Building of 4a Glenard Crescent

Our architect, Diarmuid Hynes, has set up his own company. Hynes Architectural Services: and a site: http://www.hynesarchitectural.vpweb.ie/ .

Heating all sorted now. My plumber installed a proper manifold in the attic that the old eejit of a plumber failed to do. It now works! As the weather is getting milder now, I have cut back on the running time by 2 hours. In the very cold weather, I ran it for 5 hours at night and it was enough to warm the ground floor all day. But on sunny days, it gets too warm and I have to open windows to cool it down! Even so, during the cold spell, it costs approx €2.50 per day to heat the whole house.

So far, the Mitsubishi Ecodan is a great success. There is still some fine tuning to be done (mainly due to the incompetance of my last plumber). The pump runs from 11pm until 8am every night. The high level of insulation provided by the ICF construction, plus the Pro-Air heat recovery system means that the house stays comfortably warm all day. Even at midnight, there is no noticable drop in temperature. It will take some fine tuning once the remaining issues are resolved.

Pavers are almost finished. Kevin Whelan is the paver and he does excellent work. Also, have a new plumber. Original plumber fired himself by not turning up after 4 weeks to fit final toilet. He was a disaster from start to finish. Cost us a fortune between delays and breaking things. I estimate that his mistakes / assumptions have cost us over €2000 so far. The new plumber, is however, the exact opposite. He understands solar and heat pumps and turns up when he says.

The day has finally arrived. We moved in on Friday. Excellent service from the removal company: Careline.

Getting close to moving in date! Stairs steps and banisters finished. Carpets arrive tomorrow. Plumber promises he will be fiinished tomorrow as well…. Gutters now complete as well… Decking started and should be finished by Monday.

The kitchen being assembled…

 And the granite worksurface installed….

www.notjustgranite.ie

The lads from NotJustGranite had just templated the kitchen worksurface. Should be installed next week. Block arrived yesterday for site boundary wall. Blocklayer started work today. 

Mains water has also been connected. 

ESB arrived today and conected the mains electricity. Still waiting on the water to be connected. Going to bay the heat pump and associated controls and water tanks today. The heat pump is a Mitsubishi Ecodan. Here is a review of it: 

http://www.wnibi.com/pages/PRdetail.aspx?articleId=19997

I’ve just finished building all the kitchen units. Will wait until they are in place before fitting the doors.