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Can't remember what it is but I worked it out once and our fire place is close to the limit of what works After I restored the fire place, we burned 3/4 ton of logs over a long weekend but the novelty wore off as it's as costly as running a thirsty V8. We enjoy a fire most weekend evenings during the winter and when we're done with the Christmas tree we trim the branches off and burn the whole lot :D Our house can be drafty as sometimes an upstairs door will creak open and closed when only a small downstairs window is open. Sounds kind of like how you would expect the inside of pirate ship to sound like in rough seas :D |
Mildly Interesting Motorsport News Update....
My 'other' work contributed in a small way ie didn't cause a DNF to another Monaco F1 GP win, that's 2 in a row, with 2 different drivers, fingers crossed for another win in 2023 :cool: Boring Build News Update... Mrs Ahab and I have been working 7 days a week for the last 3.5 weeks on this 'while you're in there' job :rolleyes: of bringing the roof insulation of the old part of the house into the 21st century 2 layers of 2" thick insulation board have been chopped up into many, many individually shaped bits cut from 30 sheets of 8ft x 4ft board On the 1st layer all joints/gaps were taped over with 2" wide aluminium self adheisve tape to keep any draughts at bay Room looks like this now, http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1654379159.jpg http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1654379262.jpg Not sure what the situation in the US is like but building material prices have rockets up in price over the last couple of years Once the plaster boarding has been fitted we'll easily have spent $2500 on materials for this job alone :( Next update will be an example of how nothing is square/parallel with our house and at times it makes my OCD rash flare up and itch :mad: |
Prices are ludicrous here in the US. I don’t see how people can afford to build a new house at this point, lumber costs are stupid high.
All that insulation will make quite a difference in your house, I think. |
When I picked up my last load from my building supply place I got talking to the guys in the yard and they said a lot of builders are not taking on new jobs due to the cost of materials
The insulation boards I'm using have doubled in price in 2yrs |
Even the seemingly most mundane work is treated with the utmost care. Its special.
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Thanks for the updates. I always love seeing your home, work, and progress.
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A housing development is being constructed next door to me. I preferred the forest, but did not get to vote. At any rate, these houses barely fit onto the lots, and they are large two-story homes. The workers are hispanic. They seem to know, very well, how to erect houses.
So....one of the guys told me that the cost to build one of these homes, which are probably almost 3000 SF of of living space, is less than $200K. He guessed they can be built for $170K. They are, in fact, sprouting up very quickly. Okay so here is the point I am making: There is a housing shortage. There is a land shortage. Despite the increase in material costs, materials and labor are still the cheap part of the equation. This is why they build as many SF of living space into these homes as they can. The cost of building a 1500-SF home is probably only $50K less than the cost of building a 3000-SF home. The former would sell for $400K, and the latter sells for $600K. Labor and materials are only responsible for the $50K difference. The basis for the $200K difference is the cost of land, permitting, utilities, etc. Labor and materials are not the cause of housing inflation. |
Having spent my life in construction, and having a business degree, I must say that that analysis is dead wrong.
Sorry about that. |
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Really hoping the insulation work we've done makes a difference, Before tackling the roof I looked at all sorts of energy saving options, solar panels, Tesla battery, electric heat pump systems, wood pellet heat system, water solar heating etc, etc All are too expensive, too intrusive aesthetically, take up too much space or any payback vs investment is too long In the end I decided the most cost effective way to reduce our energy costs was to take the passive approach and reduce the heat loss R value for the 6" thickness of insulation board I've used is R 43, same value for the new build roof. Original house roof was only R 14 Walls are 2ft thick stone so not much heat loss through there as verified when the house stays cool whenever we have any hot spells during the summer All my windows are well sealed and double glazed. Only exceptions being the two small stained glass windows. As a small warm, indoor job I plan to fit internal double glazing to both over the winter Front and rear door shut gaps need sealing which are easy jobs, just need to get around to doing them both. Fireplace chimney is the 2nd biggest hole so I need to fabricate up some sort of manual, butter fly valve type of seal By far the biggest hole letting the cold in is a 3ft diameter drystone water well which is just inside to the left of the front door entrance. I just threw down some oak planks to stop the children/animals falling down it as a temporary fix. Need to order a custom steel frame/glass cover and fit some lights down to the bottom. Another job for the winter and I'll post some pictures as having an old well inside a house isn't the sort of feature many homes come with :cool: |
Plaster board work all done....
