Mandy Knebel's Journey

 Hi everybody As I said in the last blog, something else did not go to plan last week... with all the MAXRaft in and the pipes for underfloor laid, Gav started to go over the MAXRaft steel plans for the foundation, he quickly noticed that there was  a difference in the plan from the MAXRaft Insulaton plan to the Steel plan and there was what looked to be some bracing insulation missed. So another call to MAXRaft to find all the engineers were on annual leave that Friday but luckily the lady who delt with my call pulled up the file and agreed there was definately something wrong with the map they sent us to piece together the precut insulation. The office lady said she would sort it and get back to us... Meanwhile I am quietly freaking out as deep down I know the piping would have to be lifted up the polystyrene taken out and replaced in that part, as we have an inspection booked! MAXRaft got back to us pretty quickly with the new map and we managed to just raise the piping eno...

 So the whole idea of doing this blog is to share this building experiance, the whole experiance so all the good things the bits going well and also the difficulties and the bits not going quite so well or not to the plan.. So todays blog is me being completely honest and letting you all know what has happened this last week...not quite so good and definately not to plan! We were so pleased with ourselves MAXRaft Insulation done, underfloor heating pipe fit out done... The pipe fit out was what this blog was supposed to be about and it is to a degree.. So Ed the guy turned up nice and early on the day for fit out of the underfloor pipes, all the piping here (delivered the week before) we had agreed with Ed to hire his main tools for the job like the big stapler and the spinning jenny for pipes ect and obviously pay his time and travel (he lives a few hours away). Gav and Ed worked on the pipes while I carried on grooming dogs around the otherside of the property. Pic below is Pipe ...

 Good morning to my wee group of blog followers...  I don't think I have gone into why we chose MAXRaft for our foundation... I chose it because as far as I am aware it is the only fully insulated thermally brocken slab design available in NZ. It has a super high R value (4 to 4.5 R value) and it will save us shed loads in heating bills. It is not the cheapest way to do your concrete floor slab but for the extra cost (aprox 10% more) in my view its a no brainer. I did not want heat escaping out of my floor in my warm healthy energy efficient home so it was an obviouse choice. The way I look at it... compare it to yourself in winter, would you wear warm thermals and a jacket then go out in bare feet or jandals, no no no well I would not, I would be putting my wooley socks and boots on, so why would you insulate and watertight your walls and roof and not fully insulate your floor!  The pic below is a drone shot (thanks Gary) of the site with the freshly delivered MAXRaft in...