Week 1 - 26th July 2010 - Foundations

Due to the number of trees on our site we decided to get the foundations designed by a local consultancy Hindley Associates) that were on the Potton contractor list. The design required a 1.8m foundation in some areas and a 2.1m depth in areas close to some of the trees, which considering the old house stood for 100years on next to no foundations made us grin but was not un-expected. We would not recommend this company as communications proved difficult after the initial meeting. After sending out 5 tenders we appointed local company Trell Contractors Ltd to dig the foundations and construct the block and beam

oversite.
It only took a few days to dig the foundations and after numerous visits from concrete mixers the footings were complete and the brickies arrived to start the block work. Trell had worked on Potton timber frame houses before and had to ensure the brick layers measured correctly as the measurements are taken from a different point and the tolerances for timber frame are less forgiving than for brick houses.

We had a delay of a week and a half as the beam design did not get signed off and the supplier had a longer than normal leadtime so things came to a stand still for a few days. Typically, as soon as the beams arrived it started to rain, but they still cracked on a good pace and within 4-5days we had a completed block and beam slab. Maxwell and Tilly decided to make a time box, with some pictures and toys etc in and they laid it under the garden room just in case there is a "repeat performance" in the future!!! (Not by us I hasten to add!!)

We used a company called Plandicil to perform a perculation test to establish the size of soak away needed and also to advise on the sizing of the existing septic tank as building control said it may need replacing. Luckily the report from Plandicil concluded that it was sufficient for the size of the house and number of bathrooms.

We timed the Potton erection team to start the day after Trell were due to finished which worked well as the Trell guys were still on site finishing off so the erection team could check the slab. They had to make one small correction to the sun room which was done straight away, but other than that they were spot on.
We decided to leave the rainwater drainage and foul drainage until a later date in the project as there was not enough time to do it before scaffolding was required.

Demolition. W/C 14th June 2010

PRE DEMOLITION
Before knocking the existing house down we had to disconnect the utilities.  Water, oil and BT were simple, but electricity caused our first delay.  It took 8 weeks from when we first contacted EDF to actually getting it disconnected, so it's worth organising well in advance as this delayed our build start date. We decided to build an electrical kiosk to provide an electricity supply for the duration of the build and to supply the office, and we plan to utilise this as our permanent supply when the new house is built as this will avoid having to pay EDF to come back again.

We've had a log cabin office built in the back garden to run the business from, but it also provides a useful base from which we can manage the build.  From watching far too many Grand Designs we realised it would be best to be on-site as much as possible, but rather than live in a caravan on-site, we cheated and decided to rent a house 20mins away! 9 months in a caravan was not something we fancied with two young kids!! (or without come to think of it).

DEMOLITION
We lined up the demolition to start the day after the electricity was finally cut off. We'd used a local chap (Charles Hastings from CH Mini Digger Hire) to dig in the electrics for the office and he gave us a good price to demolish the house so we happily employed him to do the work.. He did a great job. He kept the site very tidy and he also found a local farmer who took the rubble away for nothing. We looked into having a crusher so we could use/sell the crushed rubble, but by the time you'd hired the machine and an operator it was not worth while financially, so to get the rubble removed at nil cost was great.

We stripped the clay pantiles and concrete roof tiles (with the kind help of our next door neighbour) before the demolition started and Charles separated out the wood and metal during demolition. There weren't enough roof tiles for us to re-use, but we found a reclamation yard that gave us 55p each for the clay pantiles and 25p for the concrete tiles so it was well worth the effort. We also managed to recoup about £300 for the metal at the local metal merchant, Mellor Metals (mostly for the copper pipes).

TENDER DOCUMENTS
We have decided to send out at least 5 tenders for each part of the build and, where ever possible, send out to contractors that have been recommended to us. That way we can be sure of getting reliable tradespeople at the most competitive prices. Potton supply a list of previously used contractors in the manual, but recommendations from friends etc are invaluable as they tend to be for local builders.

The tender documents we have sent out have been based loosely upon the example tender documents supplied by Potton in their project management file, but we have used our own format and added more detail..

Stalland House Build

Hi, This blog will all be about the house that we are building, we being myself Kevin Meers, Elise Meers my better half, Maxwell & Tilly our kids.

After purchasing a 3 bed cottage in Norfolk last year and successfully obtaining planning permission for a large extension we soon discovered that  extending was not a cheap business. After consulting a number of builders and a quantity surveyor on pricing up extending the house it soon became clear that they all thought it would be better to start again.

So will after much deliberance, we took the decision to demolish and start again. We had always wanted to build a Potton barn style house and so contacted Potton homes www.potton.co.uk and selected a Belvior barn style house which, with the help of Potton's recommended architects, CHQ we streched and tweaked at bit. We submitted for planning and got permission in April 2010 to proceed. In hindsight it helped us quite a bit that we already had planning to extend the original house in obtaining permission for the new build. We are novice self builders but budget constraints restrict us from employing a main contractor or project manager so we will undertake this ourselves, so with the help of a Potton project management course and a Potton manual we are undertaking this project to end up (with luck) a family home of 2600 sq ft. I'm also sure it will be much more rewarding to have managed it ourselves when we eventually have a completed house (I may eat those word later but there we go!)

My wife, Elise, has given up her job as a forensic accountant to A, spend more time with the Kids and B, project manage the build. I will help out as much as possible whilst running our business Redrose Software Ltd (www.redrosesoftware.co.uk) which writes business system software for footwear and fashion businesses.

I'm writing this blog to provide more detail to out twitter posts http://twitter.com/stallandhouse  which we hope may be of use to other Self builders and to give us a record of our progress, stumbles, frustrations and elations.