and the pop-up type give up after a few years in our experience, we were always going to go for the click-clack type. So why did we buy one and not two at the time? No idea.
Anyway, wind forward a few months and I've deluded myself into believing that there's another waste somewhere in the mass of boxes of bathroom fixtures and fittings. And, as it happens, the expensive waste (Bathstore, £33 incl. vat) has ended up on the kids bathroom in any case.
I get the call Tuesday (9th) that the bathroom fitter doesn't have the waste, can I get one. Trouble is, I'm in London talking about dull things with people in suits so that I can pay the bathroom fitter.
So Wednesday morning I use the brief window of opportunity that Fat Gordon's deluded plan of giving kids two and half hours education a day (and having two kids at different places with staggered start and finish times, my window of opportunity is barely two hours) to hunt the click-clack waste.
First stop, Plumb Center, Bedford. No, don't have one, but Dunstable do. What do you mean Bathstore don't have them off the shelf? Are you sure? (And at Plumb Centre, who you would think would be cheaper than swanky Bathstore, the waste is £33 + vat, even with a trade account.)
Next stop, Timber Center, to chase up the fax they were putting in the post with the profiles for our architraves and skirtings for our approval. The reason it hasn't turned up? They haven't sent it. The reason they haven't sent it? They never received it from the supplier. Did they chase it? Does the Pope shit in the woods. They took some convincing that delaying the ordering of the skirtings and architrave until after the decorators turn up on site to paint them was potentially problematic.
With that out of the way, into the centre of Bedford for Bathstore. As I suspected, no they don't stock anything. But everything's standard fitting, try Homebase.
I have about a ten minute window before the kids get put into care because I've failed to pick them up. And, as I walk in, I see there's a old topless man in a trilby at the only checkout and a queue of about a dozen people behind him going nowhere.
They have a click-clack bath waste.
And it's £26 incl. vat.
And a second checkout opens and I make it out through the door before Mr Nipples.
And the kids stay out of care.
And the moral? Quite often, even despite calls to builders merchants and internet searches, the cheapest price is often Homebase, B&Q or Wickes. Which I wasn't expecting at the beginning, thinking that builders must have a magic route to cheap materials us mere mortals are denied.
I never promised you a particularly good moral, did I?
14 September 2008
Bathroom irritations
You will recall, dear reader, that I got the bathroom fitter in due to my inability to get the cloakroom basin on to the wall with any degree of solidity. I thought a professional may have better luck.
Well, I'm feeling a little irritated with the bathroom fitter who, whilst zooming through the work in a way I wouldn't, has left things a tad wobblier than I would have liked. The cloakroom basin, which he's moved out of the corner of the room which I didn't really want, needs a cupboard around it which I'm not sure he's now going to do. The basin in the main bathroom wobbles on the wall as well, but I suspect this has more to do with it being attached to the studwork. And the toilet (which was missing its fittings, which he told me before he went on holiday, but declined to mention that off-the-shelf fittings didn't fit, otherwise I would have chased up for replacements), which is attached with bits of wood, is a positive rollercoaster. I'm hoping a sea of sealant may hold it down.
Meanwhile, I think I've worked out a plan for making the understairs cupboard fireproof and aesthetically acceptable, so watch out for the entry where I describe the plaster peeling off the faster than I can get it back up. It better work, because I've asked for a final inspection for 29 September, if only to show me the boxes that still need to be ticked.
27 September 2008
48 Hours To Go
A couple of weeks since I last updated the blog, so here’s the latest position with 48 hours to go before our first, though probably not last, final inspection.
The doors arrived the day after the last entry, to the off-line blog at least, got a coat of Danish Oil, and were hung by the carpenter who finished off the studwork. Clearly I can’t count anywhere near up to double figures as I bought hinges for seven fire doors and five normal doors whereas we have eight and four. I also kept getting to him just after he’d completed a particular element that I needed to brief him over – not putting up skirting around the sunpipe towers; putting a lock on the study door, not the en suite.
I didn’t want to given him the briefing too early in the process as I’ve learnt from my experience with the electricians who, bar replacing the bedside lights in the master bedroom, have now finished. When the shade of the dining room light was found to be smashed I said I’d source another shade, which turned out to be part of an entire Ikea lamp. Forgetting that they had to combine the two lamps they’ve simply put up the Ikea lamp in its entirety. Still, not too difficult to change it over.
