Bob's Huf Haus

2010-09-30T02:14:00.001-07:00

Just a word about the interior.

The wall unit you can see in the sitting area is an example of Cado from the 1970's, designed by Paul Cadovius the Danish Architect. I found it, after some time months searching on an auction site and retrieved it from a large house in Barnet where it had been lovingly kept since it was purchased. Unusually, this example has the rosewood backing panels which gives it that something extra.

The coffee tables and the dining chairs are both designed by Richard Young of Merrow Associates and again from the 1970's.

The recliner is clearly courtesy of Le Corbusier.

The only picture currently in the house is the 1994 MOMA poster of Fallingwater by F.L.W that we visited earlier this year.

And the settees in the sitting area are usually occupied by a sleepy weimaraner !!!

2010-09-30T02:07:00.000-07:00

Here's some more piccys of the house...all as finished

2010-09-29T08:31:00.001-07:00

Some more piccys of the house

2010-09-29T08:29:00.001-07:00

Some more pictures of the final site:

2010-09-29T08:21:00.000-07:00

We've been in around 30 months now.....we had some piccys taken of the final, finished site.

So here they are:

2008-09-01T09:33:00.000-07:00

Its 1st September 2008

I guess most gardens have some plants in them don't they?

After being here for over a year and really only seeing mud it was quite exciting to go off to the Nursery to find plants.

The lawn keeps growing and needing frequent cutting. Its particularly dangerous negotiating the 45 degree slope down to the drive, so I need another machine, steel toe capped boots in case of a slip under the mower or preferably contract out the mowing to someone more agile!

The plants look great and we are currently filling up the areas adjacent to the house with white pebbles. It all very monochrome.

We've got the fencing going in next week and then that's it......look for another plot perhaps and do it all over again???

2008-05-29T10:14:00.000-07:00

OK I said it was going to be the end of April!!!!!!

Its now the end of May and we've had some crap weather. Now the grass is down, I'm praying for some more crap weather!!!!

Its been a long, long haul and there's some more to do.....like most people have plants in their garden and we don't have any yet, but the base is now there and we can do that over the summer.

Its cost a lot more than I originally thought....around £20K more , but we are here for the long term and its got to be right. ( or so 'er indoors keeps telling me)

After 12 months of wind, dust , earthmoving and rain we decided to get the windows cleaned and the slat blinds which serve the 'ground floor'. We had a quote from Huf Huas which included the woodwork and the windows which might have been better, but the cost?..... around £900 !!!

We opted for a guy from Oxted who did it for a third of that. We can now see out and admire the view!!!! I was thinking I might have needed another eye test but the expense was worth it...............We can see for miles, as that Kinks number goes!!!!

Lucca, the most important member of our family, a wonderful weimaraner, can't believe that there is grass at the end of the patio, as, for the last year, she has been looking out on the rough terrain, believing we had moved into some apartment with big windows. Life is about to change, big time, and she will be able to slip out in the evenings for a comfort break without having to treck 200 metres up the road!!!

I will be looking forward to a time when I can put the cheque book away and just enjoy the house and the garden.....but then there's a need for a shed and plants and more lighting and a BBQ and so life won't change will it??

The last image is a reminder of what it was like just as we started work!!! Some might say its an improvement....others ..NOT !!!

My fellow Swiss Huf blogger is probably enjoying those long May sunny evenings on the mountainside on his established patio, enjoying those distant cow bells and the cuckoo clocks chiming in his new Huf Haus. Spare a thought for us Brits, cold, wet and having to take off for sunnier climbs to sample what others take for granted. I know, Ric, where I would prefer to have my Huf Haus ...and its not in Engerland!!! Enjoy.....

2008-04-28T03:34:00.000-07:00

Its nearing the end!!!!

I said it had to finish at the end of April.....we started in December and we are really not there yet!!

We've got the machine back for a week to push around the soil but the main problem has been the rain. They tried to grout the patio last week and then it rained. Everything just when squaggy and that was the end of that!

I'll do a post when we've finally finished next week , but in the meantime ..here's as far as we've got.

2008-04-06T13:13:00.000-07:00

Its April 08, and the snow is falling fast !

I've said that the work must finish at the end of April....not so much the money as the time it takes and the impact on life generally.

So, come the 1st of May all the tiling will have finished and the lawn will have been laid....and the fence put in...and the lights connected. Its not going to happen is it?....

Since we last wrote we have had some progress....evidence the photos.

Pam (her indoors is convinced that the paving tilts TOWARDS the house and all the rainwater will collect just outside the lounge window ready to catch any unsuspecting person inside hoping to get outside without getting a boot full of floodwater. There's absolutely no point in trying to explain the 40mm fall away from the house......its better to just nod and agree that we ought to wear wellington boots at all times.

I've started painting the woodwork black to complement the rest of the woodwork on the house.....'Sadolins ebony' great match....the task was temporarily halted by a large dump of snow which is a little unusual for April....it will look good when finished though.

Lastly a piccy of the Huf in the snow storm.....

2008-03-08T01:44:00.000-08:00

8th March.....Progress

Its now 3 months since we started this garden thing............and we're still going strong. Well January was a complete wipe out with the wettest January on record. But February has been kind and whilst the garden is not quite the dust bowl that I would have liked, it has got a bit better, to the point where the excavator can move around the site without losing one or both of its tracks in the deep mud.

To date we have 120 sleepers on site to make the crib walls around the gabions and these will either be planted out or just be covered in pebbles or cobbles. These cost £2500 alone, so this ain't going to be as cheap a garden as I had originally planned. The budget has got out of the window and I reckon we're over double my original feeble estimate of £15,000. But Hey!!! This has got to be done right hasn't it??

The topsoil and some more slate arrived yesterday and we should now be able to cancel the hire of the excavator which has been here since early December. That's good cos that's £2500 per month!!

The other highlight of the week was Kathleen and Marina from Huf. I had been warned a few weeks ago that the 12 month inspection was due and I was asked to produce a list of everything that was wrong with the house.
Ok I thought, I'll get a new exercise book, a pen and then walk round the house noting everything that's wrong.
After a couple of hours I had four items on my list and the rest of the book was blank!! I started poking around areas where I have never been before in an effort to find a blob of plaster where it shouldn't be.....or a piece of paint missing.....around the back of the boiler in the plant room, perhpas a bit of tiling loose in one of the bathrooms......NOTHING !!!!!

So, Kathleen is based in the UK and Marina comes from Germany and they look after the Huf Houses once completed......they don't do the work themselves you understand...they arrange the work on behalf of us clients.

We covered the 'snagging ' items in about 5 minutes flat.......three door locks were stiff and the 3 metre patio door needed adjusting....so we spent the rest of the time talking about the fine "Huf Experience" Marina got back to me a couple of days later (as promised) to arrange for the men to come back and fix things next week!!!!

Great, but I was still moping around the house later convinced that I might have missed something........I hadn't !!! I still had that largely blank exercise book !!

I wonder how my fellow HUF blogger Ric got on with his 12 month inspection....He's over there in snowy Switzerland and we both finished our projects at the same time.....(well I'm still doing my landscaping) and I guess he's just waiting to mow his lawn and wait for the edelweiss to come into flower. He writes an interesting article on the "faux Huf Haus" called Da Vinci...if you haven't been there before....take a look at his blog. The link is on my site.

2008-02-19T13:43:00.000-08:00

Its 19th February...Concrete has set!!!

You can now walk around the house without getting knee deep in mud, so the last week has seen a major change. I counted up the slate tiles I had bought before Xmas only to find I was around 400 short. I have a feeling someone may have been quietly sneaking off with them but never mind I took myself off to 'Rock Unique' near Sevenoaks and they can supply me with replacements that match quite well.

There are 1047 tiles to lay and thankfully I won't be laying them. Then its the re-grading of the garden and then its some plants. I'm sure that the soil will have baked hard by then in the long hot summer that is to come and I'll need that digger back to make the holes, but hey, this is the excitement of doing your own house.

The Magnet Kitchen people came back to me (see last entry) and had reconsidered their approach. They had originally said that the faulty doors and drawer fronts had to be dismantled by me and I had to fit the replacements.....but they came back today to say they would arrange it all.....Send the lads in to put everything right. That's a relief as it will be bad enough removing everything my dear wife has put in them...just about a shipping container full of kitchen equipment in every one of those drawers!.

Volker , the Huf Basement expert came from Germany today to inspect the retaining wall as well. I hadn't seen him since those November days in 06 when the site was just a great big hole in the ground. There had been some moisture coming through the retaining wall, through the lifting lugs of the wall units that was causing the paint to lift on the front face.

Volker only does basements and concrete. He's the Huf basement manager...he knows about basements and concrte.......He inspected......long and hard.....'Yes' he muttered, 'Oh Yes' and then took a screwdriver to the lugs and prised out a plastic plug. 'Its not me, but the painters' he says with a big grin.....'Not my team!'. He explained that these lugs should have been removed and replaced with a compound before painting. He was going back to Germany that evening and would get it sorted.............'But he emphasised...Its NOT my team's work.!!! Again, if there's anything that needs fixing, its done without a quibble.That's Huf for you!!

He mentioned in passing that Huf are doing some houses in Bejing.....the Moscow one had been finished recently . Imagine the logistics of lugging one of these houses all the way to China ! We said our goodbyes and he was going off to another couple of sites before returning to Hartenfels ( an hour south of Cologne) that evening.

The previous day, Nick the Huf plumber had driven from Germany to do some maintenance. He said that he had left at 1am and had already visited another site before coming to me at 11.30am. I guess most English plumbers would be just turning out of bed at that time!!!!

I had been trying to source some Huf black paint for the multitude of timbers that are going in the garden. Huf had quoted me 530 Euros for 20 litres....yes 530. I spent a few minutes on the web and found a UK supplier of the same German paint for over 75% less......so that being a good day's work, I opened a bottle of Beaujolais Villages and everything seems good!!

2008-02-15T02:05:00.000-08:00

It was quite clear to me now that Januray was not the best time of year to be doing landscaping.

This January was special as well since it was the wettest on record since Noah took to his Ark.

One visitor here likened the situation to the Somme and the helpful comments we heard like 'Well, Its good for the Garden' ...............Well it would be GREAT if we had one!!!!!

Despite the meteorological challenges we did make some progress and as the mornings got lighter and the days a bit drier we continued in our quest to get the patch into some sort of order. Our Landscape Contractor Tim, has been doing a great job.

