Garage Installation

As is quite common in Germany (and elsewhere now I think) we bought a so called fertiggarage, like a precast concrete thing which was delivered yesterday, 2nd April.

It was actually quite interesting too see how they do it.  First up here’s a pic of the house as it stands now, looks good I think.  Sat dish is never a nice addition, but I wanted it someone I can adjust if needed.

So, at about 13:05 yesterday (for a promised delivery between 11 and 13!) this truck turned up.

 

Its quite an interesting vehicle, specially designed to do the job of course.

First thing, the chap measured our foundations, basically they were shite.  The mong of a builder had done the heights wrong so they were pretty much level with each other, the front one should be lower than the back one so it doesn’t get flooded of course.  The drainage hole at the back is also wrongly positioned, but that’s not the end of the world.

To get it to the level he wanted he used some little plastic blocks, like shims.

 

Amazing to think that the garage will be forever be sat on those things!  Must be pretty strong.

Next thing the truck levelled itself on some hydraulic actuators.

 

Here it is all levelled;

The driver is connecting up the crane to the top of the garage (some temporary lifting hooks).

The crane thing has lots of little adjustment so it can carefully be shifted into place.  It took quite a long time.

Here’s a vid of some of it

Garage Delivery Video

He spent a lot of time checking the level and getting the position as close as posible.  Once complete he added the trims to fill the gap between the garage and the  house.

 

And the final thing…..

All fits pretty well!  Just need a driveway now eh!

 

Connected…………

As planned yesterday the Utilities were connected.  I popped by last night to see if it was done and it was, ideal!

This is the thing which runs through the wall into the cellar, called an MSA – Mehrspartenanschluss……

Blue pipe – water

Yellow pipe – gas

Thick cable – electricity

Thin cable – Telecoms…..

Also last night as I was there they were taking down the scaffolding finally.

Next up – installing the heating system.

January Update !

Wow, I just realised that I have notupdated this blog since November, a disgraceful performance for which Iapologise, although to be fair not a great deal has changed in that time.

Firstly the underpart of the Rendering is done.  This has not got any further due to the weather, they needa couple of days of dry warmish weather really.

Also all the plastering inside is finished. They did all the outside and inside in less than a week.

Just before Christmas the difficultbuilder finally finished the garage foundations.  He was given instructionsto leave some holes on one part so that the utilities can pass thru them. It will be interesting to see if he has done that, you can imaginejust for the sake of being difficult he maybe has not….. We will see.

That’s pretty much it to be honest,progress is pretty slow.  The project manager is still as uselessas ever, he needs constant reminding to his job otherwise he does f*ckall.  Very annoying.  I have taken to send him an email everyweek listing his outstanding actions.

We met the chap who will be supplyingthe staircase last week.  An interesting experience, the standardspecification is not the most stylish to be honest, its metal supportedwith beech (prob laminate) steps.  He had a catalogue in which heshowed us some other options, one of them we quite liked, however he wantedan extra 1200 euro for that option!  A 50% increase on the standardcost.  We had to be sensible, knowing it would never add any valueto the house we decided not to bother.  So we then asked him how muchto change the standard steel handrail for a wooden one….. 700€, againsod that.  The wife has some ideas of how to beautify the stairs alittle so I guess we will do that.

At the moment the first installationof the heating stuff is being done.  That’s scheduled to be finishednext Monday.  I’ll try and get some photos up of that.  Theyhope to be able to put the solar panel on the roof too, but that will beweather dependant.

After that, the screed will be goingdown and the inside can start to be completed.  I think when thathappens we will feel like we are actually getting somewhere.  Ourapartment is cancelled as of the end of march, so they need to get theiract together.  We actually have it in our contract that the buildshould have only taken 6 months (meaning end of December 2011), I thinkit would be in our interests to speak to a lawyer to see if we can getsome kind of reimbursement from the building company.

