SIPS are quick

Here's the video of the ground floor being constructed in double quick time.



Ian from Sips @ Clays came down on Friday with a trailer load of timber that the crew could use to set out the soleplate. At the same time Les and Phyllis (my in-laws) arrived in their VW campervan with a plan to stay the weekend and to see the site before the build started. On their journey down though, the gearbox gave up (something about thirty years on one oil fill!). Repairs would take a week, so our busy little site had to find room for a couple of extra guests. The more the merrier!

On Tuesday, the construction crew of Duane, Chris and Phil arrived to beautiful blazing hot sunshine. They cheerfully worked throughout the day, with Les lending a hand. In twelve hours they measured, marked, packed and placed beams around the blockwork that would give an accurate and level base for the sips panels. Happily, the slab and blockwork had given them a good start - less than 10mm difference in 17 metres.

As they were working, we had a call from the lorry driver who we expected to turn up the next morning with the panels to start construction. Rather than drive over night, he had already set out. Could we find somewhere for him to park? Did I say the more the merrier? Of course! So, the campervan was joined overnight by a forty foot artic. We should open a lorry park - we certainly feel popular enough.

The next three days saw Duane, Chris and Phill working fantastically hard in a wonderful late summer as the harvest ran around us. Back wall, sides, interior and front all went up exactly as planned to the thud-thud-thud of nail guns and some enthusiastic singing along with their radio. Each day would end with the compressor being turned off from it's asthmatic bursts of activity, air being let out of the hoses and quiet descending. We'd take it in turns to wander around the house, looking out of windows that hadn't been there hours earlier and pacing out the position of cupboards, stairs and furniture.

The short working week ended with plates built around the top of the ground floor walls ready for joists and first floor deck. Les and Phyllis drove home and we set about tidying the site for the next big push - first floor walls and then the roof. Our feet hadn't touched the ground. At last our house had truly started.

Piles!

We've been busy the last couple of months, but not blogging. Sorry. We had a great holiday in July - a last little breather before the chaos hits. And boy has it hit.

The house should start to go up next week.

Right now that means we have to co-ordinate all of the bits and pieces needed on site to help the build run smoothly. We also have to pre-order many of the follow on materials and supplies for the house to be made water tight and first fit to begin. Some of these have two month lead times so we're having to anticipate where we're going to be sometime in October. Being new to the game, this is all quite daunting and I'm sure Barry (our builder, who will oversee the rest of the construction) dispairs of us at times. But it's coming together slowly.

In the mean time, I've sorted out a computer with enough space to cope with the four thousand photos we're taking a day (one every ten seconds or so) to give us timelapse video of the build.

Here's the first film, of the site being scraped down to level and the piles going in. Abbey Pynford did a great job and their teams were efficient and friendly - we'd highly recommend them.

It Never Rains But It Pours (or not...)

We started our building the actual house - or at least broke ground - in the brief spell of glorious weather and this sleepy little site has transformed into a hotbed of activity. Not only are we drowning in lists of people to contact, decisions to be taken and jobs to do (when we've not even started the foundations yet!), but our social calendar has chosen this moment to explode.

We're having a great time. Sleep, after all, is for the weak and foolish.

Friday saw a trip into Cambridge for a night of beer and curry with friends. It reminded me how well situated we are. The train station is ten minutes' on foot through beautiful fields along side the river. What better way to forget work at the end of the week than walking through blissful countryside as the day's heat gives way to fresh evening breezes? Then it's barely more than five minutes into town and a short stagger to the civilised comfort of the Salisbury Arms (many other pubs are available, please see Mill Road for details).

Back in the village (with a hangover.. ouch) the barracks had it's annual open day this weekend. The kids were entertained with a chance to sit in a helicopter and turn knobs and dials until it might never be able to fly again. Dad was entertained by a long display by the Lancaster bomber, Spitfire and Hurricane which took turns to do runs over the old airfield, dive and spin off into the sky. Mum took the opportunity to go riding.

