GETTING READY FOR BATTERIES & PROGRESS IN THE BEDROOM!

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]Okay, with the solar install busy in the background, we are trying to get this slab ready. So, we finished the slab actually last week. We're trying to get ready for the batteries. We're going to put the roof on, which means James can come back and fit another sort of fuse board out here ready for the battery.

[00:00:25]So, last week we got the slab in, chedd up, quite impressed with that. quite smooth. Uh now we're going to do uh just a timber frame shed here. We were going to do it in block work, but really it doesn't need to be that way. And means that we can get it up quicker. We can do some oak feather edge on the outside, which we've got. And we can use some composite roofing panels that are left over as well. So they'll be able to support themselves from a plate on the wall here out to the front. And then we're going to have a sort of double door wide opening at the front. Uh just so there's plenty of access. And actually, we don't need to put the doors on for a while anyway.

[00:01:07]Absolutely.

[00:01:27]So, I would suggest maybe we just quickly drop these supports to here and then at least we can >> put the other thing on top.

[00:01:35]>> Yeah.

[00:01:40]It's got to be under Yeah.

[00:02:01]>> Yeah.

[00:02:03]>> I can go in a bit.

[00:02:09]Yeah.

[00:02:13]Right. It's probably about time we update you on uh everything that's going on inside the building with the solar and the batteries and everything going on outside. We kind of neglected filming indoors, but we've done a little bit.

[00:02:26]So, we've been up to uh the third bedroom with plaster boarding. Few bits of time lapse of that now as you can see. And we're doing that so we can start skimming the south end of the building. We've got two rooms down there. And then we're going to work our way back through the building into the master bedroom next.

[00:04:00]And then all of this is ready now. So we've got our 100 mil insulation up in the roof. And that's simply just to deaden a bit of the noise, which it's doing a good job at. And so whatever issues we had with the rain on the roof, uh, you don't really hear now. And in the summer because it's got a dark colored roof, uh, you can get a bit of creaking and stuff. And I think this should, you know, stop that as well. So that's all good. This will be the next one to board. But before we can do that, we got to extend this wall because we never built it high enough for some crazy reason. We left it short because we thought we're going to be sending duct work through. Um, so it's a bit of a headache now getting the tracks over the top and then we'll be sending the stud work up. And what we've decided to do is this whole sort of spine running down the middle of the building, we're going to OSB uh just to give it a bit more rigidity.

[00:04:54]These aren't these 5x2s that we got aren't the most stable. They can twist a little bit and I feel like just giving them a 9 mil skin all the way along is a low cost but actually quite worthwhile things to do. Plus, it's really easy to just hang things on the wall then if it's just the odd photo frame and things like that. Um, but we've done that where we needed it for racking walls. And it does make it stiffens the whole thing up. Uh, so we're going to do that along this side. And then it should run flush all the way through below the handrail to the other end. And then one little detail up here, which we want to do is this handrail that runs along here. It's obviously quite a long uh length of relatively unsupported. Uh although the sheet on the OS on the OSB on the outside does go all the way down beyond the steel and should tie it in a little bit. There's obviously a bit of wobble right in the middle. So we decided we're going to put some steel flat on the here, maybe some 3M um flat and then we can board over it. It'll be hidden below the handrail and then that will just mean that there's absolutely no chance the middle can bow out and that should be a good way of doing it. Obviously the corners are strong. It's just that middle flex and then into this room. This will be ready to board once we know what we're doing over there. We want to box in in a neat way the big ducks that had to go there. There was no no other route really. So, the idea for a more discreet option is to actually just bring out the top of the window. That angled reveal.

[00:06:29]Bring that out all the way and then up.

[00:06:32]Everything to the left here and the right over the other side will end up probably wardrobe. So that means that we won't necessarily notice it here, but above the window will just have a bit of a bulkhead and in the central area there. So it's getting there, but it's just a lot of the same. So you do one room and then you're straight into the next one and uh bit by bit we're working through it. There is of course rooms downstairs which we need to crack on with soon, but we're quite keen to try to work methodically across the building. These can then remain boarded ready for a plaster as and when we find one. Uh and then we can crack on next with the kitchen downstairs.

[00:07:12]So it's beginning to look like big blank canvases up here. This is bedroom one maybe. Can't remember what it is on the plan, but this is um one of the kids bedrooms. We've got a little bit of boxing in to do here just where we're running our duck work down into the uh rooms below. That'll be sealed off. And we've also got a bent pipe to take up through the roof. Once that's done, that can be boarded round. But the first one to skim, which is ready, I think, is this one in here, which is a really good size room with a little bonus bit over there. And we've boxed that one in already. So, this is actually all set. We're going to get it taped up over the weekend.

[00:07:52]This is probably not the most fun the plaster is ever going to have, but we're going to skim that in there as well. So, it's all going to be a full skin. Um, and we're not going to go with tape and joint in the ceiling now. I think it's going to be a better finish, bit more durable, and actually not huge costsaving. And then as you work through this way, going to leave the hallway till last up on the landing.

[00:08:16]Uh, we've got some moisture board here.

[00:08:18]Now, we are using that on ceilings and any non-tiled walls. And we're going to sort our tile back up for the rest of the bathrooms. So, into the master bedroom. All getting quite exciting in here. Now, the least exciting part was the wardrobe. Um, which is going to have some nice lighting in there. Uh, and then into the big room, which is here.

