Progress update 7 Feb

Lots happening at the moment. Up on site the windows arrived from Germany on a truck this morning ( see photo) & are currently being installed. As with all window suppliers there is an approximately 50% payment due on order placement  - which is a leap of faith, trust me. A further approx 50% is due on delivery & checking to site; an residual then is due on installation. These are industry standard terms so not much one can do about it. The windows are triple glazed alucad from Pazen & they are PHI ( Passiv Haus Institute) certified; the wood on the inside is a painted eucalyptus (sp?) and the outside a pearlised silver, which looks grey to me! Only issue with the aluminium colour finish is that any scratches during construction will be hard to remedy / hide. So far so good though.

As regard utilities, we road (approx 150m) with services and stormwater to installed. BG & ESB have been out and we've received quotes for their utility installations ( which they do themselves). The foul, water & stormwater we do ourselves but the council does inspect to make sure  its up to standard.

Slates will be going on the house roof now shortly - delays caused by recent very high wind - photo below shows the wind tightness layer, felting & battening complete.  Pretty soon we'll be working on the inside in particular the wall /roof  insulation , airtightness layer, slab insulations & screeds. There are a number of items that can have a lead time so we're looking at these now with an eye to placing orders soon. Will probably order the bathrooms / sanitaryware from Germany due to the massive cost differences - approx 30% - dont worry this isnt going to shrink the budget , just move us up the quality scale.

At the same time we're looking at site landscaping as you can plant bareroot plant between now and the end of March & still get a growing season in this year. The alternative is to get rootballed plant / trees - these work out about 3 times more expensive.