Month: August 2021

Waiting on Windows

Published by Charlotte on 14th August 2021

In the background of all the floor frustration, we have been trying to obtain new windows and doors. These will replace 6 of our rotten wooden windows, and replace another with a back door. We’ll also be creating a new window in a new wall in place of the garage door, and replacing the front door. The current door requires a kick to each side of its frame before it will close, and a good shove upwards before it will properly engage the lock. While we are both happy to live in a work in progress, without secure windows and doors we would be risking not only our personal items, but the equipment provided by both our employers too. Not to mention, I can’t imagine any insurance company in their right mind being willing to cover us for contents.

Because of the long lead times on some window manufacturing and installation, we wanted to get in relatively early, get a variety of quotes and book someone in. We started booking people to quote around mid-April.

As we are in a conservation area, we wanted a style of window that would look as much as possible like timber, while being uPVC so that we could afford double glazing. We found that flush casements, with a white woodgrain texture were the most similar to the existing windows. We also needed georgian bars to be in keeping with the area. This narrowed our choices of suppliers and installer significantly, and we ended up going with one of the first companies we got a quote from.

We should have taken our very first delay as a warning sign, but we persisted nonetheless. Here is a timeline of our interactions (or lack there-of), and for those of you who love a gif, this should be right up your alley:

12/04: 1.5 hours of virtual consultation, quote given and then immediately dropped by 25%. We said we’d consider it as we were still shocked by the discounted price.

12/04-26/04: We tried to get other quotes, while receiving a call from the (finally) chosen company every couple of days to offer us a lower price. Each time we told them we were waiting on other quotes, and that we would like to see a physical sample of the type of window we had requested before we paid the deposit. Each time, we were reassured that when we paid the deposit, it would be taken “subject to sample” and the surveyor who came after this would bring one with him. On a call on the 26th of April, after the price had been dropped to 50% of the original quote(!), we told them we would be making a decision by the end of the week.

30/04: Decision made. We’d been told 8 weeks from survey to install to allow for manufacturing, and that the survey would take place within 2 weeks. Long wait, but they should be installed in early July, close enough to be a nice birthday present for Ethan from himself.

30/04-27/05: Radio silence. Each week Ethan called their sales number, requesting that someone call us back so that we could accept the quote, book and survey and ask a couple of final questions. We were assured that THIS time someone would get back to us ASAP. We received no calls. We started looking for more window companies, as clearly they did not want us as customers.

28/05: Our faith was somewhat restored as we finally were given a useful response. Instead of promising a callback, the agent on the phone gave us an email address. After emailing, we did eventually receive a phone call, and some answers to our questions. The bad news: the wait time had now increased to 10 weeks; approx. install date: mid August.

02/06: We paid our deposit and booked in a survey for the following week. They wanted to come in two weeks time, but we weren’t having it after their initial delays.

09/06: The surveyor came and measured all the windows. We made a couple of changes to the original request – switched to traditional hardware for the front door, added an additional opener in the dining room, and changed the back door to a different product range so that we could have the sizes that we wanted. We were told that a couple of these changes would cost extra, so we would receive an updated price shortly after the survey. Oh, and contrary to every previous conversation, surveyors NEVER carry window samples, but not to worry, he’d get a salesperson to bring one to us ASAP.

06/07: Apparently ASAP was four weeks later. We had offered to travel to a showroom, or to a property where they had previously installed the windows to speed things up, but it didn’t seem like they’d even attempted to gain permission from one. The surveyor brought it. The sales team claimed that they had not and would NEVER say that the surveyor would bring a sample to the survey. Still, the sample was fine, and we signed the spec and sent it off for manufacturing. New approx install time: mid-September.

Ethan’s birthday came and went, and we received no confirmation of receipt. Ethan began to call every few days for an update asking for a new price and confirmation that the windows were now in manufacture – a reassurance no-one could give.

