Week 18: 24 - 30 October

Oct. 30, 2022

Not much has changed in the basement/garage this week but you can see that every time we come, more pipes are running down into the basement technical room.

I took this picture specifically to show exactly how much structure there will be between the concrete and the actual flooring that we walk on. This is the bottom of normal, albeit very large sliding glass door. From the bottom of the frame to the concrete floor below is roughly one foot. When the house is done, the actual flooring will be almost level with the slider that the door is on. So somehow after all the plumbing is done, they’re still going to need to build some sort of structure for the flooring to sit on. Personally, I’m really interested to see how they build it out. Some sort of wood frame, maybe with plywood over the top? Based on my knowledge of US building, that’s what I would assume, but I’m often wrong over here!

This is another view of all of the water lines that they are running for everything in the house. I was really amazed to see that they are all together and how high they are off the ground. I think this was really the first time that I realised exactly how much of a space there will be between the concrete and the final floor.

This is another view of the same set of pipes going to the basement. You can get a better idea for the height in that there are places with 3 pipes stacked on top of each other and the central vac pipe too.

This is the downstairs toilet flushing mechanism. Unlike in US where toilets usually include the tank and flushing mechanism, here they do not. Here this mechanism is behind the wall and there are two buttons on the wall for flushing. It is completely standard (probably required by EU regulations) to have a low-water and high-water flush which obviously means that less water is used. Later, the toilet is attached directly to the wall. It’s actually only a toilet bowl.

The downstairs shower is plumbed, drain pipe is in and drywall is in place for the shower stall.

Back upstairs on the landing again, where you can see into the bathroom.

Last time, they were running the pipes in the walls but today that’s all done and the dry wall is up. You can easier see where the hot and cold water pipes will be for each sink and the drain.

These pipes are for the water that will go to the bathtub. There will be a low wall behind them that the faucet will be mounted to which is why they seem to come up in the middle of empty space.

There is more progress in the upstairs toilet-bathroom. When we were there on Saturday, they were actively working on it.

A view of the piping for the upstairs bathroom from the kitchen.

Back in my office/sewing room looking toward the landing.

And finally, our bedroom where not much has changed.