Roofing...

Finally the felt is installed on the roof and the play house starts to look complete. The edges of the felt in front and back need trimming, and some more planks need attaching, but it's getting there now. The final job will be painting.

The felt came in precisely precut sheets of a metre in length. They are installed in such a way, that they overlap to give the impression of tiles. They are nailed to the roof underneath, and the nails must be placed where they will be covered up by the next layer. The work always goes from the outer edge of the roof up to the summit, so that water cannot penetrate between the layers.

The material has a plastic sheet at the back, which must be peeled off first, and then the sheet will stick to the under underneath. The heat of the Sun makes the melt together, or then one can use a heat gun to speed things up when rain is approaching — like tonight.

This is what the house looks like now. Besides the roof, the floor boards of the terrace need some fine tuning at the entrance, and the railing around the terrace will get a flat top. Then we'll be done.

Day 64: Ladders on the Roof

Not much has happened over the summer, and the few things that went on will be reported on in due time. When the previous blog post on Our House went out, we were already moving house, and subsequently it's been a very busy time catching up with all the things that had to stay behind due to the construction. The photo above shows the final stage of the work on the chimney. It is a legal requirement in Finland to have ladders going up to the chimney, which are easily accessible from the outside. These were installed on Day 64, i.e. on Monday, 22nd April 2013. Yes, it took me a while to put that on the blog, and the photo was taken in July, in case you are wondering where all the snow's gone. Stay tuned, there'll be more.

Photo: Thomas Ulich.

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 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.

Day 17: Front Porch and Floor Heating

Today the roof was finished. Even the rain gutters were installed, and the house looks quite complete on first sight. Work was still in progress on the roof of the front porch as well as the covering of the ridge of the roof.

Another lorry came today, but delivering only a tiny palette with hoses staked high. These are the hoses, which will become the floor heating. The floor heating will be installed next week, after which the hoses will be encased in concrete. Somehow I can't imagine that this small amount of hose is enough...

We got a phone call today indicating that the bricks and other materials for the fireplace will be delivered tomorrow. Those won't quite fit on one palette: there'll be about four tons of material coming. Tomorrow we will also have the first visit from the Sodankylä building inspector to see if the roof was done properly, and our mason will drop by to plan the construction of the fireplace.

Day 16: Roof Almost Finished, Floors Closing

When visiting Our House today, the first thing that was obvious was the progress on the roof. As seen above, the roof is complete now. All metal sheets have been installed, and so have the bridging bits at both ends of the roof, and two air vents (little chimneys). These air vents are for the extractor fan in the kitchen (closer by) and for the air exchange system of the whole house (further away, hard to see with a tree in the background).

Also the under side of the roof overhanging the walls had been covered on the western side with the help of some makeshift scaffolding. The eastern side was just waiting to be tackled next. The image above shows the two sides in comparison in a before-after fashion.

Also the floors and walls are being worked on. Our House was delivered in four large modules, and these were placed onto the foundations with a gap of about half a metre in between them. The photo above shows the gap, seen from inside the house, above the centre wall of the foundations. The red and blue hoses are for the water supply from the boiler to the kitchen.

The next image shows the gaps in the floors being closed. First a wooden panel closes the bottom, then rock wool is filled in the gap, and finally another wooden panel is placed on top. The gap in the walls is closed in a similar fashion. The transparent blue sheets of plastic will be closed across the gap. They will help to make the house air-tight, which is a requirement for highly effective insulation. The air exchange system mentioned above will be the main way to ventilate the house. The system employs a heat exchanger in winter in order to pre-warm fresh air using the heat contained in the outflowing air.

Day 15: The Roof Goes On

Today in the early afternoon, a good third of the roof was on the house. It looks great in the dark-grey colour that we selected for it. The roof was delivered only in the morning, and the secret of its fast deployment is that – while it looks like tiles – it actually comes in large panels of the correct length for our house.  The photo above is a thin pile of these sheets, containing all remaining (about two thirds) roof panels.

The individual panels are very thin sheet metal, only a millimetre or so.  Since they are supported by a great number of triangles and planks underneath, they will be able to support a snow load of 300 kg/m²!

Here's a photo of what the house looked like when I visited, but by now the roof is probably complete already.  Watching for a while, I saw that it took only some 5 min or less per panel to be installed. The two workers are sporting a bit of white foam on their heads held in place by their ear defenders, which double as FM radios. This is because they carry the panels on their heads climbing up the ladders in parallel, and even though these panels are not really heavy, the foam cushions them against their heads. Clearly, this wasn't the first house these two are working on.

Day 13: Roof and Walls

Now the further development of Our House project is in the hands of Muurametalot, the company we bought it from – with the sole exception of the fire place, which will be built in weeks 5 and 6. We can mostly relax and wait until they give us the keys. This important event is going to happen on 11th April apparently, so we anticipate to move after that. In the meantime we will of course check on the progress, it's just so exciting to see the progress.

Last night and this morning, the roof was made weather proof, and also the gaps between the four modules are closed now. Also, in the morning the team from Rovakaira arrived one more time in order to connect the main fuse box to the electrical grid and of course install an electricity meter. We didn't tell them yet that we are planning to make as little use of it as possible: heating the house with geothermal energy and using modern energy-saving LED lighting wherever possible.

The photo above was taken today in the early afternoon. It looks ever more house-ish. We have been told that the outer layer roof material will be delivered on Tuesday, and if possible we will try to film the installation of that, at least on the western side of the roof visible in the photo above.