Day 58: Blowing Insulation into the Loft

On Day 58 (1st April), another lorry arrived. It was time to give the Our House its final bit of insulation, which was to be blown across the floor of the loft.

The lorry was fully loaded with a material called Ekovilla, which is an insulating wool made of recycled paper. It comes in paper sacks, and is fed into the machine at the back of the lorry, which gives it a good mix, and then blows it through a hose into the loft.

In the loft, one person simply guides the hose until the correct thickness of material is achieved. In our case this was 45 cm of Ekovilla, on top of 10 cm of mineral wool. This should keep us warm in winter, and prevent us from overheating in summer. The photo shows Ekovilla being blown in.

This is what the area looked like afterwards. The product name "Ekovilla" means "eco wool" in English, and it is very ecological, consisting entirely of recycled paper.

The process is very dust, and paper fibres are everywhere. Of course during the process face masks are an absolute must to wear. Otherwise Ekovilla is simply a dry, grey, fluffy substance. However, it compresses well when stepped on, and I am happy we took the advice and built a pathway across the entire loft for later access.

Day 56: Bridging the Loft

On 29th March, it was time again for us to make some improvements. The "floor" of the loft, as per standard delivery, is a mesh of planks and bars criss-crossing each other. Below these planks, and in between the bars, there's a 100 mm thick layer of mineral wool, under which there's a folio acting as vapour barrier. The folio also makes the house airtight, which aides insulation. Below the folio are the electrical cables and then the ceiling panelling. Thus it is fairly dangerous to step onto the yellow mineral wool, since one might just crash down into the house. The photo above shows the first planks crossing the loft, onto which longitudinal plants will be placed to create a walkway.

During the next phase, paper-based, insulating wool (Ecovilla) will be blown across the entire floor, which will have two side-effects: first, it will obscure the mesh of planks, making it a rather tricky guessing game as to where one can step safely. Secondly, the insulation effect is hinged on the fluffiness of the wool, and once it is compressed by stepping on, the effect is greatly compromised at that location. In order to provide access for jobs like cabling the TV aerial, we were advised to build a bridge about 65 cm high across the entire loft. Fortunately, there was enough left-over wood from the construction. The second photo shows the near-finished main walkway. Now one can move safely across the entire length of the house without stepping on insulation.

Finally, I extended the accessible area towards and around the chimney, just in case we need to get there when finishing it, and also to allow the chimney to be inspected anytime later on.

Day 55: Santa-Vision

While on Tuesday, 26th March (Day 52), it was too cold to open the roof and bring the chimney up to its final height, we did some preparations. Planks were put on the roof to allow for safely climbing up and down. Later on a level palette will serve as a platform to put bricks and mortar on. Our plan to continue the next day failed, since it was snowing and looked all too grim to work on a roof, even though temperature-wise it would've been ok. In the end, Wednesday afternoon the weather was just brilliant.

The decision was made to bring the chimney up to the maximum height possible inside the roof, without cutting the roof open, on Thursday, 28th March (Day 55). This can be done whatever the weather, and it is becoming increasingly urgent, because any day now the next team might arrive and blow a layer of Ekovilla (paper-based, insulating wool) into the loft. When this happens, the chimney must be as high as possible, so that it can be reached from the outside, since we will not be able to walk in the loft anymore. Once compressed by stepping on, the wool will become useless.

Santa-Vision: this is what Santa will see while descending down our chimney to deliver presents. I don't know how he squeezes himself through such tight places, but I know that we won't be getting any presents in the future with diameters larger than 180 mm!

Day 34: Chimney and Shell

On Monday and Tuesday (Days 32 & 33) I was travelling, and thus the work on the fireplace continued without my help. On these two days, the chimney was built and brought through the ceiling of the living room into the loft. Also, the door for the oven was installed. The photo above is taken at lunch break of Day 34 (Wednesday, 27th Feb), after we built also the first layers (1–11) of the shell. The shell will later be covered by plaster, which will then be painted.

The next photo shows how far we got today, and after cleaning up the place. Clearly visible is the mineral wool insulation, which is a fireproof shield between layers of different types of brick. Tomorrow, most likely no work will be done, but on Friday the brickwork will be complete.

The loft is accessible through a tiny door in the front wall of the house. The door is just big enough to squeeze through, and really only meant for maintenance access. Here's the view inside the loft towards the exit. The white pipes are part of the ventilation system.

The chimney is protruding from the ceiling's insulation by five layers. It is closed for now by a makeshift plug of mineral wool, in order to prevent cold air from the loft to flow into the house, and thereby not only cool the inside, but also hamper with the drying process of the mortar of the chimney. Now we need to wait for period of two days, during which there's no snow fall or rain, and during which it is reasonably warm. We will have to open up the roof by taking two panels off, then bring the chimney up to its final height, and then close the roof and seal it around the chimney. This can hopefully be done some time in March or April.

Day 25: Floor Drying and Roof Inspection

Not much has happened in the meantime, very little work has been done. Instead, the floor was left to dry after the concrete was poured in on Monday, 4th February. The photo shows the situation after four days (about 96 hours) of drying. The mists have gone, and so has the tropical climate in the house, which was prevalent on Tuesday and Wednesday. But the floor still shows wet patches, and the hoses of the floor heating show up as dry areas, since some lukewarm water is already circulating in most of them.

On the same day, 8th February, the building inspector of the local administration came to inspect the roof construction. We climbed through a tiny hatch into the space above the ceiling and encountered a maze of wooden beams holding the roof up. The roof is supposed to withstand a load of 300 kg of snow per square metre. Flat on the floor of this loft there are many diagonal planks, which will prevent shear. The white pipes are for the air ventilation system described earlier.