Above 1200 Sq/FT Swiss Garage / Workshop / House Build

[Badluck]

Hi,

Nice progress they made. Starts to look like a house.

Question though: you might have answered it already, but did you think about building the top floors in wood?
Holzständerkonstruktion oder Massivholz? I was under the impression this was done a lot in Switzerland but maybe that's just me remembering holidays in some Hütte in the Alps. Fiesch lässt grüssen.

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Hi,

Nice progress they made. Starts to look like a house.

Question though: you might have answered it already, but did you think about building the top floors in wood?
Holzständerkonstruktion oder Massivholz? I was under the impression this was done a lot in Switzerland but maybe that's just me remembering holidays in some Hütte in the Alps. Fiesch lässt grüssen.

Thanks mate,
Fiesch is beautiful, We used to have our base camp there with the army, when i still had to serve...

Yeah the more traditional houses have usually a Stone (now bricks or concrete) wall with wood to make the different floors and Roof. However, In more modern houses the floors are usually made from concrete too as it gives you some advantages. If you have an attic though (which we don't have) it's usually integrated in the roof construction and made from wooden beams as well. it really depends on the construction, the area and how traditional you want to (or have to, by regulations) go.

I remember in Fiesch / Wallis area in general they have many very traditional wood houses, which are beautiful to look at...

 

[sponaugle]

And the electrician started with some of the wiring in the garage:

SIRIO-OPEL-GR_no-logo-2-web.jpg[/IMG]

Cool. Is that low voltage DC wiring, or high voltage wiring? Individual wires not bound together (like Romex)? Interesting.

Such great progress, and that picture of both of the houses really shows the scale. Fantastic build.

Jeff

 

[sponaugle]

The lift is made by Ravaglioli, yes, but it's their "cheaper" subbrand Sirio,
Still made in europe, compared to all the chinese stuff floating around.
See here:
https://www.sirioequipment.com/en/category/products/lifts/

If I may ask, what is the price range of a lift like that there?

Jeff

 

[locul]

Cool. Is that low voltage DC wiring, or high voltage wiring? Individual wires not bound together (like Romex)? Interesting.



Such great progress, and that picture of both of the houses really shows the scale. Fantastic build.



Jeff

220v 10a i assume

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Cool. Is that low voltage DC wiring, or high voltage wiring? Individual wires not bound together (like Romex)? Interesting.
Such great progress, and that picture of both of the houses really shows the scale. Fantastic build. Jeff

THanks jeff. Well i was a bit curious as well, but it seems like for 240V AC they do individual wires. maybe it's just something temporary? We'll see. Will need to discuss some details with the electricians soon anyway, so i will ask them

If I may ask, what is the price range of a lift like that there? Jeff

The ravaglioli lift is approx 3500.- CHF. With installation and delivery it's about 4200.- CHF. The cheaper hydraulic lifts can be had for about 1500.- CHF or something but the quality differences i saw yesterday are quite big and the safety level is something else... Also the more expensive mechanical lift with a propeller-shaft needs much less maintenance compared to the hydraulic systems where the balacing cables, or mechanical with chains (was approx 3000.- CHF) need constant adjustment to keep it reliable...

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

So we had our usual sunday daylight walk-around on the site, but it appears that not much was done over the past few days...

The only differences we noted where a few repairs where the insulation didn't end up nice after the formwork was removed. Which i'm happy with they fixed it now

Update: While going through the pictures i noticed that they also made some repairs at the concrete top's in four places, which needed a bit of touch-up. didn't realize it on site. (see first picture of this post)

And it seems like some pipes got delivered, probably for the Plumber:

Meanwhile we were busy yesterday and checked out some workshop lifts:

And collected another pile of tile-samples. It gets even worse to make a choice now

I don't expect a lot of progress next week. since the roof will go up one week later.
But then again - for some reason - they always manage to do the opposite from what i expect. If i expect them to be fast - they are running on slow pace. And when i don't expect a lot to happen, i'm blown away by the progress once i visit the site. So i'm curious and excited to see what happens

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Well this week the progress is a bit slow. THe main contractor decided to save their work until next week when the roof is put up and they need to show up anyway. However they got a few small things done on monday.
Aside from a few small fixes and cleanups here and there, they removed some scaffolding on the outside, where one of the shed's roof will go up soon:

Then they went to another site working for the rest of the week. But then the electricians showed up and well - let there be light

We have temporary lighting to test the wiring and have some working lights in most of the underground / basement / workshop area now. Everything looks totaly different when you have some lights at the ceiling. The final lighting will be much, much more, when done, with some nice thornton Poppack LED tubes.

but at least we can walk around and get a feeling how it looks now.
Those electricians were quite busy and surely know what they do. I'm an electronic engineer so i have an eye on how they work

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

So, we got more temporary lighting in the underground (garge / workshop / storage) level:

The electricians went a bit crazy again with their wiring

The scaffolding got moved a bit, to setup for the roofing guys tomorrow:

And some windows got delivered, allthough only the ones for the in-laws house part. We had to choose a non standard colour (because, who likes standard things?) so it comes a bit later...

