Excitingly work has begun on Passfield Drive. Because the work will take place with the residents remaining in their home it was important to locate a container nearby which for brief periods during construction will be used as storage for the residents furniture.

On visiting the site the contractors were busy digging trenches around the foundations of the existing building in preparation for the external insulation which will run below ground to limit heat loss from the ground floor slab by avoiding thermal bridging as much as possible in this area.

A complication has arisen with a manhole that was not picked up in the survey. It is situated directly under the foundations of our proposed extension. Having contacted Thames Water to ensure that the drain is not owned by them, we can proceed to build around it. However this throws up a problem regarding the placement of our foundations which are currently planned to be more or less on top of the wall of the manhole.

An interesting discovery about the practical application of external insulation has been that if you want to move gas meters you need to apply to the gas board as soon as possible. This project has an external gas meter fixed to the front of the property and we would like to move the meter in order to put insulation in its place. It has proved difficult to tie the gas board down to doing this and when they have finally given a date the gas installers are not prepared to work under scaffolding! This has meant that the contractor has not been able to put up scaffolding to start work on the eaves and attic or to apply external insulation – some of the first items in the schedule of works.

The residents seem to have adapted well to their living room being used as a route through the house for the contractor. This is possible because they have been able to essentially move their living room upstairs where they have a suitably sized room; a luxury not many people undergoing this kind of work would be able to enjoy.

We have also started a short documentary film of the project which we plan to post on this blog when it is finished. Whilst doing the filming we conducted a questionnaire with one of the residents which gave us some interesting insights into the nature of living in the house.

One repeated complaint raised in the interview was moisture build up on the inside of the windows in the winter. Indeed this was already happening in early November with the residents having to wipe the water build-up off of the window cills twice a day to ensure that water did not overflow and run down the internal walls. High humidity levels in homes without adequate ventilation is often associated with mould growth, asthma and other health problems.

Report This Post