All Activity

No Nick. The wayrock absolutely as standard. Then the blue polystyrene panels with pipe channels (+pipes) laid on top. Then the ply, ditra, and finshes. We put an oak "step" in the door thresholds to the en-suites but it was only 38mm and looked like we meant it more than it was a cover up.

I’ve just had to convince a client to boot his builder and gang off site, very serious stuff that he was trying to cover up…… A friend said to me, “you’re the grim reaper for builders”. I am if they're incompetent, deceptive, thieving fcuktards. I was there for MVHR only, but couldn’t (in good conscience) hold my tongue any longer. Said chap pulled me aside on site and tried the bully tactics to get me to keep schtum. Didn’t work. “Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out”, and out he went. I’ve met some excellent ones, but sadly they are very few and very far between, but from the good ones that I have been lucky to have worked with I picked up some great knowledge, and I use it on every new project to continue to better myself. Giving a feck costs nothing, but quality costs more as it consumes time. If someone doesn't value quality, and doesn’t want to pay me for my time and experience, then I walk away and let them suffer mediocrity. Always costs them more time and money, but you cannot educate pork.

My simple plan is an aircon unit in the main bedroom. Thats it. Downstairs living room, being 170 years old with 2 ft thick stone walls, tends not to be a problem anyway Cooling a whole house is not a cheap undertaking.

They are included in the Westfield report which has a wildly optimistic "no constraints case" case. And even that case has production falling by 50% from today's figure by 2035. For reference their low case (2.5bn) is less than the NSTA central estimate which is about 3.5bn. So their high case is maybe 1bn (4.5bn) more than the current official estimates.

Any views on the reasonable minimum alley width in a kitchen between wall worktop and island worktop ? Thinking of going down to 870mm.

I know, people still think the answer to our problems is simply to grant more oil licences. It doesn't matter how often they are shown, by figures from the oil industry itself, that it would make no difference they just keep on about drilling for oil. 😁

It's not £5bn tho. That's the revenue from current operations. The revenue we forego from not drilling the new sites isikely to be less than 10% of that... So less than £500m. In the context of government spending that's a rounding error. But again, and I don't know how many times this needs saying, drilling for more oil will not improve our energy security - the amount of oil availible is just too small to matter.

It's, unfortunately, the industry we work in. All the years I was on the tools and then project managing I got known as the perfectionist on the firm. In my humble opinion I was just doing things as shown on the drawing. And that was in healthcare as well.

Crushed concrete / brick will be OK but not any old crap with plaster, wood, rubbish mixed in.

Reasoning with people wedded to an ideology is indeed pointless.

PS I was joking about the dog. 🤪 (I do fondly remember him occasionally excreting on the concrete floor. Some say they get triggered when their paws hit concrete, I preferred to think of it as his quality control assessment.)

Use your rage to punch-compact the bastard

I'm going to do this job myself.

If it's just a garage, go with the cheapest solution. End of. Block layers are a-plenty, and masonry is something that requires zero thought.

Sounds like a really silly question I know... but I can't remember if stone is sized by the mesh that it gets screened through (so a 14mm stone would be put through a 14mm mesh and end up with some bits that are longer than 14mm) or the size would be the max dimension on any given bit. Or some other definition. Reason for asking is I have a pile of stone I need to identify and can't recall what it was I ordered it was so long ago.

A friend was doing and agricultural shed and he went for timber frame 8 x 2s as you only need to nudge blockwork with a telehandler and it collapses whereas timber frame bounces back if it is constructed correctly.

Pipes routed into the P5? 18mm is a thin board to compromise.

In that case you just need to choose for yourself, and ensure any details for layering / compaction are observed. Have this chat BEFORE anyone starts work, not after...............

I've installed wet UFH over FF P5 22mm decks many times, and screeded over them; from 'just enough' to ~50mm. I used 16mm Pert AL, never use anything else, as laying UFH is somewhere OTT should be the standard....? alarm bells are ringing.

The water level is your friend and never lies, never lied in over 4500 years.

Just checked and their spec just states hardcore (looks like a lifted and shifted spec)

Well......guess who is to blame then!!!! They are just covering their feck up!!!!!!! I'd be asking for copies of all the delivery notes etc, but a kitchen in storage for 2 years is one thing, but worse is a kitchen put into storage without you going through the inventory and checklist before accepting it. I think it's time to evaluate being alive, and consider what other people have to deal with in comparison. This is a pita, but not life or death.

Check with the SE, they will have specified?

Diplomacy isn't working. You can't repeat the action and expect a different result, so stop him from doing any more work and ask him if he's interested in the rest of the job (or not). His response will be what decides your new direction / next decision. Tell him straight, no quivery top lip, that you have slept on it and cannot accept the discrepancy. End of feckin chat. If he shrugs his shoulders and packs up and fecks off, good riddance. If he decides to offer up a solution to rectify, then tell him it has to be removed on his time and not yours as it should have been right first time. Stop tolerating useless assholes. I wouldn't get away with this, how can he????

Just a general question for those who have been there and done that. I need to order 30m2 of type 1 or crushed concrete for the ground bearing slab. That equates to 72 ton and type 1 is £33.50/ton Recycled crushed will probably save me half that amount, but I wanted to ask what people's thoughts are on type 1 vs recycled. The ground below is flinty as anything and then it goes to chalk, so I don't think there are any concerns about settlement.