So with a first coat of paint on the walls and the scaffold down we finally find out how bright the place is. Are the windows big enough? Are there enough of them? How about the ceiling heights and what do the rooms actually feel like? Well I'm pleased and gratefully relieved to report that so far pretty much everything appears to be as good as hoped for or maybe even a bit better! I did spend 2 years going everywhere with a tape measure in my pocket, measuring kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms and we spent a lot of time working out what we need from a house so I'm relieved but not surprised that it all seems Ok.

But it is a personal thing, some folk want a massive lounge and then they need a massive flat screen tv just to see it across the vast expanse of floor that separates the sofa from the telly. We are more Hobbit like and happy for the snug room to be just that- snug.

The picture above shows the view from the lounge back into where the main dining table will be. The idea is that with the sliders open the diner will benefit from more light especially in the morning but with them closed the lounge can be kept really warm. The plan is to fit book cases infront of the doors so that they will dissapear behind the books when open. Again this is based on experience; most places we visited with hinged double doors are either kept open or closed all the time because they end up with furniture in the way which makes it an effort to open and close them so no one bothers. Hopefully the sliders get around this.

Yup, it's been a long dark lonely winter but  Aidan reckoned that we were out of frost danger and so the final coat of hemp-lime plaster could go on and then the scaffold could come down! Great to see the place in all its glory. And am I happy with it? Well sort of. The proportions are not quite right in so far as to my eye there is too much wall above the windows before the roof starts. This was a compromise between function and form; by increasing the height of the walls we increased the usable space in the roof. I'm hoping it will look more balanced when the conservatory goes along the front.

But the major difference is that now we can get a true feel of the light levels within the house. Here comes the sun...

This photo is taken up in the attic. Despite us having a 'room in the roof' top floor there is still room above the collar ties for a small attic which turns out to be big enough for a water tank, heat recovery unit, Christmas tree, a few grand master paintings, Ming vase, small teddy from when I was five and all the other stuff your kids are supposed to find up there after you're dead.

The main point of interest is the hessian sacking used as the inner surface to form a cavity between the rafters. This cavity has been pumped full of cellulose insulation (shredded newspaper covered in borax to prevent rot, mould and insect ingression). You can see it clearly visible where the hessian was cut to insert the cellulose pumping hose. Normally this inner skin would be a see through plastic membrane. In addition to reducing the use of plastic the great advantage of the sacking is that it is very easy for potentially trapped air to escape during the pumping of the cellulose fibre thus reducing the likelihood of voids in the insulation. The hessian is merely stapled to the roof joists and the installers seemed to find this at least as easy as the plastic membrane.
Now of course one school of thought would be that the plastic membrane is a a better job as it prevents air leakage and therefore potential moisture entering the roof. I'm working on the theory that with the cellulose between the joists and softboard above the joists (forming the other surface of the cavity), any moisture present will be able to 'breath' away to the outside. In addition to this I'm using a foil backed plasterboard on the inside which when plastered will create an airtight seal good enough to prevent most moisture laden air from entering the roof.  Any comments on this system most gratefully received!

So what else is in the photo? Well to the right and below  the smartply decking you can see the foil backed plasterboard of the ceiling below the attic. Eventually there will be insulation across this horizontal surface as well and the total U value of the roof will be 0.16W/m2K

The end gable wall is yet to be rendered. I'm insisting on this because the air tightness of a Durisol Block is totally dependant on the render. So even though the blocks are rendered downstairs in the liveable part of the house I want it done here as well. A good example of how important it is to keep an eye on the build!

The red pipes are leading to and from the heat recovery unit which is at the other end of the attic.

The copper pipe sticking up through the floor and the coil of unused electrical cable is a bit of forward planning for the addition of solar hot water panels and photovoltaics in the future. The ecovillage has the largest ground mounted bank of solar panels in Ireland (and Britain) and so in theory there is no need to pay extra to have panels on our house. However in the future it might be advantageous to have extra water heating capacity. As for photovoltaic panels- well at the moment I don't think it makes financial sense but as the technology improves and with the potential for feed in tariffs I want the possibility to connect some in the future.

