30th November 2006

Well its almost complete on the outside !!!!

Andreas, the wonderful cranedriver is trundling back to Hartenfels and Gunter with the last of the HUF lorries and trailer is also on his way home. He said he was in Switzerland the other week delivering to Ric's Huf, (see the link to my fellow blogger in the land of the cuckoo clock)

The team will be packing up their Green Huf Van and heading back tonight, and next week a string of people come over to start the interior........

Its now too dark to take any photos, but Gunter the driver of the last lorry, finally got through after long, long wait.
There were hundreds of lorries trying to get across the channel, hundreds and hundreds.
But, back in Forest Row the team have now completed all the roof sections and I saw the bath swinging high above the trees before being lowered into the top floor just before they put on the lid !!!!
They have floodlights and work through the evening till they drop.
It is really an amazing sight and this is the close of Day 3.
Frantic phone calls to the service companies brought no joy (we will be delayed unless they can connect up in the next two weeks).
It seems to be a clash of two different cultures. One can do and do it (German) . One can't do and Oh No we need another 3 months to do it ( British).

It a fabulous morning, and after the rain over the last few days, progress should be good today.
That is, if it weren't for the French!!!!!
How do the French come into this????
Well its all to do with the Channel, and the need to get across it or under it, or over it, in order to get Huf materials to and from Germany.
The thing with the French is their love of the withdrawal of labour. They've chosen to do this when our last lorry was en-route.............Bugger!!!!
Despite the delay, our German craftsmen still do the things they can and await news of whether their colleague could get across somehow.
Bloody French Ports!!!!!

Its really quite difficult to describe the emotions inside....Yes I know its only a house !!!!! But this is a little project I've been working on for three years!!!! Buying the land, designing a house that was to be rejected by the planners, then engaging Huf, then trying again, then changing their preferred design and then getting onto site !!! Its been a long hard road, but today I can see what it has all been about!!!!
Added to this we both waved goodbye to Vanessa and Peter today for they are about to embark on an adventure in France.....it was all happening at once.

On site it all looks great, just what I hoped it would. But these guys work so fast!!!!! If you nip back home for a cup of coffeee, they will have slipped in a few more internal walls and a roof beam in the few minutes you've been gone!!!!!

My brother Don was somewhat surprised when we turned the corner " Bloody hell" was his cry as we crept past the crane and into full view. I don't think he could believe what 5 men and a crane could do in a day and a half. We started to talk about the designs and the optional finishes. You can have black, grey or white. He commented on Ric's ( my fellow blogger in Switzerland)choice of colour as WHITE. " With all that snow around in those mountains, how is he going to find his way home?????"

Anyway, these guys are doing great.....just great!!!!!!

1st Day of Erection!!!!!!
Well they are quick aren't they!!!!
Arrived 8.00am by 12.30 they had most of the ground floor up.....

They were still working in the dark at 7.00pm unloading one of the lorriesr........Boy do these guys work!!!!!!

Haven't had much time to write much as my daughter and husband leave the UK tommorow for France....for good ...much emotion! They just managed to catch sight of the emerging beauty that will be our new home.

More piccys as they put more and more up!!!!!

We have a race on…!!!!!…
Oh, Our fellow Huf Haus client in Switzerland is 7 days ahead??? ( see http://huf-haus.blogspot.com/ )
Even the problems over the colour of the tiles from grey to red didn’t delay…… Huf Haus managed the change them back again effortlessly.!!!!

And I guess the Statutory Undertakers there in Switzerland ( Gas and Electricity Suppliers) will be a tad more efficient than those in dear ol’ blighty.
I put my applications in weeks ago and pleaded with the girl on the other end of the phone yesterday ‘if I could pay now for the Gas connection’
‘No’ she said, ‘you have to wait till the quotation arrives, send off the acceptance form and then the cheque, and then we will programme it’
‘Great, that will be March 2007 I guess’ I did explain I will have moved in for a long time without any heating except for a portable BBQ and a pile of newspapers and would be a couple of years older before all this happened’ but she seemed unimpressed. ( I think she may have been speaking from Bombay )

British Telecom have been fantastic…..a call to them yesterday triggered a surveyor on the site this morning who said he would drop round some duct which we could lay to the telegraph pole. Amazing service !!!!!

Now, we need the gas and electricity to heat the house and to dry the floor screed (Week 51 ). That is on the critical path for moving in. That also is on my critical path for getting out of the rented house we are in, whilst the gas and electricity companies debate whether or not to accept my money. We are currently sinking under the weight of boxes in this rented house full of trivia that my wife considers absolutely essential until we move. Then I will be taking all of these boxes to the charity shops because they do not fit with this new ‘minimalist cool’ environment which is Huf Haus.