Yesterday was exciting if you are into big toys....we had a mobile batch mixer with pump on site to deliver our concrete...photos attached...by lunchtime they had pumped around 15 cu metres onto the site with a few retained firemen from the local station helping Tim...you can see the professional way that they handle the pump hose!!!!

Huf are due to come and do their annual inspection in a couple of weeks.....everything works pretty much perfectly and I hav very little to moan about.

A jounalist from the Sunday Express has said she wants to do a feature on the Huf Hauses, keep an eye open for photos of this one in the Sunday rags!!!

I just wish I had stuck to a German Kitchen, after all everything else here is German......we had a nicely designed model from Magnet, but the trouble is the veneer is falling off after only nine months....imagine what its going to be like after 9 years. Those peoplle at Magnet suggested that I remove all the doors take them to Tunbridge Wells and they would swop them with some new ones............. Nice idea, but are they in the real world.???

2008-01-09T10:04:00.000-08:00

January 9th 2008

Digging in earnest.....

If my wife thought that we had seen the last of the diggers a year ago..she was mistaken !!!

Well this one is just a baby but its surprising how much of a mess it can make especially if you wait until it starts raining!

One imagines laying a garden to be a few barrows full of soil and a few paving slabs and a couple of nice shrubs and grass seed perhaps. This one isn't a bit like that as the piccys now show.

We have well over a hundred tonnes of gravel, and concrete as a base for the paving...then the slate paving, then around 60 to 70 large 10 by 5 sleepers to place...and then some topsoil , perhaps in a couple of months we'll be ready for the plants.

Our Landscape Architects' plans were giving us some strange levels yesterday....with a patio some 500mm below the adjacent ground, so we decided to raise it all up and minimise the dig.

I won't tell her...when she comes round to inspect......(that's a funny thing)....she comes to inspect the work to check that we've adhered to her plans ........and we've changed just about everything!!!! I'll be hiding in my shed.

Still it is MY garden!!!

The rain still falls, so think of us out there in the mud!!!

2007-12-23T12:56:00.000-08:00

Its Christmas in the Huf !!!!

Now its really been some time since I last bolgged.... June to be exact and I've been really remiss in not doing anything here.

Kitchen's in, lights are in, wardrobes in, storage in, the one thing we have been waiting for is a garden.

The nice lady Landscape architect drew some plans and planting schedules to work to and we have Tim, local guy starting to do the hard landscape around the house. Should be finished by the spring.

Just for now we have some photos of the black Christmas tree in the lounge and som eshots of the formwork for the steps up to the front door. The dog is especially looking forward to a garden, as life has been rather similar to living in a penthouse for the last 6 months.

Oh ....we named the house 'Deer Run' and the last few nights we have had our nocturnal visitors nosing around around midnight. These deer come from the Ashdown Forest which is about 200 metres away and they will be delighted to see the new planting in the garden in the spring. They are particularly partial to roses, so we won't be having any of those!!!!

Happy Christmas to you all.

2007-06-13T14:27:00.000-07:00

Its all been a bit quiet of late....no big machines, just the birdsong in the morning and the gentle snoring of the dog on the sofa in the evening.....

I had this telephone call a few weeks ago......

"Is that Mr Salmon??? Can I interest you in our window cleaning service???"

"well yes" I said....normaly unsolicited calls get a fair amount of abuse, but this one was different.

" How many windows do you have?" the lady asked

I had sipped a few mouthfuls of red wine, but managed to calculate that the ground floor would be around 40...

"Its around 40, but some of them are very big" I was truthful certainly as the majority were around 2.5 metres by 2 metres!!!!

" Oh, it doesn't matter about the the size" she exclaimed....."its all swings and roundabouts"

I thought...well its not strictly true if you've got 36 roundabouts and only 4 swings but she seemed happy to offer a quote over the phone.......£36 !!!!!!!

I almost fell off my perch...." Yes , I accept", "but can I suggest someone looks at the house as its rather different from the normal" I tried to explain.

Over the last few weeks I had three calls to confirm the cleaners would arrive today. Each time I suggested they should view the property before confirming a cost......." No, They said, that will not be necessary.

They phoned yesterday to confirm they would call today......

I was in most of the day as we had deliveries, Huf people coming back to do work and various others doing work, so I was in all day.....no window cleaners......

I reckon they came up the hill, saw all that glass and said "******* Hell", Sod that for a game of soldiers" and promptly sped off in the other direction. !!!

In fact there are 72 windows in total...oh and the velux makes 74...I guess I'l have to get my squeezy blade out tomorrow.................

I'm doing a level survey and putting it on AutoCad for the Landscape Architect...she will then design a garden to die for....that's if I haven't fallen off my ladder trying to reach the far corners of those big windows with my squeezy!!!!!

2007-05-21T09:29:00.000-07:00

21st May 2007

Car fits on drive.!!!!!

The drive is in!!!! No more mud !!!

It all looks rather fanastic as the granite finish blocks complement the building. Andy St. Pierre and his team worked all last week laying these blocks. Baz (the excavator driver) had spent some years laying paving blocks, lots of them, before he realised there was another life where he could sit in a cosy cab and shift soil with a hydraulic bucket . These years of experience proved invaluable as the workmanship is really excellent. The gabions have been increased in height too !!!!

"How many Huf visitors have you had?" came the words someone on the road on Saturday...

(I was sweating over a barrow of slate)

The enquiry came from a couple of ladies who just wanted to express their approval.(About the House , not me)

Both South African and the elder must have been 80 if she was a day!

"Great" she said, "Just great" "Its so nice to see something different here in England. I come here to visit once a year and there are hedges everywhere and twee houses behind them"

I guess this is true....we tend to favour our privacy by ensuring we live behind a wall or a hedge .

Anyway we agreed they should come back in a couple of weeks to inspect the inside, and there must have been a dozen visits by now, by total strangers who genuinely love the design and the setting.....its just a pity not many of them live nearby!!!!!

2007-05-16T12:54:00.000-07:00

16th May....Andy and Baz return !!!!!

Now that the six weeks of glorious sunshine is over, our friendly Groundworks contractor has returned to site. Previously the ground had dried to the consistency of 30 newton concrete and it would have been ideal for moving the terrain. But no, rain came back and we return to the slurry we have had since Xmas.

We decided to leave the final movement of soil till later and concentrate on the drive. Afterall, this is what concerns the neighbours and, to be fair, we have had a building site at the top of the road since the Germans left.

The brick wall at the rear has been completed and we now are ready for a driveway. We are using La Linia ( from Marshalls ) blocks with a granite finish and I've bought some slate from Marshalls for the patio and paths around the house. It measures around 130 metres squared so we can get a few coaches on it when it's finished.

Inside the house is liveable...well I think so although other members of the family think not.......there's only two more members , apart from methat is and one of those is the dog who has not expressed any opinion, so that leaves my better half!!! All the Kitchen works, all the blinds completed, the wardrobes are being completed by Nick (with the football injury) who has done a stirling job. Despite the construction of all this cupboard space I feel we still will make no dent in the number of boxes which surround my TR6 in the garage. Its going to be there for the summer, nestled between boxes containing 'ormanents for lounge' and endless boxes containing Vanessa's (my daughter living in France) fluffy toys. And we still have to recover stored items from Peter's garage down the road....Mesage for all you potential Huf Owners.....sell or give away everything you have ever owned BEFORE moving in....you will not want it!!!!

Another piece of advice, ...complete the ground works BEFORE moving in....the mud outside is the main problem and whilst I always remove my boots, the dog has no such sense and has caused much chaos.!!

We had a Landscape Architect come for a chat the other day.......She was really good (if expensive) and will do the plans for the hardscape and planting. I have a certain reluctance in these affairs since I think I can always do the same for nil cost, but I guess we might see if she can provide some advice. She asked what sort of sculpture we would like in the garden....well a Henry Moore or a Hepworth perhaps???, Pam saved the day by suggesting a nice piece of natural (and cheap) rock or large piece of drift wood .....Its nice to see the natural form of nature don't you think?? So its down to Eastbourne to wait for the tide to come in or hack out a large piece of limestone from some local escarpment......I'll have to measure the boot of my car to see what I can fit in!!!

2007-05-03T13:02:00.000-07:00

This is my 51st Blog on this site !!!

In an effort to keep up with Ric (my fellow blogger in Switzerland, see link) , I have gathered together all the back of fag packets I've used to calculate how much this pad has cost me.

Unfortunately my laptop with the crucial excel sheet is in one of those 125 boxes down there in the garage...and I really can't face that.

These are rounded figures and are indicative of the numbers you will encounter on a similar build in the uk.

The house has a footprint of 109 sq.m over three floors and is finished with the normal HUF finishes, but with extra tiling, electrics,solar panel,fly screens (thanks Pam) but does NOT include any internal furniture like cupboards/wardrobes/lighting/kitchen/utility etc which are not in the HUF price.

Prices have been calculated as British Pounds

Land 0.1 hectares, purchased without planning 240,000

Purchase costs eg stamp duty /solicitors etc 6,000

Planning/surveys/soils investigation/ insurances 8,000

Preparation of site eg clearance/earthworks/

soil replacement 32,000

Services 4,000

Huf (basic price) 365,000

Huf additional to basic 30,000

Internal fit out by others

Kitchen (installation by me) 17,000

Wardrobes 3,000

Lighting 1,000

Stage II externals eg drive/drainage/walls (est) 15,000

Stage III externals (est) landscape with paving/

planting/lawn etc 15,000

So, there we are a little over £730,000 for a 327 sq m Huf, including the land. Not really that far away from the Ric's costs even though we are probably 1200 miles away, and he's halfway up a mountain and covered in snow half the year!!!

I still have the external work to complete (as my wife keeps on telling me) so these may creep a little. This all works out at around £1460/sq m for the build, excluding land, but everything else thrown in.......You could almost certainly build for less, (we could have done without the expensive LED lighting in the kitchen specified by my dear wife) but if you have the right site, the experience has to be worth it.....and we're only on this earth once...so why not???

2007-05-02T13:27:00.000-07:00

Its been some time since my last entry!!!!

Apologies to all.....I've been busy!!!!

We've been waiting for the dry weather........and...when it arrives everybody wants earthworks done pronto!!!

Andy and Baz came last week with a very big excavator......and whilst we not contemplating rerouting the A22, it seemed like a good idea to hire a meaty machine to push around the soil rather than spend a month doin it with a small one.

