In the loft...

In the house, the cold water tanks are in the loft. There are two tanks, joined together by a 28mm pipe. They're fibreglass, which must date them somewhere between the galvanised metal tanks that used to be used (of which there were 4 in the loft, 2 filled with sawdust and chunks of wood, one small header tank and a large one, that I had to cut in half with an angle grinder), and the new plastic ones you get today.

The plan is to get a new 'coffin' type cold water tank, put it up on a stand, and then put two hot water tanks beneath it. The stand can be shared by the central heating header tank too.

So, with the stand built, and the coffin tank ordered, delivered and placed on top, this is where we started the weekend.

Well, not quite. At this point in proceedings, I'd already plumbed in 3 tank fittings for the 3 showers, and worked out where the mains was going to enter the tank. There's also another tank fitting for the house's cold water taps which has a piece of pipe sticking out of it in the above pics.

You can see the central heating header tank was perched on top of the rearmost cold water tank.

I started to remove the tanks at this point because they were getting in the way:

You might be able to see that at this point I've plumbed the mains feed in a little more permanently, and made some more pipe runs coming out of the cold water tank. At this point, all I could see coming from the cold water tank was one 15mm feed, and I was wondering why that was, and how it could possibly be feeding the hot water tank below. I soon found out that there was a 28mm pipe hidden behind the rear tank that was also in play. Obviously I didn't have  any 28mm pipe or fittings, so that was fun explaining to the family about no hot water for the night, and the following morning.

I also realised that I'd pushed the coffin tank back too far, and now the header tank wouldn't fit. I solved this by spanning from one roof strut to a purlin and putting the tank up there.

This is the cold water system plumbed in. It's feeding the existing hot water tank at the moment, and I've not completed the overflow plumbing, or insulated the pipes or tank (apart from sitting it on a sheet of 50mm celotex).

These are the old cold water tanks that our now surplus to requirements:

En Suite update

Yesterday I forewent a day out at the Chequers pub's beer festival to look at kitchens and bathrooms. It was OK, I suppose, few things learnt. Did a bit of tidying in the garden, but not much. Today was really an update on this post.

We left the en suite at this stage:

That's the shower tray leant against the wall on the right.

Yesterday, Mark the tiler came, and he ply'd the floor, and so I had a go at laying the electric underfloor heating:

And then my wife had a go at painting the plasterboard round the shower with Ardex WPC, which, I guess should be unnecessary if the tiling's good and all is well throughout the life of the shower. In fact our old house's en suite shower was fine for the 10 years we lived there. However, bit of insurance won't hurt. Anyway here's a pic. It's disgusting stuff:

Once that was dry, I fitted the shower tray. The advice was to use tile adhesive. So I spoke to Mark the tiler, and he advised flexible tile adhesive, so that's what I used:

The underfloors are filling up!

The two fat wires with the earths running alongside are for the laundry room and the other for the garden/sheds/future garages. I did a little more wiring today, and have decided on the site for the consumer unit. However the photo I took was total rubbish, so it will have to wait until I have the floor up next. The upstairs floor is now very clunky and rattly as not many of the floorboards are nailed down.

Bit more

Scaffolders have been:

It's there so that nearest roof can come off. The tiles are blown, and the intention is to redo the roof with some Velux windows on the other side.

Here's the little boiler house going up:

Chimney is smaller now!  You might remember that it looked like this:

This door is in the playroom. I suppose 'door' is rather overstating it. It's a hole in the wall covered in ply.

Can't find a pic of this room in 'before' mode, but anyway the door leads to this passageway:

Plasterers for Claudia's room will be here on Thursday.

And the garden today (cracking weather for April):

Odds and Ends....

This little room is next to our bedroom, and will be our en-suite. Below shot is from the house brochure, and represents a 'before' type shot:

Here's the during. The outside walls have been insulated and plasterboarded, and the plumbing put in under the floor. Also the electrics for the room below:

Couple of 'in progress shots of the little loo upstairs:

More or less up to date....

Boot room...

As in the last post, we took the silly little porch we had on the house and extended it. Before:

During

On top picture, there is a window next to the back door. That's into the kitchen as now. Clearly we've had to block this up! As before, the kitchen will be changing radically, so although we've just lost quite a big window, we'll not lose the light in the long run.

During the work, we had to adopt serious security measures:

Yep, bit of OSB over the internal door in the porch and gaffer tape to keep the dust out!

Here's the inside of the boot room:

Looks a bit dingy at the moment, but once decorated and all the stuff removed (that's the new boiler sitting ready to fit, and a load of tiles down on the left), it will be a good space. It's heated via electric underfloor heating, so no coming into a cold house (hopefully).

Above before-ish (so boot room sort of built, but no plaster or floor in yet. Below during again, with window bricked up. That room is the kitchen. That wall with the door in it is being removed and the far wall with the washing machine in it is becoming bifold doors. The washing machine is going to the new utility room.

Some outside of the house stuff.....

This is the outside of the house from the rear standing at the end of the drive. You can see the the tall chimney with the scaffolding is about to be brought down, The door on the right you can see is for an outside loo! That sort of vent thing is going to be a window eventually and there'll be windows in the roof nearest the camera, and a set of bifolds beneath the vent thing. It's a combination of living on a building site, and in a builder's yard at the moment.

This is where I was stood when I took the last picture. One of the downsides of the house is that we do share our plot with the electrical transformer thing on the left of the pic. You can also see that my half finished car port has been pressed into service as a store.

Above is before, below is during:

And again:

Above is before, below is during:

The above two pics are where we've joined the house to the outbuilding. The outbuilding we have converted a portion of it to be a utility room, Well, I say 'have' as if it's done, we're currently mid way through.

Bit more gardening....

Another hire of a digger meant that we could get stuck in moving tree stumps out, and clearing the 'woodland' part of the garden,

Unfortunately the dumper wasn't up to the size of the treestump we were moving, and I nearly lost a wife:

Fortunately she was more shaken than anything else and we used the digger to right the dumper again.

A couple more shots showing the state of the garden:

Lots more to do, but it's sort of going in the right direction.