All Activity

It's not the M1, and will be strong enough. Block paving is flexible so you won't get cracking even if it moves a bit over decades. A whacker is plenty. Do drive over it many times. If it's going to compact , then do it now and the sand will level it off. And now stop worrying.

Yes. The levelling is shit, and their management of your expectations equally shit. If I am going to fail to get a floor perfect, for whatever reason(s), I tell the client before hand so they know what to expect; that allows opportunity to explore options, and for a compromise to be agreed. You can't just have depressions that bad on a new floor, and rectifying it is relatively easy; just add spot-filling with compound over primer and then block the floor to remove the steps where the 'waves' of leveller are apparent. Using a dimpled roller is great for general levelling, but if you're rectifying areas then you don't roller it as you don't want the leveller to migrate from the area you want to improve. Talk to them in the morning and completely lay your cards on the table, and ask these questions and get the answers directly, as all you're doing here is venting and not resolving, as we're not laying your floor.

Annoyingly no idea, it just came from the grab guys taking out the earth.

Does anyone also know if you're better to roll a driveway so that it's the heaviest object that's ever going to go on there as opposed to a tiny whacker plate? Or does this not matter, Someone also recommended using a geotex membrane?

Thanks everyone for their advice on this I'm scratching my head and pulling my hair out, to say Ive had enough would be an understatement so appreciate all the help!

Yeah sorry the drive way on the side is relatively flat so they've put in an acco you can maybe see in the photo, on the front it all slopes into the road away from the house so no acco has been put in does this change anything?

Thanks I'll try this!

They've never worked with them and were saying when they drove off it after it has been whacked it showed movement I believe.

I'll need to think on this as the logical extension would be to add this function to all internal elements and party walls. It could be done by changing the workflow so that all rooms are added, like U-values, into a library and then the following the tab is elements - that way each element can be tagged for adjacent room and dT between those spaces calculated and auto applied. It would require quite a bit of change, but definitely worth mulling over.

bleach corrodes stainless. Any chance someone was a bit over-liberal with the airborne chlorine?

Just a quick thought, even if to rule out. I wonder if there is a metal in the taps / cistern that is causing the corrosion. The end connection in the flexible tube becomes a sacraficial annode if the wrong way round in the galvanic series. @SteamyTea?

Road planings can be a great material. But before you import this stuff onto your site you need to know where it came from. Beware of cheep offerings as they can be full of contamination. Just say the planings come from the old bus station.. you'll have brake fluid, gear box oil etc. Or from a busy road junction. Worse still from the road into an old scrap yard.. then you'll get heavy metals and all sorts. Contaminated road planings can be expensive to dispose of unless you have a gullable self builder looking for a cash deal! At the end of the day you are responsible for the site and what comes onto it. Main roads are made up of several layers. The wearing top coat, higher bitimen content (the binder) . The wearing coat is often 40mm thick. Then the base course, larger aggregate (often 20mm - dust) with a lower binder content often 100mm thick and then the sub base which can vary (from memory between 150 and 300 mm thick) and contains 40mm aggregate down with a lower binder still. The base course is probably the best to get your hands on. Have a read at @saveasteading post above.

I’ve a bunch of these, most of which have been there for 30 years. No problems except for one within one of those shower-hose-like kitchen taps. I wonder whether some are much better quality than others? Real stainless shouldn’t rust much with standard water. Agree that relying on the rubber hose isn’t the smartest.

A very good comment.. and often justified. From time to time I get involved in helping home owners put their case to the warranty providers. Usually by the time I get involved folk are at their wits end, often very distressed, have exhausted the normal channels, all in good faith and have got nowhere. I've done this stuff on and off for about 30 years. In the old days, from memory, there was the NHBC and Zurich, the market leaders. Now we have other companies in the market and some of the earlier ones have withdrawn. The way these providers are set up and lay off their risk is a complete mine field. It's a very competetive market. I often wonder when I look at the warranty premium.. I think it's far too low given my knowledge on what goes on on building sites. If it's too low then it's likely not going to deliver and in that case why pay at all? I could write a long essay on this but I'm coming round to the view that the one effective way to improving standards could come from the lenders; the banks and the building societies. At the end of the day a warranty should deliver two things. 1/ It protects the lender. 2/ It provides a bit of comfort and security to the purchaser of the home.

