Another month of construction works. Good progress again – all gyproc panels are installed – floors, walls and ceilings, joints were filled and surface finish applied. On the second floor walls were also painted with base paint. All bathrooms were water insulated. Fireplace chimney was built. All exterior doors were installed (except for the main one, since it is used a lot, and we wouldn’t like to scratch it). Sauna was measured and delivered from Keminmaa. Stairs were measured and ordered.

Of course there’s been a fair share of mistakes and disappointments.
One of the windows on the first floor cracked – looks like there’s been some hidden tension. Factory promised to send a replacement soon, hopefully it doesn’t take much time – it was one of the largest windows.

Kitchen and fitted furniture manufacturer representatives paid a visit to the construction site – double checking the measures, and we figured that pipes for the washing machine were made on the wrong wall, kitchen layout has to be modified because windows are few centimeters taller than in the plan, light switch in one bedroom will have to be moved, because it was placed behind fitted closet, and there was one pipe going through the place where fitted closets in the housekeeping room were planned.
Plumbers said that ground source heat pump doesn’t fit into the technical room and now it’ll take some space from the walk-in closet or from housekeeping room. And since floors were tiled/walls painted only in technical room, installation of the heating system is delayed.

But the project goes on despite of all small hickups – using agile methods works in construction as well as in software development.

As construction works progress, less and less materials are stored outside, but more and more garbage accumulates. With the help of two local guys all garbage was sorted according to instructions and taken away to the nearest garbage place. Sorting the garbage helps to save costs – unsorted construction garbage is the most expensive to get rid of, at the same time e.g. wood can be disposed of for free.

Feels a bit empty now, but gives plenty of room for thought about what to do with all the available land – where to put lawns, trees, bushes, etc.

Three more weeks of work are behind. Good progress. House project is 63% complete according to the official statement from chief engineer.

There are not many visible changes, but a lot of work has been done – network and electiric cables placed inside the walls and connections for outlets and switches are prepared, all ventilation pipes are insulated, all water pipes with connectors are done, ceilings are partly covered, sauna is completely insulated, concrete floors in the bathrooms on the second floor are done. Floor heating on the second floor was completed and floor covered with gyproc panels.

We’ve chosen tiles for the bathrooms, toilets and househod room. When fetching them from the shop I considerable underestimated the weigth – had to go twice in a fully loaded car. Almost broke my back carrying 1400kg of tiles from car to the house
Work on car shed has also progressed – mostly on the weekends – and now it is almost complete. Just waiting for warm weather to stabilise to make concrete floors in the storage part.

A fair amount of construction waste accumulated on the site, so today I organised a spring cleaning – separating wood from plastic and dangerous waste and driving most of it to the neares collection point.

Next major step is to get the heating and ventilation in the house running to be able to proceed with painting work and make sure that concrete floors are dry enough before placing floor tiles and parquet.

Works inside the house continue with some hickups. Estonian construction contractor is doing excellent job, but electricians and plumbers are really weird. Now we are falling behind the schedule almost one week because of plumbers’ no-shows. Now the project manager is changed and hopefully next week all plumbing on the second floor is finished, including floor heating pipes, and roof vent pipes are installed.

Electricians proposed really weird solution of placing electric cables on the walls instead of inside the walls, because cables were placed incorrectly when concrete floors were done. That will be fixed next week as well with some help from construction contractors.

Overall experience with the solution provider on ventilation, plumbing and electricity is rather bad. Premium they charge for delivering “integrated solution” is absolutely ridiculous, especially when facing issues like double delivery of ventilation pipes or double-charge for electric works in the car shed. Communication doesn’t go well either – hopefully things will improve after today’s visit to their office for a general discussion about contractual obligations.

Work inside the house has started as planned. After just one week of work all partition walls in the house are ready, so it is now much easier to see what it will look like when everything is finished.

An opening was made for easy access to the second floor while construction works are going on. Later same opening will be used to install the stairs.

Almost all ventilation pipes were installed – next week ventilation machine will be delivered. Thermal insulation between the floors and soundproofing were also almost done.

Next week work continues at full speed – electricians come over to start with the cables, pipe for the fireplace will be installed, and brick walls around the sauna and shower room will be built.

Unfortunately due to extremely bad weather installation of the roof over the car shed took longer than expected, so it will be completed most probably only next month.

Car shed progress is now visible – walls are in place, everything is ready for the roofing tiles installation. Small design changes were made, that slowed down the work a bit. Central pillar was removed after consultations with responsible engineer – it was just a decorative element and would’ve been a real problem if left in its place, since the shed is placed so that one needs to turn 90 degrees when driving into it from the road. Also we decided to prepare for the possibility of installing heating in the storage area in the future. Insulation needs to be installed for that, so I spent a few hours on Saturday carrying sacks of Paroc wool from the local store to the construction site.

The day before also Jukkatalo delivered about 40 sacks of wool for the house, so there was a nice pile of sacks in front of the house. Unfortunately cool and sunny weather is about to end – a winter storm is coming on Monday, so I had to fetch tarpaulin to protect all materials from the snow and water.

Today the floors were done. 8 cm of concrete poured on the floor, levelled and covered with protective plastic. Now just waiting for it to dry.

After thermal insulation was in place, water pipes and electrical cables were installed, then steel grid was placed on top, to reinforce future concrete floors. On top of the steel grid floor heating pipes were installed. With all that in place everything is ready for 80mm thick concrete layer. It’s been a bit of a challenge to arrange all that – all parts of the work were done by different subcontractors specializing in their own areas, so a lot of synchronization was needed.

Weather is excellent – +3 during the night, +6 during the day. No rains predicted. It is really bad for Christmas, but really good for construction. To make sure that concrete starts to dry up I’ve ordered a couple of heaters for the first two days after concrete is poured on the floor, to maintain a bit higher temperature inside the house. General rule is that it dries up at 1mm/day rate – so 80mm should dry up in about 3 months.

I became an employer for the first time – hired a couple of guys to build car shed. Actually that is more than a shed – there’s also place for bicycles, garbage, and two storage areas. In the end it is supposed to look like this. The plan is that it is ready in the end of January.

15 cm of Styrox (thermal insulation) has been already placed on the floor when I realised that pipes for radon were not placed in the ground. Bummer. Totally forgot about it.

Radon is a radioactive gas that accumulates in constructions with no or little ventilation and is a health hazard. It is claimed to be second most frequent cause of lung cancer after smoking. Radon is emitted from the ground in the regions with soils containing granite, which Southern Finland definitely has plenty of.

Good deal that these pipes need to be installed only along the walls, so not all of Styrox plates had to be removed. But a lot of extra work anyway. Learning how to build houses the hard way…