Sunday saw the village beer festival's family day - Pimms for Mum, beer for Dad and more ice-cream for William and Becky. When so many of the local villages have lost their identity to nearby Cambridge and the march of supermarkets and shopping centres, it's great that ours is big enough to have a real sense of community and successful events without quite loosing that close knit feel.

In between these trips we've managed to fit in a visit by Ness' Aunt, cousin Ben and his family, a visit from my Mum & Dad, my birthday and a lot of site preparation. When not socialising, we've been checking plans, marking out locations with upside down paint(*) and hammering in bargeboards to show just where everything should go. The day starts at seven and ends with me watering the plants in the dark as the sun has set. Last minute clearing, chopping, digging and marking seems to be paying off though - I'll post up the video of the site being dug very soon.

* - For painting upside down. Very useful stuff.

Starting the build

This must mark the beginning of our build - we're knocking down the shed.



It'll be a couple of months before anything shows above ground as we're still completing a few remaining details for the construction. However, by the end of this month we should have a foundation slab to show just how big (or small) the house feels. Very early days, but it's still quite exciting.

SIPs - Genius Idea

Once we got planning permission, one of the first decisions we had to make was - how are we going to build our house? Only a few years ago the choice was simple, wood or brick. Now there is the option of straw bales, durisol bricks, thin joint blocks, ICF blocks, SIPs and many other even more obscure building materials. For our needs, SIPs (structural insulated panels) seemed to be ideal. They are a sandwich of wood chip board and insulation, a little less than six inches thick and produced in enormous sheets. At the factory, they are cut into sections for your house walls and roof, holes are made for windows and doors and the whole lot are wrapped up and sent on the back of a lorry to the site.

here's an offcut 

Once they arrive on site, they're glued and screwed together to make up the entire shell of your new home. From bare slab to complete shell can take as little as a couple of weeks. Whilst the speed is impressive, the most significant feature of SIPs are that you end up with a shell that is consistently and robustly insulated. The few joints that are needed to connect panels are glued and airtight. The result is a home that is easy to heat and easy to keep warm.

in a few years time, SIPs will become a significant force in UK construction

SIPs have been used for decades in Canada and some parts of Europe. Whilst they are relatively new in the UK, the market has been maturing. Early experimental homes have given way to a well established stream of new buildings. The benefit to self-builders is obvious - you can build a top spec, energy efficient house for a sensible cost and at low risk. Developers are beginning to catch on and I'm sure that in a few years time, SIPs will become a significant force in UK construction.

After talking to a number of suppliers, we chose SIPS @ Clays, who have proven to be enthusiastic and experienced. They deliver something like a house a week from their base in Skipton and take pride in the results they achieve. The houses are first drawn up in CAD, then cut and delivered for their construction team to erect. At the moment we're making the final small revisions to the CAD model and in a few weeks they'll begin to cut them up for construction this summer. Between now and then though, we need to prepare the site and lay some foundations.

Pollarding at speed

Getting things ready for a summer of building - the old willow needed to be trimmed back. It was also an excuse to try out the camera which should help us video the house being built.



For anyone who actually cares - the house will be in place of the derelict sheds you can see to the left of the picture. But bigger.

Homebuilding and Renovating Show

This weekend saw the Homebuilding and Renovating Show at the NEC. It was far from our first, and seemed much quieter than it has been before and somewhat smaller. It's hard to tell though as we've been through four distinct phases when it comes to house building shows. This time round we knew who we wanted to see, what we wanted to talk about and what was irrelevant to our build which shrank the whole event down to a manageable size. The first time we ever went to the show, we were still just thinking "Wouldn't it be nice to build our own house", and the array of stands offering different ways to make a home seemed to go on forever.

Between then and now, we also went through the vital phase where we actually decided that we would build our own home and had to begin to research our options properly. Somewhere in a filing cabinet is a heavy stack of brochures from those research missions. Then there was the phase where we had made our basic choices and needed to find the people who could make it all happen.