We will feel much happier actually whenthe utilities are connected, the project manager has supposedly been workingon that, the truth is tho all he needs to do is make a phone call whichseems to be beyond him.  I may pass that responsibility on to a friendwith better german language skills than me…..

Finished Render + Manual Labour

As you can imagine, with the screed drying not a great deal as happened in the last couple of weeks.  However on wednesday the grey part of the render was completed and the first part of the scaffold was taken down.

Looks pretty smart eh.

The scaffolding company are taking forever to get the stuff down.  They only did that side after threats from the proj manager of passing on costs to them.  This side has been taken down so that the utilities can be connected up this week!  That’s ideal as it means the heating can be installed and the house slowly start being dried out.

The manual labour part was only minor, but involved the wife and me actually doing something!

On Saturday morning we were up and out at 8.30am (On a saturday!!), a quick stop-off at the baumarkt to fill the 2006 Fiat Panda 100HP with this shite.

Obvioulsy with that kind of loading it lost some of its exhilerating performance!

An hour of work and we had the following temporary solution to the lack of enterance of the house.

 

A bit low really!, but hopefully its only going to be there for a couple of weeks.  We need to find a gardener really to carry out the work I have planned for the landscaping, thank fook its bonus month at work!

Other than that, all looks good, I did notice that withing the lightwells the bricks have not been plastered/rendered.

Hopefully this is the responsibility of the rendering company and not that bell-end of a builder who has caused us constant problems!

Backup accomodation has now been finalised… so the pressure is now off slightly to get finished.

Slow Progress …… A Common Theme

OK, so the shite weather has finally gone (for now) so some progress has been made.

Last wednesday the screed throughout the house was finally laid, which is good news as it means the drying process is finally underway so all the things dependant on that can be organised (badly of course with our proj manager).

 

Exciting pictures I know!

On Thursday and friday they added the topcoat onto the exterior render.

 

This is the stuff they used, stored here incase we ever need any more!

As you can see we were really adventurous with the colour choice!  Below that line it will be grey, I think it looks quite smart with those colours.

Other news, I was there with a friend on saturday boshing up the satelite dish.  That went pretty terribly, took ages to get the signal right, but in the end we had quite a strong feed, so that’s good.  Check out the style, looks shite but who cares.

The weather has really fucked us over, meaning sod all chance of getting in by the end of this month, received the updated timing plan overnight.

The delay isnt the end of the world, we have a backup we think following our impending homelessness on the 31st of march.  We need to make sure the garage is installed in time tho, we need the storage.

Nr	Description	Start	Finish
11	Drywall Installation 1	12/03/2012	16/03/2012
13	Dismantle Scaffolding	05/03/2012	07/03/2012
15	Drywall Installation 2	19/03/2012	23/03/2012
16	Heating System Installation	12/03/2012	14/03/2012
17	Final Installation – Electrics	19/03/2012	21/03/2012
18	Heating of the Screed	15/03/2012	30/03/2012
19	Wall Tile Fitting	19/03/2012	23/03/2012
20	Floor Tile Fitting	02/04/2012	05/04/2012
21	Painting	10/04/2012	13/04/2012
22	Interior Doors	16/04/2012	16/04/2012
23	Installing the Steps on the stairs	12/04/2012	12/04/2012
24	Hand over	17/04/2012	17/04/2012

February Update

What a frustrating few weeks since the last update.

Unfortunately here in south germany we have had freezing conditions, down to around -20ºC.  This has pretty much stopped any progress with the Screed.  All they have been able to do is put down the foam insulation which goes between the concrete floors and the screed.

Since the weekend the weather has been better, but the big pile of screed sitting outside the house is frozen solid so they can not continue until that has thawed.  They are going to try again on friday.

The only progress has been the stairs have been fitted between ground floor and first floor as has the handrail between the ground floor and cellar.

  

 

Not the most stylish things in the world.  But they will be painted and the temporary steps replaced with wood when everything else is finished. 

