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Some caulks say its the paint that cracks with the movement not the caulk. Don't know how true that is. Ive been using the crown own brand with a green label not sure if good for you though.

They had to do a similar thing with car insurance by not quoting female drivers lower be aude they were female. Result was women drivers got higher quotes. I think the important metric with insurance is when it comes to paying out. Don't matter a (expletive deleted) if you pay 100 or 1000 a year, if they don't settle a claim adequately, the customer has been conned/scammed.

Martin Lewis has covered the dual pricing rules a few times: "...since January 2022, car and home insurers have been banned from charging renewing customers more than they charge new customers - to stop the annual 'price-walk' of pushing up prices at each renewal...The 'same price for both' rule is channel specific. For example, if you got insurance direct, your renewal must cost the same as if you were a new direct customer. If you had gone via a comparison site, it must cost the same as a new customer via THAT site (others may be cheaper)." This presents a loophole to rotate around the different channels (direct; comparison site 1; comparison site 2 etc) to offer best deals through that channel (only) to acquire new customers while all the existing customers acquired through all other channels can be charged higher prices.

See you have an ASHP, that will be taken over by the ivy the first couple of months not trimming it back. Any plants up the wall will have to cut back hard from time to time, you need your walls to look finished otherwise it will all look a mess.

I need to caulk our staircase: the new baserail to the stringer(?), the stringer to the plasterboard wall under it. Can anyone recommend a caulk that flows like a dream, handles the movement of a 100yr old house, and overpaints without crazing? I've used caulks that do 1-2 of those, but not all 3.

Does seem to. My case is a bit different as it's a change in company. When they've taken over their quotes have been consistently in the £200 range. I'm currently paying Churchil £80. (Contents only as I'm leasehold). Insurance products a complex with lots of different line items. It's fairly easy for insurance companies to change their standard cover every year, so those who want to renew last years cover are then renewing a 'non-standard' cover and the price of that cover can be different to that offered to new customers. I think @Redbeard is a good example of that.

It still happens though

Did you have to pay them or did they just accept being blown out? Maybe I'm a control freak but I always find they need heavy handed steering! That said i never used any of the more expensive firms perhaps these are better?

How thick are your boards. 3mm feels more like a scratch than a groove. Id be looking for more like 6mm you will have to do a test piece see what you prefer. I don't think sockets will look bad with the grooves going into them.

I am making, because the commercial stuff is too thin to act as the actual wall, and fitting V groove panelling in our bedrooms and am not sure what depth I should rout the V grooves. I have looked at commercial panelling and it comes out between 3 and 5 mm deep - I prefer 3mm but is that enough on a 4m run - will it just feel lost. I also have to fit a number of plug sockets and light switches in it and am wondering what the best way to do this as I would like to use dry lining back boxes as there is no structure behind the panelling. Will this look odd with the grooves running behind the face plates? Any thoughts?

@Gus Potterthanks for explaining things. That is a complex steel structure for a door opening.

I’d say it doesn’t cross their minds to put a grid on.

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.