Yes, I agree. That's all coming, but as an ancillary support doc/instruction videos with links from the app itself, rather than notes within the app itself. This is already there - it's a full EN 1264-2:2021 output calculator. If you input ufh into a room, when you go to emitter sizing, you can either import exiting UFH or Add New in there. You'll then see then full options available. This is currently so unusual, that yes, if I get a number of requests, I'll build it, but at present, it's on the back burner. This one is a bit of a difficult compromise. My original design did do auto save on blur, but when it was deployed to the cloud app server together with a linked database server, performance was not very good. I though there was too much lag, so lots of functions were re-scripted to calculated and produce local results for better ui/ux. The project doesn't need to be save constantly, just before closing the project of closing the browser. You can navigate between tabs and complete a whole project without actually clicking save, but for back up purposes I save when moving from one tab to the next, or when leaving the pc for a bit. Personally, I wanted to confirmation that the project has been saved when I clicked. This is probably more down to user instruction on when to save? In what sense? You can add your target design air permeability in the measured/tested tab - which could do with the addition of Design to the tab or associated note? Is this what you're referring to? Or something else?

TBH no. They are locally based and have been used by people that have declared to us that they have been happy with their work. They have good reviews, and do work in high worth properties in the area. Their flooring expert has been a few times as we have been so delayed and always seemed knowledgeable. One concern is that the guy doing the work is probably over 60 now like me. I am now minded to ask for details of another customer they did LVT for - to go and take a look. I feel I have got a friday afternoon job. It didn't start well when they were supposed to start on Thursday but ended up just bringing the materials after they were delivered mid morning. Friday was the first time the guy doing the work saw the job.

Have you been and seen their finished LVT workmanship if not then stop now.

@Nickfromwales any comments ? A good plastered wall might vary by 3mm, and a plasterer doesn't have the benefit of gravity.

Their T&C's says they may not be able to achieve SP1 = 3mm over 2m. But they have been telling me about laying floors in Paris for sheiks, and their next job is a luxury hotel. My suspended timber joist hallway is more level than a professionally levelled concrete floor ? If a floor is 5mm out over 2m then your dining table is going to rock - on a brand new floor.

3mm under a 3m straightedge is the official measurement for industrial floors but I haven't checked re domestic.... logically it should mob be less stringent. That is in any direction and includes if you press down one end and measure under the opposite end. But finding a 3m straightedge isn't easy. Tiling adhesive will take out minor variations, but for LVT I think it could be a big issue Probably needs local filling.

AI says this... https://www.google.com/search?q=standards+for+floor+levelling&oq=standards+for+floor+levelling&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIICAEQABgWGB4yDQgCEAAYhgMYgAQYigUyCggDEAAYogQYiQUyBwgEEAAY7wUyBwgFEAAY7wUyCggGEAAYgAQYogTSAQoxMTU1NmowajE1qAIIsAIB8QWtHVJdU_RSivEFrR1SXVP0Uoo&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 No laser level was used. They ignored the markings I had put all around the walls using my water level. They stuck down a few self adhesive soldiers with the tops levelled by using a 1.8m spirit level (same level make as mine, not a 'professional' standard level) No spiked roller or squeegy was used at any point. Just a bit of hand trowelling to spread it. One young lad mixing, older guy pouring/spreading. Ran out of compound - it was obvious to me this would happen when they reached halfway and had used 2/3rds. One came back the following day to fill in the edges by hand with a different compound (I'd have thought the first compound should run wall to wall.) The final floor will be adhered LVT plank with no threshold between concrete and suspended floor - i.e. running from the front door through to the rear bifolds, in a continuous 'look through the house' layout. Yes their plan has always been to level out the concrete (max deviation about 30mm), then put smoothing compound of 3/4mm over everything, then stick the LVT to that. So never necessary to achieve a perfect levelling result without surface imperfections, but levelling is levelling.

Did they roll with spiked roller? Looks a bit gash. Remind me whats going ontop?

I think that’s a different company… this is who we’re looking at: https://www.westcoastwindows.com/ The ones doing Veka uPVC have the .co.uk domain.

Is this acceptable ? Should I be complaining ? So from friday we left the floor leveller to dry and so have just taken a quick look. Not impressed really. Not only did they run out of levelling compound and leave a section unfinished, but sections do not appear to be very level (see photos). There is a dip of up to 5mm across a 1.8m level at one point. The surface falls by 10mm into the doorway across a 1.8m level. Where each mix was poured and spread there are some small but noticeable ridge lines at the junction curves. I didn't expect perfection, but I expected something better than this ? Yes the plan has been to put a second coat of 3-4mm across the top and continiously over the suspended floor down hall and utility. But not what I was expecting as the starting point for that. What do people think ? I feel like making them do it again - what would be the implications of two coats where there should be one - would it need roughening to provide a key ?

@Redbeardis correct. Type 1 is designed to be as dense and stonelike as possible, and it follows on that it has low permeability. Crushed bitumen road is much the same mix with added bitumen so is even more so. @Willg you haven't mentioned this and perhaps you have a slope in mind and somwhere for the water to go