All Activity

200-170= 30k gross margin, from which some tax would be taken as income or dividend. Still not a good year but that's business sometimes.

Best way is airbag/pump bag to lift the door and ensure no unnecessary stress put on the hinges. if the door is glazed, ensure the glass is properly heel and toed and the door will be fine.

Both have their place - I also do this a lot too!

I'm no offering anything 😂 The guy who started the original post might be though.......

I understood that there's no grants any more in Scotland. I think they were removed either early this year or late last year, but I got that from a YouTuber so it might not be reliable info!

@Great_scot_selfbuild Many thanks for this. That looks very useful. I've been writing everything down old school in a notebook, but your was looks a lot cleaner and easier to search back through. Cheers

Thanks, I understand now. Depending on the size of the uprights it'll be load-bearing or semi-load-bearing then. From what little I know of 'certified' straw-bale I gather that private BC was probably the right call. I am sure there may be SB builds built under LABC supervision, but I do not know of any. PD and PC need not be a problem, but I hear of 'officialdom' having issues sometimes - not sure why, necessarily. The 'rules' refer to having the relevant 'skills and competences', not to 'being an architect' or 'being a builder', and if you're already building it's likely you'll soon have them even if you may not have done at the start! Keep having fun!

Nice. Looks like different scenarios will likely call for different solutions. They all vary slightly. Very few will I be luck enough to get tucked behind the frame. Most will be abutting. I’ll give feedback in due course

Don't go into business without a very good accountant 😀

Thanks, really useful to see. Our FFL is abnormally high (we are near a flood zone) but I will try not to worry about the rest bend join somewhere below😄

Job finished! We set to last week and I'm quite pleased with the result. We used a slurry (water, SBR and cement) on the cleaned area, then applied a 4:1 mix of sand and cement with a glug of SBR. It went in well and luckily, the scaffolding was very stable so I had no trouble working at height. Then 3 coats of fence paint on the woodwork. Hopefully it will last another 50 years before needing to be done again. There are a few cracks in the garage roofline so I will plan to go over that too. As we were quoted £10k for the work (including a little extra), we think we've saved ourselves at least £5k.

There are uprights between the base + wall plates. The bales are not load-bearing but will be ratchetted down during construction to compress them.

Our neighbour advised us to use a private Building Control firm, so we're using Vantage currently. Yes we are Principal Designer and Contractor - I had no idea about this legislation before we started, I've been doing a bit of reading on it, but will have a look at the threads thanks as I'm still a bit unclear on exactly how much is expected on a small domestic self-build like ours.

Err... this looks to me like a timber footing/base with load-bearing bales built on it - i.e. no frame. Is that right, or do I just need to see more bits of the dwgs? Have you got any which show the frame? (an un-clad elevation, for example).

Plans are drawn, permission granted and we've laid the foundations, bit late to reconsider now! Yes the plot is narrow, but it's quite long so we have plenty of outside space. For us, our aims are not to have the biggest house we can afford; it's more about using natural, local materials with minimal impact and learning the skills together. We did consider cob, but straw bales made more sense with all the arable land around.

From the plans I would say the foamed glass ball -type insulation is designed to prevent thermal bridging around the timber ring beam structure. Thanks, enjoying it so far🙂

I think stop the skirting at the end of the plaster and cut a 45 back to the wall to account for any skirting profile. Finish the bit on the left of the kitchen unit with filler and paint and fit the plinth as normal. You already have the gap thing going on between units (I assume for handleless), so don't make it look more complicated.

Hi Nick, yes that makes sense to run some sort of tape then membrane over the top, I’ll speak to my timber frame manufacturer tomorrow!

I would think £35k extra would do it assume 300mm piles up to 6m. £20k piling £15k ground beams. You could get indicative quotes based on your ground investigation.

Yes. 16mm out. If he can get it out in one course, then the fat mortar joint will be hidden by the ACO drainage.

So its 16mm out of level? I wouldn't try to get that out in one course if its seen. Why don't you have him get it out over 3 or 4 courses

@craig What is the best way to make sure that the load is distributed equally when adjusting the hinges to raise the door. Thank you

It's a bath filler.

Thanks. I know I will need to talk to a piling contractor in due course. Just trying to get a feel of the cost risk for valuation purposes. From fairly recent experience I can estimate the cost from ground up, just go no idea if I need to add £10k, £30k, £100k for piling.

You should also install 150mm wide DPC across here too: This protects the sole plates from water ingress, should anything get in behind and sit on the horizontal counter batten. I got chatting with Darren from MBC when he was on site doing the pre-airtightness test, test, and offered up this great bit of info, which he says is often overlooked; I conveyed this to the client and it was agreed in an instant that this was a good idea and to run with it. As it’s horizontal I’d recommend a 100mm tape along the top edge of the DPC strip also. Sole plate is the first point of failure if details are overlooked, and are ‘fatal’.