Update

No pictures to upload this time folks. Been really hectic of late, very busy with work but I've found three days for the bungalow. It's been another night with no sleep. I seem to be in a vicious circle at the moment, I graft hard all week and have a really big sleep & lay in on Sunday. Then Sunday night I'm wide awake and end up missing out a nights kip - I really must try to get back into some kind of regular sleep pattern.
The bathroom tiles have been cleaned, two coats of sealer and now grouted - just the final clean & seal to do once the grout is fully cured.
Hole for toilet waste pipe cut through wall.
The meter cupboards now have the doors hung and the spring latches fitted. May need to change the hinges though, as Charlie pointed out, they are a little cheap compared with the spec in the rest of the building.
The hall now has it's heated skirting boards fitted and the various sections of 'dummy' skirting are fitted at several locations throughout the dwelling. The 'dummy' stuff is made from MDF but in the same profile as the heated skirting's and is used in areas that either you don't want to heat or can't fit the heated stuff there. Many thanks to Pete for his hard work on Saturday.
And a big thank you to Charlie for his efforts today, I now have enough PIR insulation board on site to finish insulating the loft - you're a superstar Charl - I owe you a .......
Other than that there's not too much to report. Gotta go to work for a few days, then hopefully I can find a couple of spare days for more bungalow. Right now though it's sleep time, laters folks....xx

A milestone!

Well we now have heating & hot water, hooray! The heated skirting boards are now working in both bedrooms, the living room and the kitchen. Hopefully the hall will be done in a couple of weeks time, when I have some spare time.... It's great to have hot water too, I was able to wash the cups up today without the need for boiling kettles up. The Alpha Flowsmart set up appears to be working well too. I've given the system it's initial flush to remove flux residues and installation debris and am so glad I installed the Fernox TF1 filter system http://www.fernox.com/equipment/filters/total+filter+tf1 This is a smashing piece of kit. You'll see all the debris it collected, in the bucket in one of the pictures. The TF1 is installed on the return just before the boiler and prevents all this muck from getting into the boiler and causing havoc. I was well impressed, it collected all that debris within a relatively short running period, I'd recommend every boiler in the country be protected by a TF1 - amazing.
The heated skirting boards appear to be doing well too although they take a lot of bleeding out to remove all the air. They are basically pipes within the skirting and to remove air from pipes is more difficult than removing it from a traditional type radiator. Normally any air in a heating system would be pushed into the rad where it's easily removable - it's not quite as easy with the heated skirting's, it's achievable but just takes more time and possibly a slightly different approach to system design. As you'll see in the picture I've not fitted the bottom plinths or the corner covers yet, I'll wait until the floor coverings are all down before I do the 'finishing' touches. It'll be easier for the flooring guys to do their stuff without all the plinths/covers on and they can't get damaged if they're not in place can they?
Oh, I also fitted the new gully drain over the weekend too and ran some waste pipes to it. I now have the bath, dishwasher, kitchen sink and washing machine all connected to drainage - it's becoming more like a home every day...
There is still a lot of work to do but I'm slowly chipping away at it, to be moved in by Christmas was my goal and I am still aiming for that although I may be moving in with it un-finished. Wouldn't be too bad a thing though, the basics are there now. I can do the rest while I live there. Hmmm, maybe I'll wait until one of the showers are up & running and perhaps a toilet that can be flushed by pressing a button rather than filling a bucket!
It's happening though folks, we're on the home straight!
Almost forgot the piccie of the Spider & its web. Not really anything to do with the project, just thought it'd make a good picture.
And finally, I've recently discovered the 'stats' tab on the dashboard that allows me to see limited information on who's viewing the blog and how frequently etc. It's been read in the UK, USA, Australia, Denmark, Philippines, Italy, France, Canada, Germany, Poland and South Korea. I'm available for working holidays folks......

