The address of the new house we are building is on Tipperlinn Road in the Morningside district of Edinburgh. Our clients told us that Tipperlinn in the 18th century had been a little village on the outskirts of the city situated roughly on the grounds now occupied by the Royal Edinburgh Hospital on Tipperlinn Road. We did a little bit of research (googled) and put together here the few facts that we learnt. First of all the name itself; Tipperlinn is from the Gaelic and it means 'the well beside the waterfall' The village was tiny, consisting of twelve, two storey houses. The village produced fine linen and the well was used in the dying process. The village was said to be picturesque enjo
Following the site clearance it was time to start the heavy work. We carefully took down the 4m high garden wall that formed the corner of Tipperlinn Road and Stable Lane. This became the access onto the site for all lorry deliveries, excavation vehicles cement lorries etc. But it also meant that we couldn't carry out any of the groundworks in this area for the time being. We began by levelling the site with our own digger and driver. The excess earth was taken away in lorry loads, 16 tons at a time by Lothian Lift & Shift. Ultimately we would remove about 170 tons of earth. With the site mostly levelled, we still needed to allow vehicle access onto the site, we dug and cast the foundation o
The first survey of the site. Estimates at this stage suggested we would need to move about 120 tons of earth off the site during the groundworks. In fact we moved quite a bit more than that. Initially the plan was to make a lorry entrance off the front street by taking down the wall at its lowest point near the pedestrian gate. After some consideration we decided to make the entrance on the corner between Tipperlinn Road and Stable Lane, mainly for safety considerations. We were going to have to underpin the wall on Stable Lane because the site excavations might go down 5 metres. Since the wall was already badly leaning and had previously been reinforced by adding two buttresses, we decided
Inscape was chosen as the preferred contractor and after a short period of negotiation between ourselves and the client's quantity surveyors, which allows the client to be confident that the estimated costs are fair, the contracts were signed and the site was handed over to us. Building contracts are often awarded after the job is put out to a 'competitive tender'. Here several building companies all offer their 'best' price and the clients/architects choose one, maybe the cheapest maybe not. Inscape often tenders for work in a competitive process but in this case the form was by a 'negotiated tender'. Here the client or architect nominates a preferred contractor, possibly based on previous
While the clients still occupied the original house we were asked to install what would become the new drainage connection for the house that was about to be built. The drain would run across the remainder of the original house's garden and then track around that house to a large disconnecting manhole at the front of the property. Drainage is such a great part - and the guts of any new build. This work was done ahead of the build and before the original house was sold so there would be no disruption to the new occupants. At the same time a temporary wooden fence was built across the garden to separate the new site from the existing arden. So, with everything in place the old house could be s
We thought it might be interesting to create a blog post on the web site charting the construction of a new house we are building that has been designed by Richard Murphy Architects. The house is in the Morningside area of Edinburgh. The idea is to take the project from start to completion updating regularly and detailing the whole building process. In this case the project started on site in January 2017 so initially the blog needs to catch up. The new house is largely concealed from the street behind an existing traditional stone wall which had to be partially demolished to allow the construction work and then rebuilt to match the original. The house is of a single storey construction buil