28/07: Three weeks had passed and we finally got through to the ‘local’ branch. They told us that they were simply waiting for us to send evidence that we had planning permission for our ONE new window before they could start manufacture for ALL our windows and doors. No-one had thought to tell us that they needed this document that we had had in our possession since the 17th March, let alone to give us a quick call or email to ‘remind’ us after 3 weeks of them apparently “waiting” for us to send it.

The only time planning permission had previously been mentioned was during the survey where the conversation went like this: “Do you need planning permission?” “Only for the one new window, and we have already got it” “Great”. We immediately sent our evidence and were told on the phone that the approximate installation date would be mid October. Ethan was more than a little mad, and I immediately had another breakdown. He reminded them of the several weeks of chasing we had had to do, and the delays that their company had caused to us being able to actually live in our home. She said she’d see what she could do.

30/07: We received a phone call regarding the installation. We have been provisionally booked in for installation starting 20th September, pending a scaffolding company being booked. IF this goes ahead we may FINALLY be in a position to move into our house on the weekend just before my 32nd birthday.

Also, no price adjustment needed to be made apparently. I hope they are as inefficient at asking for final payment as they have been throughout the rest of the process. Fingers crossed the manufacturers and installers are somewhat more competent. We haven’t received any written confirmation of the installation date either.

Oh hey, were you expecting this to be a renovation post? Well, now you’ve paid your dues reading my frustrated rant, here are some updates on the renovations surrounding the windows.

When we finally had the surveyor booked in, we thought we ought to make some changes to help with measuring the windows apertures. This mostly entailed replacing the old, bitty window sills with new ones. We chose calibrated slate from the builder’s merchant, and cut it down to size using the grinder (my hatred for loud noises ever increasing). We chipped out the old broken up slate sills, trying to leave the old wooden frames in place. This was (mostly) successful.

For the kitchen and dining room windows, to make space for the new sill we had to cut the bottom of the frame off. This lead to quite a precarious situation in the kitchen, even once the new sill was back in, and we have since had to use sandbags and various pieces of wood to keep the window from falling out.

Kitchen with old sill chipped away, and frame cut

Dining room window with old sill chipped away and frame cut

When we started on the wide bedroom window, we saw it drop every time we chipped away another piece of the existing sill. We thought it best to leave it until the windows were almost ready to go in before we lose this window completely and have to board up more of our house. Four out of six of the windows sills were done, and this was enough to give us a good idea of what height needed to be left for those we hadn’t yet managed to replace when ordering the windows.

The large window on the 1st floor is to be changed into a back door. Below this window there were a few large stones that could have limited the size of the opening. So before we could allow the window company to take measurements, we needed to enlarge it, and see what opening we ended up with. We started by removing stones, including the giant piece of slate on top of the wall. This took the window from this:

Via this:

Internal wooden sill removed to reveal slate and stone

We plan to have a full glass, georgian paned door in this opening. We could either make the opening rectangular, with one of the lower corner panes having a lovely view of the end of one of our new steel beams, or give it one tall section for a door, and a shorter section for a window. We decided to go with the latter.
There was still a large stone sticking out into the opening that could not be removed from the rest of the wall. So Ethan and his dad took to it with various tools including a grinder, a lump hammer, a bolster chisel and a sledgehammer. Because of the loud noises, and us only owning one set of ear defenders between us (something that has since been rectified), I ran away and hung around at the front of the house (looking suspicious to passers-by), particularly when the grinder was in use.

Because of the small size of the disk of the grinder, it couldn’t get through the depth of the stone. So they made various cuts to try to take chunks out of the stone, and perhaps weaken it in the direction where they wanted it to break. They then used the various other tools to try to knock off the weakened parts. While this method was eventually successful, part way through the ordeal, I decided to go and take a look from outside – and had to inform them that their sledgehammer hits were in fact slowly moving the whole stone sideways out of the corner of the house, and that the stone above appeared to have cracked out of its pointing. We’ve decided the house is still stable though.

In the end we had a door opening that looked like this:

The window has thankfully stayed put, so we could screw boards to its frame to at least give the illusion of security until our new door is installed.

