Postscript.

I closed the blog of the building of the house when we moved in.
(Have to draw the line somewhere.)

But things have happened to the new house, so here is an update.

We got block paving. It is so nice not to be walking hardcore into the house.
The guy nearest the camera is Hans, (The Original Dutch Paviour Ltd), except he works from North Shields.
He did a good job for us, not cheap, but you get what you pay for.
He had three lads working for him, but he was the brains in the job and worked as hard as any.

This is the finished result, taken by flash at night.
The blocks are Beamish Cobbles, a mixture of lengths, widths and colours.

One thing Hans had to come to terms with was that we did not want the rainwater to go to the sewer,
but did want it in our garden because our Ground Water Heat Pump gets heat from the ground water.
So he laid the block paving to drain to a place where he dug a big hole
and filled it with several tonnes of pea gravel to make a soak away.

Another thing that has happened is that I have began constructing the decking.
This is the decking on the South side of the house with garden furniture!

The construction is of two beams with slots at every 600mm,
that fit with 2m joists cut with slots that fit into the floor joist slots.
The slots could have been made with saw cuts and chisel but I made them using a router.
This involves screwing bits of wood to guide the router on each side of where a slot will be.
It takes time to set up but very quick to do once setup.

Progress on the wetroom. We gave up on finding someone to do it for us,and decided to do it ourselves.
Margie was brilliant at it. Here she is applying adhesive. Equally competent at grouting

This is the result, just awaiting Mick the plumber after Christmas
to install the shower, toilet, wash basin, and hot towel rail.

We have tiled the hearth and that is Margie's head, not very interesting.

But we lit the wood stove. Did not need the heat but it is more interesting than the TV.
In fact we could get rid of the TV and stop paying the TV license fee.
There is nothing on the TV we want to watch, or about 1 hours worth a week.

As part of the VAT refund application I had to itemise quantities of materials, here are the results.

In the end the electrical installation was even simpler than planned. This is the final quantities installed.
Basically it is 8 power sockets, one data connection, and one light per room.

Building costs

This is a breakdown of the cost of building the house.Initially we thought it would cost £150K.

Over 20 days in winter we are using 1KW per Hour for:
Underfloor heating, hot water, shower, kettle (hot drinks), oven, grill, cooking hob,
and all other electrical appliances, lights, computers, battery chargers, ...

The equivalent of a one bar electric fire heats the whole house in the winter
powering a ground water heat pump producing 8KW when running.

PPS

It is now the 30th of December 2006 and there have been additions so here is a Post Post Script.

Originally we were going to have the temporary railway sleeper steps
replaced by ones made from bricks. But Hans (block pavior) said they had railway sleeper steps
in the Netherlands. So we decided to be environmentally friendly and keep the steps.
I fixed and tidied them up and clad them. I think they are better than brick ones.

The chain, an open air downpipe, guides rain water from the gutter the the pebbles
in the opening in the block paving, below which is a gully and drain to a soak-away.

This is Dan Craig helping me with the ramp for wheeled access to the house.

The finished ramp. The wood needs treating, but that will have to wait till the wood dries.

Another thing we have fixed up is a clothes drying rack in the Utility Room.
The ground water heat pump and freezer are both in the room and generate waste heat,
the clothes dry overnight, no need for an environmentally unfriendly tumbler drier.

Lastly, the Wet Room is finished.

12th January 2007 A late update, but to me a significant one. The garage was erected 11 months ago,
it was used to store all sorts of stuff that needed protecting from the weather.
But my car could never get into it. Over the last days I have sealed and painted the floor.
And now rearranged it so that the car can get in.
For me this is the end of the building of the new house. We are in.

What I would do differently next time.

We paid many organisations and people to do work.
The big organisations you do not have too much to worry about, Northumberland Water, NEDL, Northtyneside Planning, BT.
They can be eye-wateringly expensive, but they are not going to do a runner, and all can be called to account.
You do have to worry about the smaller firms and individual tradesmen and craftsmen. [Yes, they were all MEN, no WOMAN :-( ]
These can do a bad job and take your money and you have basically no redress. It is your fault you employed them.

Next time I would take much greater care in checking people out. There was over 20 people we paid to do work,
not the big organisations, but individuals or small firms, any of which could have done a bum job.
We were exceptionally lucky, just one bad one. (He wasn't bad, just incompetant, working above his skill/knowledge.)
But next time I would take much greater care in choosing people/firms. Do not rely on luck.

Next time I build a timberframe house I would make the utility room floor a separate foundation.
You do not need underfloor heating there and both the ground water heat pump and washing machine when spinning,
can be heard throughout the house. It is not too bad, we can easily live with the noise.
The spinning washing machine with an uneven load is the worst, but at least you know when it has finished.
But if both were on a foundation unconnected to the timber frame house you would not hear them so much.

Next time I would not put underfloor heating upstairs. Currently it is turned off. The whole house is warm
just from the underfloor heating downstairs. What is worse is that upstairs is 7 loops of 615m of pipework.
Downstairs is just 4 loops of 430m. That is all you need in a well insulated house.
So we probably paid 50% more on underfloor heating that we needed to.

Next time I would lag the pipework between the ground water heat pump downstairs and the two tanks upstairs.
During the winter the heat lost just heats the house, but in summer the house is too warm from solar heat gain,
so the heat lost is a waste. Just as important is the noise the pipework makes as it expands and contracts
through the ceiling/floor joists.

Next time I would have eased the roof pitch from 35 degrees to 25 degrees, instead of 30 degrees.
The roof tiles would still work at 25 degrees and it would have given more headroom upstairs.

Next time I would not have the front door, and its doormat, at the bottom of the staircase
everytime someone goes upstairs they walk over a dirty door mat, and take dirt upstairs, not a good idea.
Next time I would have the front door next to the utility room, where the dirty footware can live.

The metal rods that vertically threaded the artichouse logs were utterly of no use, redundant.
Delete them from the order before you place it.

Finally here is a roll call of people/organisations/firms who helped us build our drop dead gorgious house.
You do not have to read it unless you are looking to build/repair/alter a house in the NE of England.

Brian moore, Northtynside Planning Department,, he/they were good and supportive.
Roger Perkins, Northumbrian Water,, Sewer Diversion, expensive but fine fine. Returned phone calls.
Brian Syms. Sewer diversion consultant,. Yep, fine. Crucial, no diversion, no house.
Malcolm Newton, architect,. Contributed beyond what we paid him for. The house is better for his touch.
Nick Keenleyside, Ann & Alan Creedy, of Sustainable Buildings who we bought the house from. Faultless.
John Young of John Young Hire. He was brilliant at helping us with groundworks, but he has moved on.
Tony Mould & John, the Northumberland based timber house builders. The house is half their work.
Keemo & Matti, the Finnish house builders. The other half of the timber framed house was their work. Use them if you can.
Stephan Speak, (Redhead Roofing),, for our roof, fine job.
Mick Donaldson (Plumber), & Joe his mate. We knew he was good, and he did not let us down.
Bob Thackeray, (electrician), guided us to a good electrical solution.
Bob Mitchell, (Gosforth Plasterers),, AND his plasterers. Just stand back and let them loose. Great job.
Mickey Gallagher, (Decorator), Seaton Burn.
John of Appealing Steel,, for our gate.

If you want to see/visit the house the postcode is NE13 6EY and our telephone number is 0191 236 7580.