Soon we'll have a roof.

There's probably too many photos for one post here really, but if I don't put them up now it probably won't happen...

The builders have just about finished the work on the roof structure and on the incredible number of rafters needed to form the sloping ceiling and contain insulation.  As I write the roofers are finally in starting to lay the breathable roofing membrane and battens, ready for tiles to go back on early next week.  We've now missed the planned deadline of end of April to have roof back on and Bat Loft boarded out, which is a shame but was unavoidable due to the heaviest April rainfall in years.  It's essentially been exactly the wrong kind of weather for roofing.  The horrible blue plastic was never meant to be on the roof for as long as a month, but it has just about held up - mostly.  The number of leaks has increased, especially in the torrential downpours combined with the winds,  and almost inevitably one of the ceilings I was hoping to save was trashed by water.  Oh well.

While the builders have been working I've been managing to do bits and pieces in between, taking out internal walls that are no longer holding anything up, lifting paving slabs in the garden in preparation for groundworks, removing the rest of the manky insulation from the loft, and the like.  Also bits of general project managing, trying to make sure I'm ordering things in time for them to be on site when needed (biggest of these recently is the rainwater harvesting tank and paraphernalia), and answering queries about design as they come up.  There are so many decisions to be made about every last detail!  I'm getting quicker at making them now, but I think by the time I get home, even simple decisions (such as "what to cook?") are too much.

I would still prefer to be doing more of this stage myself, but the time restrictions imposed by the Bat Plan - and by needing to get back on schedule so that I have some chance of doing the rest of the preparation in time for the strawbale courses in July - mean that a burst of professional activity is necessary.  I do have to admit as well, that having seen how complicated some of the carpentry turned out to be: I would never have done as good a job as these guys or in anything like as little time.

Here's the latest progress photos:

Preparing openings for roof windows: doubling up rafters, and fitting trimmers (rafter sized timbers to hold top and bottom of window). This photo from before I pointed out the windows weren't that big...

Apple trees recovering from their brutal but necessary pruning

Kit and Simon contemplating the rooflight openings

Most satisfying demolition yet.  Knock three bricks off, cut through one timber, then wobble and shove right over.  It was a doorway to nowhere that had been irritating me for a while, but the wall supported a beam that held up a large amount of ceiling until recently.

Rooflight openings trimmed to correct size

Collected future firewood in one place, so it doesn't get buried under a mound of earth when the groundworks start.

So many new rafters.  Bottom row support plasterboard ceiling, top row to contain insulation.  Top end of top rafters also acts as load-spreader to spread the load of the main roof rafters across the top of the new glulam purlin.

The Bat Loft taking shape.

A phenomenal amount of timber went into the soffits.  This is to act as a wall plate for the strawbale wrap - we need a solid structure to compress the bale wall down from, using bottle jacks.

Gable roof extension, to cover the thickness of the bale wrap.

Accidental self-take on scaffolding.  Switching from looking like this to looking clean and respectable for massage work in the middle of the build is odd.

Rafter extensions to cover bale width at back corner of bungalow.  The conservatory roof will start on the closest side of these three rafters.

front soffit/eaves work finished, including fascia-board.  The OSB offcuts between the rafters are to contain the recycled cellulose insulation which will be blown in from inside the loft later on.

Soffit/eaves detail.  This cavity will be filled with insulation to help avoid thermal bridging where the strawbale wrap joins the roof.

Ceiling stud-work complete

This will be main living area and kitchen.

Loft-hatch!  One of those little things that I found disproportionately satisfying when it was done.

'Flying gable'.  Eventually the wall will follow the line down from that stud-work.

I was hoping to save this ceiling to minimise old plasterboard waste, but the rain got in.  The plastic went back on less than brilliantly above it after work on the roof, with the result that it funnelled rain straight in here rather than off the roof.  In fairness, the amount of rain that fell was ridiculous.

Bat roost.  Getting it up into that position was hard work on my own.  In the course of being sensible and safe about it (I never like working at heights), sitting securely on the sloping ceiling rafters on the cross timbers I put in to support me - I managed to thwack myself in the forehead with the sensible and safe prop I was wedging the bat roost up with... Doh.
Bat roost: two scored boards separated by battens, with a few battens horizontally inside to create niches for the bats to hang-out.

Valley boards, to support the felt and flashing in the join between the two bits of roof.  Left hand board needs cutting.

Massively pleasing sight: permanent roof covering going on at last ("breathable" Vapour permeable membrane/VPM, underlay which original tiles be replaced on top of).

The Bat Mesh in place at the apex of the roof.  The VPM is lain on top of this.  The mesh allows bats to crawl down the underside of the VPM without the layers of VPM separating and entangling the bats.

Gary working alone on a bank holiday weekend and on his birthday too.

Glimpse of the roof through the trees

Spring on Watton Hill

Strawbale Courses

Progress on site seems to be quite rapid now.  Lots has been done in the last few weeks, aided greatly by having temporarily hired a labourer so I'm not working alone.  It's brilliant how much faster things can happen with two people.  I'm still hoping to make great use of voluntary labour whenever it is available, so if anyone reading this likes the sound of that please let me know!  I'm starting to get a few people lined up for this now, which is a great weight off my mind.  Progress report via the photos below.

But first, it's time to announce the two strawbale building courses we're planning to run to build the loadbearing extension and the bungalow wrap.  Probably both courses will do a bit of both to give the broadest possible experience.  The instructor will be Kuba Wihan, the excellent strawbale building designer and consultant.  The lovely folk at Straw Works (which Kuba has close ties to) will be handling the admin for the course, so please contact them (strawworks@gmail.com) for full information and to book.  There is more info about Straw Works and their other current projects on their facebook page, and the courses are listed there under 'events'.

The dates for our courses are July 25th - 29th 2012, August 1st - 5th 2012.  The cost will be £325 for 5 day course, including a vegetarian lunch.  We hope to be able to include an evening meal in the price (though the course info currently says this will be extra) but can't promise anything yet.  There are many local campsites and B&Bs, and the sea is about 2 miles away.

Here's the blurb from the course flier:

During those two five day workshops, we will be upgrading an existing bungalow in Bridport to meet very low energy building standards, while using natural materials. This is a unique opportunity to take part in wrapping an existing bungalow externally with strawbales and simultaneously building a load bearing strawbale extension. The newly wrapped bungalow and strawbale extension is going to have solar thermal as well as solar PV panels on the roof, conservatory, rainwater harvesting, mechanical heat recovery ventilation system and Finnish wood burning massoven as a backup for extra cold winters. Anna and John Butler hope to give the 1960s bungalow a new lease of life, aiming for a home that is lovely, comfortable and consumes very little energy, using materials with lowest possible associated pollution and embodied energy. Anna has limited mobility so the completed bungalow will be accessible with level access throughout.

I don't know whether or not anyone in the UK has wrapped a building in strawbales for external insulation before (if you have - or know anyone who has - I would love to know) so this really is a rare chance to get some hands-on experience of doing it.  I think it should happen more often!  That part of the build is fairly straightforward and will result in a massive improvement of insulation for the bungalow (in conjunction with increased airtightness and loft insulation).  Kuba has done this before in the Czech Republic (see Strawbale Wrappaging), so he is the ideal person to be working with on this project.

Meanwhile, preparatory works continue:

Garage roof removed.  Boards saved for later use.

More back straining but highly satisfying sledgehammer swinging later...

There are lots of reusable bricks here.  Some will be used in internal changes to the existing bungalow, the rest will be stored in the garden to build raised beds and paths with later.

Demolishing the garage freed up a table and some doorframe timber to make a tool table with.  Things are getting more organised!

Scaffolding up.  It was suggested that I could just use a scaffold tower to strip the roof from but especially after the sunroom roof incident I decided the expense was well worth it for added ease and safety

End of Day 1 of roof strip.  No bats were found, but the very helpful ecologist from Dorset Ecology helped us stack tiles.

Mid morning on Day 2. The tiles to need to be stripped so that the roof timbers are unladen when we make structural changes.  The 47 year old felt was shot and disintegrated on touch so that had to come off too.

Hello kitchen

Hello sky

The wall cavity is a hideous place.  Anybody identify this spider? One of about 5 different species of large spider found during the course of roof work.

Eaves structure detail.  A new timber wall plate will shortly be added inside the eaves/above the soffit, which will enable us to compress the strawbale wrap down from it

End of Day 2.  Temporarily covered with plastic to keep most of the rain out until the structural changes are done and the roof can be re-tiled, hopefully within the next fortnight.  I don't like having to use all that plastic, but there wasn't much choice at the time.

Schedule?

10kg demolition hammer made much quicker work of the stubbornly solid chimney breast.

I had hoped to have most of the roof work done by now, but instead we are just about ready to start it.  I keep remembering Kuba's comments about the works schedule (Kuba Wihan, strawbale building design/consultancy): I'm not sure of the exact words but the gist was that the schedule was something you do and then watch it go to hell (though I think he put it more nicely than that).  The written schedule is more a means of working out what order to do things in, and it provides me a framework to keep check on whether we're vaguely on track or not.  If I remember to check it often enough it should also remind me when to order things at roughly the right the time.  Should...