The gabions went in last week to support the 3 metre sheer face adjacent to the retaining wall and we also completed the foundations for the brick wall at the rear. I say 'we', but that's not strictly true....I watched and the others did their bit.

I was still trying to convince my other half that it had been a good idea to move in before the outside works were complete. Advice to anybody doing what I have done.....DON'T . It has to be completed driveway and grass in the garden next time.

I have been completing wardrobes in conjunction with our carpenter Nick, whose bad knee has recovered sufficiently for him to do the wardrobes with my very capable assistance. I've been itching to use this Dewalt drill for ages...and boy have I used it.

The trees have come down in the eastern boundary and now we get a blast of sunlight in the morning. The driveway is scheduled for next week so here's hoping the good weather stays for a few crucial days.

Ric ( our Swiss blogger) has done a financial breakdown..very interesting...and I will do the same when I can put that drill down for a second. Our costs are in the same ball park but as you would expect we pay a premium for shipping to the UK and the occasional use of English trades....eg. a plumber charged me £221 for 3 hours work the other day......£75/hour seems like the going rate.

2007-04-12T14:07:00.000-07:00

There's light at the end of the tunnel!!!!

April 12th 2007

Kitchen's comin together......

The worktop men came today with 3 pieces of heavy Quartz.......its like Granite but with shards of glass in it. The worktops will no doubt be used to stand kettles, toasters, old newspapers, the post and the washing up so you'll probably never see much of this glistening finish anyway....but its there.

And the electrician arrived this morning to connect up the ovens and the hobs, he's goin to send his mate round to look at the CAT 7 cabling and see if we can do away with the trailing lead I have out of the plant room to the outside where it comes in through a window in my office and into a telephone socket with telephone and computer attached!!! (very Huf)

A Huf maintenance guy arrived from Germany this morning to fix a couple of things including a sensor on the solar panel. He arrived at around 9.30 am (which meant leaving Hartenfels around 3.00am??? He spent a couple of hours here and then went to another site near Dover before driving home.....back to Germany!!!!! Now I don't know about you but a trip to Germany would mean weeks of planning, having the car serviced a couple of times, renewing the passports etc etc......

And those LED lights in the kitchen??? Regular readers will remember this argument almost meant my wife and I coming to blows in the kitchen showroom. I lost, and shelled out £600 on some fancy LED lights to light the cupborads which house the dogs canned food etc. I fitted them OK, almost made me sick as I found some LED sticks in a shop the other day for £8 each!!!! Anyway , when you switch these on at night, they are bright blue....and I mean BRIGHT!!! A passing neighbour might think I'm doin some arc welding at night when they're on.........totally useless!!!!!

Andy and Baz and Graham return on the 23rd to start the groundworks.......gabions to support the embankments, push some muck around, build a brick wall and trim some trees.....then topsoil and then I can get some lawn down and the dog can go outside...at the moment its just mud and she is desperate to have some green grass to go for a widdle.

Off to France for a few days...so will return to the next phase which is the return of the blind man and the wardrobes and the earthworks......the comment 'still at least we're in' now causes my wife to scream uncontrollably....so I tend not to use it so much now.

Oh I must get a plumber so we can have a sink and taps that work in the kitchen......still at least we're in!!!!!

2007-04-04T09:38:00.000-07:00

4th April 2007

Well we did move in !!!!!

Ok....so the house could have been a little more finished inside. (As my wife kept on telling me.)

We had a kitchen with the units in...(but no worktops) or appliances as it happens. There is a microwave nad the fridge freezer works, but if you want to wash up dishes you have to find a sink elsewhere.

The worktops (the fancy Quartz ) arrive on the 12th April by a UK company , together with the Huf maintenance team who want to do some things to the solar system and various other bits.

The wardrobes arrive in around a weeks time but Nick ( the carpenter who was due to fit them )damaged his leg playing football, so its a bit dubious whether he will be able to it all without some help.

Anybody know how to connect CAT 7 cable to the telephone system??? I may be forced to get the Huf electician back to do this as the local man said he had never seen CAT7 before. Even the ever helpful BT guys said they had not seen it before. Its used for data transmission at a million megs a second. I guess I will not be needing that to phone up for a local pizza delvery....but you never know!.

The dog is bemused by all the glass everywhere and is sporting a bump on the nose at the moment through trying to pass through one of the glass doors in the lobby, after spying a cat at the front door.

Attached photos of the haven area...elsewhere its a tip!!!!

2007-03-20T13:17:00.000-07:00

20th March 07

1 week to move in!!!!

Its been a busy few days.....since our elderly kitchen fitter (who didn't know one end of a mid height unit from another) had left.....I've been quite busy!!!!

The kitchen is now in place. The units are placed where they should be on the plan and the appliances placed in their respective places and now await the arrival of the worktop gang.

They arrive on Thursday morning, and, as I am working that day, I have to leave it to Pam to ensure we get what we want. Should be interesting......

They accurately measure the surface and then head off to the hinterland to fabricate a quartz worktop which has shards of mirror embedded. ( This was the thing that sold it to the wife!!!)

They return ten days later with a fabulous worktop which will last a lifetime or quite possibly a lot longer..... and its more expensive than Corian or Granite....but it looks nice!!!

We had some prospective Huf clients arrive the other day.....they will be building in Surrey with a design not dissimilar to ours. We gave our advice gratis.....we should charge for these in the future!!!!!

Lights are still some days away....like Ric in Switzerland ( see link ) I have around 45 lights to connect. My friend Peter came the other day to put some in the lounge where I have now erected my Poul Cadovious Cado wall system. Very 70's, but the Rosewood goes great with the White and Black.

That's the thing isn't it.....I could be puttin up lights, which would be really useful for when we move in....but what do I do???? Put up my Cado Wall system !!!! It will look really great with the fickering of candles next to it. And, tippin' up to bed with my night light......I'll pobably burn the place down!.....still. in this life you've got to do what you want to do!!!!!

Oh , and I forgot to complete the BT connection, so, when we move in we will not have any telephone!!!!! or internet !!!! probably for some weeks.

I have to get the TR6 and 136 boxes in the Garage next week, the rest of the gubbings goes in the various rooms.....should be fun!!!!!!

2007-03-07T10:41:00.000-08:00

IT'S HELL'S KITCHEN !!!!!!

7th March 2007

Why did I employ an English kitchen fitter?

I'm not really sure that he was a kitchen fitter at all. You will remember I had some misgivings, but that was his age and the fact that he had difficulty getting up the stairs, let alone lifting the units up from the basement.

He started work on the Monday and arrived with a flat tyre. OK , so that can happen to anybody but his jack didn't work and I offered my trolley jack which was immersed somewhere back at the rented house. Amazingly I only had to shift 25 boxes before I could see it at the back of the garage. After an hour we had fixed his spare and then he started on the kitchen!.

He had the plans and instructions and I had spent some time over the weekend reconciling the boxes of bits with the schedule and the plans and marked them up accordingly. All present and correct !!!

By the end of the day he had screwed some of the units to the wall and it looked sort of OK. He was always coming up to me to ask whether this was right or that was right and would I contact the manufacturer to check the installation instructions. I did this twice and by the end of the second day, he was complaining that there was a gap of 670mm to accomodate a 600mm unit. He asked me to check. He went home and left me to check....

I spent the next hour checking and re-checking the plans and what he had put together. Nothing matched !!!! This guy obviously didn't follow plans, he just put the units against the wall and screwed !!!!

I met him at 8.30am this morning and explained he had done everything wrong.

'Oh, I'll take that down and start again if you like' he said

'Oh, I don't think so' I said ' I want it done properly and I would like you to leave everything just as it is, and go'

He did, he packed his tools up and went, leaving me with a bundle of half opened cartons and a pile of wood.

He claimed he was a carpenter...he was around 75 years of age and seemed OK. Hey readers, if you are having a kitchen done by an independant fitter, watch out for this one. He's dangerous!!!!!

Anyway he's gone and I'm back in control, which is fine.

The second oven arrived today, it was missed off the delivery last week, because, according to the delivery man, they thought it was a mistake. There were two ovens on the order!!!!

' Oh,' I said, 'You don't know my wife, yes there are two ovens, identical'

Handy if you're cooking for a banquet, or for the local rugby team, but neither of which we have done recentlyor likely to be doing in the near future!.

The other things that happened since last week, the Germans came and delivered the GREY carpet, and one hour later the German carpet fitter came and fitted it. took two days ......Perfect !!!!!!

Must go.....I have some kitchen units to fit.....and make a call to defer the stone worktop templating which was due on Monday!!!!

2007-03-01T13:36:00.000-08:00

1st March....Handover!!!!!

Frank ( the german plumber/technician) took us through the technical bit of the handover last night. He explained the hot water coming out of the left tap and the cold out of the right tap. Well I followed it up to that point but when we descended to the hall and sat in front of the central heating programmer for 40 minutes....my eyes glazed over. Apparently you can programme your holidays into this piece of kit and it will switch everything off, or keep it running on low until you arrive at the airport on your return. It will probably book your holidays for you too!!!It will then fire everything up and make sure its warm when you come in through the front door. Marvellous!!!! It has an outside sensor to monitor the weather and to anticpate whether the boiler needs a boost to ensure the inside temperature is constant. Its very complicated and very impressive. I can now throw away those oil filled radiators and electric fan heaters..........well, maybe I'll keep a couple, just in case.
The basement houses the plant room, where I have spent many a happy hour trying to feed the water, electricity and BT cables through the ducts to the outside. Here lurks the Enterprise Galactica control room with boiler and associated technologies. Fortunately there's a manual (in English) telling you what to do and there was a great debate about where this special wooden Huf manual and holder should be placed in the room. I stepped back from this one, and left it for Pam to decide, after all she is probably the one who will be resetting timers, ambient temperatures and checking water pressures. If it goes over 8 bar pressure, run for your life, and there was one valve that Frank said 'DON'T TOUCH', but I now can't remember which one.

We signed the requisite documents saying we had read and understood everything even though we hadn't and I promised Frank I would take the manual home and study it sometime.
The handover the next day was a far less stressful affair. Rudiger ushered us through the rooms with Fred, the German chippy alongside. Rudiger stuck yellow tape where anything wasn't perfect and Fred was there with a selection of paints to address any tiny marks of imperfection. Well, we could only find four instances of minute damage and Fred appeared rather disappointed that he could do no more.
The windows sparkled like new, everything spotless and the carpets hoovered showing a uniform pattern where the machine had been.
At the end of our tour Rudiger appeared with a black holdall and in it was a selection of paints for exterior and interior, some special rawplugs for the basement area, a wax crayon for taking out scrapes on the black woodwork and a tool kit with the Huf Haus logo for any maintenance one might have to do. Another manual with instruction on the electronic blinds, tile and carpet maintenance etc etc. And another set of documents to sign and then....the handover of ten sets of keys!!!!!