So we did just that – boarded it up, and ignored it for weeks. But today, we (mainly Ethan’s dad, with us micro-managing) finally squared off the stonework and installed sills for both the door and the ‘cheek’ window. Hopefully they are perfectly separated in height to have the new georgian bars in each section align.

We do like the new sills, but they perhaps need a bit of wear before they look like they fully fit with the property. We’ll see if we have the energy for that once we have done all the other jobs.

Circling the Drain

Published by Charlotte on 7th August 2021

To give you an idea of just how behind we are on keeping you up to date, the last blog (of the soakaway saga) was set over the spring bank holiday weekend, and the foundation was poured on the 1st of June. Nine weeks have passed since then, and things have happened. Luckily, (for you, not for our progress) we mostly only have evenings and weekends to work on the house, so progress comes in bursts. This post should bring you a fair bit closer to present day, at least in terms of where we are with the never-ending job of the floors and drainage.

After the foundation was poured under the existing garage door, we began to build the wall to replace it. The wall will be one skin of concrete block internally, and a stone skin on the outside – hopefully matching the rest of the house, and built by someone else. It will also contain a hole for a window to eventually be installed. As we wanted to concentrate on floor installation, we built only 2 courses of concrete block. These couple of layers give us enough wall height in the garage to allow the first few layers of the floor, up to the top of a new concrete slab, to be contained.

Our beautiful new foundation and concrete block:

This eye sore is right on the road for all to see – I’m sure our neighbours absolutely love us.

The plan

Now that we have the wall to contain the floors, the goal is to get the inside of the house to the point where the layers of the floor can be built up. Here is a plan of the ground floor, containing our plan for the drainage layout, and a cross-section of the intended floor layers at the back (underground) wall. It might help show what the hell we are trying to achieve!

Hardcore is the next job to be done by someone else. This means we need to deal with the water on the muddy floor, and more effectively contain the existing drain hole at the back of the garage, so that we can book someone in.

As you can hopefully see from the diagrams, the basic plan is to have a french drain around the perimeter of the interior walls under the whole floor structure. This should help clear the water that is already sat in the house. Once the final floor structure is installed, most of the water should be dealt with a new drainage channel recessed into the concrete slab. The channel and exit points will be accessible and maintainable in case of a blockage. Even with all this in place, building control aren’t so convinced that the house will end up dry enough, so that makes us nervous.

However, we have had two damp proofing companies take a look and told us that drainage channels in the slab with cavity membrane on the walls was the way to go, and this should solve our damp issues. So the french drain is just a bonus back up really. We have to keep reminding ourselves that the house was previously drained using a couple of pieces of guttering covered in some damp proof membrane, and the only area that seemed to have significant water was where they just hadn’t bothered with any kind of solution. So this double layer of drains really should be overkill for the amount of water we are seeing.

The hold up

Before we could start digging to install the french drains we still had a small portion of underpinning that was required before our walls could be fully trusted to stay where they were. In the meantime, we used our new trusty hoover to attempt to remove the worst of the silt and water from our muddy kitchen floor.

Given how long it has taken to get anyone in to do any job, we were pleasantly suprised that the remaining underpinning was underway two weeks after the need for it had been discovered. The additional underpinning was around one of the existing drainage points, that we intended to keep – the more drainage points the less likely anything would end up fully blocked and the less water would be hanging around in our floors. The pipe of this drainage point had been broken when the floors were dug out and as the wall was undermined for the underpinning, it turned out that it was broken quite far into the wall. The pipe needed blocking, fully replacing, or a new piece of pipe to be connected. Of course, the previous owners who installed this pipe thought it best to use a piece of square guttering downpipe, leaving us searching for a water tight connector or end cap that simply does not exist.

The external end of this pipe was also a mystery. On the other side of the wall is our small triangle garden, and an unadopted road that is much higher than our internal floor levels. As we had not yet dug deep enough in the garden to find any pipes, we would have to wait to determine how or if they had actually managed to connect this pipe to the outgoing system, or if it just dumped the water into the ground outside.

