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Welcome to Build Hub. Your photos are very helpful. As a word of encouragement, you'll get lots of different opinions, all you need to do is sift out what is most appropriate to your circumstance. Here is my first take on your first good post! Ok I'm 62 in September. When I inspect houses like yours you have to try and impart enough info to the Client (You) to allow them to take a view. If you overwhelm them then you are not communicating that well. Sometimes us SE's omit info to avoid confusion. Some SE's are not good at communicating. So here is some extra info. The idea here is to let you see some of the things I might think about and I hope this helps you a bit. Take this photo below: Call it photo 01 And this one, call this photo 02. In photo 01 and as you say you have quite a lot of retained soil and mobile ground water. Now in photo 02 the steels are actually at quite close centres. It makes me wonder if the steels are doing two things. Holding up the floor / structure above but also and most importantly providing lateral support to the wall that is up the left side of the external stair case. This is the key to any remedial solution. I would say the steels are doing more than just holding up the floor / structure above until proven otherwise. Now at first glance you may think.. what if we prop each steel in turn. Expose the ends and wrap in DPC, after we have checked they are not too badly rusted. Then introduce much more ventilation etc to mitigate the condensation But if the steels are also acting to restrain the walls horizontally then we could be making a big mistake by introducing a DPC which acts like a slip plane. I think there may be a solution to this that is not too onerous..but first you need to understand more about how the structure you have is working not just to carry the vertical load but also the horizontal loads from the soil, up the side and at the back of the house. To expand. It may even be that the beams over the garage are forming port of a stiff floor that is also serving to retain the soil pressure from the garden at the rear. I've designed houses this way before where I take the full floor deck and use it to reduce the cost and mass of the rear retaining wall. It's going to take you a bit of time to get to the bottom of this.. but persevere.

We have some damaged scaffodling board so i was thinking of ripping some lengths and treating it then using it as a border with the bigger gravel beside the house and 10mm on path followed by another board. Would that look ok? How do the boards sit upright? How are they secured?

Don't panic. Take your time to figure out what is causing the paint to flake. Just ask loads of questions on BH before you spend any money.

Aye and no.. but that is my first thought. Often I look at old buildings / renovations SE wise and think.. if we have time on our side then lets use lime mortars and renders and implement the traditional crafts.. be it an elegantly cut timber roof or what ever. But it's rare to find a sympathetic Client that just wants to do old simple stupid stuff. It's not actually stupid at all. It's actually practicing an art and a craft using traditional materials.. that you have to often make work to modern design code loadings and deflection limits. The deflections for example become an issue when say getting warranties from glazing providers. This is a dilemma.. you can't have your cake and eat it. You have to be able to consider the old and the new. I have to, as at some point, folk might ask me to sign off on it. The big challenge for me is to strike a balance, be creative that works for all. And that is one of the great parts of my job. This is the first place to look.

This makes sense. Thank you. I imagine the walls would have been wetter given the direction they face, and so I can see how not giving them time to dry out before painting it would cause the paint to peel off. I imagine if we give it another year, most of the paint will have fallen off anyway.

Thank you for the tip.

Combi grille I linked to, are fully compliant with BRegs.

Cool thanks for the reply

Cool thanks, it was their membrane and insulation i was thinking of using, with standard metal stud.

Indeed. The OP says it was done in March, which is rather early in the year to be doing lime id have thought. And painted straight after, so you might well be right.

I suspect it's because you have rushed the process. The walls will still be drying out. I hope the lime render was Non Hydraulic lime, relies on carbonation from the air. You probaly can't. Just let time take it's course and suck it up. Wait two years and let the building settle in, the lime mortar and walls adjust to the new regime.

Hmmm. Interesting to say the least, but not in a ggod way i guess. Done some limework, but cant suggest anything. Might be worth posting on the period property forum, though some are hardcore limeists, who will insist only limewash will do. Though in fairness, it wouldnt have done this.

More than happy with real world advice especailly when it's the answer I so desperately want to hear! You don't think sign off will be an issue?? And no, sadly no posi joists...

Annoyingly you can't get 40mm from the sheds, and delivery is mental costly from insulation specialists, especially for like 2 sheets only. I have some 50mm but don't think cutting that sideways would be very easy...

Very happy so far with my Indra Smart Pro charger. App dead simple etc. Pedestals are available. For example: https://shop.ukevinstallers.co.uk/product/value-indra-smart-pro-charger-post-pedestal-square-post-with-plinth/