Right now the schedule is kind of dictating itself.  Structural details weren't approved earlier, I didn't get some things sorted earlier, I fell through the sunroom roof and that slowed me down etc etc.  I've decided to use a firm of local builders to (hopefully) speed things along a bit with the structural changes to the roof, so that we can still get the Bat-loft (as I've started thinking of it) re-roofed and sealed off from the rest of the build by the end of April, so that we comply with our Bat Mitigation Plan and have it ready in time for any bats that fancy it to hang out in there and breed.  Further roof work (insulation, running of MVHR - Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery - ducting and the like will then have to wait until October when the next bat-safe window opens).

Preparation and more bureaucracy

Twelve days on from receiving  planning permission I feel like things are starting to move in the right direction.  I'm swinging from excited to terrified, but I suspect that will be the way of things for much of the year to come.  Now in a whirlwind of emails, phone-calls, site visits and general attempts to get everything in place practically and bureaucratically to start in March.  For example, today's magical mystery tour combination of bureaucracy and practicality has involved lifting manholes to photograph the drains and work out where they go and phone-calls to the dramatically titled Sewer Protection Team at Wessex Water, in order to determine whether the drain is classified as a private or public sewer.  Thankfully, as it only serves our bungalow and is on our land it's still private which means that one big bundle of added (and expensive) paperwork is avoided.  Any work over - or within 3 metres of - a public sewer would need permission from the relevant sewage authority, which in Wessex Water's case has a £225 fee attached.  (NB: a private sewer now becomes a "public" one once it leaves your land, so work needs to be more than 3 metres away from the point it crossed the boundary... ours is around 4.5 metres from that point so we're okay).

On the planning front, Kuba - the designer - (www.jakubwihan.com) is starting work on the detailed drawings for building regulation approval.  We've appointed JHAI as our independent building inspector for building control - they're local (based 5 miles away), have experience of other sustainable builds and materials including strawbale, and have a good reputation for helpfulness.  For SAP Assessment (Standard Assessment Procedure for energy rating of dwellings, taking into account all energy usage from heating, lighting, hot water etc, the sources of energy used, and the relevant CO2 emissions) we've chosen Phil Neve of Brilliant Futures who is based just south of Bristol - as well as doing the relevant calculations to ensure compliance with Part L of Building Regs (which deal with the conservation of heat and power) he will help us ensure we are building something that will be as efficient as we can make it, keeping our energy use (and operational costs) as low as possible.

Of bats and bureacracy, Part 2

Brief summary of Part 1: the bat man checked for bats and found bat poo indicative of one bat, but couldn't rule out the possibility of there being more bats hidden between the felt and the tiles of the roof.  He then wrote us a bat plan which received the necessary approval from the bat people at Dorset County Council, once we'd resolved a few glitches (they initially failed to read the plans properly).

The bat plan (Dorset Bat Mitigation Plan/DBMP) sets out an approach to roof works that will minimise any potential disruption to bats.  Although the plan describes "a bat roost of low conservation significance", we have to act as though there may be more bats roosting in the space between the roofing felt and the concrete roof-tiles, just in case.  Had we known earlier about the need for a Bat Survey we could have carried out emergence surveys - checking at dusk to see how many bats emerge from the roof - and based the Bat Plan on more specific information.  Sadly, it was already October by the time we knew a survey was needed and at this time of year the bats aren't active in that way.  I'm not sure what they are doing, but it isn't flying in and out of roof roosts.

Of bats and bureaucracy, part 1

The last week or so has been a flurry of fairly stressful activity.  I haven't felt so stressed about the project at any point so far.  Thankfully as a result we now have nearly everything in place to finally submit our planning application.  I hoped to have done that by now, and as I'll explain one of the reasons for the recent activity also makes it more urgent than ever to submit the plans as soon as possible.  Urgh.

I went to see the planning officer again with the virtually complete plans (previously I'd only shown them my own computer mock-ups of possible designs, rather than the actual accurate plans).  The planning officer didn't really have much to add this time, having already commented on the basic principles of the project (and broadly approved - see Elevated Greenery), but she did add that we'd need a Bat Survey before we could submit our application.  Despite my best efforts to find out what additional information we needed to accompany the application this annoyingly hadn't shown up in any lists on the Dorset For You website or the Planning Portal site.  The Dorset website is so convoluted that I can't guarantee it's not on there somewhere in the depths but certainly not anywhere obvious.  The Planning Portal ("the UK Government's online planning and building regulations resource") does have a lot of information, but when it comes to local information requirements it just says that pull-down lists will show what you need when actually submitting a planning application online.  That's not much use in advance.