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I re roofed my cottage with second hand slate, i got all additional slate for a few hundred pounds but had to sort through each and every one, get rid of anything that was de laminating, showing any signs of rot or where the iron pyritise was rusting. It was a slow job but i wanted a very particular style. After sorting them myself and various helpers re cut every slate to sharpen the edges and straighten them out, also punching the nail holes where needed. The recutting process also provided a secondry chance to verify each slate was in top condition. Then it was a matter of grading length, width and thickness..... the easy part was laying them. Its a long haul project as very low on funds and will take me a few more years to finish the refurbishment.the slate knife is a must for cutting slates and punching holes. In retrospect i should have put the air vents on the back but hay ho.

Finished packing up the old place today. Had to take 2 days off work at short notice as despite a fantastic effort from my wife we couldn't get it all done by the weekend. House still well off being finished, booked into Airbnb for 2 weeks now. Absolutely cannot go past then. A few pics of the current state of play. That may be me trying out a bath.

Well @PeterW i expect in the next few days a big green parcel will be arriving on my doorstep. I have been looking and reading stuff on here for ages about ashp in a “i wonder if this would be a good idea” kind of way.... well that part is over and now the next few months will be about designing a system that will work for me. I will be asking for lots of HELP with my plans. This unit will be for my refurb project in the cottage, for good help i geuss i will need to generate some key information for my would be advisors..... could you please help me get my list right so that i can get all the information together and in order. Would it be something like Space heating requirements Current room and house insulation levels size of rooms / house my main aim would be to use this for room heating only on a new radiator system. Happy with electric shower Instant elecrtic hot water heaters for bathroom and kitchen sink Thanks in advance with list help.

eek! battery acid, copper sulphate ...I can see the guy at the hardware now !! If i was to look at the pressure cookers for the wife (while there) they would have me in a small room at MI5

The only things I will add is DONT skimp on safety, if you are saving some money on doing the roofing yourself then you can afford good scaffolding, no wobbly tower. get some help for 2 days and a tile bumper and get all the slate up, then you can plod on at your own pace.

dpm underneath also

Probably a bit too spongy, too much stress on joints i'd of thought. Remove and fit underlay designed for floating timber floors.

So given how long enforcement takes the council will be “evicting” you about 2-3 months after you have moved out ...

We have a passive slab, and we're on gault clay. Essentially it's a way to get a very well insulated, thermal bridge free, foundation system with usually less excavation work and much less concrete used. The idea is an old one, and the basic principle is that if you spread the load imposed by the mass of the house over a wide area then the soil maximum bearing stress can be far lower than for conventional strip foundations, where all the load is taken on narrow strips. It's a bit like the difference in load that a flat soled shoe will impose on the ground versus a stiletto heel. Without getting in to too much detail. a passive slab relies on a layer of crushed stone to spread the load evenly into the ground, very much like railway ballast stone spreads the load from heavy trains. If the maximum allowable bearing stress of the soil is very low, then increasing the depth of crushed stone gets around this. For our hard clay we only needed 150mm of compacted stone, and the insulation was laid on that, with some grit blinding to smooth it, and a 100mm thick reinforced concrete slab was poured into the "tray" made by the insulation. As an aside, the underfloor heating pipes were also fitted into the slab, as it's very well insulated from the ground beneath and around the edges. The final benefit was that the slab was poured and power floated dead flat, to exactly the level needed for the final floor finishes, so there was no screeding etc. It took four days, start to finish, to lay our foundations and slab, with three guys. The bits of interest are here: http://www.mayfly.eu/2013/10/part-sixteen-fun-and-games-in-the-mud/ The week after that foundation was put in, the house went up: http://www.mayfly.eu/2013/10/part-seventeen-day-one-of-the-build/ and http://www.mayfly.eu/2013/10/part-eighteen-a-house-in-4-12-days/

?? Your on it ? @JSHarris blog is very informative from the ground up so maybe check some of his earlier entries and have a damn good read there first. ?

Not really - plasticity testing is done to check composition at various levels of water content as certain clays act differently at variable saturation points. Normally what happens is you get a nice long report stating the components such as sands and clays and it’s compressive strength. Have you discussed a passive slab with your architect ..? It may be something worth considering if you’ve got to go down the piles/raft route.

Professional indemnity Insurance is expensive. Let us know what happens. Ian

It is possible and it isn't folly. @Construction Channel and @Mrs Construction Channel are too modest to point out that they have done a series of videos on how they did it here The Devil is in the detail (says the guy who's never slated a roof). But I have built a roof, and felted it. And I will be slating that roof when I know I can afford the slates. There are lots of videos about slating on YooChube. I found the videos by this guy particularly good because he takes care to explain a little more than the average Monkey-See-Monkey-Do approach to skills-based teaching and learning. What is clear to me after a few years in touch with online self-builders is that there is a generosity here which often provides enough moral support to get started. Once that happens, we also enjoy unpicking the inevitable cock-ups. All that's needed is a bit more courage than average. Self builders have enough of a push to Just Bloody Do It. And a poor bank balance is a real help . Just think of it if you had too much. You'd miss the buzz of Just Bloody Doing it. Make your own mistakes: don't pay someone else to make them for you

I can write a DD&D report from 200 miles away ....... Working on TPOs is fine until you get a new tree officer like the one we’ve just got - young and clueless ..!! Degree in Environmental Science yet can’t tell an oak from a sycamore and thought a 40 year old oak covered in water sprouts was “healthy”... Wanted me to put a full application in to remove, I declined with a “if it falls onto that house in the interim it’s on the council insurance...” Mr Husqvarna 1 - Council 0 I know a couple of lads who have already put in complaints against her - doesn’t seem to understand what PPE is either ....

Ps my wife (hospital theatre manager) said she would pass slates up onto the garage roof from builder trestles ‘But now way am I standing on the roof’ What a difference a week or so makes Deborah picture in the pouring rain

I think you are in the same general area as myself, i.e. Yorkshire. I used White Rose Laboratory Services Ltd in Castleford. They were very reasonable cost wise, £45.00 + VAT and got the result back to me within 1 week as promised. I did drop off the sample myself to make things easier but I,m sure you could do the same.

You would need a serious silencer on the chain saw.