My personal headache – the understairs cupboards in general, and plastering the underside of the stairs in particular – has gone better than I thought. The plastering took most of a day, but rubbing it down with a damp cloth has given the curves something of a rustic look. There’s still one slight hole in it which needs more plaster. The bits that are meant to be flat don’t look so professional, though. I’ve also prevaricated over boxing in the nightmare of wires and pipes, boxes and boilers and my solution is now to somehow string up a removable rod across the whole shooting match off which we’ll hang coats. The coats will then cover up the mess. So all the pine doors I bought from Wickes have now gone back.
I think the kitchen hanging rack I got from Ikea will also be going back – nowhere to put it that doesn’t cover a spotlight. Apart from wrong handles and the missing innards of one corner unit, and the fact that the surveyor was an innumerate who couldn’t manage a tape measure to the extent that the runs of units had to practically be redesigned by the fitters as they went with elements missed out or exchanged, the kitchen fitting was so uneventful it didn’t warrant a mention here.
Decorators will be back next week to paint the skirtings, architraves and window boards. They put a first coat on to the skirtings before the chippie put them up, making use of a rare run of dry days to paint & stack them in the garden. Reminiscent of breaking ground, the fact that we would have got flooded out over summer but autumn weather has been more trustworthy. Talking of skirtings, there was a slight doubt that I’d ordered sufficient and I haven’t been back to site since yesterday morning. I’ll see when I go back to site tomorrow to sort out what I know won’t pass muster with the inspector before I find out everything else that he needs to see.
1 October 2008
SAPs, EPC, & Air Permeability Tests
The building inspector came, liked the stairs (which really weren’t his concern), didn't even open the door to the understairs cupboards to see their fire-protected nether regions, asked for a smoke detector to be spun round to keep the detector part at least 300mm from a wall (always got to be something to complain about), and said he was happy. Ish.
Not that that means we're finished. Oh, no sir-ee, Bob. We now need to submit our electrical certification, plus our SAP, EPC and air permeability test. When asked what the letters stand for he got a little vague...
You'll recall the work of our slightly crazed energy assessor (friend/colleague of Shower the so-called architect). Well, all that now needs to be redone based on what we've actually built, rather than the bits of paper. And because I am not prepared to go back to our mutual friend, it seems like whoever does it needs to re-do the sums from the design and then modify it according to reality. The company that's doing it for us (sister company of the building inspection company) charges £115 for the first bit and £35 for the second. All this pales against the £300 bill I refused to pay for the initial calculation.
The company won't do air tests, so somebody's coming up from Kent to do it on Monday, both for me and Peter at the Old Grain Store (127a's Victorian doppleganger) who also has a self-build nearing completion. The whole air test thing has left me utterly confused, based as it seems to be on thinking of a number then sticking a fan on your house to justify it. It was this number that BBS thought was missing from the calculations, so I've had several circular conversations with air testers asking for the answer which the test should show, and me not being able to provide it). However, after several more readings of the SAP calculations I’ve now found a number that seems to tie in with what people who tell me that they know what they’re talking about keep talking about.
Oh, and the inspector was content enough with our disabled access ramp – actually the pallet the doors came on cut in half with the bottom hidden by gravel - enough not to fail it, but not so much to avoid asking me to forward photos of it to the inspection company for their approval. No news one way or the other yet…
Meanwhile, our blinds should be being fitted today, but the company who are supplying & fitting said the first and wrote down the third. Which is no good to us as the decorators will be there.
And we also have expensive speakers winging their way to us having been purchased on eBay with minutes left on my 20% off voucher – which then didn’t work because I hadn’t bought one item, I’d bought four. So that was over £40 that I expected to have shaved off the bill that wasn’t. Bastards. But, if they’re attached to the wall then it’s going on our VAT claim…
3 October 2008
Just a bit of a nightmare scenario, that's all...
Not helped by falling off a ladder causing my leg to balloon like a grapefruit. (Do I have to mention that the ladder was lying against a wall and I was trying to walk along its edge in totally unsuitable footwear for reasons too domestic to go into?)
No, the nightmare scenario emanated from the following e-mail from the girl doing the SAP calculation sent me last night: " I have input all the construction details in the SAP calculator and currently the dwelling is failing. This is because the u values for the walls and roof are quite poor, can you tell me at what stage you are in construction, is it built already?"
