We have seen good progress on several fronts this week.
On Monday, Charlie of Insul Hub checked all of the floors ready for the delayed screeding on Tuesday. Meanwhile Sam, also of Insul Hub, started to fix the render board on the elevation over the front door and garage.
On Tuesday, the line pump from Ashville Concrete turned up on time at midday and was followed an hour or so later by the first volumetric mixer. By the end of the day, we had taken 13.1 m3 of C30 concrete for the screeds on the middle floor and in the basement. Unfortunately, due to the debacle with Hanson the previous week (the supplier that decided that HS2 was far more important than us), we had to accept standard rather than self-levelling concrete. The knock-on effect of this was that all the concrete screeds were poured 10mm below the required Finished Floor Level (FFL) and would the have to be topped up to FFL using self-levelling screed.
On Wednesday, the rainwater goods arrived from Metal Solutions to match the roof in SSAB Greencoat Pural BT and Sam fitted them straight away so that the soffits could be completed on both sides of the valley gulley. Due to the size of the roof, the hoppers are nearly 300mm by 200mm in section leading into a 100mm square downpipe.
On Thursday, we joined forces with Sam and installed the 10mm thick self-levelling screed. This sounds straightforward but entailed trips to four separate Screwfix branches to secure 25 x 20kg bags of the compound. There is a cautionary tale associated with this procurement: each 20kg bag clearly stated on the website that it is suitable for 1-10mm screed; it further states that it covers 5m2 per bag. The assumption that you make from this information is that each bag will cover 5m2 at 10mm deep. Wrong!! In small print of the bag when you receive it it informs you that one bag covers 5m2 at 3mm deep!! We had 49m2 to cover on the middle floor and 72m2 in the basement. We had calculated a requirement for 25 bags at 10mm thick. At 3mm thick, this meant that we needed at least 3 times more bags!! Consequently, we were able to lay the screed on the middle floor only using the 25 bags. Nonetheless, it was good team work: Max measured the water into the buckets and then added the compound; Amanda then mixed the compound using a paddle mixer; Max carried them into the house; and Sam did the skilled bit of placing and levelling the compound.
Meanwhile, Amanda has been planting 60 1.5m high Hornbeam hedging plants, supplied by Wessex Woodland Management of Hungerford, along the boundary so that they will grow by the time we move in. Another 60 are on the way to complete the boundary hedging.
So, by the end of the week, all of the render board had been installed and all of the core screeding had been completed with self-levelling on the middle floor completed.