Roofs seem to have been the focus for this week. Our builders completed the new rafters along the front of the shippon – now these are done the next stage will be to add the rooflights and then roof felt (the ‘felt and batten’ stage). And they’ve also started putting rafters over our extension, so we can start to get a sense of how the room is going to feel. Very helpful considering we’ve been revisiting our lighting plans, and deciding what sort of lights we want in places.
The main farmhouse roof has been finished – complete with slate vents to let the building breathe, and crevices for bats to use. We’ve got new ridge tiles (the old ones were pretty worn), and the electricians have been in to start wiring up the solar tiles. We’re not actually using the tiles yet as we need to wait for National Grid to approve the design before we can install the inverters – we could be waiting another month for this which is really frustrating given the long days of daylight, but there’s not much we can do.
John has been working hard in our new house, chipping old render off the wall in our dining room area to reveal the stonework and make it into a feature wall. Turns out it’s harder than it sounds – especially given the height – it’s not easy to hold your arms that high for that long! It’ll look lovely once it’s repointed – it’s the only part of the building where we can show the stonework because the other walls will need internal tanking to avoid damp, so we need to make the most of it. He’s also started sanding down the fascia boards on the front of the farmhouse – with the scaffolding coming down a week on Monday, that doesn’t give him long to sand and paint it, before the builders need to refit the gutters.
On the garage building, the steel lintels are in place over the doors and window – the building is getting ready for the first floor level to go in. Progress with building up the stonework has been a bit slower as our stonemason has been repointing our farmhouse walls before the scaffolding comes down. Having said that, the breezeblock walls need to be done before the stone facing can be added. Once the first floor level goes in, our builders only have 2 months to build up the walls and put the roof on, as the flooring material they use is only waterproof for that long.
The most exciting part for me (geeking out a little) is the almost-complete installation of our new hot water cylinder. The old one was too small for the property, and we had a vented heating system that required a cold water tank in the top floor. As we wanted to use this space for the new shower room, we decided to change the system into an unvented one (I.e. that doesn’t need the cold water tank and is more compact). I first heard about Mixergy cylinders at my previous work – they use a different process to heat the water that’s more efficient and faster, they’re smart, they can take multiple fuel sources to heat water (including solar power), and they use artificial intelligence to learn your water usage patterns so you don’t overheat the water and waste money. So I was very excited to have the opportunity to install one! There was some question over whether we could actually get the cylinder into the cupboard – whether we’d need to rip the bathroom apart or drop the cylinder through the bathroom roof, but with a bit of wiggling and a lot of good luck, our builders managed to get all 85kg of cylinder fitting very neatly into the corner of the cupboard, only removing a small boxed-in section that was actually wasting space anyway. It’s a snug fit, but a fit nonetheless. Now we’re just waiting for the electrician to wire it up, and we’ll have hot water again!
We had our monthly site meeting as well – these are so helpful to gauge progress and understand what upcoming decisions we’ve got to make, or things that are slowing the project down. One of these is the council conservation department – we’ve now been waiting a month for the conservation officer to sign off our latest materials, but we don’t even have an expected timescale for this yet which is ridiculous given we’re a live building site. We’ve given plenty of notice luckily but delays like this just give our builders less flexibility to work around the weather, if there are too many outstanding questions.
A wet Saturday meant we had the chance to get through a lot of the elements we needed to review – including fire plans, and chasing up various companies. It was really interesting to look at the fire safety report we had commissioned for the farmhouse, although it’s confusing when the advice conflicts with that from the Devon & Somerset fire brigade. The last thing we want is for anyone to get hurt while staying with us, so our natural instinct is to go to the extreme – so we’re going to speak to a holiday cottage company and get their advice too.
Today is actually three years since we moved into Ley Farm! Time really has flown… We’ve been looking back on just how far we’ve come this year – watch out for an extra blog during the week!
Ley Farm Cottages 