There are few square corners, parallel walls and in some cases even vertical walls in the rooms of the old part of the house and sometimes it makes my OCD itch :( I was having trouble accepting the crease line between the sloping roof and vertical wall not being horizontal Luckily Mrs Ahab keeps me check with large doses of reality ie it's an old house with character. 'Put the saw down, leave the walls alone and walk away from creating more work as we have enough to do!' :D http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1655066026.jpg Apologies for the state of the carpet, promise it will be burned at the earliest opportunity :eek: http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1655066315.jpg Used a left over 4" thick chamfered stone window sill and a couple of smooth cut flagstones to create a 'feature' step up to the new build floor level http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1655066500.jpg For putting wiring holes through 2ft thick external walls you need a serious drill bit and then hang on for dear life http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1655066672.jpg Next up it's 'Window Time', hoping to finally lose the derelict, abandoned house look and up the tone of the neighbourhood |
Fast approaching your 4th anniversary.
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The build.
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Like any good 'professional' builder I have my excuses for things taking so long, Start delayed 1yr because I was dead Mrs Ahab and I are not professional builders and are doing most of the work ourselves My hernia op 6 months after the first 6 months I make a lot of it up as we go along Back to work fulltime in F1 for 2yrs (was worth it as the delay helped win a drivers championship, 19x race wins, including 2x Monaco race wins) I am stupid and want to do as much of the work myself A fight with an angle grinder requiring a visit to accident and emergency to have my leg sewn back on Working through a global pandemic Now working through the highest UK inflation in 40yrs Phew! I'm still glad we're only 4yrs into this project, I'm not dead again and we've not run out of cash :D Just to ease any worry of this build thread finishing too soon it looks like the UK is going into recession and I'll be going back to work fulltime for a rest! |
Captain. When i was building my house (took 2.5 to 3 years), I was driven crazy by people saying, "So, when are you moving in?" I wanted to shout at them I was building it starting with clearing and grading the land where hothing but scrub oak was. I wasn't going out and buying something already built, like they did. I made myself just say I wasn't sure.
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Steve, Your first excuse was pretty good, but reminded me of The Holy Grail opening, "I'm not dead yet!". Friends gave me a T shirt with that on it for my 60th birthday.
We should get you one with "It's just a flesh wound!" I know where you're coming from on the length of the procedure. I built this house over a five year period forty one years ago in my spare time.(plus another year for a couple of additions) When I have to do renovations or upgrades, I know exactly what I'm getting into (well, usually). Digging into the structure of a house built centuries before you were born is a whole 'nother kettle of fish. I suspect there are many times you have looked at something part way into an operation and said something along the lines of ,"Darn! I can't do it that way after all." Since I don't have to lug heavy stone or crawl into confining, dusty spaces behind knee wall studding, I am perfectly happy to wait for you to post the next instalment. Kudos to you both. Best Les |
Lobour of love Cap?
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Les,
Big kudos to you too for building your own house :cool:, please post up some pictures as we'd both love to see the fruits of your hard work Before this project I've only built a kit car for myself which I sold it to help fund buying this house which is our 1st house, when we're done I'm going to have a rest and try and do a car project, have a few in the queue, not sure which one I'll do first :confused: Rod, You're not the 1st person to call our build a labour of love, guess it is but I think of it more like a hobby that should more than pay for itself Most hobbies involve spending lots of money with only enjoyment back in return but when we eventually sell we should have a large lump of money for all the work we've put in |
Hottest day of the year....
