Off grid house build Orkney

Totally great stuff - you'll be as content as the cat if not already!

Oh definitely, can’t wait to be that cosy, the place we’re renting isn’t bad but will be nowhere near as warm as our place when done.

Delivery of all the internal bits arrived today so that’s the rest of the insulation, internal walls, doors, plasterboard, skirting and all the other bits and pieces.

Also picked up this amazing live edge bit of oak! Chopped it down and squared the edges that would be sitting against the wall and got it sanded for treating at some point. This is going to be for the bathroom sink and it was a long enough slab that there was enough for a shelf underneath as well. I reckon we’ll go with a proper sink rather than a basin though..

Also picked up this massive old sink for use in the workshop, perfect size for if I get back into screen printing for rinsing screens and things.

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Had been down near Glasgow visiting my folks and heading round the salvage yards for this stuff so hadn’t seen the house since the delivery. It’s absolutely jammed full and there’s some stuff in one of the byres where we’re renting and some in the joiner’s shed too..

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Lovely looking wood. Great photo

Bet it smells amazing 👌🏻

Ooooooo yes! That smell!

I should be a chippie..

Cheers, figured I should try and take some arty ones as well as just straight progress shots.. the cladding does look very pretty indeed
@johnnettles2 yeah I love the smell of it in there just now, apparently the air in the house when cutting that rigid insulation gets pretty brutal though..

Picked one of these up for the bathroom sink, bit of a bargain if anyone else is doing a bathroom renovation or anything.

Reckon that and a tall tap will sit quite nicely on that live edge bit of oak. Had originally planned for maybe a fancier sink, but I think the plainer it is the more it’ll show off the wood it’s sitting on.

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When the sky makes it look like your house is being built in space..

That’s them just finishing off the last of the velux windows last night

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Lovely!

Absolutely stunning.

@ChainBreaker @jontea yeah it was ridiculous last night, and the sky is so wide here you can see the whole way from light to dark when it’s like that.

Really chuffed with the skylights. We didn’t want them too big and fancy but wanted to bring a little more light in on that east wall which is where all the light comes from in the morning. We were going to put a window on the wall to the left of the front door but then anyone coming down the hill could see right in. Figured this would be a good way to stop that being a dark corner but keep things private. Seems to work, brightens things up quite a lot and that’s on a dull day in December.

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Telescope. You’re gonna need one. I want some cosmic updates.

but keep things private

Not to point out the obvious... Buuuuuut

Orkney

Same

Just wonderful seeing the progress on this.

Yeah. I agrre. Makes you consider your life choices as well

@Chak yeah got a wee one here but it’s not great/I haven’t spent enough time learning how to use it properly (probably more of the latter), definitely on the to do list for passing evenings!

@ChainBreaker you’d be surprised, the bit at the bottom of our road (first photo and centre right in the second) is a wee inland loch with just beach and that wee path separating it from the sea. Lots of folk on island come to walk their dogs so it’s not busy, but people do pass relatively regularly.. haha ignore the two rocks in the foreground of the second photo marking the seal pup grave.. (not a sentence I’ve uttered often) it washed up after Arwen so I figured bury it and hopefully dig up a cleaned skull and things in a couple years.

@jonny @Hulsroy thank you, feels like it’s been a long time coming, bought the field wanting to start building immediately in November 2019.. been a fair bit of work trying to get it all together but seeing it becoming real is just mind blowing.

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Haha, how’s this for rigid insulation??

Still waiting on the tin sheets for the roof showing up.. we’re meant to arrive last week and then again on Monday.. been told now they’ll be in Kirkwall tomorrow or Saturday but we’ve been told that before..

@Technics100 I underestimated!
The roof is packed now with 6 inch rigid insulation between all the legs and it’s still to to be overboarded with another 2 inch rigid board before the battens and plasterboard.

They’ve had things to do but the roof not arriving has really limited what they can do internally so no plasterboard or anything for a while yet..

The joiner has also popped up a wee test square of the cladding to see how it does in the wet. The cement board for the exterior has still to be ordered (the builder needs many nudges..) and I think he’s just wary of putting all the larch up before everything is there to get it all finished and closed off externally..?

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Great.. that should keep you toasty.. we would generally use 100mm between and 60mm below rafters.. I remember doing my roof space about 13 years ago and using 65mm total between the rafters.. it was the warmest room in the house..

Haha, how’s this for rigid insulation??

Going to be nice and toasty in there. I’ve just bought a load because the price seems to go up by 3% every week.

I’m glad the joiner is doing the bits in our roof space. I cut it all for the underfloor heating and even with a mask on, it’s horrible stuff.

Look how neat that insulation is!

Really enjoy this thread, but I do have one question. What do plan to use the seal pup skull for?

Amazing photo, almost looks like a painting.

Yeah the prices are just wild right now.. There was a 70% difference between our first quote on the cladding a year ago and when we bought it this year..

Yeah our joiner said the same, I thought it would at least have been better than the wool but he said it was much worse, poor guy there’s been so much so far! Looks like you’ve got quite the project going there! How are things coming along?

@Technics100 that’s really reassuring to hear! Trying to reduce drain on the system and retain as much ambient heat as we can for the times we’re not producing any power.

@ChainBreaker yeah very chuffed we got a hold of this guy, very detail oriented and seems like some quality work. Lovely guy and lives on island so apart from materials most of our build money stays local too.

@SasenFrAsen not quite sure yet but sure we’ll find something for it, part of some wee art project, or just bleached and sitting on a shelf? I must reassure folk it wasn’t that nice wee seal there was a photo of earlier in the thread, it was this poor wee thing that washed up further down the beach.. There’s been a lot of birds and marine life dying this year up here, puffins are having a brutal time up here too, so saddening.. they’re saying the storms are impacting the numbers but think there’s something else going on and aren’t sure what’s causing a lot of the deaths.

@ltc it’s just mind ridiculous, the skies here do all the work, I’m just pointing and clicking, no filters!

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