Progress! More insulation in, now up to first floor window height.
Also the batton is fitted to the existing house wall to carry the floor joists for the upstairs rooms. With the help of Barrie we set pads on the wall at the right height to make it easier to hold the 195x45 timber up agaonst it. Next day with the help of Colin and Barrie agsin the batypn ent up first with hammer in fixings then resin anchors.
now need to work out the height of the joist hangers on the other side which course in with the block work on a row of bricks. We felt that the blocks would be too soft and would wear if there was any expansion and contraction of the metal hangers.

Slow progress slow due to recent poor weather but progress nonetheless! The outside walls are now this height,

Only 2 courses away from fitting the next batch of insulation, got the kids to load up 100 bricks! Nothing like a bit of child labour!

Hopefully Monday will be dry and I can put the bricks down and get the insulation ordered along with a couple of lintles for above the windows!

The photos I forgot to add! Here they are just to jeep it a true and accurate record!

Wall starter strip in place, they give you 6coach screws for 2 strips at 1.2m! I recon its nowhere near enough so bought a load of stainless steel coach screws and put 6 in each strip!

 

With the scaffolding getting higher,

It was getting a bit doddgy swinging from ladder to boards so have manufactued a landing platform with a couple of hopups and boards

Scaffolding was still a bit wobbly so went this morning and got more poles and clamps.  The trick would seem to be to make triangles, it is now significantly steadier.

Have cut a load of bricks for the corner, enough to get me to the top I think. And have built corners three courses. Will need to point one bit of the wall still over hand due to proximity to a tree.

Got the laser out to check levels and am about 5mm high at the back corner, not a bad tolerance over 12m !

Have now bricked outer skin to 150mm above the steel veam which will form the valley in the single storie roof. Have moved the scaffold platform up a peg and it has gecome quite wobbly! The solution would appear to be to build another tower to the side of the scaffolding and brace the two together.
Went and got some more scaffold legs and ledgers

No wonder my car is falling to bits!

Location of additional tower

The steel is up!

these are the 2 beams which carry the upstairs back wall, inserted into the existing house onto the pad stones. each beam bears on both pads. The hole is also bricked up though too dark to photograph it!

The pad stones which will carry the steel beams which will support the back wall of the 1st floor extension now in place. Had to cut out a corner of the house to put them in! I did it in 2 stages, first the inner skin by cutting access on both the side and back of existing building, leaving one brick of the corner intact.  Then placed pad stone and bricked up back of the house again, next day, took out the one brick at the corner thus only digging in 100mm to the corner so the outer skin pad stone could be placed. Steel is ordered and should arrive this week. Once it is in place I can get on with more bricks! Will soon need to go up another lift with the scaffolding!

two 100x150x600 pad stones installed at corner of existing building

one 100x150x900 pad stone installed on new blockwork wall.