Thermaskirt

The Thermaskirt training day went off OK. Of all the invites only 1 person took me up on the offer of free training! Good on ya Pete, foresight! We managed to get the living room almost done although some of it needs to come back off & be altered/renewed. Somehow we overlooked chopping the wall out for the threshold kit and I've found a manufacturing defect on a section!
I then returned to tiling the bathroom for a few days which is now done. Well, when I say done I mean that all the tiles are stuck to the walls - just cleaning, sealing, grouting, cleaning & final sealing to do before we can final fit the shower & cover plates and then think about fitting the loo & basin etc. Took me ages to tile that room, 'brick bond' pattern tends to give you more cuts and as the tiles are 'Travertine' (natural stone), each one has had to be cut on the wet diamond wheel cutter. I reckon the offcuts will be cut into uniform shapes and become fancy coasters...
So the last two days have been spent doing the heated skirting boards. Yesterday was a prep day - cutting out the walls in the right places, fitting the insulation and brackets etc. Peter was back assisting today and we managed to get both bedrooms and 1 wall in the kitchen skirted up. It does still need levelling up and spacing correctly before I can throw the odd fixing screw in it here & there to keep it all secure. I'll do the top gasket strips once it's all secure (as they shrink back upon first heating) but leave the bottom plinths and corner covers etc until after the floor coverings are all down. At some point I also need to connect it up to the boiler flow & return so it can be filled up & tested.
It is super time consuming though. I reckon I could of fitted all the rads and piped it all up in two days. So far we've been on the heated skirting's for three days and there's still the hall to do, top & bottom gaskets and all the covers and all the piping up. I reckon there's at least another three days work to see it finished making it three hundred percent more expensive on the labour alone without taking into account the huge cost of the Thermaskirt itself which is probably around four times what radiators would of cost. It does look good though. It'll be real nice to not see rads on the walls. Unfortunately I'll need to fit a decorative rad in the kitchen as 1 wall of heated skirting won't provide enough heat for the room. I could've used heated skirting around the kitchen cupboard plinths to get enough heat but I don't fancy trying to drag an integrated appliance out for repair/renewal with the skirting's in place - a recipe for disaster I think! So I'll need a groovy rad for the kitchen and there'll also need to be heated towel rail in the bathroom as there's not much point fitting the heated skirting's in there - won't really dry towels will it? But the rest of the Bungalow will be radiator free....
I've just won the three Westerham jobs too so the bungalow will slow down for a little while - think I'm going to have to cancel my holiday!!

Bathroom tiling

Finally made a start on the tiling. Had no sleep last night - (books, quotes, materials sourcing & ordering etc,etc) took me till 4am so I didn't bother going to bed. While doing all my bits on-line noticed that there were four transactions on one of my accounts that weren't mine! Card trouble I suspect.
So I was at the bungalow by 6.30am after taking the scenic route and stopping for diesel. Had a bit of brekkie and then decided a power nap would be a good idea while waiting for my delivery - bloody 11am by the time I came round. Good thing the airbed has a slow puncture, if it weren't for being flat on the floor reckon I'd of slept till 2pm. So I had a couple of cups of tea, phoned the bank & sorted that out - card cancelled, money will be refunded in 24hrs and I have to fill some forms out and return them within 10 days or they take the money back. Set up the tile adhesive mixing kit & tile cutting kit and was just about to start mixing when my delivery arrived - the Thermaskirt is on site!
Then decided that now I didn't have to wait for the delivery it'd be a good time to go & get a new tile adhesive trowel with deeper notches as the walls are a little bumpy and the tiles are huge. Also needed to do some banking. And I managed to get the tile to vinyl trims picked up while I was out which I need for the wetroom en-suite. So it was around three this arvo before the first tile hit the wall. A bit tricky! I usually tile with smaller tiles which are a bit more forgiving if the walls are out. These big buggers make it difficult to get all the joints perfectly lined up as the walls are slightly out and to make matters worse some idiot decided that 'brick bond' pattern would be the way to go!! I am a glutton for punishment aren't I? I just have to keep reminding myself that it's going to look the tits when it's done, as long as I don't rush it.
Back down there tomorrow, toolstation.com delivery is due so I may as well continue with the tiling while I wait.