The Huf letter which arrived today advises me that they could finish the house by week 9, 2007 if we can get the electricity and gas supplied on time. That’s the end of February…..but it depends on achieving the impossible with our privatised energy companies who now need three separate organisations to quote, fill in forms and receive confirmation second class mail to complete one connection from the main to the plant room in the basement. Anybody out there got any ideas to quicken it all up????
Perhaps if I said I could smell Gas ??? would I get a crew out quickly ? and while they were sniffing it all out, they could connect my meter into the system??

Meanwhile…..back in Switzerland, my fellow blogger Ric must be smugly sitting on his deckchair in his new Huf Haus admiring the view and watching the snowline advance…that’s my only chance of victory …..that there is a large dump of white stuff which holds progress back for a couple of weeks. I wouldn’t wish it to be delayed any longer because he has a loving family to get moved in, but just long enough for me to get a couple of days ahead. Meanwhile the weather forecast here is just rain!!!

5 Days to go

The house is due next Monday 27th November!!!!

We are backfilling around the structure at the moment. Andy and I are meeting Volker again this afternoon for him to check that everything is ready for the team to arrive on Monday.

He wants a better electricity supply........I will have to augment that with a generator as we are currently using our neighbours' (Dane and Louise's), oh yes with their agreement!!!

He also needs the crane to sit half on the site and half on the road and reminds me that any delay that the crew incur as a result of my poor preparation will result in charges at 1000 euros an hour!!!!...........Nice!!!! But we will have good preparation so that will not be a problem!

Now I had perhaps expected a somewhat different kind of approach to a customer who is paying £400,000 for this contract to erect a 'second little piggy's house'...but is it just me???? On the other hand if the guys can't work because we have left them a soggy base to put their crane, perhaps it is more understandable.

That aside, all the arrangements will be in place and we have warned the neighbours of further possible disruption next week. It was incredibly bad timing, but we have the Annual General Meeting of the Residents Association on Saturday when all my future ( and recently inconvenienced ) neighbours will be there, so I expect to be thrown into the stocks and will probably miss the arrival of the house on Monday!!

You really MUST read Ric Capucho's blog (there is a link on this page) as this week he has been watching his white Huf Haus being put up in Switzerland. Ours is Black and White but very similar and I do hope he hasn't delayed the team at all this week....otherwise there's a charge......I wonder whether the charge is the same in Switzerland as it is in England???

I now have to chase the utlity companies to get them moving into gear.

I'll post lots next week....It's when the action really starts

15th November..Basement almost complete.

Its strange to think, as I drive up to the site, that back in Germany people are beavering away in the factory making my house!!!!

The factory is in Hartenfels, a village almost totally dedicated to making these houses and it makes a fascinating visit to see the show houses there and the factory itself where wood goes in one end and complete panels with doors, windows, and service ducting come out the the other, ready for erection.

Anyway back here in the UK we have only the concrete pour for the basement roof to complete (that's tommorow) and the land drainage around the basement together with the tanking and insulation to make it all cosy and nice.

The basement team return to Germany tommorow afternoon and their next one will be in Frankfurt so that's really local for them.......they'll be able to lie in..... till 4am in the mornings perhaps?

Andy and Baz return on Friday to complete the backfilling. Now, our only question is have we saved enough spoil from the dig to complete the backfilling or, a worse case scenario......we have to buy back some of the spoil that we paid vast sums of money to put in that big hole elsewhere in Sussex some weeks ago. Oh No, that will not be the case will it???

Monday 13th November

A couple of large lorries arrived overnight and were ready to be unloaded firdt thing this morning.
The basement team arrived early, having left Hartenfels last night at midnight.
The crane arrived, filling the road completely, creating further annoyance to those who live around here. But, what else can be done???
We've started. so we have to finish!!!!
Here are some piccys of this mornings efforts......
By this afternoon, everything will be in place and the crane will trundle back to Heathrow, from whence it came.
I meet Volker(from Huf) this afternoon, with Andy, the groundworks contractor to discuss the backfilling operation.

Well the concrete is in and the base is now complete!!!

Its Friday morning and the Huf Basement team will now be heading back to Germany for the weekend. It is about 6/7 hour journey so they will get home at about 4pm today, but...... they will be back for Monday morning starting work here at 8am!!!!!

As the British concrete arrived late yesterday (it was ordered for 1.30 pm but the last delivery arrived at 6.30pm in the pitch dark) they had to work through till around 8pm under floodlights. "Oh, its normal here, the concrete is always late!!!" they said .

So, the base is in, we've upset a few neighbours who had to wait a minute or two because the concrete pump lorry had to wash down, blocking the road. And I had always thought the British to be reserved and restrained.........well not in this part of Forest Row anyway!!!!

