Tuesday 18 September 2012

24 hours later...

Well what a 24 hours it has been!


CRISIS #1

The fun started yesterday when I showed my builder the picture below which shows the style of roof I am after.

The plans show most of the major details but the main reason I showed it was to clarify the type of parapet capping, which as you can see is done very nicely in the picture. 

However, my builder was somehow under the assumption that he was building a flat roof without any parapet! I'm scratching my head as to how such a key feature of the design seems to have gotten lost in translation. Below is the building regulations plans, which were included in the pack I gave to all of the builders I got to do a quote:


Now, before we decided to go ahead with my builder Nick we did talk at length about various details and I have to admit not being a builder some of it went over my head, but I was under the assumption that he was going to quote what was specified in the plans!

Anyway, whether it was me not paying attention to what he said or Nick not looking at the plans closely enough we seemed to be on different pages. Nick had had quoted in the roof effectively being like a flat garage roof with facia board and guttering running across the roof line. I had a pretty restless night thinking about whether to go with this or to dig my heels in and insist we stick with the original plan (and suffer any extra cost he had not covered in his original quote)... Then at about 3am I decided that we would stick with the original plan.

Once Nick had a cup of tea in his hand on site this morning I broke the news to him. What I probably should have made clearer in the in the first place was that we went with the whole Orangery style (with parapet) as we didn't want it to look like a flat roof extension (and couldn't have a pitched roof due to the existing bedroom dormers). So we're back on track and sticking to the original plans (yet to agree the extra cost, but one of the reasons we went with Nick was his reputation for being open and fair with costs etc.).

CRISIS #2

Today P and P glazing (who I selected to source and install the roof lantern and bifold doors from) were on-site to do the survey and go through the details with my builder when I was present. Gary, from P&P was very professional and helpful and I really felt he was in control of everything needed to make sure the installation goes smoothly.

The fun really began when we tried to nail down the size of the roof lantern. In the initial drawings done by the Architect the width of the roof lantern was something like 1.51m. During my research into roof lanterns and the work I did in getting quotes (in particular Ryan from Thames Valley Windows who was extremely helpful and I would be very happy to buy from in future) It was pointed out that this was a very narrow width for a roof lantern and in fact nobody I spoke to had ever installed one that narrow. So fairly late in the day I had the architect increase the width to 2.1m which was what was in the final building regulations plans signed off by Wokingham building control.

Here is the plan:



So far so good...

When Gary from P&P saw the plans he commented that it was frequently the case that the lantern size would be set so as to achieve the same 'shoulder' all around on each side of the lantern. I think this thought had always been in the back on my mind too, but having already changed the size once I was (stupidly) reluctant to change it again. Nick and Gary were confident that building control would not stress about such a change so we decided to go ahead and do this. The result should be a shoulder of 80cm all around the lantern to the wall. Unfortunately, this will (of bloody course!) add to what I was originally quoted, but should be well worth it.

CRISIS #3

Wait it gets better... This is a peach!

During the course of sorting out the size of the roof lantern we noticed that the plans didn't seem to scale correctly. We then decided to double check the width of the extension, which you can see on the plan is marked at 8.3m. Imagine our shock when we found the correct measurement was actually 8.75m!

I'm not in the habit of bad mouthing people so I'll let you the reader decide if you would want to use an architect that can't get the most key measurement of the whole project correct and forgot to draw on the depth of the extension altogether (their name is splashed all over the plans above if you’re interested).

TIP: Always double check all measurement your architect has made! Assume he is an idiot!

This means that the builder has under quoted and will (quite fairly) have to revise his quote upwards. The size of the roof lantern is also going to be that much bigger too. I'm trying to stay philosophical as these would be the actual costs anyway if the measurements had been accurate in the first place...

But an expensive day all in all...

One last thing to say was that Gary was very helpful and organised about making sure everybody was clear about what the final floor level and sill level for the doors needs to be in order to get the threshold just right. I decided to go for a weathered threshold, but this will be recessed into the floor so that only a strip 10mm high and about 4mm wide will protrude above floor level. The decking (or patio if we go that way) can be built up to just 25mm below the interior floor level. This seemed like a very reasonable compromise to achieve a fully weathered threshold, but will look (as good as dammit) like a flush threshold. Nick now knows where he needs to build his rafters to, insulation goes between the rafters and does not add thickness to the (suspended timer) floor, Mike the Plummer has confirmed that the pipes for the under floor heating will be notched into the rafters and so will not add more than 1 or 2 mm. Then Nick is going to put 22mm chipboard, then the tiles and bedding!
What could go wrong...?

It’s been a bit of a crazy day, but I'm now feeling much more comfortable that all these details have been properly sorted out and I'm going to end up with exactly that I had in mind.

Next time around I will take absolutely nothing for granted!

Anyway the walls are going up




No comments:

Post a Comment