Renovating a Gite in Brittany

I've made a good start on the insulation. I really hope this stuff works because every morning this week it's been at least -3^oC and not got much warmer during the day. A bucket or water in the house had even frozen over. Brrr.

The insulation was fairly easy to put up providing you have a reliable staple gun. The cheap stapler I originally bought ended up in the bin. It's a real pain balanced up on a platform in the rafters with one had free and then the staple gun jams or mis-fires. New staple gun in hand and things were a lot easier. The insulation is fixed to the rafters, which leaves an air gap between the tiles and the insulation. Around each of the A-frames and purlins I've put metal tracks to take the supports for the plasterboard.

I quite liked this insulation compared to rockwool, even though it's more expensive, there none of the horrible dust and fibres and it's much thinner so more of the old carpentry gets exposed.

One side upstairs complete, now on to the other.

The septic tanks and all the various bits of pipework outside etc. have been backfilled and the ground levelled out.

Last week we started work upstairs cleaning and treating the beams and floorboards. All the beams, a-frames, purlins etc. were dusted and swept through to remove any loose muck and dust, then all the exposed timberwork was washed and cleaned with water and sponges to remove any dirt. All the timber was then spayed with a couple of coats of multi-purpose woodworm/beetle treatment. There was a little infestation in places but nothing too much to worry about. It's worth doing as a preventative measure and it helped to bring the wood, which is going to be exposed, back to 'life'.

I've bought loads of insulation to start lining the roofspace. In the past I've just used 100mm or 200mm thick glasswool or rockwool behind the plasterboard, however this time I'm leaving both the purlins and the A-frames exposed and there isn't the room for thick insulation. It's a bit more expensive (about 2 to 3 times more) but I've got a multi-layer thin reflective insulation. In my case it's got 14 layers of insulation, silver reflective sheets and other stuff. It's only about 25mm thick but has the same R-value (insulation) as 200mm glasswool. It's easy to install via a staple gun to the rafters and doesn't have all that horrible dust and fibres of traditional insulation. It is necessary to leave a 2cm air gap between the roof tiles on one side of the insulation and 2cm on the other between the plasterboard.

It all looks very space-age and shiny. I'll have to see how it works out.

brittany renovation

Picked up the floor compactor (plaque vibrante) this morning from the hire shop. They are doing well from me at the moment. It's just a small petrol driven machine with a vibrating plate. I've used one before for laying block paving and it's about 40 euros a day to hire.

Before starting work this morning to cover the soil pipes installed last week we had to order the concrete mixer. We ordered six cubic meters of ready mixed concrete (béton prêt à l’emploi) along with an attached conveyor belt to get the concrete to the far side of the room. The guy at the shop suggested a concrete mix with a slightly smaller gravel mix to get a better finish as I intend to tile straight on top of the concrete floor. The concrete also has a retardant to slow the drying process down to give us time to move it about and get everything level before setting. The whole lot came to 980 euros, a bit more than I expected, but I'm not mixing by hand. So, 6 m³ should be enough for 60 m² at a 10cm depth.

Concrete ordered and the rest of the day was to cover the soil pipes with the extra hardcore ordered last week. To save a delivery charge I also ordered 7 tonnes of grey unwashed sand along with the hardcore in the same lorry. As it turns out it was very lucky I did cos after running the compactor over the hardcore it compressed so much that we ended up shovelling in the extra 7 tonnes of hardcore and then added a layer of about 4 tonnes of sand on top.

We are both bushed having now shifted over 25 tonnes of sand and gravel. Tomorrow it the DPC (damp proof course) and insulation.

BTW – If you got here from google using the search terms hardcore and vibrator, then sorry.