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.

Finally connected to the water main

The connection to the water main

Yesterday (20th June) we finally got connected to the water mains. What should have been a relatively straightforward affair turned into a day and half of misery in the sun - the two hottest days of the year so far (38°C) and not good days for digging around in the yard, looking for a water pipe at 120cm depth. What happened was, when the water company installed the pipe to Harting 10 about twenty years ago, it wasn't drawn in on any plan. Nobody could remember where the pipe was. We figured that, since we knew where the water pipe was (supposedly) connected to the mains and since we knew where the water pipe entered Harting 10, we could pretty much guess how it had to cross the yard. We also remembered coming across a black plastic pipe about 100cm down when we installed the thick pipe for hot water  across the yard in March.

When the workers came to make the connection I had already dug a channel from the wall on the yard side about seven metres into the yard. This had to be done with a spade because the digger would not be able to get under the scaffolding. With the digger, the workers soon found a black plastic water pipe. A couple of minutes later, one worker turned off the main water supply on the road, I confirmed that there was no water in Harting 10 (by turning a tap on and checking that no water came out) and the other worker diligently cut the water pipe.

Connecting the (wrong) pipe

Chaos ensued. Water gushed into the channel we had dug at about 10 bar pressure, meaning it was half a metre deep in no time. The worker in the hole used a clamp to stop the flow. He was a bit perturbed to find that the water which had apparently been switched off at the mains wasn't. He connected up the pipe to our house with a t-piece nonetheless. As they were fixing up the connection to the water meter on the inside of the house, I could not get over thinking that something was wrong. I suspected that the pipe they had connected to was not the local water main at all - it was a pipe from a well. To confirm, I turned off the well water and turned on the municipal water. This should have meant that water would nonetheless come out of our water meter at pressure. It didn't. The workers accepted that this was an unlikely event to occur if they had connected to the right pipe. Hence, we now had to find the right pipe.

It was about midday at this stage, at it was blisteringly hot. We started making educated guesses as to where the pipe might be, but despite digging down 2 metres in some places, there was no sign of the pipe. I went into the party room to fix the incoming pipe to the wall, when I heard a commotion outside, where they were still searching for the right water pipe with the digger. I also noticed the light had gone out. It turned out they had hit and snapped the electric cable, knocking out the electricity in pretty much the whole locality. The energy company had to be called and spent three hours fixing the cable. In that time, we kept looking for the water pipe, to no avail. After a pretty much wasted day, the workers went home. To add insult to injury, the digger broke down because of the heat.

The thick pipe is the main municiple water line

The day after (yesterday, 20th June), the workers were back, with a new digger, a map showing where the electric cables were located, and some new ideas as to where the water pipe might be. This time we tried digging around the drive - they figured that, irrespective of how the pipes crossed the yard, they absolutely must have entered the yard through the drive. However, two hours later and a massive hole further, we still had no water pipe. The workers decided to give up and to create a new connection to the main municipal pipe rather than trying to connect to the Harting 10 pipe - which didn't seem to exist. Out on the road we quickly found the water main. From the party room (where the water meter is) they used a hydraulic rocket to shoot out underneath the house. The rocket emerged exactly under the foundation (100cm deep) right next to the hole we had dug on the road, to find the main water pipe. A perfect shot, so to speak.

A few hours later, we had water from the mains with about 10 bar pressure and a new hydrant on the street, where we can shut off the water to Harting 8 if necessary - without influencing water supply to either Harting 10 or to the rest of Harting. The workers stayed around a bit longer - they dug a shallow trench so I could install the main drainpipe to take water from the roof. They also helped to fill in the rest of the trenches dug around the yard, looking for the water pipe.

Today (21st June), Grasser finally arrived with the steel supports for the glass roof. These will also support the balcony, as soon as it goes in (after the plastering on the outside). It was about a two hour job to get them permanently installed. Now the roof should be rock solid - both to carry the weight of the roof itself and (more importantly at the moment) to "tie down" the glass roof in case wind (e.g. in a storm like last night) gets under the roof and forces it up.

The next steps for now are to get Niedermaier back to start fixing the plumbing up. We cut a hole in the roof of the party room, going all the way up to the living room. The hole will have to house numerous pipes going up and coming down. Below are a few photos of some of the things that were done in the last couple of days.

