A day of dealing with various things

Robert — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 20:53:00 +0000

Set up a basic site office in one of the bedrooms - desk, chair, whiteboard, drawings on wall.

Had another meeting with the sprinkler company - pipe runs etc pretty much all worked out, and agreement for first fix to start a week on Monday (1 July).

It's awkward to get sprinkler coverage in rooms with sloping ceilings (as we have on our top floor), and as sprinkler coverage isn't required in rooms less than 5m2, I came up with the idea of making the top floor bathroom slightly smaller, to get it under this size threshold (it seems pointless to have sprinkler coverage in a bathroom, but at the end of the day we need to say we have complied with BS9521). This would necessitate omitting the bath from the design, which I didn't see too much of a problem with - and that top floor bathroom was crowded anyway.

The rainwater harvesting system arrived (everything but the underground tank, which is being held back until we get rear garden vehicle access). I specifically wanted the header tank on-site to ensure that the joiner builds the cupboard that will be housing it to the right size. And it was a good job I did, because I found out that, including its lid, it is just a little bit too high to fit in the space between the top of the doorways and the underside of the existing ceiling - so the ceiling will have to be raised in this area. I also hadn't realised that it has a 40mm overflow.

On similar lines, I ordered two of the single-room MVHR units (Manrose HR100RS), which should be delivered tomorrow.

I called Velux technical support to try to understand their somehow rather incomprehensible code numbers; good job that I did, as the guy helpfully pointed out that a smoke vent window is required to have at least 1m2 of opening area, and none of the Velux range with a width that would fit within the existing top floor stairwell would match. His suggestion was to have two smaller windows in-line; the other option would be to adjust the stairwell enclosure (which fortunately is all timber studwork). Need to investigate this and come to a decision ASAP.

This evening I had the future occupants of the house come round and discussed various things with them - all went well, apart from the omitting the bath idea, which they didn't like. We discussed various options including having a bath in the ensuite bathroom, and having an over-bath shower in one of the bathrooms (which I really don't like, as in my experience they always leak sooner or later - structural timbers soaking up water in an eco-house would of course not be good at all!).

Obviously it's not good to be firming up and making adjustments to the design at this stage - hindsight is a wonderful thing!

Withington Co-operative Eco-house - occupants

A day of dealing with various things

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