Self-Build Story

Sometimes it takes a bit of bad luck and a fresh set of ideas to get a project back on track.

Unfortunately for me, the bad luck had come in the shape of a period of sustained illness and some costly errors from an unscrupulous plasterer.

Forced to take some time away from my business and the build, I handed the reins over to my dad, Geoff Copeland. He chose to speed up progress by recruiting more professional help on site.

Our well-publicised self-build had received several admirers along the way and with Jim Evans’ work on the shell almost complete, he was invited to get involved with a £1,000,000 project in Cheshire. He left with our best wishes and in his place came long-time family friend and experienced builder Jon Day (07918 736198) and Adam Garner of Passivhaus Ltd (passivhausltd.com 0800 055 6887), whose brief it was to take the project through to completion so that we could be in the house in time for Christmas.

Jon quickly familiarised himself with the property and chose to saturate the site with a team of multi-skilled Polish and local tradesmen in order to bring the build back on schedule.

As the project neared the end of the first year, not everybody appreciated the injection of pace and Jon’s professional, methodical approach. The first person to walk out was our plumber but he was quickly replaced and everybody else seemed happy to stay as the build took on a new lease of life.

After sacking the original plasterer, who has since been removed from Weber’s list of approved contractors, we brought in experienced Weber render applicators Danny Partington and Mike Carter of Plasrend (07725 918564) to complete the external render. Once finished, on went the metal cappings and the house was finally completely watertight. Rather than go for standard powder-coated aluminium cappings, Steve McKay (asmckaysheetmetalfabrication.co.uk) had chosen to manufacture them out of galvanised steel to give us some extra weight in what is an exposed area. With the house sited in an elevated position on the side of a hill, 500ft above sea level, we didn’t want to risk the cappings blowing off the top of the four storey building.

ABOVE: A rustic-coloured stone from Scotland gives the front elevation a natural feel. A team of Yorkshire stonemasons from RHR Walling (01535 636522) managed to provide us with the look we were after, with the joints mortar-free to give the appearance of dry-stone walling.

My joiners, Chris Hookes (07952 298978) and Dave Cunnah, were well under way cladding out selected areas of the exterior with stunning iroko hardwood — which has brought real warmth and depth of colour to the property. With so much wood on display, it was important to get it finished properly, and the lads were meticulous in the way they mitred every joint and corner.

Inside, Jon and his team had quickly got to grips with the property and within one week had almost finished plastering out the 500m2 building. Rather than go for traditional plaster, Jon chose to go with the modern spray plaster from Swedish manufacturer ICP-Alltek (icp-alltek.com). Only a 4mm-thin coat of plaster was required to give us the same acoustic properties of 15mm of traditional plaster. Made from fine-graded calcium carbonate, the plaster could be smoothed down for decoration or applied – as we had – in a self-finished white texture requiring no further work. The product looks better quality and is also resistant to mould.

Once complete, down went the Styrodur floor insulation ready for the underfloor heating pipes. Again we chose to steer away from traditional self-build products and opted to use BASF’s extruded polystyrene foam because of its superior load-bearing performance. Used extensively in Germany, the product has been proven to outperform many of its leading competitors because of its long-term compressive strength, and was far easier to work with.

ABOVE, RIGHT: Styrodur, a green polystyrene floor insulation, goes down ready for the underfloor heating; LEFT: The Polish team come to the site to shutter out the staircase ready for the concrete.

With the Polish lads shuttering out and building the top flight of stairs in concrete, the house is now starting to look close to the finished article. It has been a good month and with the kitchens and bath - rooms due to arrive any day, we can start to concentrate on kitting out the house.