Lot of plastering done, insulation almost finished

The insulation is almost finished

When I wrote the last blog post the insulation had just started. That was at the start of last week. Since then, Petermaier's crew have almost finished the insulation. They started on the west gable, continued on the north side and then finished the east gable. Currently, they are well on their way to getting the south side finished. There are a lot of windows and doors on the south side, which slows things down considerably. At least the weather has been good (too good really - last week was almost 40° and this weekend is also supposed to be that hot).

Chrisch plastered the living room and kitchen

The major thing that was blocking progress on the inside was the plastering. While it isn't absolutely critical in absolute terms (it could theoretically be done after everything is finished), it made most sense to get it out of the way before the underfloor heating and the concrete floor go in. Last weekend we were lucky to get Chrisch in for Saturday and Sunday. A lot of Saturday was spent installing the steel profiles for the corners and in putting up plastic sheets to protect the timber. It does take a lot of time but the end result is much better.

Today, two of Niedermaier's men arrived to install a hot water pipe down into Alois' bathroom. They currently have an electric boiler to provide hot water. Having the pipe from the 1000l tank in the attic will spare a huge amount of electricity.

The next steps will be do get the bathroom ready - I need to build a kind of step in the wall to hide the pipes and the toilet frame. It isn't all that much work, but it involves a lot of cutting of OSB and the green plaster slabs. Once that is done, we can have Niedermaier deliver the insulation for the underfloor heating and be one more step closer to the concrete floor (and hence the kitchen).

Above the joist is plastered now but a finish coat has to go on

We still need to think of some way of finishing the wall/ceiling join

We're leaving the old timber visible

The kitchen reveals still need to be finished

Wire profiles were used around the curve of the arch

A half plastered window reveal

The plastic profiles are fantastic for sealing the windows with plastic sheeting

The new timber is a result of engaging an engineer

The brick wall will be brushed and pointed

Insulation underway

The north side is almost done. The west gable is done already

It's been awhile since I updated this blog - mostly due to being up the walls at work and on the building site. Since the last update, our insulation has been started. 229 bales (at 1.5m^2 a bale) of anthracite coloured insulation was delivered - a truckload basically. The panels are 50cm high and 14cm thick. They have a UWert of 0.032 W/K/m^2 (watt, Kelvin, square metre) - so they are at the more expensive end of the choices available. I went for those because the next less expensive (0.035) would have meant I would have had to get 16cm thick boards - not much of a problem in itself, but because the windows downstairs were just "swapped out" (i.e. not moved out flush with the old wall like upstairs), with 16cm insulation, they would have been even further back in the wall. As there wasn't all that much difference in the price, we went for the 0.032 boards.

Compriband seals at the top of the wall

I watched the three men doing the insulation for awhile to see how they were doing it. First, I had to spray the old plaster with a kind of glue. That bound all the dust together and kept the plaster from crumbling. Next, they set a 14cm stiff plastic profile around the base of the house - 40cm from the ground. This works as a plinth as well as a base for the first ring of insulation boards. Later, when the scaffolding is gone, I will dig a channel 30cm deep all around the house and the plinth can be finished to below ground level, for optimum insulation. Once the profile was in place, they used a kind of soft, sticky mortar to glue the boards into place. When the whole house is finished, each t-joint will be screwed into the original wall, so there is zero movement. At the top, where the wall meets the roof, they used compriband to have a proper joint that still allows some movement.

It looks as though setting insulation boards is fast work, but windows and doors do slow the whole thing down considerably. They had to put a kind of plastic net around each window - probably so they can plaster the reveal properly. These plastic pieces needed to be aligned perfectly (i.e. plumb) - otherwise the reveal will look wrong later.

I was quite fascinated at how accurate their work was - cutting the boards etc and fitting them was millimetre work - their joints were practically non-existent. Where there were joints, they used an insulating expanding foam to fill them. Later, when the whole house is done, they will go back over the facade with leveling knives (which work kind of like a cheese grater) and level any foam or boards with a belly.