Hopefully roofing works starts tomorrow. we have a lot of snow/rain at the moment, which gets into the bricks and freezes over night, so a roof would definitely help to dry the walls and prevent everything from freezing. Otherwise we need to pay for an addiational drying-service... (they heat up the whole house for a number uf days with large industrial heaters)

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Can you spot the difference to previous pictures?

First part of the roof (for 1/2 of the attached shed) is up. well temporary sort of. they will adjust it , once the rest is installed so that everything is straight before they finalize it:

All the beams come pre-cut and pre-painted in the colour we chose earlier, so they just have to puzzle it all together. The white stuff between the beams are for fire protection.

On top is a water-protective black plastic foil type layer. They will add a layer of battens where the tiles wil go, once everything else is done. First priority is to get everything underneath dry, from what i understoud. Makes sense to me

I guess we will have some big visible progress this week and i try to get as much updates as possible.

 

[Ronin22]

Really taking shape now! Must be excited!

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Yesterday the roof guys brought a truckload of beams for the roof of the in-laws part of the house:

And by today the roof frame structure is already done:

Next they will cover it to protect the house from rain, before they start with our part of the roof.

On the inside, they started to lay down power-hoses and outlet into the brickwalls:

And then the windows for our part of the build arrived. There's another pallete full of windows on the other side of the garden. Unfortunately they have to wait another two weeks before they get installed.

 

[Finallygotit]

That's interesting.

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Things are a bit hectic at the moment, with so many things going on at the same time, but i'm happy the project is going strong at the moment with even more people expected to show up for work for the rest of this week..

The roof beams are up and covered, which means no more rain / Snow inside the house, so the walls and concrete can dry further and faster

The plumber was busy too, installing all the in-wall Toilet flush reservoirs and water outlets, general plumbing and piping etc.. The rest of the holes will now be closed by the masons again:

The roof guys continue with some details, while the electricians and plumber will work on with wiring and plumbing. and today also the heating-guy should show up to install the heater-hardware, as well as the Fireplace-people, which should either start work on the fireplace or do some work in the roof for the chimney. Will see on the weekend what happened. Pretty exciting times. And next week the windows should get in along some metalwork on the roof...

 

[Ronin22]

Wow! Now we can officially say we see two houses!

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Wow! Now we can officially say we see two houses!

It really makes a big difference from which angle you look at it, but yeah the roof on top of the two houses makes a big difference too

 

[BORING HOP YARD]

Very cool! and nice progress is being made, being dried in is a good feeling.
Thank for letting us tag along.

 

[Hostyle]

Great progress!

Not seen the toilet installed that way before. In Holland they're usually mounted to the wall, creating a small bump-out where the toilet mounts to. This is way better, but I think it's only possible on new-builds this way.

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Great progress!

Not seen the toilet installed that way before. In Holland they're usually mounted to the wall, creating a small bump-out where the toilet mounts to. This is way better, but I think it's only possible on new-builds this way.

Thanks mate.
We have this style of toilet flush reservoir mounted in-wall since many years here. both new and old type of house are possible. In old houses you would usually install it in a dry wall, or in a small additional Concrete wall "Bump" as you said. We do the same in our upper bath room, because it was not possible to put it inside an outer brickwall there, but honestly i don't know the requirements for this. The swiss "Geberit" brand is quite famous around central europe i think. allthough we went for an italian brand toilet itself..

 

[Hostyle]

The flush mounted system is used a lot in Holland, in fact Geberit is the system mainly used. But it's never truly mounted in the walls. A friend of mine is a tiler/bathroom installer, should let him see this. It will make for a clean installation.

Come to think of it, I believe we used Geberit ourselves when we redid our downstairs living, bathroom and kitchen. We went with a Dutch toilet (Sphinx) that is rimfree (no edge inside the bowl, more hygenic apparently).

