One of the problems of having curved walls is that stuff to fit then needs to be bespoke. Bespoke as in; houses are built with straight lines. If you want something curved, you need to take the straight thing and curve it yourself if you can, or pay for the privilege of having it curved for you.
This is what the plan was with Beco who were supplying our walls. Essentially, they make the straight blocks and then send the straight blocks to another company who bend them.
Unfortunately for us, the bending company are not a big company and ended up causing a further delay (So Beco tell us).
Our 4 week lead time ended up being 8 weeks before we finally received our blocks...and even then we don't have all of them! To cut a long story short, we have some surplus curved blocks from another project that should be enough for us to do the first few courses. This is what we need before filling the floors and hopefully by then, the rest of the curved blocks will arrive.
So whilst we waited, we started on the breeze block plinth that will sit underground with a brick wall on top. This brick wall is purely decorative and goes up to window height before the wooden cladding begins.
As per our original design:
It looks like render on the design, but it is supposed to be red brick.
Anyway...we ended up getting this done on both sides whilst we waited:
Andy also started putting some of the drainage pipes in and connected them up to the existing network of soak away pipes.
Then finally our Beco arrived! We spent the evening moving the packs to the correct side and checked everything we were expecting had arrived. They are incredibly light! I could lift a whole pack which had about 8 blocks in.
You essentially clip them together and fill with concrete. Lego for grown ups!
You then have insulated walls which you can clad, render, tile straight onto, plaster straight onto etc.
If you want to know more detail, then take a look at the Beco website:
http://becowallform.co.uk
As part of the price, we are given a day of training with a chap called Matt who doesn't work for Beco but contracts for them. We met him at Swindon and he was demonstrating how they work. He has built houses with this stuff for years so knows what he is doing. He came and trained Andy and helped put some of it together yesterday and showed him how to cut it all up to size, manipulate the curved blocks and all that jazz.
If we were pumping the concrete in, he would also come back to help with that - also included in the price when purchasing the product. Nice chap! Knows his stuff. We will get him back at some point to help with some other bits.
So day 1 looked liked this:
Today Andy was on his own doing the rest and the other side. We need to lay 3 courses first and then finish the floors (insulate, DPM and concrete).
This is because of how our engineer has put the plan together. He wants the floor to be tied to the Beco and lots of steel work in the floor (all because of the clay and trees apparently). The DPM also needs to come up in between the Beco before the Beco in concreted. Keeping up? I have no idea what I just said but it sounded like I know what I'm on about, right?!
Anyway - I came home today and Andy had finished putting the first 3 courses together. He has decided to half fill the Beco with concrete tomorrow so they are steady and weighted when it comes to doing the floor work as they do have a tendency to move around because they are so light.
Up to date pictures from today:
And then we stood and watched the field get combined! And got covered in dust!
Andy has 2 weeks off so is hoping to make a lot of headway with the floor. He has lots to do before getting the concrete poured. Still getting there slowely!
Another update soon!