 

That said, the credit crisis seemed to have had an impact. There were fewer gizmos and 'bling' house features on display. Only a handful of stands were giving away freebies - and jute bags with your company logo are apparently so last year. Some well known faces from the self build scene were absent. If not subdued, the whole event seemed to be a very calm affair.

More depressingly, the Eco-village showed that you can make anything environmentally friendly (apparently) by adding 'Eco' to the name and painting your stand a nice shade of green. The show itself led the way in that respect, but it's hard to view (amongst other things) a swimming pool as a means to make your house kinder to the planet. At least some of the stalwarts who used to sell slightly suspect whole house vacuum systems have moved on to selling heat recovery ventilation kit instead which has a more convincing benefit to the self builder.

Retrospective Blog 3/3 - Planning Permission

We got planning permission. We got planning permission. We got planning permission.

It doesn't get old.

I have to apologise for not posting up perhaps our most significant news of 2008 until a few weeks into 2009. The reason for the delay is that I've not been able to put down in words the combination of delight, relief, vindication, exhaustion, frustration, trepidation and a few other emotions that the news has brought.

The overwhelming feeling is delight. We've been waiting to build our house for quite a few years now and at last it's happening. The process had gone on so long that we'd stopped buying self build magazines and making mental notes about kitchen designs we liked. Now, suddenly, it's time to put the theory into practise and make it all happen.

There seem to be two schools of thought as to how we should describe the last few years. The soap opera view suggests that we have been stressed and dismal, forced into terrible living conditions and dragged ourselves listlessly from day to day, hopeing for salvation. The Grand Designs view is that planning permission happened just like that in the five minutes before the interesting part of the programme gets going.

The reality is that we've had a fine old time living in our caravan, bringing up two small children and getting on with our lives. A few things have been put on hold (such as big holidays), and there has been a slight sense of limbo, but really the move to Lock Farm has coincided with quite a few other changes that have kept us busy and entertained in equal measure. We have learned the valuable lesson of what exactly we need to be comfortable and happy (it turns out, remarkably little). There have been occasional bad moments usually centred around heating or storage space (the former being slightly unpredictable and the latter highlighting how disorganised we can be). On the whole though, living in a muddy field is good fun.

The planning battle has very much been a learning experience. Most of it has been boring and bureaucratic, with short sharp shocks of disappointment. However we didn't go into this expecting instant gratification, or with a picture in our heads of the exact house we wanted to build without compromise. The result is that though we feel we could have done it better - or at least faster, we're very happy with the final decision. There's a lot to be said about our planning system in this country, a good deal of it being deeply critical. However none of that actually matters when there are tenders to be requested, suppliers to choose and the detailed design to complete.

Did I mention we got planning permission?

Retrospective Blog 2/3 - Bonfires' Night

When I was young, bonfires' night was always a favourite. We'd have a big old blaze of deadwood and odd remnants of furniture. My Dad would carefully work his way through a box of fireworks which childhood memories recall as a long and spectacular display. We'd frantically wave sparklers around until the sparkle burnt out and the glowing metal bent in our flailing hands. At the time our cooker was a coal fired Aga which spread heat through the kitchen floor and into the room. It was pretty much inevitable that we'd have jacket potatoes that had been slow cooked to perfection. The following day would see me raking through the bonfire ashes, trying to coax it back into life and hunting down the spent rocket shells as trophies of the night's fun.

As I grew up, bonfires' night took a bit of a back seat. We moved house, away from the convenient back garden and the Aga which so suited traditional celebrations. Later I went to college and made do with watching Battersea fireworks display from the roofs of our student digs. It wasn't quite the same.

Then, moving up to Liverpool for my first job, bonfires' night got so much better. The evening would start at Keith's Bar before swaying gently with the crowd to Sefton Park for the big display, making slightly inebriated oohs and aahhs. Then on to one of the old park mansions, run as a commune and putting on it's own display - an enormous bonfire of planks and furniture and a comically small fizzle of fireworks that could barely compete with the heat and light of the blaze behind it. As an adult the occasion had suddenly become less about the explosions and more about gathering together with friends to drink, sing and enjoy the company.