We have done a couple of bits and pieces our selves in that time.  We had to take down the scafolding in the stairwell ourselves as the company were bone idle and the stair folks would have charged us to do it.  Also have installed the cabling between the utility room in the cellar and the outside wall at the top of the house.  These 9 cables will carry the DVB-S (sattelite) & DVB-T (Terrestrial) TV signals from the dish/aerial to the multiswitch which will then distribute everything to the individual rooms, each room has at least one TV connection point.

It took about 4 hours all in, including drilling a big 50mm bore hole from the outside to the inside, which was fun.

As soon as the outside layer of render is applied I can put the dish up so that the house looks like it belongs on a UK council estate.

Heating / Plumbing First Fix

So…. Over the last couple of weeks the plumbing/heating chap has been doing his bit.  He seemed very slow, but has done what looks like a neat job, and as long as it works that’s all that we care about!

So first up the solar panel is up on the roof

All the tubing/piping etc runs through a shaft to the cellar room on the other side of the house thru a corner of the kitchen, in the following 2 photos you see the bundle in the cellar and also the kitchen.

 

The white pipe is the exhaust from the boiler

We will be having radiators in most rooms.   The piping for these runs along the floor, to some kind of distribution block and there are strange mount things plastered into the walls.  Never seen such a system before.

 

 

These last few pics are in the main bedroom upstairs.  In the bottom right photo you see the mount thing, although in this case it actually connects to something on the other side of the wall which you can see in the following photo.  That the basthroom upstairs;

This room has underfloor heating, and the radiator in this case will be a towel rail type thingy….

In the other plumbed rooms we have;

Ground floor WC

Sink/Basin connections closest to camera.  Shitter is furthest away.

Cellar Shower room;

 

Here the bog is mounted in the corner, to allow more room for the shower area.  The white placcy box is the macerator, which allows us to have such plumbing in the cellar.

Next up comes the Screed which should be being done this week!  We’ll see.

January 2012 Update – Putz

Wow, I just realised that I have not updated this blog since November, a disgraceful performance for which Iapologise, although to be fair not a great deal has changed in that time.

Firstly the underpart of the Rendering is done.  This has not got any further due to the weather, they needa couple of days of dry warmish weather really.

   

 

Also all the plastering inside is finished. They did all the outside and inside in less than a week.

   

 

 

Just before Christmas the difficult builder finally finished the garage foundations.  He was given instructionsto leave some holes on one part so that the utilities can pass thru them. It will be interesting to see if he has done that, you can imaginejust for the sake of being difficult he maybe has not….. We will see.

 

That’s pretty much it to be honest,progress is pretty slow.  The project manager is still as uselessas ever, he needs constant reminding to his job otherwise he does f*ckall.  Very annoying.  I have taken to send him an email everyweek listing his outstanding actions.

We met the chap who will be supplyingthe staircase last week.  An interesting experience, the standardspecification is not the most stylish to be honest, its metal supportedwith beech (prob laminate) steps.  He had a catalogue in which heshowed us some other options, one of them we quite liked, however he wantedan extra 1200 euro for that option!  A 50% increase on the standardcost.  We had to be sensible, knowing it would never add any valueto the house we decided not to bother.  So we then asked him how muchto change the standard steel handrail for a wooden one….. 700€, againsod that.  The wife has some ideas of how to beautify the stairs alittle so I guess we will do that.

At the moment the first installation of the heating stuff is being done.  That’s scheduled to be finishednext Monday.  I’ll try and get some photos up of that.  Theyhope to be able to put the solar panel on the roof too, but that will beweather dependant.

After that, the screed will be going down and the inside can start to be completed.  I think when thathappens we will feel like we are actually getting somewhere.  Ourapartment is cancelled as of the end of march, so they need to get theiract together.  We actually have it in our contract that the buildshould have only taken 6 months (meaning end of December 2011), I thinkit would be in our interests to speak to a lawyer to see if we can getsome kind of reimbursement from the building company.