Carpentry!

A carpenter I'm not!! But needs must and the chippie that was going to build the meter cupboards has gone awol so I've attempted them myself. The doors are cut too so I just need to sort out the ironmongery, fit the doors and then fill/sand and paint. I also built the cubby hole/shelf at the end of the bath while I was at it. The top will be tiled and the rest painted. Will be a good loo roll store.
Monday will see the arrival of the heated skirting boards from http://www.thermaskirt.com/default.aspx and all being well the area sales guy will be with us on Thursday for a training day to ensure I fit it properly. If you pay for their training day then you get a listing on their website as a registered installer which had a bearing on my opting for the training.
So we're edging forward slowly. Hopefully we'll have heating & hot water within the next few weeks and then I can move in properly and spend all my spare time working there.
I'm off, got to order some materials and search the net for a towel rail for the bathroom & decorative rad for the kitchen.

Todays effort

The drains are now prepared, old gully that was set above DPC has been broken out and the pipe including its concrete shroud have been cut back to a sound collar ready for the new gully to be set in at least one course below DPC. The toilet drain has also had the same treatment and is ready to be extended from the collar into a new soil pipe taking both the new loos. I've made temporary connections so as the old loo can still be used for the time being and the rainwater pipe from the guttering will also run to drain.
The loft now has all of the celotex that I had in it - about seven 8'x4' sheets have disappeared! Looks like I'll need many more, anyone got any 100mm PIR insulation board (Celotex, Kingspan, Recticel, Ecotherm or similar) going spare? I could of had the loft insulated to current building regs under the government grant scheme but the grants only available if you use 270mm of fibreglass which renders the loft useless as storage space. Putting 100mm of PIR between the joists gives the same 'U' value as 270mm of fibreglass and means I can board over it and use the huge loft space. Trouble is it's so expensive that I've been trying to get the sheets cheap by buying surplus whenever it becomes available..... I need to find some more urgently!

Music

Here's me temporary stereo picked up for free from a freecycler. Can't get the CD player to load CD's but the Amp works fine and the speakers sound good too. I've rigged my Ipod up to it and have spent the last two days working to good music at a reasonable volume with a little bass. Thanks to Chris in Ash for the gift, I'm thoroughly enjoying being at the bungalow!!

I passed the BPEC Solar thermal course last week too. So I'm now trained & qualified to install a complete Solar thermal (Hot water) system including the unvented hot water store side of it, using my BPEC unvented ticket for that and my new BPEC qualification for the solar collectors & associated controls/pipework. Just need to find a building to practice on now......

Boiler Cupboard

Finally!! Here it is in all its glory - the Alpha Flowsmart 25 and all the controls & valves. I've managed to squeeze the lot inside a kitchen tower unit including the condense neutralizer, scale reducer, water shock arrester, Fernox TF1 system filter, and additional expansion vessel. Not quite as neat as I'd hoped but I should be able to get to and remove each component for servicing/future maintenance. The vertical flue went through the roof today so all I need are my heated skirting boards which are due around the end of the month and the electrical controls need to be fitted and wired up. All being well I'll have heating & hot water in 4-5 weeks time.

Also got the sun room roof finished today and the bath fitted, connected to waste and the thermostatic diverter valve is plumbed to fill the bath from the overflow. Bath is full of COLD water and levelled up, legs adjusted & fixed to floor and all siliconed around the perimeter.

Will think about making a start on the drainage alterations on Friday, weather permitting although there is a more involved repair to do before the drains will pass a water/pressure test (required by the BCO). And I now have the tiles for the en-suite and the bathroom on site so hopefully can start tiling over the weekend.