Hello Everyone, About a year ago, we had the entire outside of the house re-rendered to replace the cement base render with a lime base render. The house is a late Victorian build (1880s) with no damp proof lining. The rendering was finished around March and painted soon after. Beeck Renosil Fine Mineral Paint (suitable for lime render) was then used after applying a Beeck Fixative first. Since then the paint has slowly been peeling off on all the walls that face south west (where most of our weather comes from). These walls are now just a mottled, patchy, cracked mess (see close up picture). I can confirm that the render itself is still solid and not shot. There are a couple of small hairline cracks in the render, but otherwise the rest of the cracking is in the paint work. I reached out to the supplier of the paint to try and find what's going on. I knew lime would be hard work, but I didn't expect this to happen on such a scale so soon. They suggested, I remove the paint and then repaint with a coarser Beeck Mineral paint first to fill the hairline cracks, and then paint with the finer Beeck mineral paint that was originally used. However, what they haven't told me, and what I'd like to ask here is: - Why has the paint not stuck, like it has on the North Eastern facing walls? - How do you remove paint off of the lime render without damaging the render? - Do I have to apply the Beeck Fixative for both the coarse paint layer and then the finer paint layer? Any insights would be gratefully received. Cheers Jonny

Hi folks, there are 28 more sleeps left in our bloody awful rental before moving in to our new pad. Our aim is to get signed off early June, and to get signed off we need an EV point. Ours is going to be on a pole about 5 feet from our electric kiosk, the SWA cable is already in place. I find looking on Google for EV charger points completely bewildering. I understand electrics, and I would probably understand all the various factors if I put the time but I have zero time to put in, I just need one. Therefore I would be grateful if anyone can recommend a pole mounted EV charger untethered, single phase so I guess 7kW, for a couple who don’t have an EV and don’t plan to get one any time soon.

I have MVHR so no vents. I would hope that I should achieve a 1 ACPH. If heating per m2 is area / heating load it would be 12.6 watt per m2. We are in north Devon in a valley by a stream. Its rarely that cold.

Hi again, The pergola is done (wooden structure and roof) and now I have to think about the decking. I was thinking about EU pallets. My idea was to put the weed membrane, 2.5cm thick slabs then EU pallets (16cm of height/thickness) and decking boards which is 28mm. It would be 21.3cm high. Does this make sense or is it too high a step? Please advise.

@billt >>> My system is off grid and AC coupled using SMA inverters. Is that totally off grid? You have generator back-up or something similar?

Think long term. If it's going to be paved or concrete it will need a hardcore base. You could just lay and compact hardcore and walk on that until you can afford to finish it. Just avoid dusty crushed limestone as it can get a bit slick when wet. Perhaps go for MOT 3 which is free draining?

If you don’t have storage heaters now the switch over probably won’t affect you too much. Perhaps the property did once and they where removed. Did you use timers for washing machine or immersion heaters to make use of economy 7 it’s not just what was on the one CU, eg old storage heater CU. Presumably you are going to have a smart meter installed, there could be a wait for a 3phase smart meter as the installation involves a little more knowledge than the average switch over and there was a shortage of supply of 3phase meters once. we switched over 2 years ago EDF did the switch they where useless first year with them and they never got it all reporting our useage correctly. They knocked off £600 for the inconvenience though. Moved to Octopus and from day one it worked correctly but we have had a few wobbles when rates change etc reassuringly they always know how much electricity we are using and on what tariff even if the in home display is incorrectly showing me my solar outgoing rate. A few emails and messages and it got sorted. Once you have a smart meter with a counter for two rates then you can change between economy 7 to economy 10 or any other time of use tariff. It would be worth looking back at your bills now and seeing how much it would have cost you had you been on standard rate 24hrs. We currently get paid slightly more for our outgoing electric (solar) then the off peak economy 7 rate so I use as much as I can immersion, dishwasher, even the bread maker at night and we are better off both in winter occasionally storage heater and summer being on economy 7. We also run a business from home and are both here all day so use a fair bit of daytime electric. You really need to do your sums based on your own usage.

Second hand slabs from facebook I laid a patio a couple of years ago, slabs where a £1 each, bang them down on some weak mortar and live with them for a couple of years.

Thanks for this. I'm not convinced on this argument but as i don't know much about these screeds I need to do homework. It does not have fibre. I've gone off fibre anyway as it clumps and is very inconsistent. It is a gypsum product, pumped. 49% club... I don't understand. Brilliant info: I was going to look into this principle. Cracks will be about 0.1mm and will refill with dust. Even if they did somehow open or close again, it would need a minuscule movement in the adhesive... and the grout should give way first. Quite right. In such cases I would often explain the perceived risk with the client, and often they took the saving. It could still be awkward if there was a problem, whatever the contract says. But it's for ourselves using the pension I've saved by making such decisions for decades. i. e. Questioning almost everything, especially the standard ways of doing things that nobody can justify. These are usually "trade" things where they say its best but hsve nil justifiication. Most radical experijents have been on ourselves. Some haven't been ideal but no dramas and usually it's fine. Strangely I see that the ufh pipes are mostly visible by having 1mm or so ridge over them. I'm thinking this has been by displacement of the screed after partial setting, and being walked on. But cracking is only visible in one place I've noticed, though if it's like concrete, there will be millions of tiny cracks/crazing. They didn't put crack inducers at doors and there are no cracks there, which suggests shrinkage is miniscule. I will research further.

Rockwool fill, 40mm PIR, foil tape, then PB. You’ll need to manage the holes for lighting, or use a surface mount / pendant.