[00:08:41]So, this is the first of the Veilux windows with its flared opening that we've done. I think it's turned out quite nice. So, we we've managed to flare it on both sides and the bottom, but because of where the pings are, this one comes it's perpendicular to the the window frame, but it still kind of comes down on an angle. So, that just means we've got a fairly nice opening up there, central to the room. So, ceiling's done.

[00:09:08]We've got that wall done over there.

[00:09:10]We've blocked out the steel up there, so we can do a bit of a feature beam. Now, around the rest of the building, we've done a few odd bits. So we've boarded the other side of the stud wall there.

[00:09:19]So that's actually the loft space all the way along there. So it's partly safety just to make sure that nothing can fall down through the stud wall for now. But also it's just a nice clean surface the other side. We're not going to skim it. We're just going to leave it as it is. But it's nice to have that than just open studs and it gives us something to insulate against. So when we board that wall, we can fit our uh sort of acoustic insulation in there.

[00:09:44]But more exciting progress this week is that we've got people actually on site doing stuff far quicker than we would.

[00:09:51]So we've got uh Jamie doing some plumbing and that is coincided with James coming out to do some electrics for the solar outside and finishing off the last bits in here. So we're first fix is done now on electrics which means we can board all the way through apart from some more networking cables I've still got to run. Um, but Jamie's downstairs. He's running some of the waste pipe in. And although we haven't done a really precise layout, we have got some of the bathroom bits. So, the soil pipe and the waist pipe here for the basin and everything below here ready for a shower tray is kind of within the areas we need it. Again, it means we can start thinking about boarding up the ceilings from underside of uh of these joists. The one thing I need to order still is pipe work and uh fittings for the two vent pipes that are going through the roof. So, we've made sure we've got the two where we need them on the two runs that go out of the building. Uh but we just haven't quite decided where we're going to carry it on up in 110 or we could drop it to 75, which might be preferable. Uh it also means we can insulate around it a little bit easier and it's less cut out of this roof. Uh so that's all that has to happen up here plumbing wise for the waste. Now on the supplies that are coming through to the bathrooms, we have decided on the secondary return. A lot of people were giving us feedback on that previously. So we're going to go with our main cylind cylinder down in the plant room. secondary return which will supply the uh two bathrooms upstairs and the two uh sort of WC and cloak room bits downstairs on this end of the building. And then the ones adjacent to the plant room, they can be direct fed and then all we've got then is a simple one that goes straight to the kitchen and back. So there won't be any remote water heating, which was one consideration. It just makes sense for us to keep it nice and simple, have controlled pumps, all really well insulated, and go that route and then just less things to go wrong hopefully.

[00:11:59]But, uh, that's the route we've decided on, and that's all lined up now. So, plumbers's going to do the the runs and then, uh, the airsource heat pump company are going to come in and do all the controls and the connecting up in the plant room. Now outside, Tom and I have also been jumping. It's been like a variety show this week. We've been jumping around doing uh the cladding on this end. That's all had to be done off the tower, which has not been easy. And we still got a bit of sorting out to do there and riveting on the joints. But it's nice to at least start that. But the rest of it's going to have to wait until that scaffolding's down and then we can work further along. chickens dead.

[00:12:41]Think this pH is better than those ps.

[00:12:45]>> Oh, I see why you needed a bigger box.

[00:12:47]>> Yeah. Okay. You need that in swoop.

[00:12:50]>> Yeah.

[00:12:54]>> I don't really know what that's all about. Uh but it's happening and it needed to happen. I think just because every time you join these 35 mil cables are just massive and they've got all the shielding around them and you got to strip all that back. But when you're trying to join all those and then send off cable elsewhere, you've got to have that whole enclosure. So I really haven't factored in that. I was just assuming it was just going to be a consuming unit stupidly. Um, so it's going to be a little bit of argui tomorrow with the battery installers to make sure they can either slim down their installation space or we have to just bump everything across. But it had to be what it had to be. Right, we're down to the next challenge of the day, which is fix a bit of plywood to the wall, which we're failing at miserably, but once it's on, uh, this is going to be our board that we're going to try and relocate bits to in the future. and then also install the new solar gateway next week. But there's a mixture of redundant bits, new bits that James did when we moved here, and then a stupidly positioned meter, which we really need to get changed, but no one wants to touch it. Uh, which is not helping anyone. So, in summary, not a huge amount on the YouTube front, I have to admit, but there is a huge amount going on back here on site on the farm, and I can't wait to share it all with you.

[00:14:17]Loads of stuff filmed, drone footage, different episodes, the panels going up, all the cabling, the wiring, the batteries, some additional work we've had done uh by James. And also, of course, we now starting on a load of the plumbing internally. And once I've got a rigle on and sorted out my last bits of cabling, that means we can get the place boarded. We can start getting walls skimmed, decorated. We've got to start polishing and finishing the concrete, polished floor. Oh, it's all going to get rather exciting. But another huge leap forward is we've ordered the kitchen, but not without its hurdles.

[00:14:52]So, a future video in the next week or so is going to be all about ordering our kitchen and why I turned into a grumpy old man. I'll leave it there. Thanks for watching. Remember, if you can do it yourself and we'll see you next time.