OK, so we're on our own now!!!!! Later I spent a little time going through the kitchen unit delivery in readiness for our fitter arriving Monday. A bottle of bubbly arrived (thanks Julian) and we toasted the new house....(our other two offspring live abroad...Vanessa in France and James in Dusseldorf) and we saw the sun set from our vast lounge window.

Now we have kitchen fitting, lights,etc etc and the ground works.......

2007-02-27T13:25:00.000-08:00

27th February 2007

Underfloor manifolds!!!

Bathrooms being finished.....

And we can't fit any more vans on the drive!!!!

Ok so we've got two days to go, but this activity is manic!!!!

Monday morning Baz came to bulldoze the gravel at the front so we could get some vehicles into the drive. One Bright Huf Huas green van turned up (having started his journey at 3am in Germany), and then another turned up half an hour later.

So,we have a chippy and a plumber ( 2 big green Huf Haus Vans) and then later in the day (obviously a bit of a lie in) the cleaner/windowcleaner turned up in another van from Germany , then today we had Colin the electrician in another van and then the kitchen units arrived in a very large lorry. I was regretting using my car driving from one side of the village to the other with all these vans parked everywhere, and then some of the neighbours tried to drive past to get to their houses.! It's so inconsiderate...why don't they walk!!!!

Anyway over the weekend I finally got the BT cable through under the house and (importantly) out the other side and then yesterday I diverted the water from the stand pipe into the house, having first checked with the plumber that it was safe to do so. He could have just been fitting a tap in the bathroom at the time and then the place would have flooded............so, we are all systems GO !!!! If you elect to be project manager you have to be prepared to get your hands really dirty from time to time.

The kitchen units look formidable!!!! There's at least ten pieces to go with each pre-assembled unit and there is no way my UK chippy man (who retired 25 years ago) will be able to carry all that stuff upstairs into the kitchen, let alone put it together!!! I'm not working till Thursday next week so I can lend a helping hand!!! I'm sure I will have to help him along, and, between the two of us , I'm sure we'll work it all out......

The appliances arrive tomorrow, so I'll probably walk to the site to reduce the vehicle congestion and I've been warned to expect a 'technical handover' from the plumber who can explain what all these levers and knobs do down in the plant room. We have underfloor heating manifold (see piccy) on each floor (presumably they will cover this up with something) .

Each time I come here I can't wait to take my wellies off , just to experience that heat between the toes!!!!

I've arranged my last stage payment to Huf Haus....that's cleaned out the piggy bank. I have to say its been worth every penny so far......they have been great!!! Not Cheap but great!! Ontime...to the day.....and quality like I've never experienced before!!!

We still have the ground work to do....It is just so wet everywhere it would be madness to get a big machine in and start pushing the soil around.....we have a month before we finally move in...so somebody pray for fine weather !!!!!

2007-02-22T09:41:00.000-08:00

The interior and things 22nd February 2007

The handover will take place at 11am on Thursday 1st March!!!!
Delivery of kitchen will happen before then and we use of the garage from the 27th February

There still seems much to be done, but Rudiger assures me it will only take a couple of days to finish everything, clean the place top to bottom and lay the carpets......well there's a story there!!!

We were goin to have grey.....all the Huf Hauses are grey carpet !!! All of them, either that or tiles or wood, but grey is the thing with all that black and white everywhere.
Last time we were in the Huf village in Hartenfels, we said we would have beige carpet....why???? well don't ask me ... an abberation it certainly was!!!
Back in October we changed it back again to grey for the living area, leaving the bedrooms in beige.
I'm not surprised that Huf was confused and when the carpet arrived at the house.....it was all beige!!!!
Ok, so Huf said they would change it and then Pam says yesterday....'what colour will the stairs be'??
'Well, I think they will be beige.' I said 'In fact, the carpet fitter is there at the house and he will be laying it in about an hours time'
'Its got to be grey....got to be grey......OK the bedrooms will have to be beige, but the stairs and landing have got to be grey'
A couple of seconds later I was on the phone to Rudiger our project manager.....I started by saying that Pam and I had been discussing the colour of the carpet and I heard him groan at the other end.
I explained the problem.......'Its got to be grey'
I guess as a project manager these are the things you have to deal with....really difficult clients who keep changing thier minds. We had been quite good up to then. But to be fair he said calmly that he would make enquiries and come back.
I drove past the house today and the carpet fitter had gone!!!!! I guess he was thinking that it would be wise to drive back to Germany for a few days and spend time with his family and wait till these mad English finally decided on what they wanted.
Huf were brilliant..........they said they would order the grey carpet and ditch the beige and probably not charge us any extra!!!!! How's that for customer service !!! Where else would you find someone prepared to do that!!!! Brilliant!!!
We'll have to wait until after Handover for the carpet to arrive but that's no problem.
Oh and they glue the carpet down......no underfelt, no grippa rods...this is all glued to the floor and they put the skirting boards on after the carpet has been laid. 'Its just so much neater and it is flat......with no bumps' he says.
And the lights, well if you have a moment......go look at Ric Capucho's blog (Link on my page), Whilst he's in Switzerland and I'm in Engerland we have identical problems.
One of my many mistakes was to buy a 'Catellini and Smith ....Turcio Soffito light on Ebay last year......it is 6 foot long and has 36 strands of heavy nickel plated cables , with a light attached to each cable. These are arranged randomly in a swirling fashion and the arrangement weighs around 60 kilos....yes really!!!!!!! It requires a 10inch RSJ to provide the support!!!
Well the idea was always to hang it in the gallery, but given the difficulties of the Huf designs in the area that Ric so eloquently describes....it looks as if my Catellini and Smith Turcio Soffito will be relegated to the garage for ever....or possibly put back on Ebay!!!!!

2007-02-16T04:03:00.000-08:00

This was October 2006 before any work began

Friday 17th February 2007

Its 20 weeks since we first stepped onto the site to start clearing....

The site is around 0.25 acres (0.1 hectares) and comprised an old derelict double garage and a wooden shack and piles and piles of debris.

The main attraction is the potential view across the valley and the fact that it is 200 metres from the Ashdown Forest.

We knew the family who were selling and bought it on an option subject to getting planning permission.

We started with a local timberframe company who worked up a design for the site and submitted it for planning. I heard some time later that it was about to be rejected, so I immediately withdrew the application! ....(if it looks as if your application is going down the pan....don't let a rejection get recorded...withdraw it!)

We then started a difficult period thrying to talk to the planners, and eventually got an audience.

They were not happy with the sub-division of the plot, thought the house was too big, the house would be too close to a very large Copper Beech with a tree preservation order on it and the house would restrict light to adjacent neighbours.

I guessed then it would be difficult but perhaps not impossible.

I ditched the timberframe company as the architectural advice was a bit dubious and decided to approach Huf Haus.

I had the feeling that I would have to take this application to appeal, but when Alexander ( our Huf Architect) came to see the site and the Copper Beech sitting in the middle of the plot, he thought it looked nice....in fact he said 'Wonderful, a nice tree so close to where we can put the house!!!'

At this time the option period was running out, so we had to move fast to get the application in, and surprise, surprise, the planners liked it!!!!!!

I did a quick analysis of sunlight/daylight calulations and submitted those just before the committee as there were concerns about how dark the house would be, so close to the tree. We trotted along to the District Council to see the application get approval.....that was back in the summer of 2005.

You can see these things take a little time.....the actual house build is so quick in comparison!!!!!

As for costs.....

You can pay anything for the land!!!!

A nice plot of half a acre went for £400,000 nearby, just before we bought ours, but we paid 250K

As for the build, work on around £1300/metre for the Huf element (without any kitchen)

Ground works/services/drainage will depend on the site but ours will be around£40K

Don't forget the landscaping ....which is whatever you want to pay

Then if you are doing the project as a couple, make a generous allowance for your partner's influence.......project management of the budget at this point goes straight out of the window!!!!. You have been warned!!!!! If you want to see some more piccys of Huf Hauses...go to the Huf Haus Owners site...there's a link on my blog

This was Early December 2006, just finishing the tiling

2007-02-12T12:40:00.001-08:00

12th February 2007

Anticipating the move!!!!

We are scheduled to take over the house on the 1st March.
Pam had arranged a quote from a local kitchen fitter who was able to do the woodwork side, but wouldn't touch the electrics or plumbing!!! He came on Friday to look at the job. I was surprised to see that he was at least ten years older than me...probably twenty (and I'm retired ). He was complaining of the stiffness of his joints as he mounted the stairs....but seemed to be quite confident about the job in hand.
Why do we have these pre-conceived notions about people....he has loads of experience doesn't he??? he must have must'nt he??and we've been told about ageism haven't we??? Providing I don't have to carry him up the stairs he will be fine!!!! It means that I will have to lift the units from the garage up to the ground floor myself .....Ok.....I'm no spring chicken but I can manage that and I'll have to do some plumbing at the end of his weeks work....but we'll go with him. The other guys I had asked to quote have still to come back to me!!!!

But the tilers have been here all week......they are quick and very accurate!!!!! See for yourself in the piccys.
We have the standard white small mosaic tiles everywhere in the bathrooms. For those of you who have spent some time in Germany you will recognise the style. Only in the cloakroom so we have something a little different.

Another lady stopped me today, a total stranger, as I left the house after sorting out the security fencing which had blown down in the wind.
'I was brought up in this road 'she said....'and I was just visiting an old friend'
'Its just fabulous' she exclaimed.......'where can I buy one'????
We discussed the merits of the Huf Haus for some time and she vowed to return and seek my advice on building something similar elsewhere in East Sussex......'I've just GOT to have something modern' she said, 'I've had it with traditional!!!!!' 'I just LOVE it'

I tried to set up the house insurance ready for when we take over.....this might be a problem!!!!
My previous insurance company stopped dead in their tracks when, in answer to a question about the construction.......'well, its concrete in the basement and timber frame and glass above' I explained. I remember saying....'but it does have a tiled roof'...trying desperately to distinguish my house from a very large greeenhouse!!!
There was a pause for a bit, then she asked if I could be put on hold while she spoke to the underwriter.
'Oh No we can't do anything like that' she said and cut me off quick, eager to get somebody else who she might be able to flog something to!!!
Zurich Insurance (personal services) would be able to quote, but I hesitated as they would also advise on 'wealth mangement'.....After this build exercise I do not have much wealth left......I'm trying some other agencies who were mentioned in the Huf Owners Club website.
The weather has been crap lately which means that Andy and Baz and Graham haven't returned to do the earthyworks....I'm hoping that things change soon otherwise we'll be stepping over piles of mud with our sofas when we move in.
And I still have to work out how to push the telephone cable under the house (albeit in a duct) to come out the other side.....I've tried twice so far and I'm reluctant to admit this to my wife who will no doubt come up with some blindingly obvious method that I haven't thought of yet.....help!!! Any ideas ....quick????

