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

Roof half done, glass roof kind of done

The north side is fully tiled

Despite the absolutely terrible weather at the moment, the roofers got the north (street) side of the roof tiled yesterday (Wednesday, May 29th) and made a good start on the south side. Niedermaier GmbH sent around to of his men to get the solar heating put up on the roof. It's much easier and faster for them to fix the solar panels when they can walk on the lats rather than on the roof. It also doesn't make any sense at all for the tiles to be put in place and then have to be removed again (at least sixteen of them) to fix the panels. At the end of the day, the solar panels were fixed but they were not able to bore a hole in the roof as the tile with the hole had not arrived yet (it was sent by post for some reason). Today (Thursday) is a public holiday and most workers will probably have taken a holiday tomorrow (Friday) too, so I doubt anything else will be done before Monday. That takes us up to four weeks of work - which means it's time that things start finishing up.

Half the height of the slot is cased

I wanted to pull the Cat 7 network cables through the pipes I put in for them a couple of months ago. However, the plastic cups into which the pipes go (and where the socket itself is fixed later) were not really secure in the tile cement mixture - it takes a couple of days for that stuff to dry out sufficiently enough for it to hold wires/sockets securely. The sockets are positioned just above the perimeter slot that I cut into the walls in the bedroom area last November, to allow for the heating pipes (to the radiators) to be installed. I used these slots for carrying the empty pipes through which the Cat 7 network cables will be pulled. I decided to close in the slots below the sockets, to make the wall more stable - so the sockets themselves sit more securely. Unfortunately, given that the insulated heating pipes were on the bottom of the slot (and didn't take up the whole width), it was difficult to see how I could properly build anything to fill up the slot. I decided to case the pipes in mortar, so that I'd have a flat, stable surface to work from. As the mortar bed is not all that thick (and also has steel in it), I hope it won't fall out. Once it is dry, I should be able to fill the rest of the slot with flat bits of bricks. I'll also have to use wall anchors to make sure it is properly tied to the wall itself.

Installing the glass roof

Other than that, the company that were to fit the glass roof came as well. The roof was to consist of a double layer of glass, which they brought with them. They had a kind of a suction tool which they hung from the crane. The suction cups grabbed the glass plate and they hoisted the plate up onto the roof. All went well (it took them about three hours) and they were packed and ready to leave. Then there was a snap and one of the panels broke. Apparently they had put it under too much pressure. They'll be back on Friday to repair it - well, to replace it - there isn't much left to repair. The rest of the glass roof looks fantastic. The entire area underneath is now rain proof. This is good news for my cement and lime.

Lastly, we managed to get the four concrete supports poured for the supports for the glass roof. Stuckenberger's men moved the two acros which were unfortunately positioned just where I had to dig. I dug the remaining two holes and on Tuesday evening Uli, Alois and myself mixed concrete and wheelbarrowed it over to the holes. This morning I removed the timber casing - the concrete looks good. Tomorrow the fitter is coming over to measure the lengths of the support poles (i.e. from the concrete foundation to the outside joist of the glass roof).

I started installing the OSB above the kitchen

Casing the heating slots to stabilise the sockets

Sandra found (and rescued) this. It's going on my office door

Working on filling the casing with concrete

It took a double lorry with 17 crates of tiles for the roof

The glass panel being hoisted into place

The machine must have a battery powered vacuum

The glass working fixing a glass plate to the machine

The south side was tiled after the north side

Stuckenberger's men needed to leave space for the solar panels

The solar panels with the glass installed - ready to go up on the roof

Eaves and chimney done, lots of small jobs finished inside

The eaves are done

The weather has been absolutely terrible for the last couple of days. Actually, for pretty much the whole last week. Rain, cold and lots of wind too. Exactly what you don't want when (a) you have a house with no real roof and (b) you are a roofer trying to put a roof on (a). Anyway, fair play to the roofers, they still managed to get a lot of work done. The pavatex hardboard insulation "exaskeleton" is done and the lats are finished. Best of all, the "Spengler" (not sure what this trade is called in english - the guy who fits eaves and does the lead/tin/copper work on the roof) came last Saturday and got almost everything done in one go (one half day's work really). He put a metal skin on the chimney as well. We went for metal because brick chimneys tend to rot over time. Water from rain (and we get enough of that) gathers in any cracks in the mortar, freezes, expands and breaks. That continues over time (not even much time required) and the end result is a chimney that rots and decays.

The wallplate is no longer hanging on skyhooks

Other than the Spengler work on the roof, there were numerous small-ish jobs on the inside that finally got taken care of (mostly due to the weather). You can see from the photos below, that the Ytong wall in the bathroom is now built up to the ceiling (credit goes to Daniel for this piece of tetris work). Uli has started the wiring in the bedrooms (and the main electric unit is in the wall already). I finally finished the reveal of the front door (I kept getting called away to other jobs) and the kitchen windows are pretty much finished as well. I also dug two of the four holes necessary for the steel beams which will support the glass overhang. The other two will have to wait until Stuckenberger's men move the existing Acro Jacks. I also bricked up a section of wall under the wallplate on the north wall. It was bothering me for months because it looked as though the last metre of the wallplate was floating in the air (apart from one huge rusty nail which might have been holding it). I bricked it up yesterday afternoon while a tempest raged outside. I almost forgot to put in my empty pipes to carry the network cables. That would have been a disaster...

The cladded chimney (with some example tiles)

The acro in the background is just where I need to dig

The drainpipe from the eaves on the south side

Finally finished the west reveal of the front door

The gate to hell (or at least 90cm down)

Metal reinforcements for the concrete foundation for the roof supports

The wiring is started

Where I have to go to flick fuses back on

Daniel's tetris work

The kitchen wall is now 36cm thick everywhere

Getting ready for tiling

The chimney is cased and filled with concrete

When the roofers were finished today all of the horizontal lats were in place, which means that they can get working on the tiling on Monday. This is good news - we're not exactly behind schedule, but it will be good to have the roof finally closed off against the rain. The "Spengler" was there today - that's the german word for the tradesman that does eaves and chimneys - anywhere where tin/copper has to be shaped. He wants to do the chimney tomorrow (Saturday, 25th May). The old chimney stack was pretty much derelict - the concrete cap it had was badly broken and the bricks themselves weren't really in good shape either. Another issue was the building regulations for chimneys - the mouth of the chimney must be no less than 40cm above the finished top of the roof. As our roof is now substantially higher than the old roof, there was no way that we were going to be anywhere near 40cm - more like 15cm. We cased the chimney and I used the crane to carry up big buckets of concrete to fill the casing. The entire chimney stack is going to be covered with a copper (or something like copper) casing. That should mean we should have no issues with water penetration over the next (hopefully) decades.

As well as the casing for the chimney, the markings are now on the ground for the four support beams for the glass roof overhang. Currently, the rafters for the glass roof are resting on a horizontal beam which itself rests on three acro jacks. The four 12x12cm steel girders will themselves rest on a concrete foundation which will be 50x50cm with 40x40cm reinforcing steel. I still need to make four casings for the concrete - I might be able to do one or two of them later on tonight so that we can pour two of the supports tomorrow. I'll have to wait with the other two because (coincidentally) two of the acros are positioned rights where I have to dig down about 90cm.

The lats are finished on both sides of the roof

The roofers finishing the lats