Start of Construction

This is just one section of the plastic liner for the well

The perforations should allow a free inflow of water...

These sections of the felled trees started as tidy heaps at the top of the slope.

We met the chosen contractors, a local branch of a national company, Pearce and Co, at the architects' office in early March. There were several loose ends to tie up, not least that the proposed windows weren't up to the high specification we want, so Pearces found another supplier, in Latvia, and their products are excellent. Fingers crossed that they will arrive on time. How many Grand Designs projects have we all watched, where the build is delayed waiting for the glazing?

Pearces started on site in early April; once they'd set up their site hut and storage, their first job was to stabilise the well shaft. It's very close to the new footings and it'd be a shame to have one collapsing into the other, in either direction. A rigid, perforated plastic pipe, about a metre diameter, was lowered down the shaft and a sleeve of porous concrete poured around it. The water had to be pumped out for this work and then the well was allowed to refill. We'll learn tomorrow if the refill rate is sufficient for us to use the well. Such suspense.

The site seems very small, cramped and steep; and we wonder how the contractors will stop everything from rolling down the hill, like the logs have done. Pearces seem unfazed by it, however.

We have a programme of the building work, week by week, right through until the projected completion date at the end of November, so we know that for the next 2 weeks, they will be excavating, constructing foundations and tanking. The next scheduled task is "internal drains and services", followed by laying of the slab. Suddenly, it has gained a real momentum.

Why did it have to come down?

This view of the original house is taken from a field on the other side of the valley.

Why would anyone demolish this sweet little house?

Who lives in a house like this? (the rotten timbers had been roughly splinted and covered up again).

The scarily flimsy and rotten 4*2" frame exposed.

No wonder it was so cold and damp; there's no insulation between the outer asbestos panels and the inner plasterboard

This, the chimney, was probably the most substantial element in the whole building.

It's so flimsy, we didn't think they actually needed such a powerful grab.

More but this time unsuspected, asbestos found when the recently added conservatory slab was broken up. This forlorn heap was left sheeted over the Christmas period 2008.

Farewell Macrocarpa and friends, November 2008

The macrocarpa, taken from the gateway into the property. It dwarfs the house and would have ended up in our bedroom.

And this is how the tree was dismembered, limb by limb.

The neglected and wind-damaged evergreens on the slope immediately below the house.

These two conifers would have ended up almost in the new living room.

We took the decision to cut down the evergreen trees very early on but selecting which ones, explaining it to the neighbours (who were all in favour, as it opened up their views across the valley too), clearing it with the local planning department and choosing a local tree surgeon all took a considerable amount of time, effort and angst. And that was before the chain saws started to howl, in November 2008. Three men, industrial sized chain saws, several sets of climbing ropes and carabiners, an astonishingly versatile 4-wheel drive articulated dumper truck and a chipper to spray the wood chips around the hillside, took four weeks to complete the work. The kind neighbours who'd offered their driveway for the men's vehicles received as much wood as they wanted from the trees near the top of the site; the rest was cut into huge chunks and we have stacked and sheeted some of it. It will provide our fuel for years to come. We wanted a wood burner because despite the work involved and the dust, there's nothing like a real fire. The house will be so well insulated that we shouldn't need it for heating except on the bitterest of days.
In fact, to begin with, we had planned to install a ground source heat pump, to run under-floor heating but both the mechanical engineer and a friend who'd put in such a system convinced us we wouldn't need it. When we are really old and need more heat without the work, we'll put in some clever and beautiful wall-mounted electric radiators. Some of the latest ones are just a sheet of glass...

View eastwards towards the valley of the River Taw, from our bedroom-to-be

The calm before the storm

Thank you for taking an interest in our project, to build a new house in North Devon. We have been thinking about it for more than five years now and our aim is to end up with as sustainable a house as possible (with solar thermal and electricity generation as well as high levels of insulation) and one which is beautiful as well.

When we first bought the site, four acres of steeply wooded hillside, leading down to a small stream (a tributary of the River Taw), there was a scruffy timber and asbestos bungalow sitting forlornly on it which was slowly disintegrating and sinking into the hillside.
The bungalow was built in the early 1920's as a home for the manager of an orchard for the big house further down the valley. As well as the fruit trees (long since rotted away apart from a few ancient Mazzard cherries), many exotic, imported evergreens were planted, as was the fashion then.
In their native forests, these huge trees are surrounded by others which gives them protection from the wind. These were dotted around the bungalow garden, singly and some were looming scarily over the house, on the very steep slope. They were wind damaged and unstable and some had their roots exposed. They needed to be removed before any work could start on the site. The difference once they'd been felled was dramatic. Suddenly, there were far reaching views and the sun could shine in.
The tree fellers were working hard for nearly 4 weeks, in November 2008 and hadn't quite finished cutting up the huge sections of tree trunks when the demolition team moved in.
We will have enough wood for the foreseeable future; it just has to be carried up the site and stacked to dry, once the house is finished. At the moment, it's mostly lying where it fell, right across the southern slope below the proposed build site.