Cambridge only reinforced that. When we bought our first house just in time for November's celebrations, eighty friends packed our garden, trying to strike a balance between singeing themselves by the bonfire and freezing up by the house. Almost without exception every one of them had come with packs of fireworks - it took three of us over two hours to work through the rockets and roman candles. At one in the morning a frantic search was carried out for the last remaining sober driver who could help collect a large unwanted cupboard which was just right for keeping the fire burning bright that little bit longer.

Now we're out on the edge of the fens, with young children of our own and bonfires' night has changed again.

Last year we bought a very small pack of fireworks to see how William and Becky would respond to them. Not too surprisingly William very quickly decided he didn't like the unexpected noises and we called a halt before he could get that idea lodged in his head. This year we thought we'd try again - I'm looking forward to them both being old enough to come along to the fantastically well organised Cambridge City display. After a couple of fireworks, William started to ask what kind was going to come next, and by the end he was asking for 'the sparkly one' or 'the green one'. Even Becky joined in, standing on the window ledge inside the caravan and watching me setting off rockets. We used up a pack and a half of fireworks (this year's and the remnants of the previous year which had been languishing on top of a cupboard) and every one was happy. Especially William's proud/pyromaniac dad.

Retrospective Blog 1/3 - Halloween

We planted the seeds, grew two impressively healthy pumpkins after a couple of false starts, hollowed them out and made tasty if rather surprisingly spicy soup. Then I managed to make this with the help of a template from the interwebs (you didn't think I was that artistic did you?).

 

Not bad for a couple of seeds!

Assassin's Trousers

We need to find a shop that sells Assassin's Trousers. It's amazing to discover just how noisy a normal pair of trousers can be. Jeans, chinos, it doesn't matter - they’re all equally loud.

If you don’t believe me, try the following experiment. Get a small 18 month old child that is teething (parents of young children might be able to see where this is going). Place said child in a cot where you hope desperately that it will spend an hour or two catching up on the sleep it is so sorely missing. Sit next to child making shushing noises, patting it fitfully and (if you're brave) singing old McDonald until you run out of sensible animals. For this purpose lions are quite normal farmyard animals. However I can't quite decide what noise a gnu makes so that’s where the line gets drawn.

At some point you should find you’re in the enviable position of sitting in silence next to a rumpled ball of sleeping toddler. At last! Enjoy the moment. Soak in the calm after the storm of tears and tantrums and cries of ‘teef’, ‘teef’ with one hand in a dribbly mouth (theirs, not yours).

Now try to stand up. In silence. Without waking the baby.

If your child is like ours, teething sleep is not deep. The slightest noise that suggests that Comforting Parent is about to leave will wake them instantly. Shushing, patting and Old McDonald’s entire menagerie will be required all over again. The fear can keep a sane parent rooted to the spot for hours, wondering if it might be easier to sleep right there next to the bed. Even though it's actually 10am. But no, it’s time to go and let them rest.

It’s only when you're praying for the absolutely silent exit to the safety of the front room (and a stiff drink, 10am be damned) that you’ll discover that everyday sorts of trousers are surprisingly, distressingly noisy. That first moment of straightening your legs in preparation for a tip-toed dance to the exit is a symphony of strange little noises that you never knew simple material could make. One hurried step could return you both back to square one.

That’s where assassin’s trousers come in. They must have them. Trousers for assassins. Surely the need to be able to creep around without a noise must have led to advances in silent trouser technology? Especially if your professional career (and indeed life) depend on it?