2007-02-06T08:55:00.000-08:00

6th February....
Electricity Sir???? Well Yes please...Its been some time waiting!!!!!

The guys came to 'joint' the cable which was laid under the road last week.
'Where's the meter gong ?' one asked
'Well it can go anywhere really, as far as I'm concerned' I replied
'Well, the duct is in the wrong place.....if the control box is here ( he points to the wall), then the duct should be here' ( he points to immediately below)
'What are the options ' I asked and explored every one (except the one which meant them getting into their vans and disappearing for ever)
After much debate I phoned the Huf electrician......
They concede after some humming and pulling faces at me they agreed that it could go above the duct........and they started drilling.......Hooray!!!!!!!
Next day was the EDF meter man.........
'If your husband isn't here in five minutes, Ill be gone' he was saying to my wife on the telephone back home, as I drove up.
'Well, I'll have to check the earthing and what the electrician has done in the house first' he said
'There's a problem with the earthing' he was muttering as he returned five minutes later.
I pointed out the earthing positions in the plant room and he still wasn't satisfied. I phoned the HUf electrician again and left him to explain the layout.
'I'll have to phone my manager to get approval' the EDF man said after a while.
And I waited with baited breath as he had this long conversation with the Guv'ner at the other end.
'Yes its a Huf Haus' he said....oh, that expalins everything I guess, because he came off the phone saying that it would be OK, BUT only just, and some additional work would be needed.............OK, Fine, I'll agree to anything......just get that meter in!!!!!!!!
So, after a wait of four months , we have a meter, and only after some hounding the poor girls on the call centres......if I hadn't phoned.....how much longer would I be waiting.
Oh, and we connected to the sewer in the road, and the man from Southern Water said it was fine.
Oh, and the tilers arrived and started work immediately. White small mosaic tiles in the bathrooms and grey tiles elswhere.
Oh and the carpet arrived, in a very large German lorry mit trailer. Trouble is some of the carpet is the wrong colour. Compared to all the other problems that has to be a minor one, after all its just a question of getting some more from the manufacturer in Frankfurt and taking it a few hundred miles.......
Isn't it amazing?....we have elctricity!!!!!!!!

2007-02-01T01:22:00.000-08:00

1st February....4 WEEKS TO HANDOVER !!!!!

Everything is now falling into place.

The EDF contractors arrived Tuesday to dig up the road and lay the cable through to the basement. Now I had the job of running the duct under the house a few days before for the cable to be put in....you could get someone to do this, but hey, lets save some money here!!!! Afterall, given that Pam's choice of letterbox in the basement was 464 euros and the led lights on the shelves in the kitchen to illuminate the dog food cost £600, we have to make some savings!!!!!

I wouldn't say it all went in fine and without a hitch, no, I definitely wouldn't say that, and I'll spare you the details about feeding the 'drawstring' through the duct by dangling 30 metres of heavy plastic duct from the top balcony at the Huf down to basement level in order to allow a heavy weight and string attached the benefit of gravity and to go from one end to the other, with Pam giving me clear and loud and explicit instructions about what to do next......, and the fact that the drawstring broke while they were pulling the cable through!!!! But the important thing is that the cable is now in!!! They joint it on Monday, I have scheduled the meter to be installed on Tuesday and the Huf Electrician in on Wednesday...fine if everybody turns up on time.

My fellow Huf blogger Ric and Claudia ( he in the land of cuckoo clocks) seems to be stuck on the decorating phase at the moment whereas this is completely finished. Well it would be finished had not Pam decided that she wanted to have another telephone socket in the basement hall, which will involve the digging up of most of the floor downstairs and some of the new plasterwork. She seems serious about this, claiming quite emphatically that she told me about this weeks ago,....and why hadn't I done anything about it!!!!

What Ric (see link to the Swiss site) doesn't realise is that we still have to install the kitchen AFTER the Huf people have left. I guess that he has had one of those lovely StilArt people at Huf come a design a wonderful kitchen creation and the main benefit of this is they can install it all within the programme they have set out. The main disbenefit is the cost, which is a considerable disbenefit!!!.
I have the kitchen units arriving into the garage on the 27th February, the kitchen installer coming on the 2/3/4th March and the templaters for the worktops shortly after. They require 10 days to rush off the South America to mine the Quartz and come back to make the worktops and put them in, then my installer returns to finish off. So, should be finished by ....lets say July???

So Ric, whilst we may be in by the 15th March, we may be eating take away Pizza for some time to come!!!!

2007-01-26T01:30:00.000-08:00

26th January 07

By popular request.....
Everybody says ...can we have some exterior piccys of the pad !!!

So I legged it up there this morning and took some more.
I drove past at 7.00am this morning (still dark) to take the dog for a walk, and the decprators were already there working!!!!!!

The first piccy is the view facing east. You can see that the Huf gables are all glass, and in fact most of the front elevation on the ground floor is also glass. So, we have the lounge facing us at ground level and two of the bedrooms at first floor. There will be more earth placed adjacent to the retaining wall and a patio constructed there but at the moment there's a very dodgy slope that will need support if its to stay there.

And then there's the piccy on the right, and that's the front elevation of this Huf Haus. There's a full length garage on the right at basement level and a boot room, hall and one bedroom with ensuite.

At ground floor level , there is a kitchen (which faces east), study/bedroom, kitchen, dining area and lounge which is all open plan. Upstairs there's three beds and two baths. approx 3300 sq ft.

Here's the rear of the house, looking northwards!

So, you will see that we had to orientate the house round this way to maintain privacy for the older house at the back.

Please note my contribution to saving the world...apart from the actual house....Its the solar panels on the roof. These have not actually been placed in yet, but they will right at the end, when they will provide steaming hot water 24/7 at no cost to me!!!!

One problem yet to be overcome is where to put the TV aerial. I did not want it on the house. which unfortunately leaves me with a problem....I was banking on IPTV by the time this was all finished ie TV over broadband.....after all they have it in France.

But it seems that's not yet available for some time and I have yet to tell the wife that she wont be able to see anything on the telly when she switches it on in a months time!!!!

So what do we do.?.any useful suggestions are very welcome, but at the moment, it looks like either an aerial on a telegragh pole at the end of the garden or a sky dish on same said pole. I'm not sure either of these will work that well.You can buy these aerials that you put in a box on the patio which dont look like anything particular but you need a clear line of site through to the satellite and there's that bloody victorian house at the back in the way!!!! I just wish NTL or some other cable company could very quickly dig up this road and connect me up...but that's not going to happen is it!!!

Lastly this is the side of the house which has got the front door, and a balcony over (which serve one of the bedrooms and a bathroom. I can stagger out onto the balcony in the mornings and watch everybody down the road going to work.

The German decorating team leave today....there's back to Germany tonight. Next week some plumbing I think and some tiling.....oh , and some groundworks. Looks great inside!!!!!!

2007-01-21T13:15:00.000-08:00

It's taken just 11 weeks to get this...........................from this ....its all pretty impressive

I've just had a chat with the decorators who have been working all weekend!.
I called in at 6pm today....(sunday) and the friendly English speaker said he and his mates would probably finish at 8pm and go and get a shower and bit of shut eye before returning tomorrow to start again (around dawn). I usually catch them as I go by for the dog walk!

This finish inside is simply perfect. It really cannot be faulted!!!!!

The black post and beams are now all painted with special Huf paint, which leaves the white panels to be covered with this special Huf white self coloured plaster. Everything is special Huf specified materials ....Remember even the extension leads that they all use are coloured special Huf green and are stamped with the special Huf logo!!!!

So I raced back to the gaf that we are renting and promptly threw away half the paintings and posters we have....they is no way that we can spoil the look of these perfect white plastered walls with the wide variety of mirrors/coloured prints/paintings...it just wouldn't be right!!!!
In fact I have some real doubts about using any of the furniture we have inside this now perfect environment. I think it should be left clean and empty, perhaps with a single orchid placed strategically in the lounge..........but no, lets fill it up with all our boxes full of trivia and battered furniture that we have collected over the years and make it home!!!!!!

The one thing that is quite worrying is that there is really no storage anywhere....well you can have it if you really want, StilArt, which is a subsudiary of Huf Haus, will provide you with anything you need, hand crafted, expertly constructed, and exactly to your specification. Trouble is its quite expensive.

So we will be moving in on the 15th March with the minimum of storage to place the 127 boxes of crap that were generated from the move from our last house. I have a good idea of where its all going to go.......in the garage which is big enough for a few reasonably sized motors. This should be the place where my TR6 should be residing, but I can guess that it will be standing out in the weather again until all these boxes have been emptied and the contents taken to the tip.

Efforts to try and reduce the amount of rubbish being transported to the new house have been miserably inadequate. I have discarded at least 6 CD's from my collection and thrown away endless tapes (with no titles on) whereas the collection of furry animals that my dear wife has collected over the years remains completely intact. Is there no equality in this world? I have explained it might be more economic to rid ourselves of this pile of junk BEFORE we pay someone to move us.............but no, it looks as if its all coming with us!!!!!

Andy and the ground work team return on Thursday to complete sewer connections and drainage and to think about the large pieces of sandstone to be placed against the house....

To this:

2007-01-19T01:31:00.000-08:00

19th January

Decorating !!!!!

There's decorators and decorators. These guys are good!!!!
They are a subcontracting firm from Germany who do all the Huf Hauses. They paint the posts and beams black first with a strange black paint which is the consistency of thick mastic / fox poo. Then its masking tape everywhere applied with a machine ready for the final coat of a fine white plaster 1.5mm thick over the walls. The finish is so sharp and black/white, it's a machine like finish. And it alters the look of the inside completely. Very bauhaus!!!
There was progress with EDF too !!!!!

