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I used UltraTile Pro Primer. It looks and smells exactly like SBR and out of the 5L I used barely a mouthful... Would just use SBR if I could go back.

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

SBR Bond before you tile, will give much better adhesion as well as water proofing

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

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 £?

So, I’ve spent the last 4 days installing the posi joists and getting a temporary 18mm OSB platform down for the brickies who will start the upstairs blockwork next week. I was probably naive in thinking that posi joists would be dead straight. So a lot of time was spent, trying to pull them flat via strong backs and also concrete screws. 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. not sure if anyone can comment on whether that will cause issues fitting the flooring. Here are some pictures. I’m especially chuffed with the site stairs I purchased and collected a couple of weeks back and the temporary scaffolding platform I erected. It made carrying up the 18mm sheets of OSB on my own nice and easy. Without that it would have been impossible. I’ll get it finished tomorrow, before back to work Monday.

Ok, thanks. I had to fettle as ours were 4-6m in length and had the 1cm curve in them too.

@Sparrowhawk Chop a load of bricks / mortar / other out from the gap, then pour 2-part fibrous SLC in to get a uniform working platform around 50mm below DPC. Then use black jack liquid DPM, 2-3 coats, across the cured SLC and up the sides etc, and leave to dry. Then more of the 2 part SLC to the required level. Find some complimenting mosiacs and tile the gap back in. Pub.

Yes, the DPC sits loose. You lay it across the full width (spanning both leaves and the cavity), then bed mortar on top and set the slabs. The weight holds it; you do not nail or screw it down, because any puncture defeats the point. Keep joints lapped properly and take the membrane up a little at the door threshold so water cannot track under the door edge. With inward opening doors you want a proper threshold detail too: continuous DPM/DPC into an upstand or welt under the threshold, and a sealed sill so driving rain and wet footwear cannot soak into the floor make up. For a more waterproof finish once the base is solid, a liquid applied tanking or a bonded waterproof membrane over the slabs before tiles or vinyl is worth it. Avoid relying on the old chipboard again in that wet zone.

Well Floor replaced and over boarded with 3.6mm ply as planned - nice and flat and very very solid. now ready for tiles unless I need to coat the ply with something to stop it stealing the water out of the adhesive too quickly?

No Perspex diffuser yet ( need a beer ) ….

Perhaps have a look at these - https://webuildit-ltd.co.uk/bio-pure-1/ - same ball park figure as above but no moving parts ! Other than a pump you are good to go. We have one and it discharges into a water course the other side of the farmers field, assisted by a connection to the field drainage system.

Yes , yes . Patience ! You had to wait 10 yrs to see my build almost finished - so a few days of suspense you can tolerate fore sure 😎

See what did there ? 🤔🤔🤔🤔

Yes, a treatment plant can usually discharge to a ditch or stream, which is the big advantage over a septic tank. In England that comes under the General Binding Rules for small sewage discharges: under 5 cubic metres a day, a plant built to BS EN 12566-3, and the watercourse should normally have flow all year round, so a ditch that's dry all summer won't do and you'd be back to a drainage field. Septic tanks can no longer discharge straight to a watercourse at all. Wales and Scotland run their own rules through NRW and SEPA, so check if that applies. Building control will still want it shown on the plans. On periods of no use, a septic tank is the more forgiving of the two because it's passive. A plant relies on a live bacterial population and a blower, so after a few weeks empty the biology dies back and it takes a little while to settle once you're back. It's still fine for normal holidays: keep the power on, don't switch the blower off, and go easy on bleach and big loads of washing the first day back. If it'll sit empty for months at a time, mention that to the supplier, as some designs cope better than others.

That's exactly what they did. I've drilled drain holes on the now-outward side a year ago which helped and (since taking the photos) sealed the inward side drain holes, so will see how they go. TBH they need replacing so this is a "tide us over for a few years" bodge on the doors - but I'd like the floor repair to last longer. Paving slabs, that's a great idea. Yes, all under the chipboard is two rows of brick with a cavity like this, so a matter of finding something the right thickness. So you don't fix the DPC down, you lay it and then mortar and then the paving slabs, and rely weight to hold it in place? With inward opening doors there's always going to be water dripping off the bottom when we open them in the rain, wet boots coming in etc so I want to make this new floor as waterproof as I can.