Is it ****ing built? We're at the point of moving in!
What happened to "“Unilin panels help to comply with Part L Building Regulations and achieve air tightness and energy efficient buildings” using PIR foam having “Excellent U-Values exceeding building regulations in UK and Ireland”?
So I spend part of the night on the net researching the various u-values of all our component materials so I'm in a position to check her assumptions. This morning it turns out that it has nothing to do with walls & ceilings, but if you assume the underfloor heating is submerged in concrete with nothing more than an on/off button then her spreadsheet puts us on a par with Drax power station as a carbon emitter.
But telling the spreadsheet that the pipework is in screed as it really is with zoned/time-controlled thermostats restores our Guardian-reading status. She's also made a load of blanket assumptions regarding windows and asks me to research the real figures, even where I'm surprised she doesn't have them all at her fingertips. Example: she asks me to find out the u-value of the conservation Velux, so I put "conservation velux u-value" into Google and get the result with one mouse click. Doesn't she do this kind of thing daily?
Anyway, nightmare scenario averted and, until the air permeability figure is confirmed, we're virtually identical with the figure Frank from Blue Velvet produced for us. A good air test and we may be B-rated which would be a result.
9 October 2008
Snagging
With the exception of the master bedroom & en suite, and the outside, all of which I’m studiously ignoring, we’re on to snagging. The good lady wife has even put together a spreadsheet with a few dozen snags which I’m expanding to the several hundred items in reality which I can modify to make it feel like I’m progressing things, but I’m not really.
The decorators have been and gone, having done a better job with the woodwork than the emulsion, although I did go a bit Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Bodysnatchers when I noticed a drip of paint on the stairs. The blinds are also in, which should mean no more trades, discounting the man with a van, which I still need to line up.
Our air test has also taken place. All of a bit of a non-event. Deliberate venting points like bathroom extractors and the tumble dryer vent pipe were covered, and a big sheet went with a fan suspended in it went on the front door. We then sat inside – I thought we were going to be outside – whilst air was sucked out – I thought it was going to be blown in.
The man then took up residency in a fishing chair with a laptop whilst the software controlled the rest, altering the speed of the fan and working out how much air it needed to keep sucking out to keep the how at a certain pressure. Dots were plotted on a logarithmic scale, a line of best fit drawn, and a number generate for our SAP rating. A number less than six, thus giving us the B rating. Good result.
Back to snagging. The playroom is now finished, bar cleaning windows, and the spare room, in which we’ll be sleeping for a while, is also there minus a couple of obstinate screws in shelving and a few oil spots on the walls (I elected to oil the kertos, but I don’t think I will with the others). In classic fashion, the spare room has proved a few cms too narrow (basically the width of the skirting) for the rowing machine, and the placement of sockets in the playroom means the bookcases will half cover up a double socket.
The kids’ bathroom just needs a bit of grouting, some filler rubbing down, a drop of sealant, and paint touching up. Curtain rails to go up in the kids bedrooms (discounting a way of shading the sunpipes), and paint touching up. The open plan ground floor is a bit of a nightmare, but is more of a cleaning job than anything else. Still need to get skirting on in the cloakroom and the study has become something of a dumping ground. If anything, it’s the halls and stairwell that require the most rubbing down & touching up. I have an unexpected opportunity to knock some more items off the list tonight when the Boy’s new bed gets delivered at 9pm.
17 October 2008
Victim of the Digital Age
The bed turned out to be missing the small matter of the rung which will stop the Boy rolling out of bed and falling a metre on to a hard wood floor. Still, life isn't perfect is it?
Snagging continues sporadically, particularly as the vomiting virus has now laid low the Boy, Girl and Good Lady Wife. I seem to have survived after a minor scare when I confused a mild hangover for the early onset of virus. I think four rooms - spare room, and the kids' bedrooms & playroom can be declared finished, with main bathroom not far behind. Not much to do on kitchen/dining/living room or utility room. Study is lacking something industrial to put computer on, but master bedroom & en suite are looking like a junkyard.
To use WWII as an analogy, I think Germany & Italy have fallen, but we still need to drop the big ones on Japan to finish the job off.
