Floor damp-proofing and insulation

Now that the house is essentially dry, the flooring can be started.

Base layer of sand across the whole floor

Base layer of sand for the whole house interior

Stud walls protected from damp with plastic sheeting

Floor insulation sheets cut to size as required

Floor insulation in the living room

Floor insulation in the dining room / kitchen

Floor insulation in the bedroom and en-suite bathroom

Floor insulation in the en-suite bathroom

To date, it's only been the oversite concrete floor which has been visible inside the house. All the internal scaffolding has been sitting on this surface, while the roof was erected, and the studwork for the partition walls sit directly onto this surface too.

The next step is to bring the floor up to the actual finished level, which involves a number of layers on top of the oversite.

Firstly there is an evenly spread layer of sand, which covers the whole house. On top of that, the 100mm foam insulation sheets have been placed - mostly as whole sheets but then with the remaining shapes cut to size as required. There have been two huge piles of the insulation sheets in the garden for a couple of days, but it didn't take long for the guys to work their way through these, to get them into the house.

With the whole house now insulated - like it's wrapped in a big warm blanket - you can definitely notice an immediate difference to the temperature inside, especially after the sun has been shining through the big front windows during the afternoon.

On top of that, the sound doesn't echo as much inside, so it even sounds like more like a home too.

Walking around on top of the insulation sheets, is quite a bouncey experience, although the next stage for the floor is to fit the underfloor heating and screed over the top. It feels like things are starting to speed up now and we're picking up some momentum.