stairs look mint. What did you pay? have seen them for 500ish before. don't worry about the plates and straps. when you board it you will be using foaming glue and it will fly over these interruptions. Nobody is housing these in to get a snooker table flat job. Are your osb joints on a joist? Not create any traps hopefully? Why didn't you just use egger p5 and be done with it? Is this OSB sacrificial and if so how much £?

Also if needing to slide any 50mm waste pipes in perpendicular to joists now is the ideal time

1 hour ago, Oz07 said:

stairs look mint. What did you pay? have seen them for 500ish before. don't worry about the plates and straps. when you board it you will be using foaming glue and it will fly over these interruptions. Nobody is housing these in to get a snooker table flat job. Are your osb joints on a joist? Not create any traps hopefully? Why didn't you just use egger p5 and be done with it? Is this OSB sacrificial and if so how much £?

I paid £320 for the stairs.  I’ve subsequently fitted the side rails for safety.

 

The OSB joints are on a flat, except one piece which I’ll address with some noggins.  I contemplated fitted the CaberDek, but given we are having floor to ceiling windows and the detailing would have been difficult to get right without the windows being fitted.

 

It’s about £500 for the sacrificial OSB

Stairs are lacking mid support. Way too long a going to be relying on nothing mid span, giving the duty it’ll suffer during the next phases.

7 hours ago, Nickfromwales said:

Stairs are lacking mid support. Way too long a going to be relying on nothing mid span, giving the duty it’ll suffer during the next phases.

They don't have mid support. Yes, the angle is too shallow, but will be fine when they are put inside where the actual stairwell is going.

I think Nick is thinking health and safety.

If you are going to be having big guys carrying a load of concrete blocks and mortar up them day in day out you need to consider the risks.

Are you moving them inside before that work starts ?

Are they attached to the scaffold & did the scaffolders put them in for you ?

There are regs around scaffolding I believe, I think it is supposed to be checked and logged as ok on a very regular basis. Probably very often in breach, but if someone has an accident - it is your site and... they could come for you. If you need to modify or add to scaffolding I suspect you should be going back to the scaffold company.

One of our carpenters had a friend that fell through a rooflight and ended up in a wheelchair.

Inspection: construction platforms from which a person could fall 2 metres or more require inspection before use and at intervals no longer than 7 days, with further inspection after events liable to affect safety. A competent person must make the required report.

Tags: a tag system can communicate inspection status, but tags are not themselves a legal requirement and do not replace inspection reports.

8 hours ago, flanagaj said:

They don't have mid support. Yes, the angle is too shallow, but will be fine when they are put inside where the actual stairwell is going.

I would have thought with the impetus you’ve got putting your temp osb deck down, it’ll not be too long before them stairs are inside? With all the trials and tribulations you’ve had to navigate it’s great to see your progress. Well done, keep ploughing on.

4 hours ago, Spinny said:

I think Nick is thinking health and safety.

If you are going to be having big guys carrying a load of concrete blocks and mortar up them day in day out you need to consider the risks.

Are you moving them inside before that work starts ?

Are they attached to the scaffold & did the scaffolders put them in for you ?

There are regs around scaffolding I believe, I think it is supposed to be checked and logged as ok on a very regular basis. Probably very often in breach, but if someone has an accident - it is your site and... they could come for you. If you need to modify or add to scaffolding I suspect you should be going back to the scaffold company.

One of our carpenters had a friend that fell through a rooflight and ended up in a wheelchair.

Inspection: construction platforms from which a person could fall 2 metres or more require inspection before use and at intervals no longer than 7 days, with further inspection after events liable to affect safety. A competent person must make the required report.

Tags: a tag system can communicate inspection status, but tags are not themselves a legal requirement and do not replace inspection reports.

Ok. I put them in, just for me to use. As we are having full height windows upstairs, the brickies will keep using the ladders installed by the scaffolding company. I am curious though. Who the **** do I get to come an inspect a set of stairs? Do they bring an X-ray machine with them to check the welds are all good?

Nah, I think there is some kind of certification scheme for scaffolders which renders them competent people, and I guess most builders would probably count as a competent person (maybe ?). I believe there are rules around how scaffold is put together etc to minimise risks.

I guess we all see lots of questionable HSE things happen in small scale building. I remember watching a really big commercial construction site working - everybody was checked at the gate - if they didn't have yellow vest, safety boots, hard hat they didn't get on site - no exceptions. There is always a balance between just getting things done and safety. I sometimes said to one or two of our builders people - shouldn't you be wearing goggles for that ? Do you want to borrow my ear defenders ? Etc. My builder himself said he had a bad back because as a young lad they used to race across building sites with barrows and hods seeing who could move the most blocks/bricks the fastest.

I wasn't trying to be a jobsworth, you are clearly doing a great job there. It is just, if, if something happened, the insurers are always looking for someone else to finger.

Afterthought - might they benefit from hiring a lift or a hoist to get stuff up - not just in saved back muscles, but maybe in time too ? Dunno.

It’s difficult. I said to the bricklayers that now scaffolding has gone up, I must insist on them wearing hard hats. They just laughed at me and said they never wear them on domestic jobs.

Another time I was using a stone saw to cut rebar. I obviously had safety goggles and ear defenders on. They looked at me and said “oh, you wear safety goggles. Then chuckled and said they use the squint technique”

I fear it’s a losing battle in trying to educate them.

They are doing a great job, but I’ll actually be glad when they are finished on site, scaffolding is dismantled and I’m left with the remaining tasks.

43 minutes ago, Spinny said:

Afterthought - might they benefit from hiring a lift or a hoist to get stuff up - not just in saved back muscles, but maybe in time too ? Dunno.

What type of hoist would you suggest as I’m keen to get the remaining first floor blockwork up to plate asap?

On 17/10/2026 at 20:07, flanagaj said:

unsure about the jointing plates on the upper cord or the restraining straps as these will surely get in the way of sitting the chipboard flooring flat, but that’s how Hampshire Engineering Timber solutions specified it.

The top plates raise a structural analytical question.

The structural behaviour explanation is lengthy, I've kind of given up on trying to explain a lot of this to you. You just cart on and react after the fact, get ahead of the game!

If you still have concerns then go back to the posi joist designer and ask if their design accounts for full load on the adjacent long span and minimum load on the short span. When you analyse this the forces change. It may be your posi joist designer has not taken into account this load case, or that their software has an error in it!

Or you may have moved the supporting walls below without asking anyone! You don't have to move them much to invalidate the design.

Next time you chat with your SE ask them about my comments.

4 hours ago, flanagaj said:

What type of hoist would you suggest as I’m keen to get the remaining first floor blockwork up to plate asap?

@flanagaj I’ve made myself up a simple pulley system (effectively block & tackle but only two single pulleys in my case as I’m only lifting a couple of packs of shingle at a time).

2 x pulley: https://amzn.eu/d/05AWFkQ0