Hi everyone!
Well finally, over a year since planning began, the system is almost completely finished!
I'm very happy so far even though there's still quite a bit to do, it seems to be performing exactly to my expectations.
I was originally planning to post updates as the project progresses, but you know what these things are like...you start the project and then everything else goes on the backburner until it's finished! (which in my case was everything between July and December!)
Anyway, over the next few days I'll post a load of photos of the work that's taken place so far. In case you didn't follow my initial planning
here, basically, I'm starting from scratch with it all. I pulled out the old night storage heaters, re-wired the entire house electrics, pulled down ceilings, put in a new thermal store, solar panels, multifuel stove and flue, as well as radiators and all pipework. Finally, I built a false chimney breast through the living room to give the authentic fireplace look.
So here goes... (please feel free to ask any questions / post any opinions on the work) - Click photos to load full size version.
Bits and pieces start arriving. This is in the living room before any work starts.
The living room is now all emptied. The first thing to be done is to get the ceiling down...
First section of the ceiling down. I'll just give a little info here. Our first floor is 10" concrete lintels with hollow cement bricks in between them. The cement bricks have 4 x 12mm reinforcing iron rods running the length of the house through them and have then had concrete poured into them. On top of that is a 1" cement screed onto which the floor is laid. The Ground floor ceiling is suspended around 24" below the first floor, leaving a crawl void between the two. This is where all our current wiring and pipework is. To add complication to the matter, there is a honking great 12" wide by 20" high steel girder with concrete moulded around it and on top of that rest 5 x 12" girders, again, moulded in concrete. As I'll explain later, these things are the bain of my life. I used every tool i could get my hands on to try and drill holes through them for cables and pipework but absolutely nothing worked. I think I could safely say that the ground floor of my house would be bomb-proof!
Finally, the old artex'd plasterboard is all down!
Here you can see the giant concrete covered girder. Before the ceiling came down, it actually protruded around 2" below the plasterboard. It was "boxed in" but it meant the ceiling was divided by this boxing. I think I'll probably drop the height of the ceiling a little to compensate for this so when it's all plastered, it should look much nicer.
Living room all cleared of broken plasterboard (that was messy!) Now the solar panels start arriving...
When I picked up the solar panels, I also collected the thermal store from Navitron. It's custom built to the spec in my previous thread (linked to above)
The stove has also now been delivered. It's a Stratford Eco-Boiler. Very nice!
It seems to be multiple large deliveries each day now! The plumbing bits have all arrived, as have the rads, all the fire-proof board and plasterboard, the flue bits and the rest of the electrical stuff...
The first major job is the re-wiring of the entire house. Here are a couple of pics of the wiring going in...
Upstairs in the office, the new power points, phone socket, TV aerial and satellite points go in. Notice the cables going under the carpet, these are heading through the floor to downstairs (for the media centre)
Security system going in...
After a week of drilling, digging, running cables and wiring, the electrics are done!
Up next is the installation of the thermal store...coming soon!
