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I grew up in Africa, travelled widely in the middle east, probably long before you were born. Of course it's not a compliment! Grow up and read more widely. If you do it will add weight to comments you make.

Without a full topological survey of the entire area, it's impossible to advise. Some idea on possible permeability further down may offer a solution, but there is just not enough info here to even have a stab at it, sorry.

What depth are your house foundations sitting at? You don't want to compromise them if you essentially undermine them?

Hi all, I am hoping someone can sanity check my thoughts here, we are planning a 4M x 4M sunken garden area in our self-build. Due to the plot layout and height differences versus other properties we would overlook other gardens if the seating area was at garden level. Digging down a metre means we are already in heavy clay so a soakaway isn’t an option. I am trying to get my head around the sizing of a sump and pump for the sunken area as all of the off the shelf solutions I have found seem to be aimed at large basements where any amount of water needs to be contained and removed urgently, lifted many metres vertically and cost ridiculous sums of money given the context. From a bit of googling it seems that 1mm of rain falling on a square meter is 1 litre - for Bristol, where we are, typical rainfall amounts are 0.5mm to 4.00mm per hour with storms reaching 45-50mm /hr Taking the worst case 50mm per hour and our roughly 16sqm sunken area is 800l/hr of rain fall. Given that I am only going to be moving this water about 3M horizontally and less than 1M up (there is a handy storm water drain near by that I can connect into) I am planning on using a 24V submersible pump capable of something in excess of 3,000l /hr pumping @1M vertical as these are commonly available for boats and seems to me a good margin versus expected use and the cost differential to something smaller is negligible. I am using 24V DC as the house has Loxone home automation and we have plenty of 24V already available locally to where the pump will be located So my question is how big should I make the reservoir the pump sits in? Rather than buy some huge tank and putting in perimeter channels I am thinking of using this https://vodaland.co.uk/collections/300x300-catch-basins-and-gullies - nominally it is about 25L capacity but with a couple of spacer rings that can be increased to about 45l quite easily At 4mm/hr it would take about 5mins before there was sufficient water in the catch basin to turn on the pump which would then run for about 10 seconds then wait another 5mins for the catch basin to refill and so on Even at 50mm/hr rainfall the pump would run for about 20 seconds per minute which is well within its specification. I am not too worried if a sudden huge amount of water was to overwhelm the sump as I won't be out there getting my feet wet when it does!!! Am I massively over thinking this or would you do something different? Thanks Paul

You'll probably be his only fan.......

Make sure the door to the bathroom has either a transfer grille, or an 8-10mm undercut on the bottom of the door, to let air in at the same volume that the extractor wants to remove it. Overrun timer is a must, my bathroom fan runs for 30-40 mins after each activation, to completely remove any moisture; it was shite at first, then I realised I'd no air coming in to the room, so chopped 10mm off the bottom of the door and then the magic happened. I'm always rushed doing any work in my own house so often don't see the woods for the trees.

102mm wide by 940mm long strips. About 2.5mm thick. https://grosvenor-flooring.com/product/amtico-spacia-featured-oak/

Then it's not a problem.

Well they are telling me they can put some in the appliance bays - hidden under the appliance. Then when they lay the rest of the floor, cut the floor strips to meet what is in the appliance bay. It is a wood oak effect finish.

Well one place seems to have a bit of a rise and fall creating a rocking point for a spirit level - maybe 3mm higher than the neighbouring areas at its peak. There is another area that seems to rise about 5mm over a meter as you move towards the wall.. It is Bostik SL C955 advanced. Will it get harder to grind down when it is fully hardened. There is plenty there, as it is around 10-14mm thick at one end and maybe 8mm at the other. (that is just the top coat)

You'd still need to set out the whole floor, to get the joints / lines to marry up? Not seen the pattern or style, so it's difficult for me to reply 100%.

I have been propping the front door and bifolds open when I can to get a through draft. It is Amtico spacia, so butt jointed and glued.

