Painting finished - getting ready for the crane and scaffolding

Stacking the beams for transport

After about 90 man hours of painting we got through all the boards. If you remember from the last post, the boards are needed for the inside cladding (visible as a ceiling in the living room) and for outside - the underside of the roof overhang. We also had to paint the beams that are going to be screwed to the top of the existing rafters (meaning we will have about 22cm height of rafter - which in turn means we can add that much insulation between the rafters). The boards for both the inside and the outside were split into different lengths. For the inside we needed 86 4.8m, 86 3.9m and 86 3.6m boards. For the outside we needed something like 65 5.1m, 35 4.9m and 7 3.6m boards. The inside boards got two coats of a white wax paint. The outside boards and the beams were all primed and got two coats of "Eiche/Kiefer" - a kind of varnish.

The crane will take up this space when it comes

Johannes Stuckenberger is due to start next Monday (May 6th) so last week we had a visit from a chap called Aschenbrenner who is going to take care of the scaffolding. It looks like it will be possible to scaffold the house without too much trouble and without hindering cars from getting in and out of the yard. We might have to trim back some of the bushes a bit, but Gisi and I already tried it with the Duster and it looks as if it should be possible. Other than that, Johannes Stuckenberger was out on the road yesterday to mark the position of the crane. We needed to make sure that the school bus would be able to get past when the crane is set up. We checked with the bus that passes shortly before 11:00 on school days and he got by without too much trouble.

First day painting

This heap of timber needs to be painted

I've written here a couple of times already that Zimmerei Stuckenberger will be starting work on the roof on May 6th - i.e. Monday week. Once the roof is off, one of the first things that needs to be done is to install/fix the boards which will be visible from underneath. What I mean is when you stand in the living room and look up, you see the rafters. On the "sky" side of the rafters you will see boards. All of those boards need to be painted with a kind of wax. This makes it much easier to clean them as dust won't stick to them anymore. Hopefully cobwebs won't stick either. Anyhow, the obvious idea is to paint the boards before they are even delivered.

All of these have one coat of wax paint

As the painting needs to happen before the start of the job, it needed to be done right away - which is why I took FTO (holiday/vacation) from work this Thursday and Friday to start work on the painting. The painting was set up over in Johannes Stuckenberg's warehouse in Sulding. When I arrived at 09:00 on Thursday (today), there was a huge pile of boards still wrapped in plastic. The boards have various lengths - for the inside of the house I needed 86 x 3.6, 86 x 3.9m and 86 x 4.2m - a whole lot of boards. I stayed painting from 09:00 till 19:00 and managed to get all of the 3.6m boards, all the 3.9m boards and about 16 of the 86 4.2m boards done - just the first coat. Tomorrow I need to finish the 4.2m boards and get a second coat on the whole lot. Once the boards for the inside are done, I have another load ready to be done on the outside (they need to be primed and then receive 2 coats). As well as that there are the rafter ends that are visible from the outside - they need to be done before the roof gets started too. All in all, a whole load of work.

Drilling through the foundations

Early this morning (about 07:30) there was a knock on the door. Two of Niedermaier GmbH's employees (plumbers) were there, ready to start working on drilling through the foundation of Harting 10, so that we could pull the heating and network pipes through the wall. I was expecting a delivery of the solar panels and the water tank for Harting 8 at 08:00 but wasn't really expecting the drilling to go ahead. They had only just brought their drills downstairs when the delivery lorry pulled up. The next half hour was spent taking solar panels, the water tank and various fittings off the truck and into the shed. We are now ready to install the solar panels - we just need a roof first. When Johannes Stuckenberger starts on (hopefully) May 6th, there should be scaffolding and a crane, so it should be easy to hoist the big water tank you see in the background in the picture up and into the attic of Harting 8. The solar panels will have to wait until the roof is finished. There should be enough work to do to keep the plumbers busy for a while, once the crane arrives.

