July 2010
1 post
Windows, Doors and Pressure Tests
Since our last blog, the fitting of our windows and external doors has been completed and, although they took a little longer to fit than first expected, they do look fantastic and mean that our envelope is now wind and watertight.
In terms of our Passive House standard, the windows and external doors play an extremely important role in the overall envelope, maintaining a fine balance of...
June 2010
1 post
Cladding
With the Timber frame essentially complete, the joinery team has begun the task of cladding the buildings. Due to the delay with the windows, we’ve had to carefully look at the sequencing of this as normally the windows would have been installed prior to any cladding works.
Our detail is for a build up of 50x50mm battens and 50x50mm counter battens which support a locally sourced horizontal...
May 2010
1 post
Timber Frame
It seems winter in Inverness might just be over and work on our Passive House is gathering pace.
The Spring snow did eventually clear and allow our groundworks team to complete the last of the substructure works. With the underground drainage now in place and a local Building Control inspection complete, the 200mm of under slab insulation was laid and the stepped concrete slabs poured.
In line...
April 2010
1 post
Substructure
Through 11 sets of road works along the A9 we finally made it to site last week to find that the weather had been a little kinder to our team at O’Brien Properties and, with all of our concrete strip founds in place and two thirds of our sub-structure walls complete, we could start to appreciate the scale of our terrace and its relationship to some of the other units on adjacent plots.
For the...
March 2010
2 posts
Our first site visit
Our first visit to the site since construction start was pretty encouraging. With some plots a hive of activity and with a number of timber frames going up, the shape of the expo community is finally becoming reality. Those who managed to get out of the ground before the snow and plummeting temperatures have managed to make some good progress although most of us who didn’t are finding things...
6 contractors, 5 months, 1 deadline
By Ross Barrett, HLM Architects
Since winning the RIAS competition in May 2007, nearly 30 architectural practices and design teams including ourselves at HLM Architects, have been working immensely hard with the Highland Housing Alliance to make the vision of Scotland’s Housing Expo a reality. Somewhat against the tide of the recent financial climate and even more recently the freezing winter...