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Suspended timber floor

What is the roofing material and how will the underside be finished ?

Why not glass balustrade? Then you get the view and the protection. Various levels of expense. Framed and clamped. Framed. Frameless…

Looking good. Do you cover the cavities to keep the rain out ?

You seem not to have a roof yet? I wouldn't be installing chipboard anyway in that case, so I'd would stick with the birdcage (or I'd be using beam and block at 1st floor level).

Brickwork looks the nuts. DPC / gas membrane anal but in a nice way. I bought sand from Cornwall for the colour. £80 a pallet haulage but the alternative was awful.

Cheeky (expletive deleted)ers. DIY job. What ventilation is under the floor?

Good to hear. Materials in last photo looking good. Which window colour are you going for (assuming that's what 2 colours are)?

I have the scaffolding company coming around this week. The brickies have told me to get the first floor joists in and chipboard flooring and they'll use trestles. This approach is great as I save money on having bird cage scaffolding, but given we are using 15kg medium density blocks internally, I'm concerned about the amount of weight when they load out the blocks. They said they will put acro props under the floor joists, but I'm concerned it's not a great idea. What have others done?

First pic is the area in question second one is the side of house which does to gulley the pic I couldn’t upload shows the front of conservatory. It’s essentially 2 right angles to get to the gully, approx 6-8m

We’ve had to replace some floor joists close to the bifold doors due to rot, twice this has happened, all other joists look absolutely fine. My feeling is it is related to the volume of rain that hits that area and collects. Had a few opinions and 2 quotes. 1 to aco drain all the way round to existing gulley and one just aco around the bifold and conservatory into a patio soakaway. Prices seem astronomical for 3-4 days work and fairly little and inexpensive materials bill. 5.4k and 4.8k. thoughts on this and other options?

You've 2 options really......get the wireless kit and prove it works before you complete the wiring or install the cabling for wired sensors. It's likely gonna make a mess if you go with wireless, it doesn't work and you have to retro fit the cabling. You could leave the cable buried in the wall and try the wireless kit with the cable available as a backup

Getting some data from here: https://data.nordpoolgroup.com/auction/gb-half-hour/prices?deliveryDate=2026-09-19&currency=GBP&aggregation=DeliveryPeriod&deliveryAreas=UK Plotting Price and Volume, you get this. Not sure that increasing price has much to do with volume. (a lot more data point would be needed, but had a busy day and I am tired. The peak price was between 18:00 and 20:00, but the biggest draw was 07:00 to 08:00 and the price was negative) Delivery Period MWH £ 23:00 - 00:00 198.5 46.21 00:00 - 01:00 166.3 34.42 01:00 - 02:00 112.6 15.88 02:00 - 03:00 123.9 4 03:00 - 04:00 229.9 -1 04:00 - 05:00 323.1 -1.64 05:00 - 06:00 397.9 -1.64 06:00 - 07:00 377 -1.63 07:00 - 08:00 464.6 -1.66 08:00 - 09:00 274.5 3.3 09:00 - 10:00 112.3 4.43 10:00 - 11:00 154.6 3.1 11:00 - 12:00 210 -1.46 12:00 - 13:00 188.2 -1.24 13:00 - 14:00 173.7 -1.6 14:00 - 15:00 177.6 -0.09 15:00 - 16:00 86.6 4.32 16:00 - 17:00 124.1 9.35 17:00 - 18:00 349.7 65.1 18:00 - 19:00 152 106.32 19:00 - 20:00 156.4 106.8 20:00 - 21:00 191.2 96.82 21:00 - 22:00 151.9 86.04 22:00 - 23:00 109.2 62.56

But people still think ASHP cost more to run than an ASHP and solar is ugly and would never have them.

Our scheme has a single Car Port with a 10° monopitch roof which is linked to the house by a walkway with a flat-roof over. This is the roof plan... The Car Port is to have a gutter along the low edge, which will drop water onto the Link Walkway roof, which is essentially a flat roof. The water will fall towards the bottom corner as denoted on the plan. From this drawing, I have assumed a kerb is installed at both edges, with the water dropping through a "Plug'ole" before being directed into the adjacent RWP. Does anyone have any words of advice as to how this fall arrangement is organised with firrings? Or can you suggest a better way? I did debate arranging the fall to simply run from right to left and into an integral gutter along the right-hand edge, so in essence the water from the roof above will drop directly into the integral gutter below and the water falling on the flat roof will fall also into the integral gutter. Any thoughts/advice would be appreciated, as always.

So after 6 months of delay due to one shoddy bricklayer and another one who was shoddy with a massive 'I'm the best' ego, it is finally third time lucky and the two guys we waited 6 weeks to start, take pride in their work and are really approachable when you want to ask a question or raise an issue. Just how it should be. Being behind is a pain though, as it will mean I will be cutting the roof and installing the standing seam roofing most likely in November. But so long as it doesn't get too wet, it might be ok. Here are a few photos. I made a jig up to cut the insulation at the angle of the cavity tray and I was chuffed how it turned out. A rather laborious task though, but I said I would get the trays and insulation all ready for them I also knocked up probably 12 different mixes over the last few months. We tried 5 different sands, grey cement, white cement and lime ...., but non of them really worked and they were either too grey or too yellow, but we kept searching and finally found a local firm in Thatcham who had some sand from a quarry a long distance away. The colour looked like it would work and as soon as I mixed up the 5 sand, 1 white cement and 1 lime mix, we both said "that's it". Sand cost us about £90/ton, which is not cheap, but I didn't want to be looking at the house thinking "I don't like the mortar colour". Here are a few pictures of progress from the last two weeks.

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They are all limited to the problem room, it’s not like ‘the old days’ A mist system has a timed discharge, 45 mins IIRC, and then it shuts off; apparently it’s the equivalent of you filling the bath once and flipping it on its side. A bit of flooring / new carpet etc maybe, but a sprinkler can do as much harm than the fire it put out. Plenty of good YT vids showing a mist system doing its thing. Quite impressive as it literally atomises the water. 4m radius from 1 head.

Assuming this refers to a past thread could we see a link please?

An Architect designs buildings, a builder builds them. A Landscape Architect or Garden designer designs gardens and landscapes, a landscaper builds them. They are different skill sets and IMO it is rare for a builder to be much good at design, or a landscaper much good at design. Rare to see a designer actually building things themselves too. It is easy for those with unlimited funds. One deisgner I spoke to was asking £8k for a 300sqm design. One landscaper £250+sqm. It adds up to a lot pretty quickly. Stealing ideas and a bit of direct labour becomes attractive. Lots of ways to go with steps...

Hi everyone, I’m based in the UK and work in UK LED lighting company. I’m particularly interested in LED strip lighting, electrical installations, home improvement and how lighting can be integrated into different residential and commercial projects. I joined BuildHub because there are some really useful discussions around self-builds, renovation and building services here. I’m looking forward to learning from the community and contributing where I can. Nice to meet everyone!

Just in case anyone likes those "making of" backstories... https://www.earth.org.uk/pint-poster-paper-slice-and-dice-decarb.html

Naturally - but you have spun out a whole other idea here - real time trading of energy consumption. I can imagine an AI agent getting control of a smart enough home to really drive down costs and consumption. Yes but if you achieve 80% cut in cost and use AI to control it why would you not.

I suspect that non-ToU tariffs may become much more expensive, so those who pay no attention at all will pay a heavy premium; those who pay more attention will save (or earn) significantly.