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!!