Bespoke build
This is probably our most detailed project to date, the construction of what will be a a Luxury Pub Cabin. The Cabin itself is from Dunster House. We have built several units from this particular supplier and whilst they are one of the more expensive suppliers out there, we can say hand on heart at worst only had minor issues with built their flat packed structures.
We are the second contractors on-site and inherited what you see in the first picture. New fences with concrete posts and kick-boards and a concrete base for the cabin.
On the delivery day, we assisted the delivery driver in with the timbers and meticulously counted the timbers in and ensure we had a 'full house' of components. Soon after we stated assessing the concrete and the services which had already been put in place.
We discovered pretty early on that there was a construction issue with the concrete base. It was pooling water in the centre of the base. This was a problem, because if we built the cabin straight on top of the base, the rest ground timbers would rot through within a few years rendering the cabin structurally unsafe and would cause damp issues.
While not ideal, to save adding more concrete and creating a camber on the surface that would allow the water to drain off to the edges; our remedy was to drill sink holes into the base to allow the water to seep away.
The Base had re-barb so we are confident the holes would not create any cracks in the concrete and would not compromise the strength of it.
In addition, once the cabin was built and water tight the exposed surface area would be greatly reduced which would in turn massively restrict the amount of water that can pool.
When constructing the cabin and adding in the floor, we took the decision to raise the cabin upward using engineering bricks with DPM between the bricks and timbers. The ground resting timbers had 3 coats of wood preservative put on.
These measures will elongate the life of the base significantly.
With the additional work creating a suspended floor, plus adding wood preservative, the construction of the basic shell took just over a week. The roof was then covered in a large protective UPVc sheet then 20 year guaranteed shed felt.
Before the floor could be laid, a lot of the electrics needed to be put into situ to ensure the right lengths were cut but also everything was in the correct positions to be connected up. To covered a socket ring main / roof fans / 6 x lighting circuits / External power sockets / Additional feeds for garden lamps / external lights and additional shed what would be added later. Needless to say there was a huge amount of pre-planning and it was during these early stages we uncover that the electrical cable installed by the previous contractors was damaged as well as being insufficient to carry the expected load within the cabin, which also had to be corrected.
With reference to the electrics we started from the roof and worked our way down. Lighting feeds went in and as they were completed, fibre glass was installed into the roof void and pine panelling was added to seal it in.
As we worked our way down the walls we added in the embossed panelling which hid the cabling along with the socket ring mains and feeds / switches for the other features.
nce the first fit electrics were in, we could then move onto the floor.
As the cabin was raised , we were concerned about draft coming through the wood joins. Thermal polystyrene blocks were fitted between each joist and as a final layer of prevention, we laid a pond liner over both joists and polystyrene. The floor timbers we painted both sides with a wood stain and then sealed with a durable plastic resin sealing and protecting the timber from any liquid spills.
As the flooring went down, we were then able to complete the rest of the first phase panelling in readiness for phase 2.
Laleham, Surrey
Laleham, Surrey