Building A House

Once you’ve gotten your planning permission it’s time to start building. Step one is clearing your site in preparation for your foundations. If you want to continue to save money on your building you can always clear the site yourself. All you need to do is hire a mini digger, probably a 5 ton or something similar. Basic driving of a mini digger is quite simple once you’ve spent half an hour playing with it it is very straight forward.

Clearing the site involves removing all trace of vegetation from the surrounding area of your build and storing the topsoil in an appropriate area where it isn’t in the way and can be re-leveled to create you lawn at the end of construction.

There are some areas of house building where you cannot skimp on the costs and one of these is that you will definitely need to hire a structural engineer. You cannot get house insurance unless you’re house has been sign off by an engineer and you cannot get a mortgage without house insurance.

The engineers first job is to inspect the ground conditions and decide on the type of foundations required. Normally this is a choice of 2 unless circumstances are out of the ordinary.

If the ground is solid then a strip foundation will suffice. This consists of digging the foundations to support all the supporting walls in the house. As a rule a strip foundation is normally 3 times as wide as the wall it supports. Eg. a standard 300mm cavity wall will normally have a 900 mm wide foundation, 300mm deep.

The other choice is a raft foundation which comes into play if the ground conditions are not quite as solid (your engineer will decide this) which consists of pouring concrete across the full expanse of the house, thus the name raft foundation as if provides stability by spreading the weight over a much larger area. Extra reinforcing steel is normally incorporated in areas where supporting walls are situated.

If, after clearing the site, you’ve become confident in the mini digger then you can dig the foundations yourself. As a rule the dig level should be approximately 1000mm below finished floor level unless ground conditions require it to be more. This 1000mm consists of the 300mm foundation thickness, 150mm standard concrete floor thickness, 75mm floor insulation and 450mm of block work (dead work) from top of foundation to underside of floor.

Once the foundation is dug the concrete should be poured on the same day if possible.

The dead work needs to be a minimum of 450mm to allow enough room to place your underfloor drainage pipes for downstairs toilets, sinks etc. It needs to be built of solid block work to transfer the weight of your supporting walls down to the foundations. This is where forward thinking comes into play. Based on your plans you need to decide where your underfloor drainage pipes need to be to get from your toilets etc. and out of the house and when you’ve decided you can leave openings in the dead work to allow the pipes to pass through.

Once your dead work is built and your drainage pipes are in place you can start to fill the areas (rooms) between the dead work walls. These areas can’t be filled with just anything, it needs to be a sold compactable material such as 50mm limestone (seek advice from your engineer) and compacted sufficiently.

Once up to underside of floor level it’s time to lay your Damp Proof Membrane (DPM) and Radon Barrier. This is essentially a roll of polythene which prevents moisture and toxic radon gases from emminating up through your floor into your house. It needs to be laid under the whole area of the floor and cut and sealed around all pipework.

Next you can lay your floor insulation (engineers specification) across the top of the DPM being careful to avoid putting it on top of dead work as this would render the dead work useless.

You are now almost ready to pour your floor. You need to get a plumber to lay all his water pipes for water feeds, radiators, gas pipes etc.

Once this is done you can set up your shutters and pour your floor, incorporating the appropriate reinforcement steel for strength. Float the finished concrete to a satisfactory standard and your done.

Next steps involve building your house from Floor level to Eaves.

How To Build A House | Home Building Movie

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