Meanwhile, Niedermaier's crew and Uli were working inside, doing the heating and electricity, respectively. The plumbing to the kitchen and bath was already finished when I wrote the last post. Since then they were basically holed away up in the attic doing the 1000l tank, the attached electronics and the piping. The attic is starting to look like a brewery, with all the pipes and tanks. They are finished for the time being. They still have to install pipes to the bathroom downstairs (which shouldn't be too much of a problem) and as soon as the plastering is done inside, they will be back to do the underfloor heating. Then, I can (finally) order the concrete floor.

Apropos plastering, Chrisch is going to come over this coming Friday (26th July) and set the steel profiles. They need to set overnight. On Saturday we are going to tear into the plastering. He has a plastering machine and I ordered the plaster the other day. We have two palettes of the stuff, but I'm going to ask Brenninger (the local building supplier) to have another one handy in the likely case that we will run out if we need to work into Sunday too. I already stapled plastic protective sheeting in place on our inside ceiling - the plastering machine is basically a compressor tied to a mixer with a 20m long pipe for splattering plaster. I foresee plaster all over the timber inside, so better safe than sorry.

Below are some more photos of the progress.

The first ring of boards and the new window sills

Here you can see how the insulation sits on the plastic profile

Insulation used to fill depression in the wall inside. A steel gauze will cover this on Friday

The ceiling is covered up in plastic

Power supply and more cables installed in the server rack

The west gable almost finished (it was since finished)

Supplies for the plasterers

Some of our bales of insulation

The ceiling covered up

The 14cm plastic profile at the base of the house

The big window was installed (except for the triangle at the top)

Lots of work done on electrics

Almost finished with windows and doors

Yesterday (July 11th), two men came from Auer Baustoffe (well, they had their own window installation company but did some subcontracting work for Auer) with a trailer full of windows. The trailer wasn't big enough for all of the ordered windows and doors so they had to leave the doors (except the balcony door) and some of the windows in Erding. They got right to work carrying the windows up and making sure the right windows were placed next to the right openings - not very easy as some of the windows are only marginally bigger/smaller than neighbouring ones but everything was custom manufactured so a mistake in one window automatically means a mistake somewhere else as well. Uli had taken out most of the old windows when I was in Nuremberg on Wednesday, so they were able to make good progress. The windows are wedged into place on plastic wedges. Then, each side is screwed into the wall with long screws and the gaps around the edges are filled with expanding foam. Each window takes only a few minutes.

By the end of Thursday they had installed almost everything upstairs. The balcony door was done but the main house door wasn't (as it won't be delivered until Monday). The balcony door opening needed some work too as it wasn't measured properly - the measurer apparently took the distance from the top of the subfloor to the underside of the lentil rather from the top of the step. Either way, it was only a couple of minutes work to break down the step to the level of the subfloor.

Today, they finished all except one window downstairs and also installed the front door. They were very exact about their installation and plastered the inside of all the doors and windows to ensure that there were no gaps. They are going to be back on Monday to install the last of the windows, the front door of the house and the big window. They are still trying to come up with an idea as to how they will get the big window (it weighs 120kg) three metres up from the living room floor to the opening. Currently the idea appears to be manpower and the outside scaffolding. I reckon that most of the time on Monday will be spent with that window.

The plumbers were back today - which kind of surprised me as they said yesterday they almost certainly wouldn't be back until Monday. They connected the local well water to the toilet (you may remember this was one of the ideas of saving costs as well water doesn't cost anything whereas municipal water costs €1.19 per cubic metre (including tax)). Unfortunately, while closing off the well water they broke the hydrant - it was rusted beyond recognition and needed only a bit of tightening to break it. They had to replace the hydrant - which took them a good three hours as water kept coming out of the pipe. Eventually a new hydrant was installed and we'll check it on Monday again to see if it is still sealed.

Waiting for windows

So, it is now week 28. I'm promised my windows and doors this week (all of them except the front door, as that is apparently scheduled for next week). Last week I checked all of the wall openings to make sure they were properly dimensioned. Most windows will simply be replaced, meaning that the wall openings are not a problem. For some windows which were built after the openings were measured by the company delivering the windows I wanted to be 100% sure that there wasn't going to be an issue when the fitters try to put the window in. I found two issues - the windows on the north (street) side of the living room were both too small. They should both have had a height of 128cm plus 3cm (1 and a half bottom and top) for manouvering. The height was exactly 128cm meaning that it would be practically impossible to fit the window. In two separate actions I removed the top layer of bricks from each window bottom, cased them and built in new ones. They should be about right now - I measured 131 and a half cm.

Distributor for underfloor heating

Today I got a bit of a surprise in that Niedermaier's men arrived and got stuck into the plumbing. I was expecting them at the end of the week at the earliest. There is plenty of work that they can get done without any external dependencies, so the sooner they get started the better I like it. It means there will be a pretty busy week on the building site this week, but that suits me better - more work, more progress. I'm also expecting Petermaier next week to get started on the insulation and plastering outside - he is entirely dependent on the doors and windows being put in though, so if anything changes in that schedule, he gets pushed back as well. Apart from dropping in some of the material they are going to need during the week, the distributor for the underfloor heating was installed (see photo).

Stuckenberger's worker (Max) arrived today as well to put a hole in the roof - properly. The hole is to take a pipe which itself will hold the four satellite cables running from the satellite dish on the roof down in around the house. I had asked Johannes Stuckenberger by email earlier on if I could "just bore a hole". Given that Max was sent over within two hours I take it I could not simply "bore a hole". We made sure the hole was properly done using some kind of an epoxy sealant for Pavatex on the outside and a really expensive sealant on the inside - a kind of compound that never sets. Apparently timbers in a roof move minimally in high wind etc, and standard sealant is not ideal there - it would break. This expensive stuff keeps its sticky consistency for fifty years at least. Within half an hour the hole in the roof was finished and the tiles were replaced. I'll have to go up on the roof again at some stage to fix the pole for holding the satellite dish to the lats.

I decided to clean up a bit, given that the building site will more than likely be busy this week. While cleaning up I stumbled over my server rack and decided that now was as good a time as any to fix it to the wall. It will mean I won't stumble over it anymore.

Quick update on bathroom window and garden shed

Since the water pipes went in, there hasn't been all that much activity. The doors and windows are coming next week (hopefully) so it is mostly planning and calendar work that is going on at the moment. There are a lot of dependencies involved - some things depend on the concrete floor, which depends on the underfloor heating, which depends on the insulations, which depends on the doors and windows etc - it's a bit like packaging software. Anyhow, some smaller jobs that I got finished were the bathroom window (the sides of it). You may remember that we enlarged the window and moved it to the west. The reveals were not built up, however. Well, now they are - as you can see in the picture. I still have to finish the bottom of the window. It is currently too low, as it has to be 100cm underneath the lentils. The window itself is 97x97cm, so there should be enough room for installation.

Over the last weekend we finished a kind of a garden shed, which Uli wants to store garden related stuff like the lawnmower and some tools in. It was a cross between Ikea furniture building and Mechano. We probably would have finished it on Saturday had it not been for the weather. Yesterday (Sunday, 30th June) we did get it done. A photo is attached.

Other than that I was busy with cables again. I now have the two network cables that run to the television almost ready (I still need to get them in an empty installation duct and fix that to the wall). The satellite cable is cut to length. I had to take down the holder for the satellite dish as it was too far east, meaning it was pointing directly at a tree. I'll put it back up some evening this week - probably around the middle of the south roof, down near the eaves, where I can get at it easily enough with a ladder.