The black pipe coming down through the hessian is supposed to be the termination of the sewer pipe vent. I have no idea why it is not connected or why there is no evidence of the vent pipe coming up through the smart ply! Time to talk to my builder again..

Still playing catch up with this blog but the change in weather shows that I'm getting up to date

My camera tells me this picture was taken on September 6th. Time is curved but the roof slates are pretty straight. They look normal but are actually made of recycled plastic and are manufactured in Athy by Athy Ecoslate (give it a google). It's really wonderful when the eco product is actually better than what it's replacing. Now of course a real roof slate is pretty eco unless of course it's come from China which is quite common these days. These plastic lads are lighter so the roof need not be as strong. They don't break if you miss and hit one with the hammer, you can cut em and drop em and friends in West Cork even heated them in boiling veg oil in order to shape them a bit. And the company will even buy back your over ordered slates and off cuts which get melted down to make new ones.
Time will tell if they hold their colour and whether the edges will curl up but so far they seem to be the business.

As we all know heat rises and so it's very important that the roof is insulated well. In addition to this heat loss as a result of wind via drafts and surface cooling is greater in a room in the roof than anywhere else simply because it is higher up and the wind is stronger. I therefore wanted the roof to be very well insulated and very airtight.

The construction method chosen involved cladding the outside of the rafters with softboard I used 30mm thickness of tongue and grooved Gutex made from compressed wood fibres. The idea of putting the Gutex on top of the rafters is that it slows down any heat transfer via the rafter and gives a good solid surface to further insulate between the rafters. The Gutex is also very good at letting vapour pass through it should there be any within the roof build up. It can hang around unprotected on the roof for 6-8 weeks before it starts to go soggy but that was not an issue this summer. You can clearly see the batten and counter battens which will allow a good flow of air between the tiles and the Gutex. No need for a breather membrane as the ecoslates have a large overlap and should minimise the amount of rain that gets blown up underneath to a level that the Gutex can handle. Here's hoping!

Filling the cables with concrete is a bit trickier than filling a normal wall section because the concrete could run out of the ends. Hence the plugs made out of spare Durisol insulation in place of some of the concrete. The trick was to make sure the plug did not go in so deep that the block did not get enough concrete to hold it in place or stop the concrete flowing on to the next block down.
Just to be belt and braces about the insulation by reducing further any heat that might be transferred up the concrete cores we see Damien and Bob rolling out some foil backed bubble wrap down the gable. They can be seen here using a special eco foam made organic fair trade fairy dust. Ok its the same toxic foam that got used everywhere. This build is not a pure deep green natural build and that's the fact of the matter.

The students on the Green Building course get a good tour of our build and of course are encouraged to grill me about the decisions that I have made and the rationale behind them. And of course a very obvious question is why all the foam? And it's a good question. The simple answer is that it just made construction a little bit easier. Ideally with Durisol you would stack 4-6 courses, pour them and then stack again. However because of the cost of getting the pump in we were through financial necessity having to go 8 or 9 courses before doing a pour. And at that height the walls are slightly unstable. The foam seemed to help a bit and it certainly helped when knocking the blocks into line with the line to not knock previous courses out of line. To be honest, looking back I think maybe it was just a habit that we got into and was not really necessary.
Having worked on the site for the bones of 3 months I suspect that in building as with most things habits both good and bad turn into entrenched 'ways' and if no one questions them they just get passed on and replicated.
The more I think about it the more I wonder if I should drop the eco from the ecohousebuild title of this blog

The photo also shows a close up of the underside of Gutex softboard which has been run out over the gable all the way to the barges.

A mighty moment in any house build. The gables actually proved to be fairly tricky because of the need to cut 45 degree slope on each end block. As you can see this involved cutting the insulation as well and a fair amount of foam where it was not possible to cut the insulation small enough. Me thinks there has to be a better way. The advise from Durisol in Wales was put the blocks up and then cut them all in one go using a board as a guide. In hindsight that was good advice but we would have struggled to do this because the pre made roof trusses would have been in the way. Anyone got a circular saw with a cutting depth of 365mm that we could borrow?