If you do it manually you can prevent dust. The screed is usually quite soft so it doesn't need a machine. You can get on hands and knees and use a brick. And it can be dampened first. How much would be coming off, and how thick would the remainder be?

+1 as an objective, but not always feasible in a small space.

There was a recent article in the IStructE magazine just about this and promoting the use of C16 timber. It's pretty well available in Scotland (in EU metric sizes, CLS Canadian lumber standards are slightly diferent in dimensions for example) and for years I've used it where I can. The U value regs in Scotalnd quite often drive the timber external wall stud thickness on a basic timber frame house, call that a major developer type house. You can use C16 at a deeper depth so you can fit a decent thickness of insulation between the studs. The deeper stud in C16 still delivers the strength and deflection limits you need. The problem can be that C16 significantly reduces timber connection performance one you get into transfer beams and anything (say goal posts around openings) that needs to resist sideways wind loading. There is a practical side to this. What you don't want to happen is that the builder mixes up the timber grades on site. When I'm designing I try and make sure that the deep timbers are C24 if I have to use that grade, the shallower ones C16. You never mix grades of timber of the same size. The same applies to steel buildings in terms of bolt grades., you make sure it's not possible to fit the wrong grade of bolt into same sized holes. You can't make it totally idiot proof as a designer but you can try your best.

Why don't you just stick to that in the dungeon. All you need is a working webcam and your OnlyFans page.

The practical reasoning behinds this is that shower area in dormers are a big source of water gas. You have to execute the work "perfectly" and it takes a lot of time to design and detail stuff like this. Few are willing to pay a designer to get it right. BC and I know that few builders do this properly, hence my caution. But if you are doing it yourself, are confident, dilligent in your workmanship and understand the theory, marry that up with your particular house (it needs to be detailed specifically, not generically) then it's doable.

Yeah there's z lot of fix a problem. Depends on the prompt. Some of these "tests" are to simplistic. I mean I'm writing the entire thing using chat - not claude code or a dedicated coder model. Strangely enough we've jettisoned qwen coder as it wasn't good enough ( I don't get why it couldn't do it ) - but there you go. So you build a harness and you stick a model in and see.

I prefer the basin and toilet side by side with the toilet under the window and basin closer to the door. Seems to give a good clear shared area around washbasin and shower as you enter the room, aesthetically you then don't open the door to be presented with the toilet, mirror also available when you have stepped out of the shower. Can the shower go long enough to be a walk in ? Getting rid of those nooks on the end wall could lengthen the shower ? Does the window open to help release the methane ? Too many cooks probably. Love the renders - what are you using and does it take less than a huge number of hours to master ?

https://www.makeuseof.com/claude-chatgpt-gemini-broken-javascript-debug-one-found-cause/

I usually cut a strip of self adhesive neoprene (20mm thick) along the lower rear of the unit, so when it top hangs and the bottom falls back against the wall it is on to something soft. A slice of pipe insulation will suffice, but if you're happy then no need to do anything further. Thanks for updating the thread

You were absolutely right. In the end I went for 2x 18mm plywood sheets with a layer of Tecsound SY100 between. Even without doing anything special between the Zehnder brackets and the plywood, just screwed on rigidly, there is zero vibration or hum, even if I set the unit to run at max fan speed.

I went for fully glazed, from Just Value Doors, who use Smart Systems profiles. Very easy to fit, and there is a small adjuster on the top of the door in case it ever needs the toe and heeling adjusting without taking the beads off. I went for 6.8mm acoustic laminate plus 4mm toughened glass which was a custom order but I found them helpful to deal with. My only criticism is that if the handles ever need to be replaced, there aren't a lot of options, because standard 32mm wide plates don't fit due to the narrow aluminium profile.

the room just doesnt warrant that kind of innovation!

See .... told ja' ... you're missing out on a complete realm of human existence. Gay American politicians and electric wheelbarrows : yer missing out boys, missing out. #sadbuggers