Point North, Gloster Hill Self Build

Happy New Year

Due to weather and Christmas the progress has been a bit slower than expected. We also haven’t managed to get the window in yet due to a variety of reasons. These are now scheduled for the 8th Jan. Third time lucky!

Roof on and off and back on

A last minute issue with the roof insulation meant we’ve had to add an additional 30mm of Ecotherm eco-deck before the roofers got to site. This was due to a misunderstanding around the original Kingspan used which I won’t bore people with.

Roof membrane was finally laid over the week of the 7th December. This is a single ply PVC solution which is fixed mechanically to the roof and joints are sealed with a heat gun.

Before the builders finished for Christmas they got a crane on to site to lift the skylight into place. Looks really good and brings in a lot of light upstairs.

Unfortunately, things are never easy or simple, the day after the builders packed up for Christmas 65 mph gust of wind ripped up a piece of the membrane (due to the parapet and cladding not being in place). An emergency call to Ross got the roofers back and the problem was rapidly solved

The repair work has been very successful as no further damage was caused during storms Pia and Gerrit.

Purple Paint

One of the key requirements that we have specified is that the building needs to be very air tight, we’ve specified a target of 0.6 ACPH (air changes per hour) which is approx 8 times better than current English building regulations.

In our build our air tightness barrier is effectively the inner layer of OSB where the joints have been taped but to further guarantee the air tightness the builders have decided to apply a layer of airtightness paint. This paint happens to be Fiona’s favourite colour Purple!

Over two days the whole interior of the house has been sprayed bright purple (apart from the boarded up windows)

Storms and Wind

Since my last blog we’ve had three further names storms. Fergus, Pia (named by the Danish) and Gerrit. The rain has been pretty continuous but the bigger issue has been the wind. Where we’ve had gusts of upto 65mph. These have been directly from the West which is slightly lucky as we have no window ‘holes’ on this side. Apart from the roof damage, and a small bit of damage to the breather membrane, the house has stood up well and it’s drying out inside. The scaffolding hasn’t faired as well and we’ve had to recover boards which have blown off as can be seen in the photo.

Into 2024 ….

We have a big couple of weeks ahead which are the windows being installed and the first air tightness test, after that we really don’t know as we don’t have much of a schedule from the builders, but we do have a revised date in our heads for completion and it will be before Christmas 2024 🤔