So where can I buy a pair? I’m only asking because I've been stuck here next to the cot for three days now and the supply of rusks has run out

Sunshine - in Spots

 

I've heard a few people comment on the 'terrible' summer we've had. The flowers, fruit, vegetables and (ahem) nettles disagree. So do I. It's certainly been unpredictable - the barbecues we promised never quite materialised. But in between the unscheduled showers it's been rather good. So long as we've been happy to take opportunities when they come, we've had some lovely days out and about in Cambridgeshire. From Milton Maize Maze to Wimpole Hall, from Denny Abbey to the Big Weekend Parker's Piece, the rain has held off and a good time (and ice-cream) has been had by all. That's ignoring the easy trips to the park, the local paddling pool and up to the river to watch the boats.

All in all, it's been rather a good summer. We could have done without a couple of colds and it would have nice to be building a house but it's hard to worry about these things when you're taking it easy outside.

 

Here are some late pickings from the garden - potatoes, plums, broccoli, raspberries and eggs. That's pretty much a meal all in itself.

Stud Locator

We're doing a little bit of re-organisation in the caravan. Will has been in a proper bed for some time and Becky is ready to do the same. They're on holiday with their mum and grandparents in Scotland right now, sharing a bedroom and loving it. They go to bed full of giggles and chatting to each other until sleep overtakes them.

I, on the other hand, am in the caravan with a bunch of 3x2", a saw and a couple of sheets of MDF. Whilst the rest of the family enjoy their holiday I'm moving bedrooms around so that the kids can share a room at home.

To help the job, and in the vague hope that I could avoid drilling through a mains cable, I bought a stud locator. So far with relatively thin caravan walls it appears to work well so I'm happy with my purchase.

Except...

Except when I got it I carefully put it away so the kids wouldn't find it and wreck it. Now I can't find it. I would see if I could buy a stud locator locator, but I'm afraid I might loose it.

Unrelated Note

We are just watching the Kaiser Chiefs playing T in the Park on TV, with the same stage set as we saw them last year. The small screen does live events like that no justice whatsoever, but is a fantastic reminder of what a stunning gig they played.

I suppose that's not really on topic for a house-builder, gardening, family blog - but staying on topic was never a strong point. Besides, variety is the spice of life.

Good Weather For...

..strawberries the size of cars! Seriously, they're huge.

If you're waiting for news about our latest planning application, so are we. We've gone past the eight week deadline with no news, which is disconcerting. It shouldn't really have any great significance other than giving us the automatic right to appeal if I understand the rule book correctly. Hopefully we'll find out what's happening next week.

Could This Be It?

Here's a quick impression of what our house could look like. It's drawn in Google's rather wonderful (and free) Sketchup software. The model is drawn from the plans we submitted to the planning department at the start of April. Now we must wait to see if these new plans are acceptable. We've put a fair amount of effort into discussing them with everyone and we're hopeful that we're on the right lines. Certainly we're pretty pleased with the response so far and we're very happy with the work of Michael, our architect, in turning our wish list into something that could become our home.

Thorough Repurposing

 

We had a shed (one of many), about 6' x 4' tucked into a corner by the outside toilet. It had clearly been there a few years and was happily rotting away, roofless and sagging in the bottom.

Today's weather has been fantastic, so I've been busy with a saw and my handy bucket of nails. The shed is a shed no longer, and we have a coldframe to get our seeds off to a good start for the summer. The lid is a door from an old server cabinet. Putting it together was quicker and easier than going out and buying a shiny new one, and a lot more satisfying. If I could conjour up a greenhouse as well I'd be a happy man.

Now we've got to get on with some planting.

William Loves to do Jigsaws

Though he gets a little distracted by Balamory (at 1min 5sec), which was on in the background to keep Becky amused whilst he was being busy. The editing is a bit basic, but we love this video.

The Appeal Decision

After a very long wait (fourteen months from first submitting our appeal), we have an answer.

Not a good answer.

We cannot build the house as designed - it's as simple as that. Whilst we were braced for bad news, our internal optimists were hoping that this would be the point that we could actually start actually building a house. It would have been a cause for much celebration but instead we had a week of upset, stress and (just to keep us busy) teething and colds for the children. It really was a low point, not only for our self-build but also in our lives.