Yes this is what they have told me, so a septic tank is allowed but not the favoured choice. The mains sewer (if you can call it that) is about 150 metres away and consists of 4 houses whose waste goes into a septic tank and this would involve going under a road so I figure this option is not feasible. So it looks like a sewage treatment plant is what councils want these days over septic tanks? I see they are a little bit pricier. Something like this I assume https://www.owlshall.co.uk/sewage-treatment/sewage-treatment-plants/1-4-bedroom/tricel-novo-6/ can the treated waste from such a sewage treatment plant be then discharged into a ditch or water course? And do sewage treatment plants cope with periods of inactivity better than septic tanks?

Probably outward opening french doors fitted the other way around so that they would open inwards (as you would normally want for a porch).

Always quite difficult to diagnose sound by description. Could be the inlet group or the expansion vessel. Here is a video of a failed expansion vessels at its worst (customer left it a long time to ask me to check it out) making similar noise. This was a warranty replacement on an installation I did (and before anyone comments on the lack of pipe insulation, the customer specifically asked for me to do this to provide warmth to their airing cupboard as I'd removed a small rad when stripping out the old combi boiler). Vessel was installed with correct pre-charge at 3 bar and I'd re-checked pre-charge pressure when looking at the fault, so for all intents and purposes it looked like the expansion vessel was okay. untitled.mp4

Before packing and levelling I'd sort the door, because that's the root of it. If the frame drains inwards it'll rot whatever you put back. Get the door and cill refitted the right way round, with the drainage slots weeping out and a decent seal under the cill. For the threshold, cut out all the rotten chipboard back to sound material and see what's actually underneath. If it's a gap over the cavity, lay a strip of DPC across the inner and outer leaf, lapped up behind where the frame sits, then build it up with engineering brick or a cut concrete paving slab bedded on mortar. I'd avoid timber or plastic packers in there, anything that holds or wicks water will give you the same problem again. Levelling compound is fine for the last few millimetres, but it doesn't like going on thick over a joint or anything that flexes, so get a solid base first. Prime the old tiles with the compound maker's primer and check they're well bonded before you go over them. While it's all open I'd swap that MDF for moisture resistant board or treated timber, otherwise you'll be doing this again in a few years.

JpManning has covered the important bits well. The one thing I would add from the leak side is that the percolation test needs to be an honest one. A drainage field forced into clay will not quietly cope, it will show up as surface water or a soggy garden and that is the kind of job I get called out to later. Also double check your outlet invert level before you buy anything, because without enough fall to the field the whole system struggles from day one.

The ****** who built this porch spanned the door opening with chipboard and then laid tiles on top. Over 10-20 years, water has rotted the chipboard ("helped" by installing the UPVC door back to front with it draining inwards), the floor sagged and the tiles have broken. The rest of the floor is presumed laid on concrete, with old terracotta tiles with the white tiles laid on top. What's the easiest way to repair this? I note that the DPC stops at the side, so I'm thinking: DPC across the inner and outer bricks Something to pack the height (tile?) floor levelling compound to bring it up to the top of the white tiles and then we'll lay something new over the top Better way? And what would you pack the gap with? And yes, the whole internal structure of this porch is built from MDF, and not the moisture resistant kind 🤦‍♂️

You show us yours working and we'll show you ours

Worth checking all the schedules in the thermostats in case there’s a rogue entry. Also, check the docs - from memory, there’s some occasional calls to exercise the system for some reason. You can check on the app (if you have the hub) to see which circuits fired and for how long. Bet it’s a rogue schedule.

FYI, I found my posi joists were OK but had a bend in them or other discrepancies e.g. length, of a cm over 5m. They needed to be fettled to line up e.g. at the eaves.