I phoned again to check on the start date for the electricity supply (one of my very regular calls to EDF) and the guy at the other end said....... 5th February.
"what this year, 2007 ?.....Are you sure? " I enquired.
Well all this is really too much to hope for.....electricty available before we move in!!!!
I believe it when I see it.
I set up with another firm for the meter to be installed on the 7th February, and then I have to get the Huf electrician to make the connection in the house.

I arranged with Rudiger ( our Huf project manager) for him to release the garage in advance of the handover which is now 1st March, so I can get the kitchen units delivered in the week before. This will enable the kitchen installer to get working immediately the handover has taken place. We'll have to wait for the worktops anyway because they have to template the kitchen after the units are in and then come back 7 days later to fit the worktops.

The idea of meeting our Huf man each week before handover is to sort out any problems as they are identified, and so it does not impact on the move date. So far no problems.......

We are also off the inspect a local quarry.....why is that you ask????? Well in order to support the steep bank either side of the house we need some restraint, so large blocks of sanstone will be placed one on top of another to provide a mass retaining wall. I did visit the quarry last summer and they have sandstone ranging in size from pebbles to several metres high. I have yet to find out how we can transport them and lay them but that will be one of the next challenges. Its all fun!!!!!!

2007-01-12T11:49:00.000-08:00

12th January 2007

This sounded really GOOD NEWS!!!!!! ELECTRICITY AT LAST !!!!!

The charming lady at EDF said that the wayleaves Department had now cleared my application and it had been passed to OPERATIONS.!!!!!!

'Fantastic' I said, 'Can you give me their number and I'll give them a call to see when I'll get electricity'

I should have sensed that note of sadness or sympathy in her voice as she said goodbye and wished me luck with the scheduling of the work.

However onwards with the OPERATIONS DEPARTMENT of EDF. Energy.......With that title it really sounds as if they get on with things here!!!!!

' Are you still there Mr Salmon???? Mr Salmon are you there????' The girl from operations who I rang sounded anxious about my health....had Mr Salmon had a heart attack???? Why had I gone quiet???

The reason for this long silence was after she had explained that there would be a further 8 week delay before the works could start. I was just speechless...........

Ok, so middle of March eh???? First request in October and start work middle of March.???

Here is a bit of advice for anybody thinking of building anything, ......as soon as the project is a twinkle in your eye, if the electricity supplier's name has got an E or a D or a F in it.... get that application for electricity in. What I should have done in hindsight was to cover the roof in voltaic cells and go into competetion with EDF. They're just crap.

Just to reiterate and make the point.....in the time its taken EDF Energy to push a few bits of paper around and tell me its 8 weeks hence...we've dug the foundations, laid the groundslab, built the basement, put a house on top, tiled the roof, wired it inside, boilers in and working, floors down and screeded and next week we'll have pictures hanging on the wall.!!!!

Meanwhile the house is gently heating up with the central heating on (the German Plumber came silently in the week and got it all going) he tells me next week he'll turn it up to 40 degrees to blast every last bit of moisture out of the house.

The Germans return Monday to finish the basement and install the bathrooms, then they get their paint brushes out to paint everything top to bottom.

2007-01-07T04:36:00.000-08:00

Its the 7th January 2007.

And a happy new year to you all.

We have been away for the Christmas break and so have the Germans. They always take their 2 weeks and start again on the 8th....tomorrow.

The German sub contractors who left the site on tuesday before Christmas managed to 'trip' the electrics to our neighbour's garage and failed to tell anyone. The disastrous consequence was that their freezer defrosted....and this was just before the Christmas break!!!!. We sat there silent and disbelieving that this could have happened as we listened to this message on the answerphone.
Huf got it in the ear (holiday or no holiday) and I said I would speak to Rudiger about it when we meet tomorrow. Our neighbours were fantastic about it...but the damage has been done and I still feel so bad about it ....weeks after the event.

On a brighter side ...on the 2nd January, the gas contractor arrived to make a connection to the gas main. They left a couple of hours later with a brown gas meter box suspended on a acouple of bricks and inside....there was a gas pipe!!!!!!
Next day a guy phoned up asking where the new house was which needed a gas meter. he was standing in another road nearby which the old house (in whose garden I am building) fronts onto. I guided him to the new house but he sounded somewhat releuctant to do any work on this house. He said that his work ticket said it was a house in Chapel Lane and this house was in Dale Road.
Well after a couple of calls to his manager, he reluctantly agreed it was the right house and he would fit the meter...but only as a great favour to me!!!!
Job done and complete.
Well we just have the electricity to go now.............we made the application when the site was still growing weeds and now there's a house on it!!! Over the holidays I spent a few fruitless days on the phone to EDF.....I even got the mobile phone number of the guy who was dealing with the wayleaves..charming chap who got his bit of work out of the way quite quickly, but its the emdless grind of procedure upon procedure that frustrates everyone. There's an air of resignation in my voice now when anybody asks me 'So Bob, how's the electrics coming along then?'.
This house will probably have electrics at some time in the future, but as a precaution I am buying a gas hob rather than electric. (Just in case it never comes)
We finalised the kitchen over the holidays too. Pam insisted on choosing some fancy LED lights that light up the glass shelves on three of the cupboards....cost £600. I supposed I could have walked out of the shop in a temper, but when she offered to pay for them herself....I graciously accepted that solution. Why we want to light up the tins of dogmeat and bonios in a cupboard is beyond me , but hey I could be wrong again.....( I don't think so though).
So the Germans arrive back tomorrow................last run in now, basement finished next week then the painting and tiling.........

2006-12-22T07:49:00.000-08:00

Well I'm sitting here very smug.....I've just read Ric Capucho's blog ( see the link on this site) and it seems there has been an unfortunate delay at his end.....

It's a pity we didn't have any money on this race, but I wonder what odds I would get now on the race to handover????

Just to update Ric...the floor screed is all down and perfect. My Huf project manager came down on Thursday to check things over but didn't have a key so we couldn't get in to inspect.. we peered in the misty windows and it looked good and I saw the Guys leaving earlier in the week, so I know its all done!!!!!

Starting again on the 8th is the team to fire up the boilers ( that's providing the Gas Main people come on 2nd January and the seperate Gas Meter people come on the 3rd January. Whilst we still haven't got electricity but we have our firiendly neighbours to plug into.

So it all looks fairly straight forward now...bit of tiling...bit of insulation in the basement...throw a carpet or two down, oh and put the bathrooms in and paint it all over.so lets say...a couple of weeks ??? Well actually its handover on week 9 !!!

If the Huf performance is anything to go by, Ric's delay will be made up by those German guys working day and night....anything to get it all complete by the sheduled day....

Off to France for Noel....so au revoir to all you readers...be back on the 27th to check that my Huf Haus is still there...and Happy Christmas to Ric.....and its not so bad coming second !!!!

2006-12-21T01:54:00.000-08:00

As you can see this is tricky.......scanning onto blogs isn't quite my thing!!!!!
The top floor is the area of the house that we have left largely as the original Huf design. Bedrooms are located on this grid and the one in the left hand corner is normally allocated as a bathroom. We split that in two for the en-suite.
Because the bedrooms are effectively in the roof, the kneeheight is crucial.....that's the dimension between the floor and the start of the sloping roof inside the house!!! It means you can't always stand a tall vase of flowers on a table at that side of the room ( which is probably a good idea) but perhaps more importantly if you locate the bedhead next to the wall and you attempt to sit up in bed to read a good book....you probably can't without jamming the top of your head into the roof and your chin being compressed hard into your chest and damaging your ribcage....but hey thats the price of aesthetics and even the greatest architects never really worried about practicality!!!!!!

So we have three beds upstairs and two bathrooms and two sets of balconies. The gables being completely glass.

Next floor down we have the main living area......but we've changed this a lot.....
We enlarged the kitchen, moved the cloakroom and made the guest room ( which is really my office somewhat smaller). I've forgotten quite why I agreed to that now but I suspect I will spread my belonging into one of the other rooms as well. The lounge has only one external wall that isnt glass. But all around the ground floor are external blinds which are electronically controlled and can give you privacy....if you need it.

Downstairs further into the dungeon......or keller.....we've made lots of changes to the original design. We moved the garage from the east side to the westside, located the large guest bedroom to the east side with an ensuite and created a boot room for attending to the muddy dog first thing in the morning. In doing that we made the plant room smaller but its still all OK and everything will work well down there. We changed the orientation of the wing wall off the house. It was located at 90 degrees and just held back the soil to the very steep (30 degree)driveway. We changed all that......changed the position of the driveway (its now a gradual incline) and elected to take out a 4 metre high embankment to create an extended driveway and parking area. (we told HUf after we had agreed the changes with the planner) and they just changed their plans accordingly.

I guess most people would rely on the architect to make all changes, but seeing as I have a little experience in these things I wanted to be control of what I was commissioning. And I did the project managing...which has been interesting , rather than employ somebody.

It been good so far....despite the sleepless nights we are approaching the final months now.
The sort of problem I now have to address is where on the site can I put a TV aerial or dish??? I daren't put it on the Huf Haus otherwise I'm sure Peter Huf himself may come down in the dead of night to remove it!!!! I'll have to find a tall shrub in the garden where I can hide it....

2006-12-18T03:43:00.000-08:00

Monday 18th December
Some Germans go back, and others fly in!!!!

Last week saw the completion of the electrical and plumbing work.
The thousands of wires were all connected up and the plumbing 'The Work of Art in 15mm copper pipe' is now hidden by thick insulation. More insulation goes in over the floors...a couple of inches worth at least, then another layer of insulation but this time housing the trailing plastic water pipes that will heat the house.

It is said that you don't have to switch the heating on much in a Huf Haus because the house is so well insulated and its air tight. I guess that will not apply to our house where Pam usually cranks up the heating to well over maximum. That leaves everyone gasping for breath except her and the pet weimaraner Lucca, who just loves soft beds and heat!.

The paving blocks arrived and are stacked neatly waiting for somebody to think about laying them. Whilst I managed to keep them clear of the sewer run that we have to dig, I was not so lucky with the dig we have to make for the BT connection. We'll have to move them all first! There was really no other place to put them!!!!

Now today another team arrived, this time to do the floor screeds. The bags of cement were delivered some weeks back by one of the very large Huf Lorries. The pile of bags stand 2 metres high and beside that is now a very large delivery of sand which arrived Friday. The sanad is a genuine British variety which was delivered by a British firm. I know this because he managed to dump it half on the site and half in the road, much to the annoyance of my neighbours (again).