So, while the groundworkers waited, we frantically spent time scouring the builders merchants trying to decide how we could best replace this pipe. After quizzing a member of staff, we eventually decided to buy the biggest waste pipe that would fit into the square pipe, and push it all the way through the wall, as far as we could into the guttering. This might give us the opportunity to later connect this pipe on the outside properly to the outgoing system. We would then squirt a lot of sealant into the square pipe and hope that nothing came back up the pipe.

andy dwyer i have no idea what im doing GIF

The pit

After the groundworkers had finished the underpinning, they spent some time digging in the triangle garden on the other side of the wall. The brief was to dig as deep as they could without causing a landslide on the unadopted road next to it. They found a large pipe running along the wall, likely the pipe that transports all the bathroom and gutter waste from the back of the property and the joint of the kitchen sink waste pipe. To reach the square pipe would have likely been pushing it. So that will be dealt with later! We’ve already created enough of a hazard for our neighbours for the time being. It’s hard to see the depth, but its a good few foot drop to the bottom of our excellent new pit and it’s a struggle to climb down there:

Parks And Recreation Fall GIF by PeacockTV

French drains

Once the underpinning was in and set, we got started on the french drains. Ethan and I took a week off work, knowing that the drain would take longer than a weekend. We were also having to move out of our rental property the following week, so it would be useful to have some additional packing and moving time. Another relaxing holiday.

Digging the channels was a job predominantly completed by Ethan and his dad. I had a multitude of excuses: my back was still bad; my confidence with a pick axe was particularly low; and previous to the purchase of this house I was unaware that shovelling was a skill that required honing, and that technique is actually really important, as such my shovelling speeds left a lot to be desired, and my efforts were best spent on the supervising and packing front.

We had only had underpinning to a certain depth in the floor, meaning that digging any deeper close to the walls was ill-advised. While the groundworker had managed to get a little extra depth out of the floors, we had allocated this to simplifying and strengthening our concrete sub floor, by increasing its thickness, and removing the need for reinforcing mesh. We had therefore planned to dig very minimal trenches, just deep enough to allow the french drain pipe to be surrounded with the standard pea gravel. The top of the pea gravel would be at the same depth as the top of hardcore. The hardcore requires whacking to compact it together to create a strong and stable base for the concrete subfloor. Pea gravel, however is not compactable by design and so we suspected it should not be whacked, particularly as the pipe may not stand up to it either. So we would need to place the minimal trenches and pipes as close to the wall as possible, ensuring all the new hardcore could easily be whacked. We had bought many connectors for the pipe so that every corner could be a right angle, right up against the walls.

50m of perforated 60mm pipe and a box of carefully calculated connectors

Then, we had a communication error. After starting the job, we were convinced by Ethan’s dad that we could in fact whack the pea gravel, and it would be fine, so it wasn’t worth keeping the pipe so close to the walls in the corners, and we may as well utilise the flex in the pipe to tackle the corners in a more sweeping manner. So that’s what we went for. After a days work, having dug a trench and laid one pipe, we went home for a well earned night’s sleep.
When we returned in the morning, the concerns begun. The issue had been that Ethan’s dad thought that the pea gravel would be under the hardcore layer. While we thought he knew it would not. So our miscommunication meant that all aspects of the previous days french drain had to be removed.

The new plan was then to dig the trenches further from the walls and a little deeper and make sure that the hardcore could be laid over the top and whacked. And so we proceeded.

Here are some instructions for laying a french drain, that are probably best not followed too closely:

