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Yes please.

Great, I'll crack on then. Off work for a few weeks so I'm hoping to get the bathroom somewhere near sorted. Just spent the day setting up a temporary bathroom in the neighbouring bedroom... When you gotta go you gotta go!

But you are today's winner. 🏆 💐

Next time you are in a big steel warehouse, look at the rafters. They will be very slender if well designed. To prevent rotation/ out of balance of the rafter, there can be angled struts from the bottom flanges to purlins.. a small amount of steel adding much strength. 350°C , as mentioned by Gus, is very hot indeed. By the time that temperature is reached everyone is gone a long time ago, and most contents will be too. Windows will fall out, doors will fail, skylights will burn or break and so some heat will escape. Ouside walls may even fall apart or burn. Or if it stays intact the oxygen demand doesn't keep up with the fire. The fire bbrigade'sprimary mission is to save life and that is long before 350. But also the fire must not spread so boundary walls and compartment walls are to a higher spec, and steel columns must stay in place. That moves us onto pinned or fixed bases which may be for lesson 2 (only if requested).

If you can afford it (time, not just £) is it worth talking to him? He maybe bored already and prepared to take on a job that offers flexibility. Our carpenter (recommended by previous trade) is retired and has worked an average of 3 days a week (5 when deadline has required) 1 day a week, when suited etc.

Unfortunately, the brickie the groundworker recommended has retired and the JCB driver who dug the footings just keeps his head down and doesn't recommend trades.

Basingstoke

Well, we are back from our week away so it’s back to life, back to reality … And the first question I ponder is what to do about the breather membrane on the front of our house. For various reasons the front upstairs gable of our house has not had its timber outer skin put on. Scaffolding has now gone up so that will be remedied soonish. But what to do about the breather membrane? It’s the expensive Tyvek reflective stuff supplied by ETE, the timber frame company. It’s specc’d for four months exposed. We’ve been a lot more than that. It was put up in September. It now looks a bit like my skin, rather more wrinkly than I’d like. The timber skin is 24mm larch which overlaps nicely so should keep the vast majority of the rain, etc. out. I think the main functions of the membrane are to keep wet out of the frame, and to allow water vapour out so that any atmospheric moisture in the timber of the frame can escape. So do I leave the existing membrane in place and add another layer or is that likely to reduce the passage of moisture too much? Or do I cut the existing stuff away and put new straight onto the OSB of the panels? Guidance gratefully received, as always.

Thanks for the advice! I'm going to get the brick bond sorted under the 1st floor windows and maybe above the windows too. I'm happy enough with the brickwork under the bays, and it should blend in when all repointed in lime mortar and cleaned up.

This might not work, but my recollection is that you found a groundworker in the end that you were happy with and who could work with you......could they recommend someone to you.....I ask this because being on "on site self builder" who has a strong vested interest in outcomes is not a situation that everyone is comfortable with (maybe they should be but that's another debate) so having another trade saying "look they're ok, pay on time etc etc" may help your case? This is how we have had good referrals

What area are you again?

That sounds like somebody talking sense at last.

We have a problem with the dishwasher connection but that’s above the trap and smells from the sink and you say “ (no smell from sink)”. Is it a drain/ sewer smell? No chance of a dead mouse under/ behind units?

That is my concern as well. I think I have talked myself out of it already.

Offer to pay a much higher rate, if they can show you pics of previous work on their phones. That’s the only way to bag a trade in peak season, as money talks. Ask to see the dates the photos were taken, and properly explain the issues you’ve had. Ask if they have PL insurance and say you’ll need to see a copy; those two things filter out most of the shitebags. As far as a random middle-man taking money from you as an agent? I’d lay the bricks myself before doing this; they’ll find the cheapest bricky possible, do near zero vetting, and keep as much money back as is possible.

I've concluded that a combination of being height of summer and a job half finished is enough of a reason why those who come around to view our project never come back with the quote that they say they will. We have had 5 now, who have chatted for nearly an hour and left saying they'll have a quote to me in a few days, to hearing nothing more. Very frustrating, as I'd prefer a "not interested ..." I have just received a quote with respectable QS aligned numbers from a company that on closer inspection is nothing more than a intermediary contractor that must simply have bricklayers on their books that they subbie out. It's akin when I used to IT contract, the service was provided through an agency. We may have no choice on this as before long the mortgage company is going to start asking questions. Has anyone gone down this approach and if so, what due diligence can I do to ensure that whoever does the brickwork does it to a good standard. It does make me nervous.

Sounds like your system is open to the main sewer, have you got a dry trap somewhere - washing machine for instance or maybe an air admittance valve (AAV) is stuck and your loo flushes are sucking a trap dry.

Got a picture.

morning all, We have a stink emanating from somewhere around trap under sink - but no water leak. 1 1/2" plastic waste. Could the trap be 'faulty' somehow? It's not dry/blocked etc etc - (no smell from sink). There's also an elbow after trap. Both removed, cleaned, reinstalled - but still stinks. not making any sense - new fittings maybe? any bright ideas please? very frustrating!