Cleaning the area around the existing drainpipe

Cutting the original drainpipe to make space for a new joint

The finished job

Finishing up some smaller jobs

The hole down to the party room

The last couple of days were spent finishing up smaller jobs. The roof is more or less finished now (still some smaller things to be done) and we are kind of in limbo waiting for the next big job to start. What we have planned is that the windows and doors go in during calendar week 28 (starts 8th July). When those are in, the floor can be poured. Of course, for the floor to be poured, the underfloor heating has to be in. For that to be done, a couple of smaller things needed to be finished. One of those that was at the back of my mind for a while was that a hole needed to be bored from the living room down to the party room. The hole is for the heating pipe from Harting 10 to go up to the attic and for the heating pipes for the radiators (downstairs) to come down from the attic. The water pipe(s) have to go upstairs as well. Lastly, I want to install a Cat7 network down in the party room. Currently there is WLAN from Harting 10, but it is kind of shaky and not ideal - especially for music.

The other jobs that were finished were the OSB up in Sandra's "Gallery". They were half done, but Uli and I finished them on Saturday. It involved a lot of fairly tricky cutting to fit the OSB around the rafters but we got it done. Next Wednesday (19th June) at 08:00 the water company is coming around to fix up the water. They will be bringing a mini digger to do the most of the dirty work, but I had to dig a trench a metre deep and about five metres long from the house out to where we think we will hit an existing water pipe. It would be too dangerous to use the mini digger in around the house (especially because of the temporary supports for the glass roof). I dug the trench in sweltering heat. It kept falling in on me because it was very near the trench we dug back in March for the heating pipe from Harting 10 and the earth was loose.

Today (16th June) I decided to try to build up the inner leaf of the northern living room wall. The wall is 36cm thick for about the first 1.5m height. After that it is one wide brick narrower (the outer wall is obviously flush all the way up - the inner living room wall therefore has a step). It was this step that I wanted to fill up to the top so that we would have a uniform wall for plastering. We had a few piles of old bricks which needed to be used up, but only a few of them were full length bricks. Most of them were half or shorter. As well as that I have almost no sand left. I'll need to order another 5 tonnes tomorrow. This kind of work (building up walls with irregular bricks) means a lot of mortar is used.

The wall, built up to the wallplate

About half the wall is finished

Roof done (except for a couple of small things)

The south roof finished

The roof is finally finished - almost. The 'almost' is because there still are a couple of things that need to be done. A support for two satellite dishes still has to go through the roof on the south east. For that, another "thru' roof tile" is needed. Stuckenberger's workers will do it at some stage - it isn't a priority (the satellite dish for downstairs in temporarily mounted on the wall as it is and upstairs won't have a television for quite a while yet) and they can do it without a crane and without a scaffolding. Speaking of crane, it is officially gone - the owners took it away today. That is the first real sign of progress (well, apart from the roof being tiled, that is).

Where the glass roof  meets the tiled roof

Other things that had to be done in order to get the roof finished were e.g. that the 'Spengler' had to come (again). That's the guy who does things like drainpipes, eaves, cladding on the roof etc. The major job he had to do this time round was to ensure that the crossover from the main roof to the glass roof worked properly and that no water would get in there. There are always issues where a roof with a slighter slope than another meets the other roof - and even more issues where the higher roof is tiled (because of wind driven water). I was a bit sceptical about this, but looking at what the Spengler actually conjured up, it does seem as though it will hold out against the worst of weather (which we've been having here for the last couple of weeks, by the way).

And speaking of the glass roof, the glass company guy came around last Thursday. You may remember that one of the panes of glass had broken. It emerged that it was not due to too much pressure on the pane - it was due to the apprentice stupidly putting his foot through it. The same apprentice dropped his phone from our roof the same day - he got to keep the pieces. All in all, not a good day for him. Come to think of it, he wasn't there on the second day, to repair the pane. Perhaps that was the end of a promising career as a glass guy.

Niedermaier was there as well on the last day on the roof. His workers needed to drill two holes in the roof and fit the holes out with "thu' roof tiles". One hole was for the bathroom (some kind of ventilation) and the other was for the solar panels so the pipes carrying the water to the 1000L tank actually go through the roof. When I went up into the attic today I was glad to see that the hole in the roof was pretty much directly overhead the 1000L tank. This means that there is a very short distance from energy generation (the panels) to energy storage (the tank). The pipes are insulated, but from the documentation it seems that they lose power at a rate of about 10W/m - that's not much, but the shorter the distance, the less power loss. One of the next jobs is to organise with Niedermaier when he's going to come to hook up the tank with the solar panel and the tank with the heating pipe from the other house. All of that kind of work is not really dependent on anything else (except on me drilling a big hole from the first floor down to the ground floor so the heating pipe can be brought up) so can be done before or even parallel to any underfloor heating.

Network cables from four rooms - at least another five need to be done

Has to be hooked up to the WC as soon as we're ready for that kind of work

Not really ideal, but the only way to get the potentially noisy (drip drip) rain pipe to ground without going right next to a bedroom window

The snow barrier to make sure nobody below gets avalanched in winter

The pipe that carries the hot water from the solar panels. It obviously does not need to be this long