Kitchen worktop revisited!

Finally after a bit of negotiation, the worktop guys came back and fixed one of the chips and bought a whole new piece of quartz for the island.

Crikey this is heavy...

One sexy new worktop ready for the move?....

Sucker!

As always one thing depends on another, and so on. One of the documents we needed to get for our FIT payments from the PV solar panels, was an EPC (Energy performance certificate) which all new builds require nowadays. And part of this EPC required an air tightness test.

This basically involved a man turning up and sealing the utility/garage door up with a big fan which sucked all the air out of the house..

We didn't all go blue and collapse on the floor, looking like mad healers walking around the house, we did feel any small drafts magnified to huge blasts of air. So any leaks were then sealed as much as possible.

Thank goodness for expanding foam!

A true lesson in where a house leaks though, so hopefully this should minimise our heat loss and keep a toasty house in the winter.
We achieved a high level 'B' on the EPC in the end which is a great result and with a bit of extra sealing achieved our reading for the desired air tightness performance of the house from it's design.

Anoraks only past this point...

The test result is that the house leaks 4 cubic metres per hour per square metre of surface area at 50 Pascals of pressure. (It's the fan that creates the pressure). To give some sort of comparison the minimum standard for air permeability is 10 cubic metres (etc).

The design spec was improved over the minimum standard to reduce the cost of heating the house. As well as lots of expanding foam and sealing tape one of the things we did to reduce the leakage was to specify windows without trickle vents. This would ordinarily mean lots of condensation which is why we installed the MVHR (Mechanical Ventilation Heat Recovery) system. This sucks out stale air from 'wet' rooms and uses the heat from the stale air to warm fresh air that is being blown into all the other rooms.

External stuff - Garden, Patio & Drive

One flowerbed around the front door is started...

"Can I stand on that huge pile of chalk?" 

The flowerbed the other side of the front door

The edges of the drive start to take shape

"Can we go on the dumper Mummy...plurrrlease?"

Easy peasy and 4 year old could do it

Sandcastles!

The biggest beach in town!

Whose made footprints in my beach?

So desperate for cheap labour, we start employing the local snowmen.

It's bloomin' brass monkeys out 'ere

But the snow looks wicked on the glass roof.

No edging yet, but getting there...what a drive?!

No time for playing in the trampoline hole Julie!

Main bathrrom continued...

With the impending moving in date fast approaching, the need for a working sink and bath became quite important!

Tony's fine sink building..but surely there could be better ways than a bucket?!

Surely that should be the other way up and not in the lounge?

Eamon's great deal tiles going up and looking pretty smart actually.

Nearly ready for moving in! Not quite up to most people idea of finished, however!!