****EVH's house building thread****

[Deleted member 651465]

What gate you having EVH? What you going to do to the back garden?

A big one. Preferably silver.

Fair enough, PS3 can't get through the walls in my houses immediately disconnects, so I guess the PS3 would have to stay under the TV here!

I tested the remote distance in our old place (barn with thick walls), and it seemed fine so it could be your PS3, phat?

How did the build go overall ?

Currently arguing with my wife over this as i want our next house to be a self build. We watch a fair bit of telly and most of the programe's seem to convey the same message - everything will go wrong, you'll have to pay out for tons of things you didn't expect and you will go at least 15 % over budget even if you try your hardest not to.

Was your experience that bad ?

It went well. Really only had one problem on site.

Stay away from Grand Designs. It conveys a negative picture about building to a budget. I've seen episodes where they've overspent by £300,000!

In our case we set out with a hard and fast budget of £72,500 and we currently have £7004.38 left. That's not to say it's all gone without issue, there are certainly things you can't forsee (the biggest drain for us was all the council charges that appear from everywhere) but keeping on top of it will help as you go.

I've kept an excel spreadsheet that I'll publish when we complete, so I know exactly where it's gone but having the ability to check and say "yes, we can afford that" was invaluable.

What they do convey well is the stress. Building IS a nightmare. You will be expected to know the answer to every conceivable question, where you are a master architect, plumber, electrician and builder. My favourite was getting asked where exactly the toilets were going before the slab was laid, so they could put in the drains... Errrm... There? There's a wonder people have "things I'd change" lists, when this is the norm.

In this vein I'd say plan, plan, plan. If you can draw it or explain it make sure you know what you want before things get going. Most people waste money changing things after it's too late.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Thanks for the kind words

Planning application took 6 months (June 2009 - Jan 2010)
Build from demolish to moving took 11 months (Feb 2010 - Jan 2011).

Could have moved in sooner, but we needed to buy a lot from scratch.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Loving the updates EVH looking good

Just one question - without trying to sound like a pessimist what happens if the stream next to your house should ever overflow? It's something I'd worry about living so close to a stream!

The water is about 1m down, and never really gets bad, even when the rain is hammering down.

How was the council with you when you applied for permission to build there especially with that stream?

The council were dog slow in approving the designs. We had to get a bat survey, a ground survey, go through two sets of planning notice (first time they advertised it in the wrong place ), and then had to lower the roof height to get it approved.

They didn't really care about the stream, but it took 6 long months and we missed our window to build, hence why it took longer than normal.

Never seen this thread before and in some ways i'm glad i didn't as i would have hated to wait every week for new updates. But just spent the last 2 hours reading the last 7 pages and "WOW" is all i can say. A lot of hard work and effort has clearly paid off. And by the looks of things (especially in terms of outside) there's still a fair amount left to do.

I guess time is on your side though with summer and warm weather approaching. Would be the perfect time to get the outside completed.

Not sure if i came across you saying, but how much did you pay for the rack?

I paid about £350 for it. Not sure 100%, but you're right about the summer.

We hope to have it finished long before the BBQ season

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Why did you have to lower the roof height? The other houses around look taller.

Just realized something and noticed the white lines outside, no drive way or garage?

They didn't want our house more than 1m taller than the neighbours. Pathetic if you ask me, considering the neighbours overlook a bungalow, and as you mentioned there are other taller houses on the estate. Totally ruined my plans for a dedicated cinema

The drive will go down the side of the house. The plans are approved, so I'll go out with black paint if I have to. Besides the line doesn't go all the way across the boundary of the plot.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

More pictures of the walls..

Beginning to take down the front wall, to make way for the drive. The second pillar will sit to the right of where the footing is.

Here's the footing that we'll bridge (with some concrete lintels) in order to pave over, and make the drive.

Looking down under the road. No Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Here you can see the side wall take shape. Minimum width between the house and wall is 2.7m. Our neighbours drive is 2.2, to give some perspective.

Nice blue brick wall finished to the right of the garden steps.

Ground dug away for the steps.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Another load of boring updates

Re-inforcing steel lattice laid in driveway and concrete lintel now braced across the gap.

Building inspector seems happy with this solution. Rated to some crazy weight, so no worries about driving my pokey Fiesta across!

Has been filled with concrete since these were took, so I'll update with more progress soon.