The drilling went much faster than I expected. They bored a 200mm hole for the heating pipe and a 80mm hole for the pipe to carry the network cable. The next job was to put the pipes through the wall. I had to do a substantial amount of digging - not only was the channel not deep enought where it intersected the sewerage pipe, I also had to dig away about another 12cm from the right hand wall of the channel where it met the wall. On the inside, the oil tanks were in the way and the plumbers needed room to actually join the incoming pipes with the internal system. As well as more digging, I had to take the drillhammer and knock out more of the silo walls. There was quite a lot of scrap metal in the hole as well - that had to be cut with a small angle grinder. Meanwhile, the plumbers had cut the sewerage pipe so we could get the heating pipe down under it. I had thought that we would have to go over the sewerage pipe - which would take us well within a metre of the surface, which is bad news for frost - but they assured me that they could quickly fix a collar to the sewerage pipe and join it back up again. The job of actually getting the pipe into the wall was easier than I thought - the pipe is extremely stiff, but with three people and a heap of heavy rocks to keep the pipe from springing back up out of the channel, we got it through. The plumbers then used a special collar on the inside (costs over €200) to fully seal the join.

This all means that we are finished with the groundworks - ahead of schedule. I can now look forward to a couple of hours of slavery shoving the heaps of clay back into the channel. Below are more pictures so you get an idea of what went on.

This is what it looks like from the inside

The first hole - see how little room there is on the right for the second pipe?

The teeth of the drill coming through the wall

Cutting a new length of pipe for the sewerage

Both pipes fitted

You can see the heating pipes are now below the sewerage

Some of the fittings that we will need for fitting the solar panels

The solar panels (without glass) and the water tank

200mm and 80mm core bores

Pipes are in the ground (almost)

The channel is about 25m long

Today, Stefan (from Moosburg) arrived at about 10:30 with a digger. It wasn't a typical "mini-digger" - it was the next size up. It turned out to be exactly the right machine for the job. The job was to dig the channel between both houses (Harting 8 and Harting 10) - basically across the yard. The heating pipe and the empty pipe to carry network and electric cables were due to be dropped into the channel.

By about 13:30 the channel was finished. Uli and I had already bored a hole in the wall under Harting 8 so the pipes could go through the wall/foundation and up to where they are needed. We were relatively lucky that there was a hole in the foundation - else we would have been kept busy for much longer. We managed to get the pipes in with a lot of pulling and shoving - the heating pipe was extremely stiff and so it was hard to bend it around corners.

By about 17:00, Stefan had filled most of the channel back in again. The pipes are now covered with 1.3 metres of clay and gravel, so they should be fine in case of frost.

The silo walls are broken through

When Stefan left, I started digging the last bit of the channel - i.e. the bit from the end of the channel that Stefan dug to Harting 10. In a straight line this would have been about four metres. However, we need the pipe to hit the wall at 90° - meaning we have to take a big loop out to the right first. The minimum bending radius of the pipe is one metre - and to keep to this, we needed to almost go under the chickens. As it turned out, most of the digging was ok. There was an old silo buried under the ground and this had been filled up with old buckets, bits of blocks and steel. It was not easy to dig through. The concrete silo walls had to be broken through as well. That was about an hour's work. The next step is now to organise a "core boring drill" - which is a drill which can drill a 20cm hole through a 24cm concrete foundation. The reason for the 20cm hole is because of the special kind of wall "collar" that Niedermaier brought. The 130mm pipe goes through the collar and the collar seals the  place where the pipe goes through the wall. We'll also need a 80mm hole for the pipe carrying the network and electric cables. Sounds like it will take about three or four hours in total. Below are a couple of photos from the groundworks.

The channel is 1.3m deep

The digger was able to get right in next to the wall

The channel had to go around the side of Harting 10

Daniel had a go driving

...and managed not to knock the house

Luckily there was a hole in the concrete - otherwise we'd still be hammering away at it

Provisional rain capture

Stefan filled in most of the channel once the pipe was in

We had to leave about two metres for fitting the pipe through the wall

The channel had to go around in a curve so as to hit the wall of Harting 10 at 90°

At the bottom of the photo you can see the first intersection of the channel with the old silo wall

This is where we have to bore through the wall

The first intersection of the channel with the silo wall (looking south)

The thick pipe is the heating pipe. The other one carries electric and network cables

Pipes arrived

Things have started to move faster - incidentally meaning that things have started to get more expensive - but that was to be expected. As I wrote last time, it looks as though the roof will be started on May 6th. As that means that a scaffolding will be going up then, it makes good sense to do any outstanding groundwork before that. The only real outstanding groundwork is the installation of the heating pipe (district heating I believe it is called) 1.3m under the ground across the yard. I called up Heribert Niedermaier to come and measure exactly how long the pipe has to be. He ordered a 30m pipe - which was delivered this morning at 08:00. Daniel organised a digger for Saturday at 10:30, so it looks like we'll be able to put in that pipe (as well as a another 75mm pipe for electrical and network cables) and fill the trench back in again too. We might even be able to dig the foundations for the balcony support girders.

