Plumbing: More 1st fix and more boarding

Still boarding... (sigh)

We had to finish all the plumbing before we could board the utility room & WC on the ground floor. Although most of the pipework had been fitted months ago, there were some changes we needed to make to the plumbing before finally burying it in the wall.

Boarding the WC was relatively straightforward, although as usual we did have to take apart the doorway in order to fit sheets of Fermacell into the room.





There was no point boarding around the toilet cistern yet, as we would have to remove it in order to fit the heat pump pipework, but we were able to board around the toilet window.

After what seemed like an eternity boarding with Fermacell, we became very well practised at cutting out windows.





All that untidy silver-foil around the windows will eventually be covered up with Fermacell (oh goody, more boarding) but we decided to put off doing all the window reveals until last. We are pretty tight on materials so rather than cut into any full sheets of Fermacell, we have been saving up all the off-cuts for boarding these small areas. Also, we really haven't figured out how on earth we are going to fix boards neatly around those twisted metal straps that hold the windows in place yet! Sadly there doesn't appear to be a guidebook for building houses so we often have to come up with solutions to problems on our own...

Before boarding the utility room, we needed to address the issues with the pipework. The main supply from the borehole (the blue pipe pictured on the right) had been installed temporarily to a standpipe so that we could get fresh drinking water, but this would now have to be removed so that we could connect to the main network of pipes in the house. Alan had never been happy with the main supply pipes originally installed by the plumber (the grey pipes) so yet again he decided to rip them all out and do them himself.

Alan's new main supply pipe taking shape; it goes around the room and through the wall to where the water cylinder will be sited. With the heat pump and water cylinder now scheduled for installation, we needed to make sure that the water supply was 'live'. That also meant we had to remove the temporary tap and install a stopcock in its place, but since we get all our drinking water from that standpipe we would need to find a new location for a tap...

... and here's the perfect location. Rather than install another temporary tap indoors, we decided to fit an outside tap. We wanted to install a permanent tap for the garden and this way, we could still have access to clean drinking water. On the downside, we'd still have to fill bottles of water every day, in all weather, until the house is habitable.

Alan drilled a hole through the wall and lined it with a section of plastic pipe to use as a conduit.

Next he fitted the pipework inside the conduit and a brass collar to the wall.

And lastly the tap itself. The site inspector was on hand to supervise proceedings but seemed distinctly underwhelmed.

To complicate matters slightly, the section of pipe that would feed the outside tap would not be live until the water cylinder was fitted, so Alan decided to put in a temporary pipe 'bypass' that we could easily replace with a drain valve later.

After shutting off the water supply from the borehole, Alan fitted a new stopcock. With the pipework complete, we could finally get on with the boarding.

The main stopcock needs to be accessible so this section of pipework is outside of the boarding and will eventually sit within a kitchen cupboard. From there, we'll also be able to isolate the outside tap (to prevent it freezing in winter). Alan also fitted a non-return valve to stop any dirt or bugs from the garden finding their way back into our main water supply.

The temporary pipe 'bypass' sitting alongside the pipe to which it will eventually be permanently connected.

Boarding the rest of the utility room wasn't too bad. As long as we didn't accidentally drive any screws straight through any of the pipes that lurked below (we didn't).

More pipes, more back boxes, more cutting out.

We decided not to board this section of the utility wall until the heating engineer had finished, just in case he needed to change any of the pipes (he did...)

Here's the other side of the same wall that will eventually make up the cupboard under the stairs. This is where the water cylinder is going to be fitted, so we needed to get the whole area ready before the rapidly-approaching installation date.  

The first job was to make up a stud wall that would act as the back of the cupboard. 

As usual, we didn't have any plans to work from so it took a bit of time to work out exactly where everything was going to be sited and how it would all fit together.

The other side of the wall is going to be an alcove for the kitchen fridge-freezer.

Once the boarding was up it started looking more like a cupboard.

The finished boarding for the cupboard under the stairs. We didn't fancy trying to paint around the heating cylinder and pipework after it had been fitted, so decided to completely finish and paint the cupboard walls before the installation date.

Having to get the area prepared for a deadline proved very useful as it allowed us to practice the finishing processes required for Fermacell board in a cupboard (where no-one will see any of our mistakes!)

Filling the joints between the boards and screwholes with the Fermacell jointing compound took little a bit of practice, but Alan's plastering course helped with that.

Once the joints were dry, we sanded them down and the walls were ready for the Fermacell FST (Fine Surface Treatment). This is a smooth filler that you spread over the walls with a trowel, then scrape off to leave an ultra-thin layer that acts as a skim coat. It took several attempts (and much swearing) to work out exactly how much we should be troweling on and scraping off, but eventually we found a method that seemed to work.

The picture below shows the wall after we had covered it with FST. We were quite amazed to see that all the joints were completely concealed, especially as the light from that window right against the wall would show up any imperfections.

The last job was to add a couple of coats of paint.

The 'cupboard under the stairs' painted and ready for the water cylinder.