The front door has been sanded back and had a its final coat of gloss. The internal window cills have now had two top coats of paint and all the internal door frames have had two undercoats & 1 top coat - may give them a second top coat Friday, well young Gary may give them a second top coat as it is pretty much Gary who has done all the internal decorating.

Plumbing

Well I've finally found the time to make a start on the plumbing. The boiler is on the wall with the 'Gas saver' unit mounted above it and some of the pipework is done. I still have quite a bit of pipework to do and the small storage tank that completes the 'Alpha Flowsmart 25' package needs to be fitted http://www.alpha-innovation.co.uk/products/FlowSmart/FlowSmart/991603208 . Got two additional expansion vessels to fit to the 'Flowsmart' set up too, and that kitchen tower unit is getting really cramped! It will all fit but maybe not as neatly as I had hoped! Great piece of kit, the 'Alpha flowsmart'. It's a combination boiler, gas saver & small thermal store all combined. The gas saver basically preheats the mains water using waste heat from the flue gases and 'stores' the salvaged heat in the thermal store before it sends the pre-heated mains to the boiler. It can save you approx 50% on your hot water gas consumption annually. But more important than the gas saving is the hot water delivery - 18 litres a minute maintained for 40 minutes, meaning you can run two showers simultaneously on a combination boiler!
The Bathroom is now pretty much first fixed too, got the pipes & lever isolation valves in to the Thermostatic diverter, and two sets disappearing under the floor - one set of hot & cold valves will be connected to the pipes for the shower in the en-suite which will enable that shower to be shut down individually should it develop a fault in the future. Ok, you will have to take the bath panel off to get to them but that's better than having them on show or having a removable access panel in the wall of the hall! The other set will isolate the feeds to the basins & loos although these will all have additional service valves fitted just below each termination point.
Gotta sort out some work related stuff tomorrow and then go to work on Friday so can't do anymore until the weekend. Think my Lady is down for the weekend so I have an apprentice, (tea duty, tidying/cleaning, food prep & passing tools)!! However a female on site may slow progress.....
I passed the Unvented Hot water Storage Systems course last week and am now waiting on my BPEC registration card to come through. Good news that was as it opened the door to the Solar Thermal course which I'm booked on for the end of next week. Watch this space, Eco warrior Bill will have new strings in his bow soon... Hopefully I'll have somewhere to live at some point before 2011 too!

Workload!!

Well it looks like progress at the bungalow may well slow down for a little bit. I'm in the throws of pricing some work at two renovation properties in Westerham, one to have a kitchen, bathroom & new oil boiler. The other some bathroom works, alter a load of plumbing and install a megaflo which I'm not certified to do so I'm booked on the BPEC unvented hot water storage systems course for Friday. Once I've got this certificate I can apply for the BPEC solar thermal installer course which is government funded (saving me £315+vat). We like the sound of that! Then I'll be qualified to install Solar thermal systems which is the direction I'd really like my plumbing career to go in anyway - really interested in the renewable energy side of things.
Also got a 5 bedroom new build house in Addington that I've been asked to plumb - think there's a heat pump to go in there too so possibly an excuse for another training course! And there's a few other smaller jobs in the pipeline (pardon the pun) and a job I priced a year ago has now been offered although It'll need re-pricing now...
Then there's the on-going refurbishment of my Mum's house.... I've got another bathroom to do there, an Alpha flow smart system, new soil pipes, drainage works and the separate loo to renew. I think I need a clone!
Still, it beats watching daytime telly....

Kitchen progress

Been at it in the kitchen again today! Another step closer to actually finishing...
Put the door on the washing machine, the door on the 200mm pull out unit and made a false base and back for the gap between the W/M and pan drawer unit to convert it into usable space.
Still got to fit the plinths correctly (they're just resting in position for pictures), connect fridge & freezer doors to the unit doors, adjust all doors to make gaps uniform & level, and fit the soft closers. I think I'll end up rubbing the worktops back a bit and putting a few more coats of oil on them once the splashbacks are done. I'm not sure what to do there, originally thought of tiling but I'm now considering doing them in glass. I'll need to look into it... Still need to seal around hob, silicone along back edge of worktops, cut & fit shelf in sink unit, seal wall units and end panels to walls and ...... I'm sure I'll find something that needs doing!