We now await Monday with excitement as the large crane arrives together with the rest of the panels.

My fellow Huf blogger Ric Capucho in Switzerland (see link) writes that his Huf Haus has now been delayed by a week. We were both anticipating a race to the wire as to who would finish first.....I think his delay and my current schedule for the house assembly being 27th of this month will result in us finishing neck and neck.

9th November Pouring Concrete

Just a quick update on the site....
Today is Concrete Day......

Some arrived yesterday for the strip foundation at the front of the house but the main area is filled today by a very large concrete pump (which fills the road completely) and six concrete delivery lorries which I hope do not arrive all together!!!!!

The basement team have been working flat out placing the reinforcement for today and they said they would have to work late this evening.

Monday is the day of the large crane (it is a 93 Tonne machine ) its also when the other panels arrive by lorry and they start putting the basement together....like a large Lego really. That's when I fall out with my new neighbours as well because of the disruption !!!!!

6th November Huf's Team arrives

The bright green Huf Van arrived at 9.00am together with a large lorry and trailer carrying everything you would ever need for a month long Safari trip.

Initially, there were lots of heated discussions on the site between the three man team about where the green cabin should go. This is after all is an essential piece of equipment!

For the journey down from Germany it was filled with drainage pipes and wood and other materials, but on arrival these were all distributed around the site and into the cabin went the television, the fridge, the BBQ, an oven, table and chairs and lots of bottled water ( I didn't see the beer). The heated discussions were apparently all about where the satellite dish could go to get a good reception!!

"So, the site prearation is OK then"?? "Ya OK looks fine" came the reply

Having completed the setting out, the digging of the strip foundations at the front of the building were curtailed by the presence of water in the excavations.

We elected to pump out and wait till tommorow to dig the foundations out.

The Huf team return for Wednesday to start concreting and plan to be finished by Wednesday of next week with the basement complete and ready for backfilling.

Some of the basement arrives!!!

The telephone call came at 7.10am. I was just getting ready to take the dog for its morning walk over the Ashdown Forest .
It was Baz (with the excavator).
He said there were a couple of Germans wanting to know "where they could put some materials in readiness for next week" How he gathered that given that he doesn't speak German and they didn't speak English I'll never know, but I said I would get round there as soon as possible.

I passed their transport rigs as I drove into the village. Very Large precast panels 3metres by 3metres and around four of these per trailer!!!!.

The two drivers were specific where they wanted to place the pallets of panels.
"dort ist das gut" was about all I could muster, particularly at 7.15am.

We parked them some distance (20metres) from the site, but they seemed confident that the crane would be able to reach them.

We had coffee and I managed a somewhat stilted conversation in pidgeon German, mainly dominated by the words "beer", "Guiness", "gluwein" and "alt"( a regional beer in Germany). All that seemed to go down well and they drove off back to the Channel Tunnel with another 8 hours driving to goon the other side before they were home.

It was then I remembered the dog....she would be still waiting for that walk!!

But the site is now ready........Volker wants a digger and dumper there on Monday to dig the strip foundations and then its up to Huf Haus to fit a very large crane into a very small area and start the basement.

Working towards Basement Day!!

Well, we were doing OK up until we hit a bit of a problem.

The problem was a short length of water main which intruded into our site and which rather unfortunately was connected to the live main. The problem was exacerated by the fact that Baz ( with the excavator) picked up this short length of main with his excavator bucket and the water main became detached from the stop end. There's a lot of water that comes out of a 100mm water main at 5.5 bar pressure!!!!

The water company were excellent ....they arrived quite quickly and diverted a team of guys to put matters right. It really wasn't our fault at all as we were working well away from where the plans show the water main. This was an old section of main which wasn't shown on any records and so nobody knew it was there.............but we found it !!!! Baz was exonerated of any blame whatsoever and continued on in the now very small dry bit of the site.

For a few hours the site was awash with fresh drinking water...filling up our site and flooding down the road, bringing our new neighbours to their doorstops wondering why their showers and dishwashers wouldn't work.

That was all the activity yesterday..but today the sun shines and the preparation of the site continues, with more gravel , another 20 tonnes, and lining the excavation with Terram and tidying and levelling in readiness for Monday when the basement team should arrive.

I have to send Volker( Huf basement manager) some photos of the site so that he can be assured that we have done everything that needs to be done. Should I enclose one of the event yesterday which looks like something akin to the Victoria Falls ?? perhaps not !!

By mid morning tommorow everything will be in place. The level of the base will be within the 30mm tolerance allowed. If everything goes OK it will now be down to Huf Haus to complete the project, well in theory anyway!!!.