Man with van booked for the Monday the 20th, and the old house currently looks like its been burgled - half emptied, half thrown about. Small items going off on eBay and Freecycle, but nobody wants the bits of furniture we have no place for in the new place. Shame to have as the centrepiece of our bonfire night conflagration a leather recliner, but it's what may turn out to be if we can't even give it away.
Major omission from house at the moment is any sort of telephone or broadband connection. Have spent the day trying to get Openreach to run their cable to the house, only to find out that they require me to have selected a supplier. Having made a rushed job at picking one out, we've decided that cable is the best option, thus negating all the work, phone calls, e-mails, and vows that I was no longer going to sponsor Branson's kids yachting trips. I haven't told Openreach yet: I don't think they'll be happy.
1 September 2008
I've seen the future - and it leaks
Vic did an excellent job getting the boiler in & joining up all the underfloor heating components, particularly given the bizarre and illogical places in which the electrics & manifolds had been placed by the sparkies and me respectively.
There were only two problems I found when I booted the whole thing into life (apart from failing to note the warning not to restart the process by turning the boiler off & on again, although I don't think any harms been done). Firstly the en suite flooded; partly due to not blocking off all the pipes, partly due to a genuine leak. And secondly a seep from the pump, one of the few joints that the supplier, Nu Heat, were responsible for rather than Vic.
The former was sorted in about an hour, and getting to the connections also allowed the pipework to be rerouted to the radiator (Vic was dubious whether they would get hot the way I'd set them up coming off the domestic hot water). However, I'm still confused regarding the source of the leak. It may have been a dodgy Speedfit connection, but they're normally both failsafe and idiot-proof, and I had checked them when I put them in. Or it may have been the great rent in the pipe I found which, whilst consistent with the degree to which water was leaking out, looked more like it had happened when I perforated the marine ply with a drill to get through it. I'll probably never know.
As regards the seeping pump, I've simply put a container below it to catch the drips. Didn't stop the brickie placing all the boiler manuals in it when he disconnected the hose, though.
So the heating works, and the house is being kept toasty 24/7 given that the second in command at the floor suppliers, who looked like miserable was his default setting, felt that the house was still close to being too damp still to lay the floor. The ground floor screed was sealed on Friday and the floor will go down this week.
2 September 2008
How does he fit it all in?
A question I have been asked. Partly, by managing to hijack business trips to Derby to drive around industrial estates getting quotes for MDF skirting & architrave. Who said building your own house was glamorous?
8 September 2008
The beginning of the end?
I think I've previously invoked Churchill's words about it not being the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning. Well, I think we can now tentatively declare it the beginning of the end as I'm now thinking in terms of things that have to be done, things that have to be done in order to move in, and things that have to be done to get a completion certificate.
The last of those includes getting the doors on (delivered 15 September, chippie arrives w/c 22 September); making the understairs cupboard fireproof; finishing off the overflows from the boiler; getting a ramp to the front door... and I don't think a great deal else other than the air pressure test which I'm hoping the inspector doesn't think necessary.
The other two lists are a lot longer, of course, but the kitchen fitters - and, more importantly, the kitchen - are on site, the floor fitters finishing off the engineered oak floor today, and the bathroom fitter comes back to finish off tomorrow. Talking of which, I'm going to site now to tile the wall behind which he'll attach the WC in the main bathroom.
11 September 2008
Bath wastes - a morality tale
Partially a diary entry, but mainly a lesson in choosing suppliers.
For some reason lost in the mists of time or, more precisely, Easter, we bought two baths and only one bath waste. There was a good reason for this but I'm not sure what. I think it had something to do with sourcing a simple waste for the kids bathroom but as a plug & chain will easily be knocked out by child, and the pop-up type give up after a few years in our experience, we were always going to go for the click-clack type. So why did we buy one and not two at the time? No idea.
Anyway, wind forward a few months and I've deluded myself into believing that there's another waste somewhere in the mass of boxes of bathroom fixtures and fittings. And, as it happens, the expensive waste (Bathstore, £33 incl. vat) has ended up on the kids bathroom in any case.
I get the call Tuesday (9th) that the bathroom fitter doesn't have the waste, can I get one. Trouble is, I'm in London talking about dull things with people in suits so that I can pay the bathroom fitter.
