Saw this the other night:
Quite a number of innovative building techniques I have not seen elsewhere - including very heavy use of expanding foam for gluing the brickwork together!
Has anyone seen that "hot" plumbing system before?
people like that should't be let anywhere near a house build
I just flicked through it with the 0 to 9 keys, not an ideal staircase for 'elderly parents'
I saw lightweight blocks using a thin set mortar, didn't see any foam except around windows
might watch more later ...
I think that's quite common on the continent.
goodness gracious....
No RSJs or Lintels over the windows.....
No cavity wall or cavity insulation (this is being built in the Ukraine and their winters make our UK winters mild in comparison!
I would have used PIR rather than rookwool for the roof due to the Ukrainian climate
floor insulation looks a bit on the thin side..... and there is more floor screed on top than the bottom insulation
and holes for pipes too close to the end of the joists, not in the centre and possibly over 1/4 of the joist depth
and then they add a water pipe in close proximity to the waste pipe, weakening the joist even more!
they could have used rigifix wall anchors instead of broom handles!
no capping over the cables.... hope they are using RCBOs! and also they are not following recommended cable routing! like that cable being routed around 3 sides of a window!
welding of electrical wires......! whats wrong with a maintenance free junction box????
Ah, its all MCBs and no RCD!
They made their own door set and door instead of buying a ready made door set and door.
I'm sure gluing and screwing the floorboards is a good idea, what if they needed to get a plank up to repair some electrics or plumbing or eben to upgrade/add cables or pipes?
They widen the door opening and the top course of blocks above the opening almost alings with the course below so not much support for one of the blocks without a lintel or RSJ
No handrails on the lower half of the stairs!
No spindles between the upper stairs and the handrails....
They plastboaarded one floor but skimmed the aircrete blocks of the other floor?
Interesting tiling technique, putting adhesive on both the floor and the backs of the tiles and using a laser level with a metal ruler to get all the tiles level!
They used what looks like ordinary plasterboard on top of the wood fibre board prior to tiling..... that PB is not waterproof... I would have used No More Ply or a floor version of aquapanel.
Switches and sockets in the wet room??? that would not be allowed here (and there is no RCBO's!)
A washing machine in a bathroom????
who ever sits on the toilet is going to bang their head on that wall mounted water heater!
(unless the toilet is literally meant to be where it is instead of mounted against a wall.... best not lean back on the cistern of the close coupled toilet!
interesting technique for hanging kitchen wall cupboards... Rigifix would have bene a solution!
a light switch right next to the kitchen sink....
I'm curious if they are going to leave the exterior of the walls or whether it will be rendered or cladded?
And I don't thi't't think aircrete blocks are waterproof? they abosrb moisture so the thermal properties are going to worsen in rainy weather unless an external render is applied?
My sister lives in the US, and has her washer and dryer in the downstairs loo.
We stayed in a holiday cottage in Pembrokeshire, and it was in the bedroom.
They only used the thin set mortar on a couple of key courses that also had some thin rebar rebated into them. The vast bulk of them we fixed with foam.
Lots of it around 22 mins in... seems to be a combination of pushfit, but requiring thermal treatment of the pipe ends to make them more plastic before each joint.
Given the size and weight of the blocks, probably not required. The roof was a lightweight construction.
To be fair the makers of the blocks do claim the thick blocks are suitable for external walls without additional insulation.
Given they built the whole place for $17,000 including the land, and the labour was free, that does not sound like a bad trade off.
Capping is not actually required in the UK either - you can embed cables direct into masonry. It tends to be used when walls are being plastered after first fix to protect cables from trowels etc, however they have routed the cables into the soft masonry, so they are mostly protected anyway.
Yup 28 mins in shows the technique - never seen a fusion welded joint made in copper cables before. (although welding is an acceptable BS7671 maintenance free jointing technique).
See $17k comment above :-)
Much the same here after it is under engineered wood or Karndean - it becomes a PITA! On the bright side, it stops it squeaking and creaking!
Yup I noticed one wall they seemed to have blocks almost inline.
Also interesting that after making so much effort on the inside, they did not apply any finish on the outside. (although looking at some neighbouring properties that does not seen uncommon)
Yup that was quite nice actually - he was using the projected line on the floor to get them all perfectly inline and square, and then measuring down from the projected line above to get level.
(I have found measuring down from a rotating dot laser level is quite handy for that - especially if you need things level with each other that are also spaced out)
I was seeing if I could read the markings - but they were a marked in a cyrillic script so could not tell what type of board they were. They did seem to have two different colours of board though.
Indeed - although we are the exception to that norm it seems. (and after the 17th edition also allowed here - but only in very large bathrooms)
Again common practice in many countries.
I think that was intended to be the final place... I think I would have boxed in a section of wall across the corner with a "squint" so to have a flat surface to mount it against.
Not sure if that was before or after the LED driver.
Other properties in the area seemed similarly "unfinished"...
Don't know. there are quite a few variations of those blocks for different applications it seems:
In the words of Norman Stanley Fletcher: charmless Celtic nerk
Does anyone recall that US law series Petrocelli, where for the entire series him and his wife lived in a caravan while he built his house. I never saw it get above halfway up the first floor window for years. Brian
I do often wonder why we do not make moulded housing parts more usable, and then you can personalise its outside with just decorative things.
Surely somebody could come up with something suitable after all these years. Brian
I thought most houses in the USA had the washer and dryer in the basement with a chute to dump the dirty laundry down ?
Imagine additive manufacturing on a gantry crane whwre the "hook" has been replaced with a printing head that prints a ceramic slurry....
I did see a picture of a house printed like this in China.
Big LEGO?
basements. Many older houses with basements do have the washer and dryer in the basement, but I've only seen laundry chutes in fairly large homes
- often with the kind with what were originally servants' quarters.
No not seen that system, the crimp pex system yes, the system with a pipe expander which then shrinks back to fit yes, but not that melty system.
Something like "socket fusion" seems to be the magic phrase
They blocks are not anything I have seen before, very light weight and seemed as if the place would be very well insulated.
Interesting way to make a joint - copper welding and heat shrink :-)
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