h
In 50 minutes the houses are down.
Demolition of the houses begins
We are required to employ an Ecologist with a Bat license to oversee the removal of the roof tiles in case the Bat which was in the loft at some time is found. The Ecologist arrives and the tile removal is underway. By 2pm the tiles are all removed along with the roof trusses. As I expected no Bats were found!
Finally we are in a position to demolish the cottages. The plant arrives at 7:30.
The windows were purchased supply and fit. The crew supplied by the window manufacturer prove to be quite unhelpful. As soon as they arrive on site (one and a half hours late) they look for reasons not to fit the windows and several of those that they do fit they damage while fitting. They leave site having only fitted 12 out of the 29 windows and inform us that they dont know when they will return to complete the job. Potton were on to it immediately and ask the manufacturer not to send the fitters back, and they arrange for the team erecting the timber frame to complete the job.
The windows arrive on site. They are glazed and finished all ready for installation.
14 March. After only 42 days the house is now really taking shape.
Looking at the cavernous space up here we make a snap decision to get some drawings done to add a staircase to the loft area. It involves a slight reconfiguration to the first floor but gives us an additional 340 sq ft of space. Otherwise, with the planned loft ladder we would only make one visit a year up here to get the Christmas tree! Sorry make that two visits – I would have to take it back!
The snow starts and is blowing horizontally but we keep going.
The first truss goes up. It is bitterly cold this morning with a real feel temperature of -10ºC and it REALLY FEELS like it!
We have a platform system erected on the first floor, making it easy for the guys to walk about and install the roof trusses.
The crane is a monster and makes easy work of the job in hand
The first load of two arrives.
11 March and the 29 Ton crane arrives to offload the Roof Trusses and lift them up onto the building.
Day 37 - In just under two weeks we have the two floors completed.
There was a days work to batten the base and level it up and on day 2 the panels started going up.
It took one day to complete the ground floor.
With the timber onsite the carpenters started work. First job was to batten the whole base. This was then checked for levels and we found that it was only 10mm out at the worst point. Pretty impressive, but this was made perfectly level using small plastic wedges.
Its 25 February and the first of 5 loads of the timber frame arrives
Luckily the road is not too busy so we didn’t cause any problems.
