Heavy rain but the building continues

In between heavy rain, the polystyrene walls continue to rise. We're now nearly at first floor level and expecting the arrival of a large RSJ which will form the lintel over the kitchen/breakfast room french window. It's a big window -- 6 metres in all - and will be formed by three two-metre sheets of glass, two of which slide into the third, framed in painted aluminium. We had a quote from a firm in Northumberland for around £10k but have found a local manufacturer, MPS Windows based in Exmouth, who'll do it for nearer £4k.

But I'm getting carried away. The lintel still needs to go in before the glass can even be measured. Beco, the firm that manufacture our polystyrene blocks, were confident that their product could provide sufficient strength to form the lintel but our structural engineer insisted we needed something more substantial. So in addition to the RSJ, we're reinforcing the walls with extra steel.

It's when I'm talking RSJs with the engineer that I realise how little we know -- and how much people in our position rely on others for expertise. Luckily the engineer is a mate of ours. He executes one drawing on the back of a beermat in our local. As it turns out, it's all the builder needs to make sense of a small piece of detail. Amazing.