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Good link. My own view is that the glue, if the right glue is going to out perform the timber. If you take a structural glue, like Cascamite, invented about 1940 it's well proven. It's relatively cheep and easy to use, just keep it out your hair, arms etc! You ain't going to get it of with a bit of Fairy liquid! Sometimes I want to glue stainless steel plates together, here the glue is a bit more specialised, maybe @Alan Ambrose may chip in. Buckland mention the end grain. The critical bit is to make sure the end of the cut timber is treated. But I can tell you that 99% of the time on site the joiners cut a bit of wood / trim Gluelam and don't treat the exposed ends. And then all the theory turns to manure! It's good though to see Buckland investigating this, it can only help inform.

Always helpful Thus the rebar has to have adequate cover and be surrounded by well compacted concrete. This concrete is at the start of the next lift, well down the shutter. Very difficult to achieve. The only reason for continuous rebar between floors is if you have particular fire or disproportionate collapse requirements. Less onerous on the standard ICF build. In fact.. if you add rebar into the ends of Hollocore slabs and tie that into the external walls then you start to create a moment / partial stiffness connection. You then introduce an extra bending force into the walls, thus you need to design for that, it potentially causes problems with concrete core thickness. Disagree, a lot, not really applicable to self build when using ICF, you are mixing up platform and core lifting with ICF which is a different animal. If you give your Hollocore slabs full bearing on the ICF core (say 150mm) then this often satisfies the tying requirement on a low rise buildings, like self builds. My advice stands. Recognise that on your second ICF lift it's going to be hard (impossible actually) to get adequate concrete compaction at first floor level when you have to get the poker all the way down the base of core if there is more rebar congestion. Keep it simple, extend the Hollocore out to the external face of the core. Always check with you SE in case there are funny point loads or lateral bracing requirements. My advice is general, but intended to be practical in the first instance.

Good spot, thanks for looking at my stuff. There are three fin plates, one at each end and on in the middle marked F4. The end ones stop the angle rocking on the external leaf of masonry. The centre one halves the effective length of the steel angle. Over a 4.0m length the angle will fail, in torsion and buckling. The members marked 7 xB8 are the first floor joists that rest on the inner leaf beam. I've added more drawing to let you see what I've been up to! Remember thought these are screenshots of part of my drawings. While I'm happy to share some stuff I do I need to protect my intellectual property to some extent. It is after all my day job also. The stuff you see is only part of what is a much larger drawing set. This is big bug bear I have. Architect's nine times out of ten don't put a grid on there drawings at the concept design stage. Thus it makes it right from the get go hard for a Client to line stuff up. As I wear two hats.. I just can't see why they don't do this, it's bonkers or arrogance?

Is it the three fins (labeled F4) which prevent the twisting, or the seven pieces of angle (labeled B8)? What are the B8s fixed to?

Your SE is trying to convey to you some very difficult / complex structural behaviour, in lay terms. To put this into context. Working from left to right. The first two diagrams show a Cee section. It takes about 3-5 years after graduating from uni to even get you head round this, to be able to design something buildable and cost effective. Your SE has made a pretty good go of the diagrams. Option 3 works, up to a point span wise, much depends on the span / size of the angle. Angle sections are prone to twisting. Your SE later may want to also restrain the angle in places to stop it twisting. Below is a cross section though something very similar to what you have. Buried within the insulation you'll see two bolt heads. below is a screen shot of the steel GA details. If you look closely you'll see a steel fin plate in the middle of the angle span. Here I'm shortening the effective length of the angle and stop is twisting over the doors below. The fin plate method is a small local thermal bridge, but an effective way of getting a relatively small steel angle to work. Yes there are still thermal bridges, but this is not a new build rather a retro fit into an older house. Below is the proposed rear elevation. The clear opening width is some 4.0m. The steels over the opening need to carry first floor and roof loads. I've only posted parts of some of the drawings, hope enough to give you flavour of some of the things we need to think about.

Ok, thanks. The proposed solution will make the outer leaf brickwork easier too

I'd guess that there's a risk of the plate sagging and pulling the internal lintel over with it. The proposed solution seems entirely reasonable - SE's do tend to be very practical people.

For context, this is the courtyard garden of my SB. The wall on the right is the one I am thinking of treating with the paint, mesh, and ivy. You can see that I've rendered around the windows so that the areas the mesh will not cover are presentable.

Not unless he has the code for my garage door.

