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We don't notice the small rises and falls and especially not consistent slopes. Eg we have a dreadfully poorly screeded room with 17mm variance from one corner to the opposite. ( v Big room) You cannot feel it in walking. The tiler has dealt with it skillfully with double buttering which also loses the dips and ripples. But: it is visible and a pain in fixing skirtings. If the floor was thin LVT then it would follow the curves and show every ripple and I'd worry about it not even lying in straight lines. If the floor was thin laminate I'd worry about ridges and hollows being bridged and bouncing. What am I saying? 1. It depends what floor you are laying. Appearance may be more of an issue than performance or final shape. 2. The screeders' work is awful and next time I'd ask very rigorous questions about method and control. Because of seeing it done well once, I assumed a level of competence which was not there.

@Mr Punter yep, all cut to size. Each one 100mm shorter than the previous. The longest/heaviest was 30kgs so very easy to move around.

Here is the roof plan. I've screen shotted it, you won't be able to read the detail but can see the shape. Each cold formed cee was a different size, but cf providers can handle it provided you give them a schedule. All for £1552.00! The schedule looks like this, but if the walls are parallel then it is much simpler as all the cees are the same length. I would explore using cold formed joists, creating the fall can be really easy!

If they were cut to size that sounds like good value.

Aka "life".....kids / drinks / mops etc. Easier to flick a switch vs get a sparky out to disconnect it before you can turn that bank of sockets back on again.

I have an early Victorian rental and the plinth in the kitchen is out by 50mm over 1200mm. Oddly it is not that noticeable to walk on.

You'll only learn this kind of nugget stuff on BH from the likes of Nick. You may think.. well I'm not going to let the floor socket "take a drink" but.. The spark may also want to change the cable rating anyway as it's not say in a wall. Electric cables are sized partly on not just the load but also if they are surrounded by insulation, or near to say UFH. Fundamentally we don't want them to heat up too much. Thus what Nick is saying also make sense when we look at the electrical design holistically, and that can save cost later on. Thus, why not adopt Nick's suggestion, as the spark will insist that the wiring up to the floor socket is to spec anyway? It's just that last nuance that Nick is bringing his experience to bear.

I appreciate your desire for level and diligence. Have you considered. If you have an existing house. How level and undulating all the other floors are? If a new house then it is going to take time to bed in, settle. To provide a bit of context. Often as an SE I'll start by designing a house to settle no more differentially by 25mm! Then refine depending on the finishes and how tolerant the structural frame is going to be in terms of differential settlement. A Swedish log cabin might shrink by 75 - 100mm! I would give the floors you have laid so far a "walk over test" not by you, but by visitors. Ask them if they notice much level or issues with flatness. Glancing light is always going to show up even tiny changes. This is building, not eye surgery!

This is really a bugbear I have with folk who are less experienced Architects, it's even more of a wtf are you doing with Architects who are set in their ways. I wear two hats, SE and Architectural designer. Design is about communication of information not least. At concept design stage if you stick on a grid it lets everyone see how the floors and things line up. On BH most folk don't have access to say CAD or more complex design packages where we can overlay floors etc. It lets us all see what goes where, get a rough handle on things and communicate well. If there is a grid we can say, say on teams, go to grid intersection 2A, and a bit to the left or 300m up on the drawing, there is no dubiety and that stop wasting time trying to identify what part of the drawings we are looking at, it avoids error and folk getting frustrated. Later when we come to the detailed design a grid is essential to allow the builder to set things out. Why not start with a grid at the beginning, grids help reduce error! Now Architect's like their drawings to look good, when I draw stuff in cad I'll change line weights, emphasise at time depending on whether I'm trying to show a Planner, a checking Engineer or how the kitchen may look to the Client. Funnily I work with quite a few highly experienced Architects, they have embraced my suggestion for putting grids on drawings! It's the future! Architects.. For pure visual presentation, just turn the grid layer off and stop being so precious.

Some pics would help here. It may be that the hard-packing over the steel was done poorly. Hard to say without seeing this tbh.

For comparison if it helps, in Jul 23 I got 18 cold rolled C section joists delivered, all different sizes (7.4m down to 5.3m) for £1552. And they’re relatively light.

@Spinny I'd suggest copying this to the existing thread on this 'journey', as it would have made much more sense there and have greater context. If you want to do that, I can then hide this one .

Yes, that's fine. If screwed down to a concrete floor these can rust out. Wrap the back of the box with a few layers of duct tape, and that'll be better than bare metal vs conc floor. I usually run a floor socket from a double pole FCU, so if it takes a drink you can isolate it and put the circuit back on in the interim.

https://www.buildingcontrol-ni.com/assets/pdf/TechnicalBookletD2012.pdf

It is. The reason behind it is that the building loses a lot of sideways stability. The steel work is also designed to stop the building falling over sideways. This is often the main challenge as an SE, not just to hold up the vertical loads but also to maintain sideways (horizontal stability). You also need to maintain your thermal breaks / mitigate thermal bridging etc. This makes the SE work harder as in the old days we just tied everything together! That all has to come together and then needs to be detailed (just as important), with the propping sequence thought through, so it's buildable by an average (hopefully) competent builder at a sensible cost. I deliberately put lots of detail on my drawings where I want to explain to the builder what is expected of them and thus by inference what they should include in their price.

Do you just use standard metal back boxes for these? Thanks

Soda blasting too: https://premiumdoorstripping.co.uk/what-is-soda-blasting/

Thanks everyone. Looks like laser is not a good option for lead paint, especially DIY. @Onoff thanks for that, ice blasting looks promising so we will look into it (as a service). Does anyone have experience of dry ice blasting for renovation? Particularly stripping paint. I still fancy a laser blaster but it will have to wait

I've found timber span tables you can get 63x220mm c24 to do the job on 400 centres. Expensive though. I'd be interested what works out cheaper c24 or engineered timber joists

And so should @Oz07. There are overturning loads to consider, and how to fix them down. I have no idea how to fix them to an ICF.

Definitely readily available, find your local metal fabricator or order direct on line. As for span tables they must be out there, I however relied on the professional help of an SE (Gus Potter of this Parish in my case) to do those calculations for me.

We used to have several of these in Brighton, back in the day when stripped pine was in fashion. They would certainly be OK for doors and frames but I imagine the beams have to be done in situ. I would stick to the paint stripper. Work out what area you can do in, say, 2 hours. As least you will be able to estimate total time needed and progress, which might make the job seem more manageable.

How about CO2 paint stripping? For example: https://iceblasters.co.uk/

Vaporizing lead & paint with a laser seems like a very bad idea. Apart from protecting the operator, the vapour is going to condense and deposit lead & paint dust wherever air movement takes it - don't underestimate how dangerous that can be. You'd need to confine it using negative pressure & clean every surface afterwards using a vacuum with HEPA filters, for starters. See also: HSE: Control of lead at work If you're finding the stripping too much, there are specialist lead paint removal contractors out there with all the necessary gear. For doors and other items that can be removed, there are (or were) paint stripping services who submerge the object in a stripping tank.

Maybe let's get back to the subject of UK oil and gas reserves relative to consumption and leave discussions of local recycling politics behind us.