However, these guys will complete the floor screeds to the three floors each 110 square metres by tomorrow evening. Then they fly back to Germany to do two more houses before breaking for the Christmas Holidays!!!!! Now is that impressive or not?

My phone calls to EDF for the electricity are so painful I really cannot bring myself to write about them. But needless to say they will not deliver anything until well into the new year. But which new year I really cannot say....and more to the point nor can they!!!

2006-12-11T09:55:00.000-08:00

Monday 11th December 2006

I can't find it anywhere !!!

It was here last week, I know cos I saw it !!!!

This is the second time I've been grovelling around in the mud trying to find this damned pipe. It's the foul sewer that Andy's men laid around three weeks ago. There was a pole to mark the end, but, perhaps not surprisingly, its gone because we've built a house around it since then.

Admitting defeat, I leave a message with Andy to see if his men can find it !!!

There is success with the Gas however. Those regular readers will know our move in date is dependant on drying the house out and to do this we need the heating on. That in turn depends on getting a Gas supply. With me so far ???

I phoned the Gas people this morning and Caroline said we could have the supply on the 17th January.
"They have to have that notice because they have to dig up the public road" she said
I explained that it is a private road anyway ( no statutory notice needed ) and they didn't need to dig it up because there is a gas main passing up through the site about 4 metres from the house.
" It's not what it says here. It says the main is in the road." she replied " You'll have to take it up with the Gas connection people!!!"
"Have you got a plan?....with the route shown???" I asked
"Yes, and oh, yes I see what you mean"

Well, to cut a long telephone converstaion short......she finally accepted I did NOT need to dig the road up to connnect the house up ......and she said they would be there on 2nd January.
" Would I be there??"
Well, Yes I will be there, cups of tea, biscuits, bottles of whisky, anything to get this bloody gas into the house, so as not to hold up these Huf guys who are working day and night to get me in in week 9.

I'll spare you the next conversation with another company about installing a gas meter. It was painful, as was the fruitless conversation with EDF about installing the electricity.

However that is not quite so crucial, as, if our very kind neighbours Dane and Louise (They love the house ) continue to let us use their electricity from their garage, we should be OK with a temporary supply to the boiler. I said I would pick up this quarters electricity bill, because it must be nearly all mine anyway!. ....All those drills and floodlights....

2006-12-10T09:10:00.000-08:00

Well its been a busy week with work an' all.....the house is coming on fine.

Met Rudgier ( our Huf Project Manager) on Wednesday evening who had been to Ireland and Exeter before arriving at ours at around 6pm. Busy these Germans!!!! Afterwards he was back to Heathrow.

It was the first time inside for Pam and she started talking about the layout and how it might have been possible to change things, but somehow she never finished the conversation because I guess she realised everything was being put in place, with pipes and cables, hundreds of cables everywhere. It was too late. (well I didn't want it changed anyway)
Downstairs in the sous - sol (basement ) in the plant room all these cables came to one spectacular finish. We are not building an aircraft here I thought, but why so many cables???? I was later to discover when Colin ( the electrician) arrived that these were to be individually wired in to a fuse box which would have been fit for an aircaraft!!!! Not the minature fuse bopxes we have in the UK, this is big, very big. In the same area ( they call it the plant room) is housed a boiler the size of a brewery silo. All the plumbing to and from it is superbly executed, a veritable work of art in 15mm copper pipe.

Anyway, back upstairs we were told that the floor screeds would go in the week before Christmas and then they would switch on the heating to dry the house out.
At this point I had to break the news that neither the Gas nor the electricty services were in, nor was there any prospect of this next eyar, let alone before Christmas!!!
Rudiger calmly offered an alternative which involved driving some space heaters from Germany, and we agreed that might be necessary if the miracle of connection was not to happen.

I've had plenty of comment from the near neighbours about the state of the verge opposite. Well its not us you see.....its other vehicles that go up on the verge cos the Huf Vans ( the three of them) park outside. I will be out there this week with a fork and a few turves to keep them quiet...or perhaps I'll leave it till after Christmas. ( The reindeer might chew it up on their way round or better still, the electricity contractors might damage it further when they lay the service to the house).

Plenty of positive comment though from the passers by............its quite handy because Huf leave a bundle of brochures about the 'Huf Dream' by the front door, so I can hand them out to interested parties and presumably earn a sizeable commission on any new orders...or not.

Busy day tomorrow.....(AS),,,,,find the foul sewer connection which I've lost under a pile of mud. Finalise the order for the kitchen, and take delivery of 110 sq.metres of block paving for the driveway area. Now I haven't quite decided where it can all go yet......but it can't go on the grass verge opposite!!!!!

2006-12-05T04:04:00.000-08:00

Tuesday 5th December 2006

Internals well underway!!!!!!

We have THREE HUF vans ....all the way from Germany and a lot of workmen.

As you creep round the house, there's activity in most of the rooms. Basement, ground floor and upstairs. Cables everywhere, insulation being laid, sawing of timber, arc lights and a crate of beer (untouched) I noticed in the lounge.

They had an early night last night (6pm) because they had an early start (2am) and got held up again at the French Port (strikes again).

There's been no action on the Gas or the Electricity front and I anticipate some delay in the completion because we can't fire up the central heating to dry the place out !!! BT however were really helpful and have delivered ducts and cable which is in the back of the car ready to connect my telephone.

The floor screed goes in next week then everyone goes back for Christmas for two weeks. After that there's 7 weeks of furious activity with painting, tiling,and carpeting and then its job done!!! Onto the next Huf Haus. They have a few in England, Germany and Switzerland and one very large one in Moscow.

I will have to arrange installation of the kitchen after the handover. If you choose the Huf kitchen it can be done during these internal works but we have chosen something different which means we have to wait. And, just to make life more complicated, rather than just get a kitchen firm to provide evrything, we will have cabinets from one supplier, worktops from another, appliance from another, and installation from someone else. This bit could take as long as it took to put the house up....or longer!!!!

2006-12-02T10:09:00.000-08:00

Saturday 2nd December 2006

Our Huf Haus Project Manager phoned to make an appointment to see us.
This fits in with the arrangements that my fellow blogger Ric and Claudia (in Switzerland ) had last week with his representative.

It is our opportunity to make any last minute changes to the electricals or other minor changes. Pam (her indoors) suggested that we changed the internal layout downstairs again.
" I don't like the position of the cloakroom off the hall" she says.
"Well, do you remember in Germany you changed that?" I whispered.
"And" she added, "what about a velux in the bathroom upstairs, I remember mentioning this to you some time ago"
Rather than try to explain that all the walls are now firmly bolted in and the roof on and the possibility of making those sorts of changes would involve the complete dismantling of the structure, I bottled out and will leave it to Herr Rudiger to explain on Wednesday.

The one big disappointment however are the velux windows in the roof upstairs. They are situated over a gallery that looks down over the dining area and originally we wanted to put in a large Huf Window. This is a large section of roof that is made entirely of glass and would give a fine view of the hills to the North. However our local planners could not agree to it and said there were to be NO roof windows on the north elevation. They finally accepted a compromise with two velux, but it is an opportunity lost.

Otherwise the house is exactly what I had hoped for, what we have to do now is to sort out the rest of the landscaping and driveway, fencing and planting ,connect the services ( still no progress on that front) connect the foul sewer, organise the kitchen and utility installation, and sort out where in the house the dog's bed is going to be.

The groundworks team, Andy St.Pierre from St. Pierre Groundworks and Baz and others had done a great job in getting the site ready for the erection team. All the backfilling completed on schedule and a walkway round the whole house at formation level so that nobody was sloshing around in the mud. It has been raining most days and the garden, apart from the area immediately next to the house is awash with mud. Volker had suggested doing this extra piece of work and he was absolutely right. You do need a firm dry working area around the house.

2006-12-01T04:55:00.000-08:00

1st December 2006

Our German team left this morning having been working till 9pm last night. There must have been a problem because they had said they were leaving last night!!!!
Doing an inspection after I found that there were about 6 tiles missing from the roof, of no great significance..otherwise all OK and watertight.

2006-11-30T07:55:00.000-08:00

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........

2006-11-29T10:02:00.000-08:00

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).

2006-11-29T02:51:00.000-08:00

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!!!!!

2006-11-28T05:57:00.000-08:00

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!!!!!!

2006-11-27T10:15:00.000-08:00

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!!!!!

2006-11-24T04:52:00.000-08:00

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!!!

2006-11-22T00:01:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-15T03:09:00.000-08:00

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???

2006-11-13T04:51:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-11-10T01:21:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-11-09T01:05:00.000-08:00

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 !!!!!

2006-11-07T01:26:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-11-05T00:47:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-11-02T11:59:00.000-08:00

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!!!.

2006-10-31T01:43:00.000-08:00

A Huf site inspection!!! on 30th October

The piccy is a view northwards from the site

Yseterday we had the "pre-pre-basement- unt kellerdecke -delivery- inspection" of the site. In other words Volker came to look the site over in readiness of the team arriving next monday.

We still have some things to sort out according to our German friend. I did manage "Guten tag" to begin with..

1. We have to put some 'Terram' on the sides of the excavation to prevent spalling and to secure the sides of the excavation for men working below........agreed

2. We have to tidy up the bottom of the excavation where material has fallen so the land drain can be put in without difficulty.........well OK agreed

3. We have to have the gravel with 30mm tolerance in readiness for the concrete slab....well OK we have to put another 75mm on top of what is there at the moment ...so OK agreed

4. We have to ensure there is water available and three electric cables rated at 20amps to feed the lighting and the small tools as they work long into the night, preparing the basement so that our Huf Haus can sit happily on top of it. I'll speak to our neighbours about that and get a generator in.....OK agreed

5. We have to dig the strip foundations with a machine with the team on site on Monday morning.......OK Andy and Baz will stand by.....agreed

6. We have to shingle around the land drain they lay and backfill against the basement walls once they are up to strength ( Concrete takes 7 days to reach a certain strength)...OK we expected that...agreed

7. Provide a hard standing of 8m x 8m for the crane to sit on and a hardstanding for their container which they will also need for the house build. ...well we will do some excavating for the driveway and put some Terram down and crushed concrete...and well OK agreed

8. Take some pictures of the site by thursday and e-mail these to Volker in Germany so he can decide whether the men can come on the Monday.....no problems ...agreed

Well thats all OK as far as us Brits are concerned, and Andy and Baz are coming back on Wednesday to finish off the site as agreed.

