Steel stress, but still motoring on…

Monday the 10th of February, and the structural steel that we’d ordered in December was delivered to site. The only trouble was, half of it was missing! This wasn’t the stress-free start to the week that we’d have liked.

After a few frantic phonecalls the rest of the steel was located and delivery arranged for Tuesday.

We had another delivery of Nudura blocks on the 10th too, brought up from Dartmoor by The Fell Partnership. No need for heavy lifting equipment for that though, as it’s lightweight and easy to handle.

Four days later and the window and door openings on the ground floor were in, with Nudura walls up to first floor joist height. The Nudura internal props were supporting the walls prior to concrete being poured, which was just as well as storm Dennis rolled in on Saturday the 15th.

On the 19th, just 9 days after the blocks were delivered, and despite the persistent wind and rain, concrete was poured into the ground floor walls. The following day the props came down, and on Friday the first lift of scaffolding went up outside and over the car port.

Then came another defect notice from the warranty provider, more than 3 weeks after the Building Control inspect to which it related. This time they were concerned that top hats had not been put on the service penetrations. We explained that standard practice is also to tape the membrane up around the service penetrations (which saves time and money and is just as effective). Again, luckily, we had photos (as the concrete slab now covered the site), and eventually the defect notice was marked as resolved.

When you start to write down the chain of events like this, it suddenly dawns how fast everything was happening and the speed with which the building was taking shape. Had we been building with block and brick I doubt we’d have been out of the ground due to the weather.

By the end of February the steel on the ground floor was going in, the stud walls were going up and the pozi joists were in the car port roof. The floor joists and first floor deck came next, so that the next lifts of Nudura could go up.

The floor deck we used was Cabershield which is BBA approved for 60 days continuous exposure to the elements. The significance of this didn’t dawn on us until later as events unfolded.

It was now March, and the news both here and abroad was dominated by Covid-19.

Mainly there were just 2 people working on site, 1st fix carpenters, and by the 13th March the Nudura gables were up and ready to be poured. However, ‘concrete Friday’ as it had become known had to be cancelled – Friday the 13th struck, and the pump lorry broke down. By Monday we were back on track, and Hansons brought another 16 cubic metres of concrete to fill the first floor walls and the gables.

In the background, we were tentatively lining up the follow-on crew which included the roofer, plumber, electrician and 2nd fix carpenters, and ordering windows and doors.

After a couple of days the steel for the ridge and balcony was ready to go in. A misunderstanding meant that the wrong crane was sent – it was too small! So the steel had to wait a day, but on Thursday the 19th six huge steels were hoisted into place with pinpoint accuracy by Tim from Nick Sampsons.

On Friday that week the timber for the roof was delivered, the internal props upstairs were removed, and we ordered our windows. We also had the patio door company (Alumitech) out to measure for the Reynaers aluminium doors that run along the upstairs balcony, and we got our Velux windows from Travis Perkins.

Little did we know that this would be the last ‘normal’ week on site. On Monday morning (March 23rd) we got wind that the unthinkable might be about to happen, with the UK potentially being put into lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic which was sweeping the world and killing thousands. So we headed to Travis Perkins and loaded up with what materials we could, including battens for the roof, nails, slate hooks etc. That evening the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, delivered his lockdown speech telling everyone to stay at home.