and we are just starting to see the benefits of the hard work.
It seems such a short time ago that we started to dig a hole in the ground. In April 1996 to be precise. The weather looked better then and we were certainly lucky not to start building in April 1998. Although the progress is not as dramatic we still find it interesting to see the changes year on year, rather than the very gradual changes that it seems when you are living with it.
Just a few more pictures of the house and gardens (well it's almost safe to call them gardens). One of the things we didn't really calculate enough for was the cost of plants. Although we have bought close to 1000 bulbs and 100 plants it hardly looks as if we have anything in the Garden. I would like to thank a friend John Wells who helped by getting me 25kg of grass seed at trade price and to my employer at the time for making me redundant. Without their help I wouldn't have had the chance to do as much work on the outside.
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We havn't included interior photos only to preserve privacy. Since much of the interior is very much a personal choice and we do not live in a show house you will have to guess !
We have lived through 2 winters and the underfloor heating has worked very well, the house is kept at a comfortable temperature and it's really nice to stand on a stone floor in bear feet and not get cold! We have had a few failures (not too surprising) one of the automatic valves on the heating stopped working just outside it's warranty period, however Honeywell who made the unit replaced it at no charge (thank you). We have also had one pane of the double glazing fail, we are still waiting for the replacement. Considering that there are over 200 panes a failure rate of less than 1% is not unacceptable.
I would also like to thank the many people who have dropped an Email line to us over the last 18 months, and to those who are setting off on the aventure of self build I wish you the best of luck and if there is any information that I can provide please give drop me a line.