Volker mentioned that any rubbish or surplus materials from their construction are put on the empty lorries for their return journey to Germany.....now that's neat isn't it???
What they bring over and doesn't go on or in the house is taken back for recycling.

In this week of the Stern report, at least Huf and I are trying to do our bit by recycling materials, building a house with a SAP rating of 95-117 and using MMC ,( modern methods of construction) and a little ol' solar panel thrown in. It would be great if I got a tax incentive to build like this...as it is very expensive ....Mr Brown ....if you're out there!!!!

2006-10-26T05:05:00.000-07:00

HUF GET THE MACHINE INTO GEAR !!!!
This picture is not our house , in fact it is Mr Huf's, in Germany and it is very nice !!!!

The letter we received from Huf today says:
'We will start with the building assembly of your HUF house on site on Monday 27th November 2006......please transfer the following amount etc etc..... '

That looks sooner than expected. In fact if they start production of it in the factory on the 13th November, two weeks later they will have built all the elements, the walls, the roof, the vast expanses of glass, and put the letter box in the door, loaded it onto a convoy of HUF lorries and transported it to UK !!!!

This sounds like the German efficiency we've all heard about but few of us have experienced at first hand!!!!

They only need a week to put it up cos they've got to get back to Germany for the Friday evening beer festival.

This all sounds very exciting, now I just need to get my butt into gear to make sure everything is OK this end.

2006-10-23T01:52:00.000-07:00

22nd October....site progress and finalising the specification for the house

Well its been raining..............quite a lot over the weekend and consequently the hole is filling up with water.
We just didn't have enough time last week to complete the dig for the retaining wall and lay any land drains from the excavation to the soakaway, so that will have to be done this week. Its very muddy everywhere!!!!
As a temporary measure we'll pump it out and hope the sun comes out !!!!

We've been through all the detailed plans of the house and sent scanned images of the last alterations to Patric in Germany who looks after the fit outs. Everything needs to be agreed by 25th October which is the final, final deadline.....
We opted for a solar package at 6800 Euros to reduce our energy costs and save the planet. I don't think we will be able to get any grant from Government under the 'clear skies initiative' because Huf Haus are not an approved supplier, but that's something to look at this week!!

We've specified exactly where all the points go in the kitchen even though we haven't yet chosen our kitchen nor done the detailed design yet. As we will not be going with one of the Stil Art Huf designed kitchens we will have to have it installed after the handover of the house.

I've also asked for a gas point in the lounge in case we go for one of these flueless gas fires.

Importantly however we have some dates. They don't come with a programme, but in a letter requesting the next payment!!!
It says 'we will commence building of basement on site on Monday 6th November...please transfer XXXXXEuros etc.
The other letter says 'we will begin the production of your Huf Haus on Monday 13th November'
please transfer XXXXX Euros etc.
The house takes around three weeks to assemble in the factory and is then loaded on the trucks ready for the journey to UK. They have 3 houses being assembled in the factory at any one time and the processes are very 'state of the art '.
I haven't seen a revised programme yet, but I guess the house will now go up just before Christmas rather than last week in November, that's providing I can get rid of all this water and it stops raining!!!!!

2006-10-19T13:24:00.000-07:00

19th October......The hole gets smaller again!!!!!

After days of excavating soil from my hole and carting it away to some place in Sussex where someone wants to fill a large hole in his land, we now embark on filling my hole up again with gravel from someone who is making a hole is his land. Follow??? I hope so!!!
This is called soil replacement and is brought about by the need to ensure that we have a solid and stable base to our foundations, otherwise the house would not last into the next century. This is something I care deeply about.

So the gravel has come in and the soakaway has been constructed at the lowest end of the site by Baz who is an expert in most things involving construction. The final preparation of the site now needs to be done and I will then telephone Volker from Huf Haus who will come and inspect before sending his team over to construct the basement and retaining wall. He says this will now be week 45, but could be sooner.

I have left Pam to inspect the drawings for the last time. We have 5 days to alter anything and I don't want that 'Oh, didn't I tell you I wanted that extra shaving point in that bathroom, and you didn't do anything about it' scenario. I've been there before , us wise ol' things have to take precautions at this late stage in proceedings. At least I cannot not be blamed for any omissions!!!

The building inspector arrived the other day, in my absence and gave his approval to all the hard work that had been going on. Also, we now have some fencing which is designed to protect the large copper beech ( in the middle of the site) from any wayward excavators as it has a tree preservation order on it.

This week should see the end of this phase of the work.

2006-10-17T03:07:00.000-07:00

17th October....Finishing the digging !!!!

Here we are on tuesday, down at the right level over most of the site and just a bit of finishing off to do!!!
We need to leave one metre working space for the basement team and finish the batters to the excavation, then take out the driveway to the right level. After that we will be putting in 400mm of shingle. Volker agreed to use shingle cos there's a bit of water coming through the sandstone into the pit.
The its over to the Huf people to do the rest.
I need to count my pennies for the site works as they are quite a bit over the original cost. Originally it was going to cost around £20,000, but with the extra dig and carting all the material away, it will be a bit more.......
People keep coming up to the site and saying....'well that's a big hole'......I just want to fill it with house as quick as possible now.

We have to check all the plans that arrived last Friday for any final alterations. Where do the electric plugs go? Have we got enough? Where are the light fittings going? Have we left enough room in the lounge to get the dog's bed in?

There's a really big issue about a letter box!! There's been hours of debate about this. Here in the UK we have letter boxes in the front door. Germans have boxes outside.
They refused point blank to put a hole in the front door.....'it would not look nice' they insisted. We could have a stainless steel 'huf designed art form post modernist letter box'which cost 1500 euros, but I just wanted a hole in the house anywhere, where our postman could deposit the daily dose of bills and trash mail without me having to go outside in the cold.
We compromised by putting a hole in the door in the basement at a cost of 350 euros, which Pam (her indoors) insisted was essential. In the interests of maintaining domestic bliss, we will agree that. (But at that cost I would have been quite prepared to venture outside or train Lucca (the dog) to fetch it in.

There's another additional cost with the handrail to the balcony. Originally it was going to be wood. Now it has to be stainless steel because part of it will be exposed to the elements. That will cost 2300 euros extra. I am going to check whether it is gold plated for that money, but I guess we will go with that too.

And there's another swiss blog for a Huf Haus , I've put the the link on my site. We will be able to compare notes as they could be similar, and he's just finished digging his hole!!!!!

2006-10-14T06:32:00.000-07:00

Saturday 14th October Excavating for basement

Surveyed in the house position again for Baz to start digging for the basement.

The front face will be 1.9 metres below ground and the back face approx 4.3m because of the slope of the land.

Monday will see the completion of the dig and tuesday 400mm of sub-base arrives as a base for the re-inforced concrete slab.

I had hoped to see the Huf Basement team soon after this part of the work, but their timing depends on Volker being able to revise their programme (as they have changed it). The programme I have been given shows the basement being constructed in Mid October and I will have kept to that programme. Lets see if anything changes next week.

I have concerns about leaving the excavations open for so long.

2006-10-13T04:00:00.000-07:00

Friday 13 October......Earthworks now half way!!!!

The earthworks are still current with around 250 cubic metres already gone.

A problem with a water service was solved by South East Water. Excellent, helpful staff!!!!
We now have a service to the new property and the existing service has been shut off.

British Telecom performed well too, with their crew arriving on the agreed day and erecting a new telegraph pole in the road and diverting the service.

Huf arrived to inspect the site and that didn't go so well. Apparently back in March the structural engineers said we would need a thicker sub-base, 400mm instead of the normal 200mm and a geo-fabric on the formation. That would have been fine but nobody bothered to tell the client (me) and my contract with Andy (the ground contractor) is a fixed price based on the original specification.
So now we have variations to the contract straight away!!!!!

Added to which, Huf produced a programme which showed the basement being started in week 48. The programme I have been sent shows the work starting 7 weeks earlier!!! If that remains the case we will not be in until May 07 and we have another 2 months in rented accomodation...not a good prospect!!!!!

2006-10-08T03:24:00.000-07:00

October 7th.....Work has started !!!

Andy and Baz arrived today with a large excavator and chain saw! By the end of the day much of the debris and shrubbery on the site already had been attacked.

Monday will see the start of the tree felling and the opening up of the site.

We have to arrange the moving of a telegraph pole in the middle of the site and shut off a water service.

Huf's 'basement' expert ,Volker, arrives on Wednesday to talk through his part of the work. He will bring a team to construct the base slab and basement walls and retaining wall. This is scheduled for later this month and the house itself is scheduled for first week in December.

The site works are scheduled to take two weeks and I am keen to get the basement constructed soon after the excavations have been completed.

Saturday 7th October.... Work Starts

2006-10-07T05:16:00.000-07:00

The machine arrived today to start the site clearance and the earthworks.

It is a bright sunny day and is forecast to be the same for a couple of days so progress should be good for the initial work anyway.

I have set the temporary bench marks up on the site and the levels will need to be reduced by up to 2.8 metres. This will allow the construction of the basement, part of which will be exposed on the north side.

We have around 9 large trees to be removed and lots of shrubbery and debris left bt the previous owners. There will be a bonfire here for a few days, but, after we will have a clear site and we can start to plan the landscaping and boundary treatment.

Timescales for Huf Haus are firmed up

2006-09-02T02:31:00.000-07:00

Well we have some joy over the programming now.!

The foundation people in Germany say they would like to start on site in October. Thier preferred programme says from the 2nd October, but that does not give us any time to clear the site and do the excavations. So the actual timescale will be dependant on Andy ( our groundworks Contractor) being able to make a start. That will be sorted Monday.

We are off to Germany on Wednesday to have another final look at the Huf Village in Hartenfels.

Once the foundation team have completed the basement, the erection team come over from Gernay with the house and erect it on site. That should be end November early December. The hand over date is scheduled for mid March.

2006-08-21T02:25:00.000-07:00

This has been a long time coming, and we're not quite there yet.

What is a huf Haus.??...well its a german system build house, modern in concept and style and it is built in a factory in Hartenfels in Germany and shipped over to the UK to my site where they will erect it in a few days.

The fit out takes a few months to complete after the structure is up, but its a lot faster that traditional build.

The site is in East Sussex and I'll take you through what been going on for the last two years since we bought the land and take you through the build as it happens!!!!!