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

So, the work on the roof continued. The upper part with different bar pattern, is where the Photovoltaic-panels will go:

And the gaps got closed too:

Some of the wall-holes (for in-wall-stuff installation) got covered again:

We got an additional little privacy wall for the upper toilet (where the flush reservoire isn't installed in-wall, this time):

And also the water-pump for the Rain-water tank / garden watering / water-refill-system (if the tank is empty) got delivered, which is a bit exciting

 

[sponaugle]

So cool to see it taking shape. Is the roofing material tile? Any consideration for trying out some kind of Photovoltaic tile?

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

So cool to see it taking shape. Is the roofing material tile? Any consideration for trying out some kind of Photovoltaic tile?

Yeah indeed. the puzzle assembles finally

The roof will be covered with clay tiles, which is very common here, since we have one of the biggest factories for that just around the corner...

We'll go for big photovoltaic panels.
I haven't dug too deep into the PV-tiles, but i guess the overall "bang-for-buck" rate is higher with bigger panels. Since the chimney is also making a shadow over the panels, and the overall output is always just as high as the "weakest" panel (with the shadow laying on it) we have additional compensators on the back of each panel. This would mean quite a few extra compensators with many small tiles, i guess.

I'm an elektronic engineer, but honestly i just relayed on what the expert from the PV-company offered us. he seemend very honest and experienced with a big variety of products and that was what he recommanded us

 

[sponaugle]

We'll go for big photovoltaic panels.
I haven't dug too deep into the PV-tiles, but i guess the overall "bang-for-buck" rate is higher with bigger panels. Since the chimney is also making a shadow over the panels, and the overall output is always just as high as the "weakest" panel (with the shadow laying on it) we have additional compensators on the back of each panel. This would mean quite a few extra compensators with many small tiles, i guess.
I'm an elektronic engineer, but honestly i just relayed on what the expert from the PV-company offered us. he seemend very honest and experienced with a big variety of products and that was what he recommanded us

Yea, the solar tile industry is still in infancy, so any installation right now would be on the cutting edge. I have a 34 300W panels on my current house. ( 10.2 KW ).

I assume the 'compensators' you are talking about are micro-inverters? I have microinverters on all of my panels as well -

As you mentioned the microinverters have the significant advantage that they allow each panel to optimize the seen load to get maximum power even with shade on a panel. With a single large inverter you have suboptimal load for all panels if some are shaded.

I don't think any of the tile systems have a microinverter architecture, or if they do it would be on a large section of tiles. I have had my system for almost 2 years and produced about 24MWh so far, which isn't bad considering the latitude (45 degrees), and the only 144 days of sunshine per year.

Jeff

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Hi Jeff, t hanks for your feedback.
It's exactly what you said. Compensators are Micro-inverters, to optimize the voltage when there is a shade (from our chimney, mostly).

Sounds great for the power you produced so far. I'm still very curious how this will work out in real-life. In theory all the calculations sound great and i know the guys are experienced. But real-life useage is mostly a bit different from what someone calculates based on average numbers, etc.. well soon we know

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

This morning a truckload full of Clay-tiles for the roof showed up on the site:

And almost a week earlier than what our schedule by the Architect says, the roof was covered by the evening (except where the roof window and solar panel will go). If you look close you can also see the gutter half-pipe installed at the bottom of the roof:

From the inside the holes between the roof beams got covered with small pieces of Spruce wood boards

And the electrician and Heating guy was busy preparing the slots in the wall for all the in-wall hoses, piping, etc.. which will be covered up again in mortar, once everytihng is installed...

Next update on thursday, i expect a lot of progress again and really have to praise the guys. They work with what swiss workers are known for: Accuracy, speed, skills and mostly with a good mood. Well, the unnatural warm spring weather (acually it's still winter) might help a bit

 

[Ronin22]

Amazing!

Next update on thursday, i expect a lot of progress again and really have to praise the guys. They work with what swiss workers are known for: Accuracy, speed, skills and mostly with a good mood. Well, the unnatural warm spring weather (acually it's still winter) might help a bit

Are you sure they are Swiss, and not aliens or robots?
Sadly, I've never heard of or met workers that have accuracy, speed, skill AND good mood.

How's Switzerland regarding inmigrants? I think I'd feel more at home there, than what I feel at... well, home

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Amazing!

Are you sure they are Swiss, and not aliens or robots?
Sadly, I've never heard of or met workers that have accuracy, speed, skill AND good mood.

