Plumbing and window frames

We've had another good week in respect of completing the next step on our house building. The plumbers came on Wednesday and we managed to finish virtually all the work in one day. Two plumbers and Geir worked hard from around 7 in the morning till 6 in the evening and by that time all but the hot water cylinder was completed. As prices of copper have skyrocketed over the last year of so, the plumber recommended that we use something called Austec for our hot and cold water pipes. These are basically plastic pipes which are flexible and can be pulled through holes in the studwork. This saves a lot of welding work, and can also be done by inexperienced people like us. As such, it worked out well in that Geir could help drilling all the holes, cutting all the noggins, pulling the pipes through to the right spots and clamping them in place. The plumber could then do all the connection work that us laypeople are not allowed to do.

Hot and cold water pipes in rafters above music/movie room.

Hot and cold water pipes in ceiling space towards the kitchen

Hot and cold water pipes connected to taps for bathtub and shower.

In addition to installing all the hot and cold water pipes, and connecting the solar hot water system up, we also had to do some sewerage work. As we have previously mentioned, our first plan was to use compost toilets, however, with the use of a reed bed for water treatment, the council recommended that we use normal toilets in order to ensure that the reeds would have enough nutrients. As such, we now also had to connect the sewerage pipes from the toilets into the pipes that were already in the ground. Luckily when preparing for the compost toilets we had put in 100mm pipes in the ground to act as a drainage pipe. This could now be used as a sewerage pipe and was connected into the septic tank.

Sewerage pipes connected in pit originally designed for compost toilets. The thick pipes is for the toilet and the thin pipe is for the ventilation that runs up onto the roof.

In the last week Geir has also been busy building the window frames for our living room and the dining area. As probably mentioned before we were very lucky in that we have managed to source virtually all of our windows second hand (and free of charge). For the living area and dining area we are putting three of these windows side by side. However if we were to do so with the original frames, there would be a lot of wood between each pane of glass. As such, we decided to take the glass out of the original frames and build new frames for these windows. The second challenge in this process was that the original windows consisted of two parts, the bottom part being around 870mm x 1200mm and the top part being around 900mm x 520mm. The reason for this was that the top part of the window was fixed, whereas the bottom part was hinged for the window to be opened. This meant that the top glass was wider than the bottom glass when taken out of the frames. Since these are all double glazed units we could not cut them to make them the same.

The solution has been to build the new frames so that the two top side windows stick out a bit further two the sides than the bottom windows. In order to do this we will have to buy a new top window for the middle frame, but this is still a relatively cheap solution compared to buying all new windows. The end result (without glass, and before painting) looks like this:

Window frame for living area. There will be one course of bales under the window and just stuffed straw above the windows.

Window frame for dining area. Here we will have one course of bales under the windows and up to two courses of bales at the right hand side of the frame.

As such, we have now finished all the frames and sub frames needed before we start the baling work. But there are still some other things that have to be done before we get to that point. We have already started with one, which is putting up the aviary wire over the perimeter beams. This wire will help avoid any small furry animals to get into the bales. We will render on top of the bales with at least one layer of render, but to be on the safe side we are using aviary wire (smaller holes than the chicken wire) at the top to avoid anything moving into our bales. The wire is stapled to the top of the perimeter beam and is later stitched together with the chicken wire. In order to get a smooth wall, we will build with strawbales as far up as we can, and then just stuff the last bits with straw. We tried this method on half of the garage (compared to try to make up bales to fit under the perimeter beams) and found it much easier.

Aviary wire stapled in place

The other two things we have to complete before we start the bailing is to put up the cement sheets in the eves. We have ordered the sheets and they should be coming either Monday or Tuesday next week, so hopefully we can start this work pretty soon. Further we have to put down besser blocks around the edge of the slab. This is to raise the bales up from the floor level to keep them dry just in case we are ever to get a bit of a flooding inside. The same was done for the garage which can be seen in diary entry no. 44.

So, we will most certainly have enough work for the coming week as well.

Otherwise we have recently discovered that we have some bad weeks on our property that we have to get rid of. They are called White Weed (or in Latin: Cardaria Draba). Not sure where they came from, but both our neighbours have them as well. Jodie has been working hard on researching what to do and pegging out the affected areas. These will now be marked out and sprayed (unfortunately, but we do not have much of a choice). We then have to leave them for at least a year and check the areas for another 2 to 3 years to ensure they do not come back. The weeds can spread both through roots and through seeds, and apparently about 1 m2 and cover around 1 hectare in about a year if it is not controlled. As such, we just have to get rid of it before it gets too bad !

OK, that should be it for now. More to come next week.

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