Mechanical Heat Recovery Ventilation

The house is designed to be as air-tight as possible for energy conservation. This involves painstaking attention to detail in filling, taping and sealing gaps, a "vapour control layer" (aka polythene sheeting) in between the insulation layers and having no trickle vents in the windows.

Clearly the house needs fresh air and this is achieved with a MVHR or Mechanical Heat Recovery Ventilation system. This is a unit with two fans - one to suck damp stale air from bathrooms and the kitchen, the other to blow fresh air to all the bedrooms and lounge etc.

The clever bit is a heat exchanger in the unit that uses the heat of the stale air to warm the fresh air. This means that although the fans run all the time the energy required to do so is less than the energy it would take to heat cold air coming in through traditional window vents. That's the theory anyway!

Step 1: Hire a professional installer!

Step 2: Cut holes in the roof (thank goodness for rubber tiles)

Step 3: Install roof vents

Step 4: Main inlet and exhaust ducts

Step 5: Install main unit

Step 6: Insulate ducts that run through un-heated areas

Step 7: Buy some more bits! (If only the plan was right!)

Step 8: Duct to downstairs rooms

Step 9: Build false ceilings to carry insulated duct to upstairs rooms

Step 10: Build noggins for duct exits to receive the inlet/outlet valves (post plastering)

Wot no scaffolding?!

On Friday the scaffolders came and spent one hot day taking down all the scaffolding. And 'dunn-ah!'

So this is what the front looks like under all that!

And this is the back, still minus some render and 2 bi-fold doors though.

But hey, we were dead chuffed. It feels like a proper house sweltering in the sunshine. Even if the inside has still a long way to go!

Insulation and more insulation

The huge task of moving piles of insulation to where they should be going proved to be a long time consuming task. A job we had to do ourselves over many many weekends.......

The insulation arrived back at the end of May

As usual the lorry was too big, but this time it at least got to the top of the drive. However, we devised a very technical method of utilising our steep drive to it's maximum potential! Although, it didn't quite work for the sheets!

But first the foreman was here to direct us...

 Even a kind Uncle Phil (a big thanks as always bruv) got insulating....

'But Daddy I can climb so well here'

Taddah! Our bedroom with it's first layer of insulation

Roxy's room completed...well up to the baton stage (only electrics and plaster boarding...oh and decorating to go..yadda yadda)

A lovely big atrium, but ah......a tad tricky to insulate, give me more ladders!

Rendering

The K-Rend arrives on a lorry too big to get up our road, again...

....so we are left with a pile of tubs of Top coat and bags of plaster right down the road as the rain started to pour. We ferried all of the plaster, load after load, in Dave 'the roofer's' van. A few hours later and I had to go, after my Mum and then my neighbour kindly looking after Marcie, all had to go out. A huge thanks as always for the short notice help. However, we were still left with a huge pile of render boards filling up the pavement. The answer finally lay with our renderers Afrim & Ton coming down at 7pm with their big Audi and ferrying them on their roof-rack to site.


After a few weeks of 'are the renders coming, are they not...oh no they're going on holiday' and didn't tell us until the day before...but yet, so far it is looking good.

The front of the house is a smooth white colour in K-Rend

Ton and Afrim off-loading the cement ready for the screeders.

Roxy admiring our render...until she realised it was still wet...

Enjoying the facilites!

It was a hot day, we were going to Esledes to work on the house, but we had the girls with us. What would they have wanted to do at home? Mmmmmmm....maybe they could do that in another garden......

They look happy enough amoungst the weeds. But possibly a bigger paddling pool maybe required! This is probably why they then discovered the spray on the hose!

We were later busy insulating the upstairs bedrooms, when someone said 'where's she gone?' We found her relaxing in her bedroom....

Who needs an orthopaedic bed?!

An idyllic wild flower meadow...but wait, what is that pile of pallets doing there?

"Daddy's Den" was a DVD in the back of Daddy's car while we worked on the house!

The bosses survey our garden!

Adam kindly helping out with our mesh for the ground floor. He just popped in to see it. Ha ha...never do we miss an opportunity for a bit of help!

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Please, please can we go up.....

                                            Now who could we get to crawl through there!?

Odeon, UCI.....who needs 'em?! Our own personal cinema

This building lark is EXHAUSTING!

 No, no Daddy, this is how you do it!

Sheer luxury that outdoor rug, fit for a donkey!

Screeding & Underfloor pipes

Next job on Tony's week off was to 're-wack' our TechnoPor flat and lay the DPM ready for the Underfloor heating pipes. So after Tony' worked it so hard on the lounge the first Wacker plate died. They sent a new one and.... taddar.....we did all the downstairs rooms.

  
Wacker plating - just like lawn mowing, but no bits!

oooh..so elegant...get stuck in Mrs G

Dan & Leon's beautifully neat pipework ready for our underfloor heating. Maybe the only deterent for stopping the foxes coming in and leaving some treats for us.

The screeders finally arrive....not much English being spoken but a lot of hard work being done, as their loud pump efficiently delivers the mixed screed into the rooms ready for spreading

The playroom unsmoothed but full of screed. Wouldn't the girls just love a playroom like this with just piles of sand in it!

Ooooo how lovely...a beautiful smooth kitchen floor. Well....apart from when they ran out of concrete. Our neighbourly constraints on stopping us continuing on into Saturday afternoon and delaying the other half of the house until..... next Saturday.
Mmmmm...somehow one suspects we are a sly job on the side at