Back wall now done. Quite a bit of earth to go in behind it, to level the garden though. Not looking forward to that.

Steps finished. Slabs are near identical the same colour as the house. Not my choice, but it does set it off nicely.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Hey guys. I've got some updates.. Will post pictures tomorrow if the weather permits.

@Dr House - looks good. Solid core is what you need, wouldnt say it's crucial to get low smoke zero halogen stuff but I did it anyway.

I think I used a shade over 1200m of CAT6 (iirc 4 boxes used totally and 1 partially used/spare) and that was because I was being liberal! I get comments from friends and visitors (mainly my mate the openreach engineer, that it looks like a mini exchange) I can't imagine what you'd do with 10 full boxes

For reference that's 2 48way patch panels, and a 16way for phones spread across 3 floors (if you include the roof/loft). Get 2 boxes and order more when you're running low. The stuff I got had length markings every foot, so you knew when you were almost out.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

We decided to get the block paving done now, and then get the drive done later on with Tarmac, to save a bit of money. Plus, there's no real need to do the whole drive in block paving.

A picture showing the final level of the block paving.

The blocks we went with are called "Pewter multi".

The guys work quickly. I literally left for work and came home to that

I think the finish really works well with the darker bricks of the house. You'll notice the path is sloped to accommodate a disabled access ramp.

The nice thing about having the sunken drain covers, is that they give a much cleaner finish. Yes, I am sad.

Day 2 of the blocking and they're pretty much finished to where I had originally planned. However, I decided to extend the paving around half the side of the house, so we had to get the compactor back and level more ground before the blocks could go down.

Before & After

You may notice the excess of earth in the previous picture.. that's to fill the dip behind the garden wall. Oh, the fun bank holidays I spent shovelling this lot. Not. Let it stand that I hate gardening.. I'd rather ***** my eyes out than spend 8hrs with a rake

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Joy of joys.. more gardening. You can see where I did 1 side of the path, and abandoned the other. We do intend on turfing them eventually, but I've slung some seed down, just so we don't look like ******.

Now we get to the fence.. really happy with how this has turned out. Just a shame money is tight so we couldn't replace the back fence at the same time.

The loose stone is there as a level sub-base, before the tarmac can be poured. You'll also see we edged the end of the garden with a row of blocks, to define where the driveway will be.

Tested, the drive will hold 3 cars, and comfortably fits my parents 4x4, so space isn't a problem.

Didn't have much time, so these low aperture shots will have to do

You can see how we stepped the fence up a level where the garden is. This is to stop the dog from leaping over it and paddling down the river like Steve Redgrave.

Just need to finish levelling the dip and I can call the garden done.

It's not like I haven't done gardening, see.. I backfilled the wall! yay!

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Turning the attention back to tech.. I've finally hung the TV in the master bedroom.

Samsung L32C530 32" LCD. I use the USB stick to play media. Currently going through South Park, seasons 1-15.

The slim swivel wallbracket I got off ebay works exceptionally well. Really only is a couple of inches off the wall, and in fact, you can see that I'm limited by the aerial lead, so it could go back another 1 or so, if I went with right angled connectors.

Full swivel in action. It never would get used at that angle, but just to show that there's plenty of scope if needed.

Haven't got the HDMI over CAT6 matrix yet, but I have 2 baluns that currently pipe the Freesat box to the TV, I just have to manually patch it up

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Gas pipe needs painting.

I know

The driveway confuses me, it looks like it'll hold 1 car? The wooden fence dividing it into your garden doesn't open?

But really nice finish!

It actually hold 3 cars, but you don't get the sense of depth on the pictures.

Think you need to go to specsavers.. There's clearly a gate on the right hand side, which I've shown close up and from behind haha.

Thanks for the kind word as always guys

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Building regs require disabled access, and this was the easiest way.

Wouldn't allow it around the back, or I would have had a step at the front and the ramp around back. It's all damp proofed anyway, so it won't be a problem

I mean yes, it has a person sized gate, but not a way to get a car right round the back?
But if out holds 3 cars then it's no problem! Dodgy pics tbh!

Why would I want a car around the back of my house? The drive holds 3 cars and there's enough room to park 3 cars across the front of the house if we get visitors. Not to mention we're at the end of a cul-de-sac, so potentially parking for another 10 cars+

It was never designed to have a car around the back. I planned to bring the drive from the road to the back garden wall, then halved the drive to give us additional patio space for seating etc.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

I haz updates!

Apologies for the delay since the last update. I think it's been worth the wait.

Kit list:

• 2x pair B&W CCM 65
• 4x pair B&W CCM 50
• Panasonic DMP-BDT310 bluray player
• KEF KHT-3005SE surround sound
• 2x pair KEF speaker stands
• Onkyo TN-SR609 av receiver

The Bluray player came with a free Star Wars: The Original Trilogy boxset, so that was a bonus!

In fact, I've bought the prequel trilogy and that has arrived today too

The living room and kitchen are 8x10m each, so I opted for larger speakers for these rooms. The B&W CCM 65 are in these rooms, and the CCM 50's are in all the other rooms except the bathroom and ensuite which have ebay waterproof cheapo speakers.

The red 'dog legs' on the back of the speaker is what keeps them from falling on your head. Just push them up in to the ceiling and screw them tight. The dog leg swings outward and clamps down on the plasterboard. Pretty simple mounting.

Being a perfectionist / someone with OCD, I just have to have the speakers aligned. Despite being hidden by a grille it would bug me! This is where my trusty laser line comes in handy. I squared the level up with the back wall (which is also square) to create a perfect 90 degree angle, then just lined the line up with the centre of the hole I'd cut and violá!

A picture showing the flush mounted grille

Here are some pictures of the upstairs. I have actually mounted the speakers now, but these are just some "in progress" shots, as I'd forgotten to take some of the downstairs in my excitement. I chose to orientate the speakers according to where the beds are in the rooms, so when laying in bed you get the left speaker on the left etc

What do you do as a job anyway EVH?

Health & Safety Officer

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Your house is seriously a geeks wet dream, loving the update.

Thanks. I have an understanding wife!

Anyway, here's some shots of the surround sound system and a little explanation of the IR control which I know some are interested in.

Bought this box from a company I've used a lot on the build; Keene.

I've tried to catch everything in this one shot, but I'll explain anyway.

The ceilings are fitted with IR receivers which connect via cat6 back to the patch panel. Out of the patch port, the cat6 then converts to an IR 3.5mm lead with a dongle, and goes straight in to any input on the commander. From the commander, the IR signal is output to any 1 of 8 IR emitters which are stuck to the face of each piece of equipment in the rack (Freesat shown here).

Simples.

I've tried to keep everything as minimal as possible, but I chose not to wall mount the front speakers, as it would involve a) plastering over existing speaker socket b) fishing wire up the wall c) mounting the speakers.

To be honest I thought about it hard, but if I ever change the eggs, then I don't want it to be a big job. The ceiling speakers act as my front height / rear surround speakers if I want 7.1

Also shown, which might not be obvious is how I mounted the centre speaker. When I first set it up I placed it on the white table below, but disaster.. it was too small to block the speaker socket behind.

I got around that by mounting it to the wall.. here's the genius bit though.. the mounting holes were exactly 53mm wide, which incidentally is the width of the screw terminals on the backbox. So, I just took the front faceplate off the socket, left the screws in the backbox and slid the centre on! job done!

Hope you've enjoyed it all so far, next update will be the HD over cat6.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Last update for a while, thankfully the tech is now complete, minus the multiroom audio (see below)

This is a shot of behind the main TV. Every TV location in the house has 4 Cat6, 2 of which are dedicated for HDMI over Cat6 baluns. 2 for regular ethernet. The balun is powered at the receiver end, as you can see from the red and blue glow. Red = power, Blue = HDMI sync

You are meant to crimp the Cat6 straight through, i.e. not use a wallplate or break in the connection as it will destroy the bandwidth of the signal. I seem to have no problems doing this, but if I were to recommend to someone then I would go via a brush faceplate and have straight cables.

This is the other end of the system. I've pulled out the Cat6 cable from the back of the patch panel, and crimped a RJ45 on the end of each run, as I don't want to run in to problems. It also stops me accidentally plugging those ports in to the network switch, which would be BAD.

A HDMI cable runs from the back of the Onkyo receiver, to this balun. You can send the HDMI cable to a distribution amp / HDMI matrix / splitter, before sending it out to the TVs, but that's for another day and let's just say the HDMI handshaking can get "interesting" when doing this.