So Wednesday morning I use the brief window of opportunity that Fat Gordon's deluded plan of giving kids two and half hours education a day (and having two kids at different places with staggered start and finish times, my window of opportunity is barely two hours) to hunt the click-clack waste.
First stop, Plumb Center, Bedford. No, don't have one, but Dunstable do. What do you mean Bathstore don't have them off the shelf? Are you sure? (And at Plumb Centre, who you would think would be cheaper than swanky Bathstore, the waste is £33 + vat, even with a trade account.)
Next stop, Timber Center, to chase up the fax they were putting in the post with the profiles for our architraves and skirtings for our approval. The reason it hasn't turned up? They haven't sent it. The reason they haven't sent it? They never received it from the supplier. Did they chase it? Does the Pope shit in the woods. They took some convincing that delaying the ordering of the skirtings and architrave until after the decorators turn up on site to paint them was potentially problematic.
With that out of the way, into the centre of Bedford for Bathstore. As I suspected, no they don't stock anything. But everything's standard fitting, try Homebase.
I have about a ten minute window before the kids get put into care because I've failed to pick them up. And, as I walk in, I see there's a old topless man in a trilby at the only checkout and a queue of about a dozen people behind him going nowhere.
They have a click-clack bath waste.
And it's £26 incl. vat.
And a second checkout opens and I make it out through the door before Mr Nipples.
And the kids stay out of care.
And the moral? Quite often, even despite calls to builders merchants and internet searches, the cheapest price is often Homebase, B&Q or Wickes. Which I wasn't expecting at the beginning, thinking that builders must have a magic route to cheap materials us mere mortals are denied.
I never promised you a particularly good moral, did I?
14 September 2008
Bathroom irritations
You will recall, dear reader, that I got the bathroom fitter in due to my inability to get the cloakroom basin on to the wall with any degree of solidity. I thought a professional may have better luck.
Well, I'm feeling a little irritated with the bathroom fitter who, whilst zooming through the work in a way I wouldn't, has left things a tad wobblier than I would have liked. The cloakroom basin, which he's moved out of the corner of the room which I didn't really want, needs a cupboard around it which I'm not sure he's now going to do. The basin in the main bathroom wobbles on the wall as well, but I suspect this has more to do with it being attached to the studwork. And the toilet (which was missing its fittings, which he told me before he went on holiday, but declined to mention that off-the-shelf fittings didn't fit, otherwise I would have chased up for replacements), which is attached with bits of wood, is a positive rollercoaster. I'm hoping a sea of sealant may hold it down.
Meanwhile, I think I've worked out a plan for making the understairs cupboard fireproof and aesthetically acceptable, so watch out for the entry where I describe the plaster peeling off the faster than I can get it back up. It better work, because I've asked for a final inspection for 29 September, if only to show me the boxes that still need to be ticked.
27 September 2008
48 Hours To Go
A couple of weeks since I last updated the blog, so here’s the latest position with 48 hours to go before our first, though probably not last, final inspection.
The doors arrived the day after the last entry, to the off-line blog at least, got a coat of Danish Oil, and were hung by the carpenter who finished off the studwork. Clearly I can’t count anywhere near up to double figures as I bought hinges for seven fire doors and five normal doors whereas we have eight and four. I also kept getting to him just after he’d completed a particular element that I needed to brief him over – not putting up skirting around the sunpipe towers; putting a lock on the study door, not the en suite.
I didn’t want to given him the briefing too early in the process as I’ve learnt from my experience with the electricians who, bar replacing the bedside lights in the master bedroom, have now finished. When the shade of the dining room light was found to be smashed I said I’d source another shade, which turned out to be part of an entire Ikea lamp. Forgetting that they had to combine the two lamps they’ve simply put up the Ikea lamp in its entirety. Still, not too difficult to change it over.
My personal headache – the understairs cupboards in general, and plastering the underside of the stairs in particular – has gone better than I thought. The plastering took most of a day, but rubbing it down with a damp cloth has given the curves something of a rustic look. There’s still one slight hole in it which needs more plaster. The bits that are meant to be flat don’t look so professional, though. I’ve also prevaricated over boxing in the nightmare of wires and pipes, boxes and boilers and my solution is now to somehow string up a removable rod across the whole shooting match off which we’ll hang coats. The coats will then cover up the mess. So all the pine doors I bought from Wickes have now gone back.