Our SE has specified paired beams for the garage and large patio sliders. I have gone back and asked if we could use a beam with underplate as it makes the brickies job easier. I got a rather interesting response, which I'm finding rather confusing. " Is it possible to change the spec of the beams for the garage and large patio doors, to instead use beams with underplate for the garage and patio doors. The reason I ask is that we are not having a soldier course and it will be the brickwork tricky to marry into the outer leaf beam if I use paired beams. I get the problem, however, if you just use a plate, there’s a theoretical possibility of instability of the lintel, as the combined effect of weight of the brickwork and the leverage to overturn the beam is greater than the available restraint loading on the blockwork side. See attached sketch showing what I mean. So I’m not too keen on this option in this case However, I can’t see a reason why not to use an angle in the outer leaf; the 200x100x12 RA should be sufficient, in both cases. Any good?" Said drawing I was sent is attached. Given the ends of the lintel are supported, I'm confused as to how it could physically twist like she is indicating. PATIO AND GARAGE LINTELS.pdf

No, uPVC needs additional insulation of some kind to beat timber. Timber just starts off with an advantage, but can be enhanced too - for example with cork inserts or with foam insulation between the timber and an aluminium external shell. For examples of what can be done, see https://database.passivehouse.com/en/components/list/window However uPVC is often chosen as a cheap option and, as usual, you tend to get what you pay for.

Does anybody have a recommendation for an architect or architectural technician in the West Surrey/East Berkshire/NE Hampshire area, who’s capable of producing construction drawings for a BuildHub-quality house that’s air tight with MVHR, please? I’ve just sacked the guy who was supposed to do this for me, after more than a year of low quality work, constant excuses & missed deadlines. I think this time, I want somebody who’s close enough to me for face to face meetings & affordable site visits.

Thanks all. Just to reiterate, I'm not thinking of just growing ivy on the wall of the house. I am thinking about painting the wall of the house in a silane-based, nanoparticle paint, as per the spec in my original post, affixing metal mesh proud of the wall, and growing ivy on the mesh. I am aware if the need this will generate for me to trim the face of the ivy yearly and to cut it back at the edges. My uncertainty is over whether this paint can actually prevent the plant from attaching itself to the building as advertised. I have considered various other climbers instead but, even though some flower beautifully in summer, many die back in winter. I'd be looking at a bare wall half the year. Or, they seem to grow quite slowly.

I know my way round ls engines in great detail. Im using the donor vehicle for whole drive line, suspension, subframes, wiring, dash etc. Know nothing about vipers, nor are donors cheap!

This. It needs support wires as it climbs by twisting around itself, but it doesn't cling to brickwork. Will look bare in winter, but you get the pay-back when it flowers.

+1 for not ivy, there are plenty of less problematic alternatives. I'm still trying to remove one the previous owner planted and it's relentless.

stuck. pushed the turbo "fable" button.... here's hoping...

@craig I was talking about small joinery manufacturers. They aren't getting testing done on their system if the bulk of their work is bespoke. Decent upvc beats timber then? Even without any special glues for the units or filling in the chambers. I honestly haven't seen alu spacers on newbuilds in over a decade. I reglazed some of a 30+ yr old timber conservatory the other week and that was 4:6:4 aluminium spacer

find a doge viper lump and drop that in it get some more cubic inches

sorry did not read close enough sounds like shell and bp it will all be down to deals and volume of sites and what terminal they deliver from --and drivers hours --without knowing all details its impossible to tell certainly fuel suppliers have no problem in dumping dealers if it don,t fit with what they are planning come end of contract

it will be the deal they were offered or maybe bp would not renew there deal

This old garden wall had ivy growing in / on it. It did not do it much good!

The FCA banned dual pricing at the start of 2022 Insurers are no longer allowed to charge renewing customers any more than they would charge a new customer for the same policy. https://www.cuvva.com/how-insurance-works/dual-pricing-insurance-fca

It depends where you are sourcing your products, alu spacers are still fairly common unfortunately. Regarding timber beating uPVC, a good quality uPVC frame with 4/5 chambers will beat a timber aluminium window on performance. They will have testing done on the system or at least they will be using the tested performance of the profile from the supplier. The program they use (excel, winpro etc) will perform the relevant calculation and supply the Uw, some won't even display it and just say AA Rated for example. From recollection, the lambda (λ) are pretty similar across the relevant timbers With oak being slightly higher.

I think most units for new windows are specced with warm edge spacers nowadays aren't they? Interesting that timber normally beats upvc. How do the smaller manufacturers (particularly timber with big profile manufacturer back up) calculate their u value? From my experience they just quote the unit u value. I know the accoya performs well thermally. Are other timbers the same?