Other than that, the metal grid cage is installed - meaning we can now fill the casing with concrete and be done with it. The engineer sent back the signed Baubeginnsanzeige this morning - which means we are pretty much good to go. The next steps are coordinating the roof, the window installation, the plastering and the internal partitioning and flooring.

Casing had to be reopened to allow fitting the cage

The R188 cage sits perfectly in the casing

M20 Leerrohr for Cat7 network in our room

A wire to pull the network cable through the Leerrohr

M20 Leerrohr will run in the same slot as the heating pipes

New idea - a balcony

When Johannes Stuckenberger and Rupert Grasser came on Wednesday (10th April) they set out measuring for the steps up to the front door. While measuring, the idea came about that we could relatively easily (and hopefully without substantial additional costs) put in a balcony. That would mean that we'd have to move the front door a bit to the left (in the south elevation) so we could fit the steps to the right. The steps kind of come back on themselves to save space. To the left of the front door we had intended putting in a window. This would now have to be a full height (2200mm - up to the wallplate) balcony door - well, two doors really, as the width of the opening is 1500mm. Below are two excerpts from the plan showing the plan and the cross section...

Mühldorf

Today I picked up the reinforcing steel for the concrete casing over the bedroom door. Inn-Stahl in Mühldorf was not particularly hard to find, but roadworks meant I had to take a detour through the town at just after eight in the morning. This meant a fairly long delay. Anyhow, after handing over €20 I got the steel. It was surprisingly light and short enough to easily fit in the boot of the car. They had originally made it too long (2.5m) but they shortened it down to 1.36 for me on the spot.

After collecting the steel I paid a visit to Globus (a big supermarket with an attached big building supplies) in Mühldorf. By chance I saw yesterday that they had a Kärcher vacuum cleaner on offer for €60 (down from €99). These Kärcher machines are not really for use in a house - more for a building site or workshop or garage. Anyhow, I managed to get one before the place was swamped with people. Another (even better) offer was for indoor paint. "Alpina" is a well known brand of paint - usually 10L of their paint sells at about €38. Today, it was on offer at €16.99. Apparently 10L is enough for 60 square metres - though they probably based their estimate on really ideal work surfaces. I bought seven containers (70L - theoretically enough for 420 square metres) of it. I'm not sure if that will do all the house or if it might even be too much. If it's too much, Globus in Mühldorf will take back unopened containers.

Kind of like what the living room should look like

While looking through an online catalog (for plaster and slabs) I saw this photo. It looks kind of like what we are planning for the living room (the exposed beams, I mean).

Slavery

Today was pure slavery. First, the sand (five tonnes) I ordered was delivered yesterday but the driver wouldn't listen to good advice and ended up tipping the lot right next to the wall. I wouldn't usually have a problem with that, but we have to put up scaffolding on the wall within the next couple of weeks. I rang Johannes Stuckenberger (the roofer) and asked him what clearance his scaffolding would need. He said at least 110cm - better 120cm. With a shovel I spend half an hour moving about a third of the heap. Pity the driver wasn't still around. If he had to do it he'd listen to me next time.

After finishing the sand, I had to get to work removing a concrete platform outside the house. This was about 7-8cm thick and was mixed quite richly when it went in. It had to go because we need to put down 80cm deep concrete feet for the steps and for the vertical supports for the roof overhang. I cut the platform in near the wall with a diamond disk flex first of all. This was to allow me to belt away with the sledgehammer without having to worry about causing damage inside (the platform continues inside - it will actually be ideal to build from because the door you can see in the photograph will be blocked up. After a couple of hours of work it was all broken and half of it was loaded onto the bucket on the back of the tractor, ready to be taken off to one of the neighbours (who is building a stable and needs filling).

I wrote yesterday that we put up a chipboard wind/rain block in the big window in the west wall. Here is a photo of it from the inside. It probably wouldn't comply with the DIN regulations but as long as it stays put where it is for the next couple of weeks, that's fine by me. When the roof is done, the big window (triple glazed) can go in pretty much straight away. The engineer still has to return the calculations for the house in general and for this wall in particular. When the calculations are there we can get moving on it.

Below is a picture of the next job ahead - the cement mixer will have to be brought out to see the light of day again.