We will feel much happier actually whenthe utilities are connected, the project manager has supposedly been workingon that, the truth is tho all he needs to do is make a phone call whichseems to be beyond him.  I may pass that responsibility on to a friend with better german language skills than me…..

First Fit Electrics + End of Rohrbau

Its been a while since the windows went in now and it feels like not much has happened.  The builder chap has been massively dragging his heels making pretty slow progress.  The main Building firm however have been working on this and promised us a financial solution will be made.  The problem however now is that our flat is cancelled from the end of January!  So they have to be finished by then in our opinion, if not we expect them to find accomodation for us!  We will see.

The builder chap sent a fantastic email to the project manager which I am tempted to translate and put up here….not sure tho.

Some of the work quality is not at the standard I would expect, check this out…..

A bit rough, I was clearly spotted photographing this though as it was repaired the next visit!

After the email to the project manager it was clear that they could no-longer work together, so our case has now been taken over the the chief project manager of the main builder company.  Very good from our side, he doesnt take any shite from the builder and there actually seemed to be some respect towards him! 

Anyway, we think his work is pretty much finished now, all the interior walls are in place, the windows in the cellar have been fitted and externally the waterproofing is completed and the installation of the light-shafts (is that the name?) is complete.  The cellar is actually pretty bright, so we are happy with that.

Here are some outside pics.

 

 

It seems odd that on the street side they have taken away the safety fence!  Hopefully that’s not going to be a problem, it was done without informing us.

You can spot in a few of those pics wires poking through the walls.  This is where we will have outside lights and also a plug socket on the terrace.  They are there of course because the first fit of the elctrics has been done in the last week.

Some more pics so you can see how its done here;

This one shows what we have on the wall typically.  The left most one I have added myself over the weekend as the quote from the electrician was ridiculously high tbh!

From left to right we have here,

Twin LAN (network) / Twin Sat TV / Plug socket / Plug Socker

We have added LAN & TV in both bedrooms on the top floor, the living room, the bedroom in cellar and also the hobby room in the cellar.  Of course they wont all be used but its much better than having to add them later.

The cables from these sockets are run along the floor;

These will be covered by the screed when it goes down eventually.  You can see where I have added cables, as neat as I could manage, but not ideal.

Where there is a light fitting planned we have this coming from the ceiling;

All the cables then run through a hole in the floor to the cellar;

These all finish in the utility room down there, here we will also position the Sat TV distributor and the network hardware.

Next stage is that both under coat of the render is being done this week (week 46) as is the internal plastering.

That difficult builder only has the Garage foundations left to do.

 

Windows in and potential progress……

This last week we have had a bit of progress in that the windows (mostly) have been fitted. 

These are a nice quality unit, all tilt and swing open (inwards which is a bit odd to us english but helps cleaning).  The big french windows on the back of the house all open which will be nice.  The big windows in the cellar let in loads of light, we were pleasantly surprised by that.  The smaller windows in the cellar are yet to be fitted, the rohrbau firm will fit those apparently.

 

 

 

The front door is just a temp one as its likely to get damaged during the build.

There is some progress regarding the ongoing discussion with the Rohrbau chappie.  In the last week I have been on copy of lots of emails between the proj manager and him.  Frankly after a while they both ended up looking like a pair of children and couldn’t even agree on when and where to meet.

Yesterday morning the builder contacted me directly asking if we could meet.  No problem, so I met him last night.  Seems he has no enthusiasm at all to have any more contact with the proj manager, not good.  Anyway, we went together through his bill with me pointing out what problems I had with certain things on the bill and what I accepted.  He seemed to accept some things but not others, I hope he will get back to me soon with a new proposal so we can see how it goes from there….

If we agree quickly he will work friday and saturday this week finishing the building off so we can continue with the rest.  We need to get the electrics roughly installed as the next stage.  The reason for that is that a few things will go outside, a couple of outside lights aswell as a plug socket for the terrace.  These need to be in place before the render can be applied.  We want to get that done v.quickly because the scaffolding contract means that after the end of OCT we have to start paying!