Make sure that you have underpinning installed to a depth that prevents you from digging trenches sufficiently deep to make installation at all easy.
Dig a trench that is just about sloping in the direction you would like and is only deep enough for minimal pea gravel, and minimal error in laying of the pipe.
To prevent mud and silt from blocking gaps in the pea gravel, lay a wide strip (but only JUST wide enough to meet itself when wrapping the pea gravel) of non-woven geo-textile along the trench. MUST be non-woven to prevent blockages – but I have no idea why.
Try to hold the centre of the geo-textile in the centre of the trench while someone pours some gravel on top of it. Ensure you cover the inside of the geo-textile in mud as you go, because this is definitely not what it is intended to keep external.
Put a geo-textile sock over the length of the perforated pipe because you just KNOW that the geo-textile you laid before probably won’t have any effect after the chaotic way in which you laid it.
Lay the pipe into the trench and wiggle it a bit to try to make it slope in the correct direction, get bored, give up.
Have someone hold the sides of the geo-textile up while you pour in gravel to surround the pipe because you didn’t cut it wide enough to actually contain the full trench of gravel.
Ensure you move the geo-textile just enough so that the pipe lifts and negates all the positioning you did, and leaves the pipe at the top of the gravel in places anyway.
At some point close the geo-textile over the pea gravel and pour more gravel on top to secure. Be quick to remove your hands when the gravel is poured, because gravel cascading on to the backs of your hands from a foot high hurts more than you’d expect.
Repeat points 2-9 for several days.

While digging in the garage we found an old drainage solution in the form of a stone culvet from close to the garage access point to near the internal doorway. So we opened this up and put the french drain within instead of digging a new trench.

Inspection chamber

In addition to the french drains, we needed to find a way to cover the existing drain at the back of the garage. It needed to be water tight, preferably insulated, and accessible. This seemed to be a set of requirements that no-one had ever needed before. After many a breakdown, we managed to get some answers on a forum. Apparently, there is no standard way of including insulation in any kind of inspection chamber. So, we’ll just be having an access hatch in the screed level, with an inspection riser down to the drain, with a custom concrete base to allow access to all 3 pipes, and the all important brick on its side.

The only information we could find about the type of access hatch required was that it should be double sealed for internal use. Helpfully, not all websites use the same term, and the diameter of the inspection riser that each of the access hatches should interface with isn’t at all clear. We’ll then create a makeshift damp-proof-membrane-surrounded insulation “plug” to shove into the inspection riser. Hopefully this will insulate from both the cold, and the running water noises. The floor damp proof membrane will be brought up around the outside of the inspection chamber and secured with a large jubilee clip.

The first step to take in this solution was creating a concrete base. We had to go with a non-conventional shape to allow all pipes (and brick) to continue to discharge water, and to allow for a sturdy base on which the cylindrical inspection riser could sit. Additionally. we needed to leave space behind the access hatch for the in-concrete drainage channel to pass along the wall behind.

The former ended up being more complicated than it probably needed to be, but we wanted to make sure we could remove it easily once the concrete was set, and that we could be ready for the other layers of floor that would be added. We also had to interface with the french drain, creating holes on each side of the former to let the pipe pass through. One pipe discharging into the drain, and the other providing a back up exit, should it ever be required. We were quite proud of the resulting solution.

Result

Things didn’t go exactly according to plan, so here’s an update on the diagrams for what the new plan is. Essentially, what has changed is the positioning of the french drains in depth as well as layout. Due to the additional depth uncovered by the ground-worker, we have also been able to give extra thickness to our concrete slab, which gives us better thickness underneath the drainage channels. So hopefully they are more likely to survive now.

The drainage plan after we completed the french drains

In real life, this looks like this at the french drain level:

After the french drains were all in the mud was a bit less swamp like, and we were ready for hardcore. With our first grey hairs found (I think I may have found one of my own earlier in the project already), we had our fingers crossed for a short wait. We spent some days packing, moving and cleaning our rental property. Due to the state of the muddy floors, and only a ladder to get upstairs, we moved many of out boxes into our house via an upstairs window from the back garden. Precariously shuffling boxes along a scaffolding board over the hole where the stairs should be. The rest of our boxes went back to Ethan’s dad’s house, where we will also be until we have floors, doors and windows. On that note, after the 23rd of June, this is what those floors looked like:

This is what happened with the floors before the 27th June. However, you’re not quite caught up to that date as I haven’t talked about windows. Be prepared for an almost parallel timeline in the next blog.

Have some bonus french drain pictures and a video of Ethan spraying some underpinning with milk (lime sealant – also apparently very important) while you wait: