13 tonnes of aggregate had to be moved from our front drive, via wheel barrow, up the garden into the hole to provide the foundation.
Mains drainage - quick tip - getting the digger to dig the holes you need is a better bet - I forgot so had to dig this one manually along with all the other drains upstream from here! These are of course the soil pipes for the toilet that was going in because there was no way I was going to be drinking beer and then legging it down to the house every 5 minutes!
Concrete shuttering added and levelled for the main structure. You can see the trench drains and pipework that are critical to the floor drainage. The main brewhouse is constructed as a wet room.
Levelling the area with sand. Also gives a good view of the trench drains. These are stainless steel wet room drains not brewery trench drains. It was a risk as we didn't know for sure these would be adequate but they are great! You can also see the DPM (Damp proof membrane) here that doubled as a rain cover until it was laid.
Celotex insulation going down on top of the blinding (sand). Getting the building well insulated would pay dividends in maintaining consistent temperatures for fermentation and conditioning so we put it in the floor as well.
The slope to the trench drains was created by levelling from the earlier level section to the drain. I used left over pipe from the foul water drains cut into sections to lay the trench drains on. This enabled me to set the height of them precisely to achieve a 2% slope
The concrete was smoothed always working from the level higher sections towards the trench drains. Paul regretted this later when the lime from the concrete burnt into his knees. Very painful!
The completed base with sloping floors in the brewhouse and conditioning room.
The layout of the internal walls was tested along with the location of the main brewhouse equipment to ensure room sizes were correct.
In the foreground you can see the mains water pipe entering the building, the foul water stub stack and connection pipe for the toilet.
In order to ensure the frame would not get wet when the floors were sprayed and vessels emptied I built a brick course of engineering bricks. Never laid a brick in my life but then I was ticking off lots of firsts!
Here you can see me checking the position of the toilet...
In order to ensure the frame would not move in high winds we fixed each frame to the concrete floor with metal 'straps'. My DIY drill barely made any impression on the concrete so I borrowed an SDS hammer drill. Thanks Colin!
The insulation in the roof was laid on top of a layer of OSB3 sheets. a final layer of OSB3 sheet was then laid on top. This had the advantage of ensuring the roof cavity within the building was available for all the electrics.
The roof was covered with a single sheet of rubber membrane that was glued to the OSB sheet. The sheet was too heavy to lift up so we had to construct a ramp with movable chock and drag it up in stages.
The walls were then sheaved in OSB3 and covered in a breathable membrane.
It was by now July 2019.
The next stage on the building was to fix battons to the sheaving. I wanted to fix the cladding vertically so the battons needed to run horizontally.
I chose Western Red Cedar for the cladding on the front but British Cedar for sides and rear. Whilst the Western Red is more dense, durable and beautiful, it is a lot more expensive so this was a good compromise of looks and cost.
The doors and windows were sourced locally from Steve Watts. They are all double glazed to ensure minimal heating/cooling costs.
With the brewhouse being a wet room the electrics needed to be IP65 rated. Time to call in an electrician.
Each of our boilers is powered by two 5.5Kw elements hence the dedicated circuits.
We wanted the walls to be plastered so next major job was to get the plaster board up. I used moisture resistant in the brew house. Note also, it does not go down to the floor. The floors get wet and I did not want the plaster board bases sitting in water, however brief
Time to then call in the plasterers. Thanks to Anthony and Adam for this! They also rendered the area between the base of the plasterboard and concrete floor in a concrete render.
