We are at that stage of the house where to the untrained eye nothing seems to be happening, but the house is being stuffed with wires, pipes and things to make the house “work”. Here is the foul waste pipe coming down from the upstairs bathroom, various electrical cables and mains feeds to the bathroom sinks etc. The plumbing is further complicated by the “grey water” system for the toilet flushing which will come from a header tank that the system’s pump will fill up. Once all these services are in place we can start fitting the ceilings and wall finishes. This will be a mixture of log siding on some of the internal stud walls, plasterboard on others, generally plasterboard on the ceilings but some tongue and groove in a few places too.

 It seems like a long time ago we were using a monster drill to create conduit routes for wiring in the log walls. Now it’s time to find all those routes and chop out recesses for sockets for light switches and 13amp sockets, pull the cable and leave it ready for the “second fix” when they will be fitted.

 There was just enough space in the eaves to fit the heat recovery and the comfort cooling units. The comfort cooling unit on the right re-cycles air in the room, passes it over a heat exchange matrix which uses the cold return feed from the heat pump to reduce the air temperature by about 7 degrees. So the return side of this has to be insulated (the sliver stuff). The heat recovery pipes only have to be insulated where it goes into “cold” spaces such between the rafters above the sheepswool insulation.

 Forwarned that organic matter could cause problems with our rainwater harvesting plans, we have another trick up our sleeves, or perhaps I should say down our pipes. We bought German zinc guttering for the house and this included a rainwater butt spout for each side of the house. So… if we do put any more nutrient or fertilizer on the roof in the future, we can divert the water to a butt for a few weeks whilst the fertilizer is absorbed into the plants as a precaution by opening the chute like this…..

 Vorsprung der technic I think!