Ground beams and joists

With the foundations done and the site prepared the last bits of strutural timber arrives just in time. I had planned to put in the ground beams and joists and lay the OSB Floor and then put the wall on the floor but that would mean insulating the floor now wth a great risk of the whole lot getting rained on. So I have tweeked the design so the floor can be laid after the building is watertight. That feels so much better.

Putting in the ground beams and loists was easy but took a while tweeking everything so it is square and level. It seems as though you go around doing that all day but in the end we got it acceptably good.

Then we laid a temporary floor to build the walls on a perfect flat surface it made the whole thing so easy.

Finishing the foundations

Finished the foundations and cleared the site of rubbish and rocks. We then covered it with a membrane that lets water though but stops growth. This is then covered with 20mm gravel to hold it down. So tomorrow we can finally start cutting timber. I really find the whole foundation thing just bloody hard work and un rewarding but hopefully they are basically OK and the floor structure should be quite simple with just some fine tuning. We will see.

Foundations 2

On first look the site appeared to be quite level but when you measure it there is quite a difference from one side to the other. So we just set the pads at around ground level and we then set levels with heavy concrete blocks.This way will be quicker and save costs.

Foundations

As usual the foundations took longer than I had hoped this was partly due to clearing the site and the top soil being very light and deep. We had to dig bigger and deeper than I had hoped so we have ended up with slightly over the top founations but better that than the building sinking.

So we spent best part of the day mixing concrete and moving the delivery of timber. There seems to be a lot of OSB so I hope I have the figures right if not I am sure we can sell it on or use it somewhere else.

This is the current design but it does keep changing shape, colour and layout. The windows may be bought but we may get a local caftsman to make the frames and buy the sealed units.

The structure will be simple stud wall with an insulated floor, walls and a lot of insulation in the roof. this should mean that there will be a minimum need to heat the building as at the moment we only have electricity. If it is cold we may install a small wood stove.

Preparing the site

After a day clearing years of rubbish from around the back fence we cleared the site removed some of the top soil and checked to see how level the site was. Never really used a laser level befor but for approximate levels it seemed great. We will see how it performs when we come to level the foundation pads.