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I think you need to have a frank conversation with your PM as well as the crew doing the boarding. You are after all, paying your PM to look after your project.

You. must get rid of them If there boarding is that rough there skiming won't be good It may likely be terrible like there boarding As already pointed out above Its pretty bad It's you that will be stuck looking at it Also your project manager is wrong stating that he only looks at the finished job He should have reacted in the same manner as my fellow posters Good luck Gary

Yes, it's one reason why aircraft fires are always doused with fire retardant foam, other than the risk from fuel. The water/heat/aluminium reaction is pretty violent, if the temperature is high enough, releasing significant amounts of hydrogen, from the aluminium + water = aluminium hydroxide + hydrogen reaction. This reaction isn't easy to start, but can be self-sustaining if the conditions are right. A high initial temperature is usually needed, plus a reducing atmosphere that decreases the rate at which aluminium oxide forms. A fierce fire is likely to be reducing at it's core, where the temperatures may also be at their highest, so in theory the conditions seem about right.

Not wanting to put a downer on this but imo I don't think the regs have really caught up with "passive" build techniques yet. Such well constructed, vertical cable voids full of cables, sat above a cu are potential chimneys providing a fire route between floors. I'd urge anyone to think about a fire break. Neatly drilled holes in some frpb maybe all sealed with intumescent (touched on in another thread) would be a nod to it.

So the song goes, and that was the predicted air permeability number which went into our 'As Designed' SAP calcs (though our target was to be sub 2 'as built'). Well, we finally reached the point where we could delay the test no longer (we hope to move in in 3 weeks' time), and with some trepidation I watched as the blower door was fitted and the fan turned on. First thing to happen was the suction pulled the frame out of the door opening. Re-fitted, the fan was turned on again and depressurisation commenced. With inward opening windows I'd have preferred a pressurisation test but the tester wasn't planning on sitting outside in the light rain that was falling. The first run of recorded numbers were rejected by whatever software he entered them into on his laptop, it suggesting he needed to cover four of the eight holes in the fan cowling. He duly did so and re-ran the test. It was clear that the suction was again trying to rip the blower door out of the door frame as air was leaking past it on both sides, but the entered numbers provided a m3/h/m2 score of 1.74 - not bad (and inside my target), but both the tester and I knew it could be better if we could stop air leaking past the blower door frame. Tape was added and we had another go. Again, air was soon rushing in around the blower door, but the recorded numbers gave a score of 1.599 when entered and, as that was comfortably better than the original aspiration, we decided not to try again to seal the leaks round the blower door. Okay, I know this is nowhere near the 0.6ACH (I estimate our test result equates to around 1.23ACH) required for Passiv House, but we were never aiming for that and the complex shape of our chalet bungalow and large dormers never leant themselves to such levels of air tightness. Frankly, I was delighted (and mightily relieved) to have achieved 1.6 but I'm now wondering what it could have been had that blower door sealed properly. Would I be being greedy to get them back for another go? Running it as a pressurised test would pull the frame hard into the door seal after all, and any chance of minor leakage past the windows would be reduced. Would it make much difference? Would I get a lower number and would that have any impact on the 'As Built' SAP score? Or do I just accept that 1.6 is my magic number?

I have a contract, but it has never been signed by me or the main contractor. Implicitly we have agreed to it by working on the house. I have this kind of contract, effectively it works out as a cost plus contract. The builder estimates what things will cost at the start, but this varies if things cost more as you go along. It is very difficult to price up fro architects plans, unless you wait and get all the structural engineer input. Even then issues arrive during construction. For example I have way more steel than expected in the house when we started which is by far the largest cost variation. With this kind of contract there's a good chance that the house ends up costing 5-10% more than expected due to changes and unexpected costs. I am sitting at just over 10%, but I have a block built house on site, a timber frame house would be a lot less likely to have variations. The builder bills me monthly and gives details on any variations, waiting until the end would be crazy. To save money I have found the best thing to do is go through the estimate and make sure it all makes sense, effectively you become your own QS. For example the initial price for screed in my house was very high so I asked him to get more quotes. I also changed the spec of insulation from PIR to 400mm of glass wool which was much cheaper. You will find that the builder just orders everything up from the local merchant and as a cost plus contract he just wants the easiest place to get them, not the cheapest.