The external surfaces of our Beattie Passive house were wrapped in (bright yellow) Wraptite membrane but needed to be clad to make them completely weather-proof. We have chosen to use a board from Cladco that is a mixture of recycled plastic and timber.
We started on the garage. The cladding boards were screwed to wooden battens. We want to used a mix of vertical boards in anthracite grey and horizontal boards in cream. The vertical boards needed cross-battening.
The boards went up quite quickly on long runs like this - the cladding was easy to cut and fix (don't over-tighten the screws).
It was a bit more tricky to fit the overlapping corner trims where the garage walls deviated from vertical.
Very pleased with the finish but a little apprehensive at the prospect of cladding all of the remaining walls of the house.
We have also had our first fix electrics installed by Tommy Cushing of TC Electrical. We spent a few hours thinking through the circuits, sockets, lights and switches that we needed and gave the team of 2 electricians a "dossier" of our requirements.
Our groundworker - James Turner of Norfolk Property Services - came back for 3 days for a final phase of digging. First task was to excavate a hole for our 7500 litre rainwater harvesting tank - we plan to catch water from the roof and use it to water the garden, flush the loo and supply the washing machine.
James' team, reinforced by the electricians, managed to pick up the tank using the digger and lower it expertly, getting the size of the hole right first time.
Ready to connnect up and backfill.
Finally, James installed our sewage pumping station. We are joining on to an existing sewer but don't have enough fall in the land to drain using gravity.
