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This week has been hard work, but for all that, there's a lot to show for it. This post is an update - much more detail to follow when things have settled down in a week or so. First of all, what's the end in mind? Have a look at this. Its roughly 10 by 10 with an internal garden (on the left hand side - the dark area is open boarding to allow air to circulate freely) The Piggery (of which more later) is the small (wire-frame image) building on the right of the image. We are using an ICF called Durisol. This shot shows a corner detail with our (as yet roofless) Piggery in the background. The blue marks show where the blocks were cut to size: and where the gap is a little bigger than finger width. A little foam was injected into those gaps. Here's a more general shot taken at about mid morning. As yet all hand laid, dry, no concrete. You can see the main contractor (Dan) framed by the the front door framework. The house fairly shot up... Here's where we'd got to by Wednesday And here's where we are today. A couple more window gaps to make, the final pour of concrete and that'll be it for the main build. Everyone walking past says something like 'Where did that come from then?' I always take the time to talk to anyone who expresses an interest. It's important to explain to locals what's happening. There's a very big anti-build atmosphere centered on the Local Plan - it has identified the A6 corridor (100 meters away) as the main area on which to achieve Wyre Borough's housing target. Why the A6? It's a little higher than the local flood plain - ie. the area west of the M6, but East of Blackpool. Lot's of development has already taken place on known flood plain area round here; and justifiably, the LPA is taking stick for it. I'm knackered. Lot's of challenges, lots of hard work, lots of satisfaction. It didn't all go smoothly. Next post, much more detail and an analysis of what issues we faced and how we solved them. The good bit? Needing to buy an SDS+ drill. (The term 'need' is correctly applied in this instance @Ferdinand )

probably not, but im sure it would be "good enough" plenty of foam Mr Malcolm probably had a finished bathroom

Bonjour from sunny Newtownards. Another first-timer here, trying to pull off that miraculous money-saving build. We're at contract on a site currently near Carrowdore, and are working with Shaun Baxter from Irish House Plans on a design. There's FPP on the site retained on footings, but we'll be reapplying to get our "own" home. I've had discussions with Kilbroney re. a TF build and it sounds like they'll be good to offer whatever level of support I require. We'll see if any of the other TF providers want to play too. We've someone trusted for the groundworks I intend to do all the interior except for the spread. My background is in industrial and lab equipment repair and so I'm comfortable doing the electrical, plumbing and heating (with a little help from my friends, lol) as well as the insulation, airtightness MVHR and boarding. I hope I can offer something to the collective as much as take. David

Im not sure a stud detector would find them but a tone set might if they are fairly close to the back of the board. I.e. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GREENLEE-TEXTRON-PTS100-200-432A-TONE-AND-PROBE-SET-TEL-BT-PLUG-/142371929050?hash=item2126073bda:g:bpMAAOxykMpTHtqm It will though be a very feint tone from behind plasterboard. You can also drill some small holes to poke the probe into. Less invasive than a lump hammer Oh and make sure the circuit is NOT live using a tone set!

Just on the off chance that you might have been offered the services of a passing plasterer, and had to skim everything before the sparky had finished, leaving some wires curled up behind the boards... would a stud detector be useful in finding them again? (asking for a friend, obviously...)

Yes, that's the original architects detail (it's where I got it from earlier in this thread). At some point both the cladding specification and the insulation specification seems to have been changed, but that change seems to have been made with approval, as Harley Facades referred to the aluminium composite cladding on their (now deleted) web pages. The aluminium composite rain screen was almost certainly cheaper than the zinc; currently zinc is around $2500/tonne, aluminium alloy around $1500/tonne. In addition, the aluminium composite panels may well have been significantly lighter, so giving an additional possible cost saving on fasteners. I can't believe that the aluminium composite was substituted for the originally specified zinc without some sort of sign off, probably by three or more parties. Whether they considered the altered fire risk I don't know, but from what's been revealed or uncovered so far I doubt they did.

@PeterW sorry to be thick, but does this mean the Lan's will not be separate. I do not really understand netwoking. I tend to search for a way of doing something try it and be pleased with myself when it works. I did this initially with DDWRT where i set up VLAN detached networks on a buffalo router. this fed two routers for two wifi hotspots one for us and one in the rental cottage. I followed instructions but did not really understand how i got it working.

How facking big is your kettle? Oh, and looking good ?