I'm covered in SF50 (stone-dust factor) for protection from the harmful sun's rays while chopping up the last few pieces of stone for the shed :D http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1655469254.jpg The additional roof insulation we've just finished on the original part of the house has made an amazing difference on lowering the temperature of the top room which must be a good sign for keeping it warm in winter |
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I am sure you will get back your money and then some. My mother sold her house after my father died in 1967. This was in Wallingford, Oxfordshire. She sold it for 8000 pounds and it is now worth 1.6 millions pounds. Cheers, Guy. |
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Prior life was business degree (accounting), 20 years in banking, now in home building nearly 18 years. Would love to hear more - have you thought of starting a thread? |
Not to hijack the Captain's thread, but as there have been a couple of requests, I went looking for photos of my house construction. My wife advised me I was mostly shooting slides at the time but I found a snapshot of me on the roof putting the last of the siding on the upper part of the house. My phone won't upload it so I'm going to have to get it onto our computer to post.
Basically the house is a back split based upon a design from a competition 50 years ago for an energy efficient house design. It had been conceived as a two part modular design to be constructed in a factory and placed on a two level foundation. This would place the kitchen, dining area and living room on the main floor with a bathroom and two bedrooms on the upper level. There was a space for a finished half basement under the upper level and a crawl space under the main floor. We had small local contractors do the excavation, concrete and septic. Another acquaintance milled the lumber and I got busy. I was working as a route supervisor with the dairy but would be finished most days by 3 PM.I would work until dark and get some sleep. We were living with my in-laws whose house was just across the field, so if I had some spare time, I was on site. The excavation was done on August 13. Foundation was in by the first week of September, then my part of the work began. Our plan was to live in the half basement until we could afford to build the main house. I didn't have electricity on the site for two months, so all lumber was cut with a hand saw: 2x4s 2x6s,2x8s and ( gulp) 2x10s. I got the main floor built over the crawl space and the pony wall erected to carry the upper floor. Then we put up a shed roof over the upper floor and stairwell and covered the whole thing with tarpaper. Insulation and gyprock got us in just in time for Christmas. When the bank account recovered two and a half years later, another load of lumber allowed me to build the 2x6 stud walls in sections, rip off the shed roof, erect the wall sections and get the permanent roof on. I'll try to get some pics dug out. Best Les |
I seem to have one image at the moment of the house as built. I am standing on the south facing roof, installing the last pieces of vertical t&g siding. This choice of material was a mistake. At first it was lightly stained, but the wife didn't like the yellowing nature of the pine. She wanted it darker, so we changed to a heartwood stain. That caused solar gain and it warped in the sun over twenty years and had to be replaced. Since I was re-doing the south and west sides, it all was re-done in clap boards.http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1655553625.jpg
You can see the basic design idea of the upper half story getting sunlight through the clerestory windows. Then we decided to add a sun room to the south side and a porch to the east end. http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1655553857.jpg That was relatively simple except to continue the roof line, the floor of the sun room was at grade. It is concrete with air circulation pipes under in a heat sink of several tons of course rock. The white round fittings on the right side of the sun room were warm air circulation pipes to and from solar collectors I built. There was not enough insulation in the foundation to make it worth while and I removed the collectors after a couple of years. We had our domestic water heated with a solar array for about ten years, but it failed the same summer the pv solar array was installed. The solar water tank was re-purposed as a rain barrel and in this image you can see it, also note there are only two windows on the north side of the house. The wire enclosure on the left side of the image is a cat kennel to which our cats (8 at one point) had access. Coyotes in the area mean there are no kitties loose around here. Hmmm. That one doesn't seem to want to load. Best Les |
Let's try that again.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1655554906.jpg There. Got it. Sorry for the rhubarb flowers obscuring part of the north face. You can see part of the garage and, on the end of the garage, the shed with the pipe sticking up in a generator/gardening storage space. Wires from the generator to the house are underground. Best Les |
Over the years, I have changed out all the wood framed windows for vinyl . As I go on, the glass is getting upgraded from double glazed to triple glazed. The flue serves a tiny air tight wood stove on the main floor. We burn about two cords of wood through the winter. There is a heat pump visible in the last image which helps warm the basement, which doesn't get much solar gain.