How's Switzerland regarding inmigrants? I think I'd feel more at home there, than what I feel at... well, home

To be honest, most of the workers (except the carpenters) are actually immigrants from surrounding countries like Italy or germany, but working for a swiss company means you have to fullfill these criterias mostly, otherwise you get fired and another worker will be hired.

Switzerland is known to welcome anyone who wants to come here with open arms, so i'm sure there's a place for you here too. Just the weather is **** and cars tend to rust quite fast

 

[Growlertdi]

I was surprised to see the seams of all of these tiles all lined up. Is there a provision under the tiles for any moisture that gets between the columns of tiles?

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

I was surprised to see the seams of all of these tiles all lined up. Is there a provision under the tiles for any moisture that gets between the columns of tiles?

Yeah, underneath there's first a space for air circulation (for "breathing") and then below what we call a "steam barrier" - a thick plastic kind of foil to keep the moisture out...

 

[Growlertdi]

Yeah, underneath there's first a space for air circulation (for "breathing") and then below what we call a "steam barrier" - a thick plastic kind of foil to keep the moisture out...

I looked back and see the waterproof membrane now.

its been fascinating seeing a house (or two lol) go up with this concrete and thick extruded brick construction style. it certainly isn't done this way in my part of the world.


Thanks for sharing!

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

I looked back and see the waterproof membrane now.

its been fascinating seeing a house (or two lol) go up with this concrete and thick extruded brick construction style. it certainly isn't done this way in my part of the world.


Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for your kind words.
Sometimes i feel a bit bad for posting so much non-garage-related stuff, but then you always remind me how interesting it is to see for people in other parts of the world (Which seem to be used to build buildings out of cardboard and matchsticks )

 

[Ronin22]

It's called GarageJournal, but I think most of us can agree that it's satisfying to watch a house/garage/shop/car being built.

 

[tjpavlov]

Thanks for continuing to share this build with us. It's been a lot of fun to see how things are built in your area.

I figured that I would share a link to help some of your American followers. Matt Risinger is a fine home builder in Texas who recently visited Switzerland. He has a few videos up on his youtube channel which go into a lot of detail on construction practices in Europe. I remember in one of the videos he talks about those clay blocks that are being used in this project.

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

We have some first windows in - yay The guys are awesome and will even come on saturday to complete it. really nice people and great work


After we got invited to say hello to the new neighbours it was already dark outside, so will get better outside shots, once everything is completed:


The we got our skylight with Motor and automatic shades installed. which gives a lot more light into the stairs area:


The electricians were busy too alongside all the other workers. They also prepared the hole for the inn-wall-IPC for our house automation


The heating guy was busy too installing the main plumbing for the upper floor including the distribution box:


Next up i dug out the beautifully hand-crafted Wind-vane which we got for our civil wedding two years ago. We have to install it soon, as long as the scaffolding is still there. Need to find a good place for it

 

[Carford]

good trees

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Here we go, finally all the windows are in and the small gaps have been closed with expanding foam and an insulation tape from the outside:

Starts to feel and look like an actual house inside now, especially now that there is no more wind blowing through the building

And this means i now also have a window in the future workshop area:

The electrician was busy wiring up all the inn-wall outlets now and the plumber was busy too. Aside from a lot of other small things, he hooked up the pump for the rainwater collecting tank:

And drilled a hole into the concrete wall to get the water hose and sensor cable into the tank:

And he also installed all the in-floor plumbing for shower, bathtub, etc..

The woodworking guys also installed some stuff to setup the small wood walls for the attached sheds:

We got a big load of floor insulation delivered:

And floor insulation / preparation for the intermediate cement floor started at the in-laws house. First is a waterproof foil to protect moisture coming into the house, then there's an insulation foam layer and on top of that another water protection foil layer. On this the in-floor heating system will be installed, before it all gets filled with an cement type floor, where then a noise reducing layer and finally the hardwood floor or tiles will be installed. Sounds complicated, huh?

 

[Finallygotit]

......Sounds complicated, huh?

Yes it does.


Fantastic progress.

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Yes it does.
Fantastic progress.

Thanks

What you see in the last picture by the way are the three lowest layers.
Waterproof foil
Insulation foam
Waterproof foil (Moisture barrier)

I'll keep you updated with the details of the floor build, if anybody is interested.
Ah, I'll do it anyway

 

[Hostyle]

Do it!

Great to see the houses coming along so quickly.