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We used kytun t2 with our slate and halves. Bit of fiddling to set out to allow for cladding, but pleased with the results.

It’s a <£200 day out for the training and subsequent “qualification”. I have been meaning to do it, but life continues to distract me.

Hi everyone we are pricing a modular house for delivery to the Isle of Harris I am looking for some contacts/ sub copntractors with local knowledge and though it worth asking on here.

Yes UK timber is hard to source and often poorly processed- graded and stored. All of our CLS comes from europe but some yards still grade and stamp timber in the yard.

I’m going to respectively disagree - as I said our type 3 drive is working well. You can get a SUDs calc done, receive the volume you need to store, and then calc the volume of driveway that represents, bearing in mind the ‘void ratio’ or some such i.e. proportion of your drive that can be water. I’ve a calc like that here somewhere. Helpful if it can drain somewhere by gravity.

This will be the best £4k you ever spend sir.... Please do. I've done a few pools for clients over the years, next one is outdoors in ICF, and am ever curious (and keen to brush up where any opportunity presents itself).

Understood 😎 Yes, it's the ~28m one that I had to take to appeal. The pool is approximately 11m x 4m with the rest for plant, changing area, and three-bay garage. One day I'll update this place with the completed project, one fine day 👍

For just the additional report on the ground composition, etc. it's just over £4k. From the comments here and some "pseudo-research" on AI, it's not something I can or should avoid having done so looks like I just have to bite the bullet.

But it is not. It is a very big water tank, and if the ground moves a tiny bit, the slab and or walls could break and it gets very messy and expensive. And you will be indoors now, not outside., so damage and repairs are x3. There are a lot of failures of swimming pools and contractors have gone bust and Engineers had very expensive claims. And some of these are for proper designs: the ground we live on is very mobile. If the results of the boreholes are encouraging then you will save cost on the amount of concrete and of reinforcememnt. If they show poor ground then it really is essential to know that and design to suit. Is it still 27m long as previous posts? that is big and not to be dabbled with. How much do you want it?

If you are on clay soil you would need to excavate a vast amount and backfill with the granular permeable base material. You may need to go down half a metre from the finish level. I have laid permeable paving on a fairly thin bed of granite chippings on chalk subgrade and it drains very well.

The boreholes should not be too costly. If they are good designers they may use the information from the geotechnical report for a more cost effective solution for the pool.

Another vote for adding more battens. Just remove any that really mess up your gauge. The extra battens will strengthen the roof a bit. Could you get different shingles to work?

The Panasonic’s are up on a factory plinth anyways. I set these on blocks if the client specifically asks, also allows the typical concrete slab to go bye bye, much easier on the eye with a bit of nice landscaping around.

Listen to your SE! Anything short of their current proposal would be what worried me here, plus they won’t put even the hairs of their crown jewels onto the chopping block of assumption, why would / should they? This one is absolutely fundamental, as the downward and outward forces at play here are significant to say the least. If this is done even slightly poorly you risk losing the integrity of the house you’re putting it into. Best not to tar them with the same brush…..

There are specifically tools for the job. This basically a slide hammer and pincers in one. https://amzn.eu/d/0jgJMtLC

No, but choosing which battles to fight is a skill. Everything about self-build is a marathon rather than a sprint I'm finding. In the scheme of things, this is a small issue tbh. There are plenty of other aspects that wind me up far more!

@Spinny good luck - you deserve some after dealing with all that 💪

The tail doesn’t wag the dog though 🙃.

You are a rare gem in the industry. Normally the blame avoiding is staggering, and the ones levying charges for rectifying self made feck-ups is probably the most intolerable behaviour I have witnessed.

Hmmm... I'm looking to re-use the wood rather than the nails though 🤣

Hi, I'm having an indoor pool built to replace an existing outdoor pool and while I think it should be a relatively straight-forward project, the structural engineer seems to disagree. In addition to the cost of calculations for the roof and steels they want to drill several 5m boreholes to test ground conditions, in-situ geo-technical testing and soil samples for chemical testing. I've recently had a water borehole dug out to 50m with a basic report (soil/ground type, water found, etc.) issued - I gave them a copy and they still said they wanted the above work done. I accept that they need to cover all bases due to professional liability, etc. but I've been through the mill with the LPA and all of their "required" reports, investigations and mitigations. Am I now just being cynical or does that all sound reasonable? Thanks for any advice/opinions offered.

Easy to say, less easy to implement, especially if I want to maintain a working relationship for the other bit that I can't do myself.

Even if no rubber feet required the extra height they give is useful for a degree of winter snow protection .

Yep, no rubber feet or flex hoses rerquired. The new m series has a separated compressor a bit like a washing machine drum so you have to remove the transport bolts when you install it. I'm soon fitting one directly onto a flat garage roof very much because of the lack of vibration.

Have considered this, and even did the maths to work out the most efficient spacing, but it's all a compromise somewhere. That will incur cost as well as time (not just the install time, but it means the exact height of the shingle fixing will vary from row to row, so the measuring and checking each time has a greater likelihood of being messed up.