It depends! But here is a rough outline of how we go about designing steel fire protection. The following is in the context of the self builder, not multi storey, multiple occupancy structures. Ok, the process / theory is.. roughly this. The starting point is to understand how steel behaves when it gets hot. Someone ask me / others a while back.. why does my oven not start to melt / distort when I cook a pizza hot? The above is what we call a fire curve (SCI, Steel Construction Institute data ). There are different fire curves. They vary depending on fire loading (how much and what types of stuff can contribute to a fire, how "intense and rapid" the heat delivery) but the above is one we would refer to in a typical domestic self build. You can see that up to about 350 Celsius the steel maintains much of its strength, which is why your oven does not "melt" and fall to bits. After that the steel strength starts to plummet. When we fire protect steels as @saveasteading says This is correct. All we are doing it to stop the steel from getting hot enough, then soften too much, and thus not carry the loads on it for the time required by the building regulations for example. Now we can either select a geometry of steel member and make it very heavy such that there is so much mass of steel that it does not get heated quickly enough to soften to the point of failure. In lay terms. If we had a solid round bar of steel say 150mm in diameter it has a large cross section area compared with the exposed surface. This is what we call the heated perimeter / cross section area ratio (Hp/A), the Euro codes have slightly different way of presenting but they mean the same. They are presented using the ratio Area / Volume, A/V. But if we have the same cross section area of steel and weight in an I shape (a universal beam) it has a much larger surface area and thus will heat up much more quickly and thus lose strength more quickly. Now we ain't going to be using solid 150mm diameter steels. What we could look to do is is insulate the steel. This could be by way of fire proof plasterboard or intumescent paint. But also we could build the steel into a masonry wall and maybe have only one side exposed to the fire on the inside of say a garage. Or we could have the steel built into a floor that in itself insulates some of the exposed faces of the steel. Below is a screen shot of a table that shows how we need to consider the exposed sides. They key here is that the lower the section factor the slower the steel will heat up. The section factor changes depending on how many sides of the steel are exposed. But to go back to what @Great_scot_selfbuild asked., which was how heavy does a steel need to be so it does not need fire protection? The info below is taken from Corus literature 2003 as an easy generic example. The bottom line (Hp 61m^-1) is of interest to us here in a domestic self build. Using a design temperature of 550 deg you can see that the bottom blue line hangs in there, all other things being equal for 30 min. So let go back now and find a steel section with a section factor of lower than 61 m^-1 to try and get a handle on how big a column needs to be for example. A 203 x 203 x 86kg/m is a candidate if it has three sides protection (section factor 60), but that is a heavy steel. You also need to handle this safely on site. Ok let's see how a box section compares. Ok we can get down to 60 for three sides exposed protection.. not much difference. But if we reduce the sides exposed the numbers get a lot better. I've not shown them here. That main remaining key bit is what we call the load ratio mentioned above as 0.6 ratio. When we design a beam / columns or pretty much any structural member in your house we design for the normal expected loads. The self weight, permanent loads and the imposed ( live loads, people, book shelves etc) but in a fire we recognise that the floors, roof etc are probably not going to be fully loaded with people for example during a fire, the permanent / self weight load is still there. So we can make a reduction in the load if a fire occurs. Its based on probability and the loads that could be reasonably expected in the case of a fire. We call this an accidental load case and the safety factors get reduced for example. If we designed everything for the worst case buildings would be too expensive to build! The load ratio is the load (stress generated) during a fire compared with the ultimate capacity of the member. Often we design beams to be restrained by say a timber floor.. but if this has burnt away we can't count that. To conclude: The above I hope, gives you all a bit of insight into what we need to do / think about to design steels for fire. The take away is that sometimes it works using a heavy steel to avoid the expense of fire protection. The design can become much more complex if bolted / welded connections need to be taken into account. This kind of design consideration is a bit complex if you've not done it before, it's not common bedtime reading! It can be a tricky subject once you get into detail, something that many Architect's, BC officers are also not too familiar with. But it's a fundamental part of producing a safe design. My objective in writing is to try and help BH folk gain a bit more knowledge so you can ask and phrase any questions you have to your designers from a lay person perspective. You make a good point. Yes steels expand in a fire and will change shape and distort the surrounding structure, to the point it often has to be later demolished. The objective is that the building hangs in there so it does not fall on the fire brigade, set light or fall onto a neighbouring building not least.

Where things are at... https://youtu.be/nl__O_QGIR4?si=G_CGnPuO8etvYzmV

This is standard detailing, for any spark. Was going though this today for 1ph ovens (x2), 3ph induction hob, 3ph ASHP's (x2), and 3ph immersion. Lots of very comprehensive discussion was had, and that means the CU will be sized, populated, and comply fully without any hiccups Breakers (or fuses) have always been sized historically, like 15a rewireable fuses for immersions, so this is not anything that's ever overlooked in my experience.