I think the kitchen hanging rack I got from Ikea will also be going back – nowhere to put it that doesn’t cover a spotlight. Apart from wrong handles and the missing innards of one corner unit, and the fact that the surveyor was an innumerate who couldn’t manage a tape measure to the extent that the runs of units had to practically be redesigned by the fitters as they went with elements missed out or exchanged, the kitchen fitting was so uneventful it didn’t warrant a mention here.
Decorators will be back next week to paint the skirtings, architraves and window boards. They put a first coat on to the skirtings before the chippie put them up, making use of a rare run of dry days to paint & stack them in the garden. Reminiscent of breaking ground, the fact that we would have got flooded out over summer but autumn weather has been more trustworthy. Talking of skirtings, there was a slight doubt that I’d ordered sufficient and I haven’t been back to site since yesterday morning. I’ll see when I go back to site tomorrow to sort out what I know won’t pass muster with the inspector before I find out everything else that he needs to see.
1 October 2008
SAPs, EPC, & Air Permeability Tests
The building inspector came, liked the stairs (which really weren’t his concern), didn't even open the door to the understairs cupboards to see their fire-protected nether regions, asked for a smoke detector to be spun round to keep the detector part at least 300mm from a wall (always got to be something to complain about), and said he was happy. Ish.
Not that that means we're finished. Oh, no sir-ee, Bob. We now need to submit our electrical certification, plus our SAP, EPC and air permeability test. When asked what the letters stand for he got a little vague...
You'll recall the work of our slightly crazed energy assessor (friend/colleague of Shower the so-called architect). Well, all that now needs to be redone based on what we've actually built, rather than the bits of paper. And because I am not prepared to go back to our mutual friend, it seems like whoever does it needs to re-do the sums from the design and then modify it according to reality. The company that's doing it for us (sister company of the building inspection company) charges £115 for the first bit and £35 for the second. All this pales against the £300 bill I refused to pay for the initial calculation.
The company won't do air tests, so somebody's coming up from Kent to do it on Monday, both for me and Peter at the Old Grain Store (127a's Victorian doppleganger) who also has a self-build nearing completion. The whole air test thing has left me utterly confused, based as it seems to be on thinking of a number then sticking a fan on your house to justify it. It was this number that BBS thought was missing from the calculations, so I've had several circular conversations with air testers asking for the answer which the test should show, and me not being able to provide it). However, after several more readings of the SAP calculations I’ve now found a number that seems to tie in with what people who tell me that they know what they’re talking about keep talking about.
Oh, and the inspector was content enough with our disabled access ramp – actually the pallet the doors came on cut in half with the bottom hidden by gravel - enough not to fail it, but not so much to avoid asking me to forward photos of it to the inspection company for their approval. No news one way or the other yet…
Meanwhile, our blinds should be being fitted today, but the company who are supplying & fitting said the first and wrote down the third. Which is no good to us as the decorators will be there.
And we also have expensive speakers winging their way to us having been purchased on eBay with minutes left on my 20% off voucher – which then didn’t work because I hadn’t bought one item, I’d bought four. So that was over £40 that I expected to have shaved off the bill that wasn’t. Bastards. But, if they’re attached to the wall then it’s going on our VAT claim…
3 October 2008
Just a bit of a nightmare scenario, that's all...
Not helped by falling off a ladder causing my leg to balloon like a grapefruit. (Do I have to mention that the ladder was lying against a wall and I was trying to walk along its edge in totally unsuitable footwear for reasons too domestic to go into?)
No, the nightmare scenario emanated from the following e-mail from the girl doing the SAP calculation sent me last night: " I have input all the construction details in the SAP calculator and currently the dwelling is failing. This is because the u values for the walls and roof are quite poor, can you tell me at what stage you are in construction, is it built already?"
Is it ****ing built? We're at the point of moving in!
What happened to "“Unilin panels help to comply with Part L Building Regulations and achieve air tightness and energy efficient buildings” using PIR foam having “Excellent U-Values exceeding building regulations in UK and Ireland”?
So I spend part of the night on the net researching the various u-values of all our component materials so I'm in a position to check her assumptions. This morning it turns out that it has nothing to do with walls & ceilings, but if you assume the underfloor heating is submerged in concrete with nothing more than an on/off button then her spreadsheet puts us on a par with Drax power station as a carbon emitter.