Bits

Well the film crew have been and filmed an unfinished project. I'm a bit gutted about that as I would much rather have shown them a completed job. But, looking back through all my photos I've done a huge amount of work in a relatively short space of time, especially considering that I've still had to go to work and was delayed by 11 weeks due to the window company's poor performance.
Anyway if I get this in the right order there should be pictures of...the toilet! Just to show it was cleaned of all it's dust for the cameras.
The new fuse board, meter tails and Earth. The electrics are now all complete. Every circuit is working and I am in possession of the certificates from the Spark. Literally from the meter onwards is all brand new to meet the 17th edition electrical regs. I believe the Spark will be notifying building control in due course too...
The bath is now in situ although it has to be taken out again as I need to run a load of pipes along the wall behind it before it gets fixed in it's final location. Hopefully towards the end of this coming week I'll find the time for that.
And finally the front door - now in black gloss with the new chrome furniture. Will need another coat but for now it looks much tidier than it did and it has a better resistance to the damp getting in.

Front door

This is now in primer/undercoat and ready for glossing. Going to be finished in Black. Have bought & fitted a new chrome letterbox to complement the new chrome locks.

En-suite

Now all first fixed on the plumbing in here too. Wall all closed up with insulation, plasterboard and hardibacker. Shower connections ready for when tiling finished....

Bathroom

Moving forward in here too. Wall now all closed up with Insulation, plasterboard and Hardibacker. Soon be time to start tiling.

Paint finishes,

Both bedrooms done in 'Dawn Mist' durable acrylic matt emulsion. Sockets & switch plates all scrubbed clean & fitted level!
Living room in 'Parchment' durable acrylic matt which I'll use the leftover in the Hall. Again switches & sockets all scrubbed & screwed back to wall with the aid of a spirit level...

KItchen

A few more of the progress in the kitchen. Still a few finishing bits to do in here but the sink, washing machine and dishwasher are now all plumbed. It's also now been painted in it's final colour (soft primrose?) so I'll take some pictures to put on soon.

Moving forward

Had a few days at the bungy this week. New consumer unit (fuse board) is now installed and testing done - all circuits live and working even the sockets & lighting in the garage. Certificates will be with me early next week all being well. EDF are coming next Wednesday to connect the meter tails into the meter (Electrician not allowed to touch meter) and connect the new Earth wire into the recently installed (by EDF) PME earth which is much safer than the old earth rod.

Worktops have had their fifth coat of Tung oil which has meant I can start fitting the appliances. The new double built under oven is fitted & working. Gas hob fitted - electric ignition sparks, but not connected to gas yet. Sink is in & tap fitted - not plumbed yet, hopefully over the weekend. I've also put the dishwasher and washing machine in but not plumbed yet and cupboard door still to go on W/M - need to buy a special cutter for the hinge holes. Oh and the fridge/freezer is working and loaded with beer. Just need to connect the cupboard doors to the appliance doors. Again hopefully over the weekend.

Thermostatic diverter valve is fitted in the bathroom wall with pipes protruding. I can now insulate, plasterboard and hardibacker that wall in order to allow the bath to be fitted. Great piece of kit that is, will run the shower or fill the bath from the overflow, thermostatically controlled so as no chance of a scalding accident. Have also put the pipes in the en-suite wall ready to take the shower and protruding through the floor into the sub-floor void ready for connection to feed pipes. Again this wall is now ready for insulation, and cladding with Hardibacker. Was hoping to find the time over the weekend for this too but I suspect I'm being optimistic - I am but one man!

Homes under the Hammer film crew are due in on Friday the 13th so I need to get as much done as possible. It's not going to be finished but it has changed by a huge amount which will just have to be good enough....