Still, we're not ones for wallowing in misery, snot and calpol for very long, so now it's time to put all that we've learned into fresh plans.

We've always said that the main goal of the appeal was to clarify where we stood. Even a refusal would leave us with a set of clear and consistent guidelines for planning a house. Getting such guidelines from the local planning department is difficult because as a lone self-builder your project has a very low priority and details get forgotten between the sporadic meetings you can arrange with the planning officer. Our experience was that in having pre-planning meetings we would submit a design, the planner would suggest a change, we'd make the change and submit it, they'd suggest another change and so on. The design became ever more complicated without actually getting to a point where it was likely to receive permission. The lessons learned are that meetings must be regular to keep the end goal fresh in everyone's mind and that if a design has to be changed it must remain simple or change completely rather than accumulating 'tweaks'.

The actual ruling lists twelve points where the appeals officer felt that the concerns of the planners were justified. In the last few years, we've had plenty of time to think about what we wanted from a home and that has changed a little more since we've had children. Living on the site has also given us an insight into how this location works, from light and seasonal weather to views and access. So, we've taken all of these things and re-written our requirements. The end result is two sides of A4 listing the bare minimum we need, things that would be nice to have, things that we want to avoid and some aims to ensure that the new design might get approval.

We'll be taking those requirements to our architect and giving him free reign to come up with a home for us. Suddenly it's exciting again.

The Appeal

The memory of our appeal that will probably stick with me the longest occurred when we were all standing on site in the rough place the house would be built. My parents had come round for the day to look after the children and when we arrived for the site visit, had spirited them away to look at the boats and throw small objects at the ducks. The inspection took ages, so they returned just as we were positioning ourselves to work out where the house would sit. William staggered directly towards us, his woolly hat pulled down so low over his head that only his nose and enormous grin showed. With his arms out wide so he wouldn't bump into anything, he joyfully shouted out "Daddy!", gave me a big hug, shook our planning consultant's hand and staggered on to the caravan for a juice. After a long morning of earnest discussion, it was a bright ray of sunlight.

The meeting itself was hard to judge. It started at 10am at the council offices with the usual suspects - the inspector, our planning advisor and architect, the council planner, 'Ness and I in attendance. Surprising by their absence were the actual planning officer who has been in charge of the case, and the conservation officer who can (and did) object to our plans as they are in the curtilage of the barn (never get involved in listed buildings if you want quick results). Surprising by their presence were one of our neighbours who had completely independently decided to come along and support us, and our local councillor who said he wanted to present the case of the parish council (who've basically echoed the planners' objections to our designs).

The meeting lasted three hours, then we spent two and a half hours wandering round the countryside looking at the site from various vantage points. The inspector took reams of notes and then called an end to proceedings. We feel we made a solid case and came across as professional and sincere in our aims. After the event, it's hard not to think of various points we should have made, but that's how these things go. Unfortunately, however good our arguments may have been, it comes down to the interpretation of the local and national Planning Policy documents, and specifically whether the appeals officer thinks our house would 'harm the character of the area'. It'll also depend how critically he considers the various arguments made as the planner was adamant that our house would cause catastrophic damage to the countryside. We will apparently find out in five weeks' time from the meeting, so mid January. The inspector was completely poker faced (as he's meant to be) so we have no idea whether we'll 'win' or not.

In fact, as we've explained to various family and friends, we are not dependent on having the appeal upheld. Our aim has always been to produce a house that best suits the plot and whilst we're fairly convinced that the design we've produced is an excellent match, it's certainly not the only house that would work very well on the plot. So why appeal? Why not just submit a different design if the planners aren't keen on this one? The issue is that we have been told so many things that the planning department don't want to see that it's hard to imagine what they would approve. We have very little confidence that we could come up with any alternative design that would receive any more favour than the current one. We hope that even if the appeal is rejected, we shall at least come away with a set of concrete guidelines that we can use to inform a new design. An appeal should at the very least clear the tables and allow us to come up with a new plan that suits everyone's needs.