Paraphrasing : while our soil survey recommended steel sleeved concrete piles, the SE pointed out they were not mandatory - for example stone improvement columns would be acceptable. Price difference? Between £10 and £18.5K. He also pointed out that the piling mat we needed happened also to fit in beautifully with our landscaping design. He didn't need to point out what to him was the blindingly obvious. But he bothered to engage with his customer. That's why , even though he has been over cautious elsewhere on the design, I would have no hesitation recommending him (and this is the key bit in terms of this thread) for a similar design challenge.

On fibre... unless in the next 10 years we see a significant move to our transmission network, the possibility of fibre connected TVs is minuscule. Save your money ..! on PoE... Reolink cameras operate on 48v 15w as standard - any PoE switch will do. On cctv... you are easier creating a subnet but bear in mind everything will come together at your internet gateway so you're better off spending some time setting up the QoS rather than the subnet security if you are wanting internet access to the cameras. On eBay Cat6.... just check its solid core copper not CCA or stranded. I looked at some and it turned out to be stranded which is useless for structured cabling.

A quick look online and I could get pre made made fibre cables for not a lot of money. Maybe to key points such as TV and study.

Hi, Having multiple switches connected together will work - and unless you are doing something fairly extreme its unlikely you will have any performance issues with it. However switches with lots of ports are not so expensive - eg something like this for £100 with 24 ports would be fine. Having all the cable runs going to a single central point has a simplicity to it - remember if you have multiple switch locations each needs to be accessible and ventilated to stop it overheating. I would put in more cable runs than you think you need - terminate them to a patch panel and you don't even need to connect them to a switch - you can patch them in when you need them. I wouldn't bother with connecting switches via fibre unless you have really long distances between them (over 100m). Fibre is complicated and the parts tend to be much more expensive than CATx (you need special connectors etc). If you want to ensure good performance from CATx runs - make sure the termination is done really carefully. When I did my house I got the electricians to wire everything up - and noticed that some of the runs seemed to have really bad performance. I got a specialist company to come in and test them with fancy equipment - and the conclusion was the termination hadn't been done very well. It took several tries to get them working properly. Note - the cheap test equipment for CATx cables isn't good enough - that just tests there is basic electrical connectivity. The fancy equipment tests that a cable run is capable of meeting the requirement of CAT6A (or whatever) - ie is capable of supporting lots of bandwidth. - reddal

@Simon, @recoveringacademic is the official in-house Herpetologist (*), or Batrachologist if we are being pedantic. Ferdinand * For the avoidance of doubt, that is not a reference (as far as I know) to herpes.

Just kill all the newts and say they emigrated.

They will have the numbers from somewhere but may misquote, cannot add up if written by Arts graduates, and do not cite. Decent bloggers more reliable. On Twitter it is very much a mixture, John Band and Unity who wrote the Ministry of Truth blog have been reliable nonsense debunkers for a decade. One myth that is perhaps about to collapse are the claims about empty foreign owned flats in London that the current Mayor campaigned on and Mr Corbyn wants to confiscate for refugees from Glenfell Tower. Mayor Sadiq commissioned a report from LSE which seems to be about to report that there basically aren't any left as empty land banks .. less than 1% of foreign bought homes: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/house-prices/almost-no-evidence-london-homes-owned-foreign-buyers-left-empty/ and on the lse website Yesterday. http://lselondonhousing.org/2017/06/overseas-investors-and-londons-housing-market/ The report for the London Mayor was dated 2017 May https://www.london.gov.uk/moderngovmb/documents/s58640/08b2b LSE Overseas Investment report.pdf But Mr Corbyn made his demand to requisition the non-existent empty homes yesterday, but should have had access to the report http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40285994 And I have been hearing people talking about requisitioning these homes on R5 this morning. But 5-10 years of political campaigning against a non existent groups of foreigners vanishes into thin air. My conclusion is that a lot of statements get made regardless of available evidence, and that is essential to look at the original data. Please to check and tell me if I am wrong. There is also the slight problem that these people claim to believe in the Human RIghts Acts which forbids confiscation of property without a major legal process. IMO it is pretty much all popularise politics. Ferdinand

I've one of these: https://www.photospecialist.co.uk/brinno-mac200dn-outdoor-security-camera#group4016 Really pleased with it. While it might not have the 6 month battery life it claims it certainly last 3 or 4 months of just two D cells. I have had to dry it out a couple of times after a few days of heavy rain. I buried in a muck heap at one point. But most of its life it was hidden in a set of randomly placed bricks at entrance to the site. Few people noticed it even though it was right up front.