But telling the spreadsheet that the pipework is in screed as it really is with zoned/time-controlled thermostats restores our Guardian-reading status. She's also made a load of blanket assumptions regarding windows and asks me to research the real figures, even where I'm surprised she doesn't have them all at her fingertips. Example: she asks me to find out the u-value of the conservation Velux, so I put "conservation velux u-value" into Google and get the result with one mouse click. Doesn't she do this kind of thing daily?
Anyway, nightmare scenario averted and, until the air permeability figure is confirmed, we're virtually identical with the figure Frank from Blue Velvet produced for us. A good air test and we may be B-rated which would be a result.
9 October 2008
Snagging
With the exception of the master bedroom & en suite, and the outside, all of which I’m studiously ignoring, we’re on to snagging. The good lady wife has even put together a spreadsheet with a few dozen snags which I’m expanding to the several hundred items in reality which I can modify to make it feel like I’m progressing things, but I’m not really.
The decorators have been and gone, having done a better job with the woodwork than the emulsion, although I did go a bit Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Bodysnatchers when I noticed a drip of paint on the stairs. The blinds are also in, which should mean no more trades, discounting the man with a van, which I still need to line up.
Our air test has also taken place. All of a bit of a non-event. Deliberate venting points like bathroom extractors and the tumble dryer vent pipe were covered, and a big sheet went with a fan suspended in it went on the front door. We then sat inside – I thought we were going to be outside – whilst air was sucked out – I thought it was going to be blown in.
The man then took up residency in a fishing chair with a laptop whilst the software controlled the rest, altering the speed of the fan and working out how much air it needed to keep sucking out to keep the how at a certain pressure. Dots were plotted on a logarithmic scale, a line of best fit drawn, and a number generate for our SAP rating. A number less than six, thus giving us the B rating. Good result.
Back to snagging. The playroom is now finished, bar cleaning windows, and the spare room, in which we’ll be sleeping for a while, is also there minus a couple of obstinate screws in shelving and a few oil spots on the walls (I elected to oil the kertos, but I don’t think I will with the others). In classic fashion, the spare room has proved a few cms too narrow (basically the width of the skirting) for the rowing machine, and the placement of sockets in the playroom means the bookcases will half cover up a double socket.
The kids’ bathroom just needs a bit of grouting, some filler rubbing down, a drop of sealant, and paint touching up. Curtain rails to go up in the kids bedrooms (discounting a way of shading the sunpipes), and paint touching up. The open plan ground floor is a bit of a nightmare, but is more of a cleaning job than anything else. Still need to get skirting on in the cloakroom and the study has become something of a dumping ground. If anything, it’s the halls and stairwell that require the most rubbing down & touching up. I have an unexpected opportunity to knock some more items off the list tonight when the Boy’s new bed gets delivered at 9pm.
17 October 2008
Victim of the Digital Age
The bed turned out to be missing the small matter of the rung which will stop the Boy rolling out of bed and falling a metre on to a hard wood floor. Still, life isn't perfect is it?
Snagging continues sporadically, particularly as the vomiting virus has now laid low the Boy, Girl and Good Lady Wife. I seem to have survived after a minor scare when I confused a mild hangover for the early onset of virus. I think four rooms - spare room, and the kids' bedrooms & playroom can be declared finished, with main bathroom not far behind. Not much to do on kitchen/dining/living room or utility room. Study is lacking something industrial to put computer on, but master bedroom & en suite are looking like a junkyard.
To use WWII as an analogy, I think Germany & Italy have fallen, but we still need to drop the big ones on Japan to finish the job off.
Man with van booked for the Monday the 20th, and the old house currently looks like its been burgled - half emptied, half thrown about. Small items going off on eBay and Freecycle, but nobody wants the bits of furniture we have no place for in the new place. Shame to have as the centrepiece of our bonfire night conflagration a leather recliner, but it's what may turn out to be if we can't even give it away.
Major omission from house at the moment is any sort of telephone or broadband connection. Have spent the day trying to get Openreach to run their cable to the house, only to find out that they require me to have selected a supplier. Having made a rushed job at picking one out, we've decided that cable is the best option, thus negating all the work, phone calls, e-mails, and vows that I was no longer going to sponsor Branson's kids yachting trips. I haven't told Openreach yet: I don't think they'll be happy.
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