The contrast between the Captain's house and this one couldn't be much greater. walls are 6" studs with 5 1/2" of fibreglass insulation. Roof is 5 1/2 " of fibreglass plus 2" of styrofoam board for a total of R30. That was radical when the house was built, but way behind standard now. Basement walls are 3 1/2" of fibreglass inside and 2 " of foam board outside the walls. Also in the last image, just to the left of the thermometer is a white pipe and a stainless steel plenum. That is a cold air feed for the airtight wood stove so we are not using inside air for combustion and thus not drawing outside air in through cracks and vents which would make the inside of the house colder and more dry. Best Les |
Les, your house looks great, kudos to you for doing most of it yourself
Unless you build houses for a living or have done it for fun it's hard to grasp the enormity of the amount of work involved |
Steve, the whole thing was " learn as you go". I was so naive I didn't know enough to know I knew nothing. I just did what my Dad used to do on the farm when he needed something: he built it.
I was able to work through most of the challenges, but after four decades there are things I shake my head over. After the house was finished, I did a small horse barn, then a garage for my toys. Each one got easier. Should have built the house last :D Best Les |
Slightly late update, been too busy enjoying some mountain weather/scenery and not doing any building work
This week the UK has enjoyed a few unusually warm days this week, new record of over 40C or 104F for the 1st time A national emergency was declared, ie stay indoors or you will die if you go outside so we were very pleased to find all the extra insulation we recently added to the original house roof made a big difference to the indoor temps. Top room was a very comfortable temperature and the whole house felt a lot cooler. Hoping it translates to a more comfortable winter too! In other news, I've finally finished doing all internal glazing bar work on all the windows and fitted all the rear windows The window cutting and shutting was a heap of work but I think the end result was well worth all the time and effort. Even up close the new windows are visually almost identical to the old windows Rear of the house now looks less like an old house with a new build extension and more like a whole old house, well it should do as it's taken so long http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1658529666.jpg I'm now part way through fitting the front windows and it's starting to look like it might turn out ok too! |
Wow
So nice! |
Looks great! Did you guys escape to the continent for a little bit?
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There is nothing like standing back and admiring your accomplishment, and all the more sweet if it involved years and a thousand details and literally tons of work.
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That is so beautiful. As a west coaster in the U.S., I always found the old buildings in Europe fasceinating. Something centuries old is something you can't find here. If something is a century old here, it's considered ancient.
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You and the Missus have done a fantastic job on that property. Unless you know the history of the project and know where to look, one wouldn't suspect any changes from when it was first built.
Re the insulation in the older part of the house, even though you have increased the total volume of the living space by approximately 40%(?), I suspect your cost to heat the place should drop by 25-30%. Well done! Best Les |
Gorgeous!
Glad to hear you got to get away and enjoy other outdoor beauty. |
And a lot of satisfaction from having done it yourself.
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Thanks for the gracious comments gents
Sometimes I think we must be slightly mad taking on so much work, occasionally even thinking we've made a huge mistake but when we do find time to take a step back to look at what we've done it all seems worth it Front is starting to look good too, was hoping by now to do the 'front reveal' with windows all fitted, taking a bit longer due to distractions sucking me away from building fun! So instead here is an update with a picture taken today from the top of my 17ft tall scaffold tower while I was trying to fit the last window frame http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1658957723.jpg This was me while taking the photo :mad: it didn't work as it still rained :( but not for long :) http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1658957815.jpg Also a few more pictures to show what our hood looks like Thinking I need to throw up some laced together sneakers onto the telephone lines to let the rest of our village know our end of the village is a no go area for them Hang on, maybe I should forget that idea as the brewery, two pubs, post office, meat butchers, doctors surgery and grocery shop are not in our end of the village ;) All we have is a post box, dog poo bin and a bus stop :D http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1658958425.jpg http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1658958498.jpg |
I cannot express how different your lifestyle is and what we typically see in the US. I would trade what I have for that in a heartbeat.
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Living in rural middle-England has it's charms but there is too much traffic, we're a 2hr flight away from a sea warm or clear enough to swim in, not enough good driving roads, no Tex-Mex restaurants, everything is expensive or very expensive, house/land plots are too small/over looked, weather in winter sucks in a cold, damp way, summer is too short etc Like most people we chose the area we live due to my work and I've been to plenty of places in the world where I'd trade my lifestyle for theirs in a heart beat too As soon as I get bored with working, maybe in 10yrs time or so we'll sell up and move to somewhere nice without factoring in work locations |
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