I may pick up a small HDMI splitter so we can get the feed on the bedroom TV for the time being. It will mean we have to watch the same source in each room when doing this, but for the moment a full matrix is out of my budget.

This is a shot of the finished rack. All it needs now is the blanking plates to cover up the gaps between components, and I need to buy 8x Sonos ZP120's for the multiroom audio. If I move every component up, I'll have an 8U gap at the bottom for the multiroom audio, and that's still maintaining the 2U gap above the Onkyo amp. Plenty of room

Here it is, in all it's glory. From the top..

• 16 way patch panel (6 IR, 8 Phone extensions)
• 48 way patch panel (upstairs connections)
• 48 way patch panel (downstairs connections)
• Brush faceplate for network cable passthrough
• HP ProCurve 1810-24 gigabit network switch
• Apple AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi access point
• Billion 7800 ADSL modem @ 6496/1024kbps
• DroboPro NAS with 12.5TB storage
• Brush faceplate for coax cable passthrough
• 16 way coax patch panel (2 LNB, 1 Freeview, 1 DAB, 6 rooms)
• Humax Freesat HDR+ with 1TB HDD
• Pure DAB digital radio
• Apple Mac Mini as HTPC (running Plex)
• Sony Playstation 3
• Panasonic DMP-BDT310 bluray player
• Onkyo TXNR609 Black AV Receiver

Hope you've enjoyed reading the thread.

Update: Please see this post for an update kit list!
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=23724908&postcount=618

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Um yes, yes I have.
Epic thread, epic house and a lot of envy.

Thanks. I only did it as somewhere to document the build initially, but it's good to know people have enjoyed the process.

Where did you get your tiles (white rectangle) that you used on 1 wall in the bathroom please? And what size spacer did you use?

Bought them at Wickes, £9.99 per square meter. Not sure the size of the spacer.. at a guess 3mm?

 

[Deleted member 651465]

That’s quite an amazing setup.

How do you go about controlling everything when you have your components in a rack, surely not a pile of remote controls?

If you go back 2 posts, you'll see my IR commander, which routes all the IR from the receivers in the rooms to each device.

I have a Logitech Harmony One as my main remote, which is programmed in a "wife-friendly" way. I.e. Press 1 button to "Watch a film" and it switches the amp on, switches source to the BD player, turns the volume to a decent level and shuts off any other device which would likely be on, like the Freesat box.

IR receivers in the ceiling he mentioned I'd imagine. It's a truly epic setup. Wish I had the skills and funds for similar.

Thanks. I've saved a fortune doing it myself. If you can wire a RJ45 then you're halfway there. The rest can be found online or by calling the suppliers, as I've found they're always really technical in this industry.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Sweet mary poppins that looks good!

I stuck on Wall E last night, turned it up loud, and it was mind blowing.

Not only the audio quality from the 7.1, but the fact that everything is hidden away made it feel like a cinema

 

[Deleted member 651465]

You know there is a mod for the foxsat that allows you to chuck on ftp and other services, it might be quite helpful as you could plug in a cat 6 and stream recorded tv off it to front ends.

Oooooooo, care to post me in the right direction?

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Did you not want speakers built inside the walls or was it something you didn't think about until the build was finished?

Nice tidy job in the rack and have you added any cooling system for it I know from experience it will get very hot in there.

Last question hows the outside work going?

1) I was thinking about in-wall speakers long before the walls were built, but I would have lost 4 inches front and rear to accommodate them, so decided against it. Plus, the speakers I wanted were £800 each

2) No cooling system in the rack. As you can see from the pictures, everything is spaced with a minimum of 1u gap between components, with the exception of the Onkyo, which has 2u above. I've been toying with the idea of a cooling fan linked to the 12V trigger on the amp, so that when in use, the fan will come on but I've had the amp and ALL the kit on for 6hrs or so "stress" testing the system and it didn't get hot.. warm, but no warmer than previous systems I've used.

In fact, I used to install the sound systems for the UKs largest clubs, and we used to put 3 or 4 audio amps together in the racks and never had issues.

The front door is essentially open because of the pattern of the door, which is something I specifically chose (over a closed, glass door)

3) Front garden just needs to be turfed and it's all done. Oh, and I've started staining the fence around the side. Shall add pictures when it's done.