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The Timber Frame company arrived on site on a very wet mid-January morning. Very quickly wagon loads of components started to arrive and before long every space around the slab and up the drive was dotted with Ikea style flat packs, assorted timber and steelwork. The first job was to floor out over the basement to form a flat working platform for the main house erection. The original specification called for pre-stressed concrete floor panels, these were changed to Posi-joist, as this gave us space within the joist to locate services, ducting, electrics and waste etc. With the basement floor in place, the sole plate was positioned, levelled and fixed ready to attach the wall panels. With every panel, piece of timber, beam and noggin precut in the factory and numbered and with a full set of drawings, the house started to take shape quickly. Four weeks later and the roof timbers were in place and the next job is to fit the roof.

Evening all having just finished my second concrete pour in my icf walls I thought I would post up a recommendation of the company I have used for the pumping. 100% happy with the service I received and Kevin the owner operator knows icf very well so new exactly how we should tackle the job. Kevin told me he travels north as far as Worcestershire, east to Reading, and all over Somerset and Bristol areas. Kevin draycup. 07713974541

Lidl Parkside one all day long. I couldn't find either of mine recently when I put the daughters TV bracket up so asked the BiL. Gave me his Aldi one saying he couldn't get on with it. https://www.aldi.co.uk/workzone-stud-detector/p/011334263945200 Absolute doddle to use. Tried getting one but couldn't other than online so got the Lidl Parkside one below. Incidentally this looks and acts pretty much identical. Just for you I've arisen from my deathbed: Clamped a stud to a bit of mrpb: I've only tried it on the stud setting and NOT read the instructions: As you reach the side of the stud the arrows peak, make a mark: The arrow tails off as you reach the other side of the stud. Come back from the other direction to make sure and make a second mark. Centreline of the joist is in the middle of the two marks. I'll do a little video:

It's suggesting it's directional. I assume you get low with the handset for cleaning the shower? Have an issue here with the upstairs en suite shower tray. If my daughter showers I'll occasionally get drips coming down into the cupboard of the new bathroom. Most likely she's not too careful about pulling the shower curtain across and the water goes outside and under the tray. Can't really stand in there whilst she's showering to find the leak! Could be to do with the time she spends in there too. Wish she'd bloody clean up too, it's like Cousin It's been in there! When the wife showers it doesn't happen. Can't wait to rip the en suite out!

You're thinking of the trick with a fat bird...

I had a water leak in my garden between meter and house, they came out and found it fir me using a listening rod, I repaired it (old stop cock buried under lawn). Water company refunded excess usage by comparing past water bills past ?. I was very surprised as the pipe was not theirs but ours. The water company may well be understanding.

worth putting talc powder or flour over the area to see exactly where it leaks from? Or possibly UV dye so you can trace the leak exactly??

Try a smear over that fixing?

Oh bugger! You sure it's getting through the sealant and it's not getting in through a gap in that fixing somehow?

A full azimuth tracker could give around 30% more energy in the UK, but generally the cost of the tracker is too high to justify it. Better to spend the extra money on more PV point it south and have no moving parts. I've never seen a commercial setup using trackers. They all use fixed frames for a good reason I think.

No don’t do it, it will look shite.

Don't throw it out. I will still need that, but it is not as high on my list, i.e will wait until later more easily than door frames. We will be making at least 2 trips down south this year so there may be a deal to do.

Check with the insurers as ours covers lost water. And also speak to rhe water company as they may make an allowance on the sewerage part of the bill if it’s a known leak that wasn’t going into the drains.

Yes as @JSHarris says. Assuming the most negative you would have 0.016l/s/m2 so 0.016 * 120 = 1.92l/s. Can I have some of the £1,350?

Use the chart and method in the building regs, Part H3, Section 1

A quick answer is there arnt any flaws If you need any of the walls to be structural Simply use I stud Far stronger than timber You can also use res bar on any MF studs If you take your time you will find it easier than timber Dont bother buying crimpers There ok But a devil to unpick when you have to move Somthing If you buy a couple of Irwin C clamps They are great for holding the stud in position while you get a wafer head in If you need any advise Don’t hesitate

Like @JSHarris our house has 2 internal supporting walls either side of the stairwell (in many ways it is a similar house layout). They serve 2 purposes, firstly to support the 11 metre long ridge beam, and secondly to minimise joist spans by allowing the joists to span the width of the rooms. These were the only internal walls supplied by the builders. All the other non load bearing internal walls were built by me and could have been metal if I had wanted. If we had tried to get a shell built with no internal walls at all, then the joists would have had to span front to back making them longer and bigger, and you would still have to find a way to support that ridge beam. So by all means ask the designer to minimise the number of load bearing walls as much as reasonably possible and then only supply and erect the kit with just the load bearing walls. The other thing I did to "simplify" the build was I stipulated no sleeper walls downstairs. The initial design had sleeper walls to help support the ground floor joists, but I argued the upstairs joists can span that gap with no intermediate support, so specify downstairs joists than can as well.

My misses thought I was up to no good when I told her I was looking for a “stud finder” ... ?

TBH I don't know. I've liked the idea of steel studs ever since seeing them in France, when a friend was renovating his house there. Looked a lot easier to get straight walls than when using timber. Having said that, all the internal stud walls for our frame came pre-assembled and were dropped in by crane along with the other panels for the frame, so all our ground floor stud walls were in place by 4pm on the first day of the frame going up. They were all dead straight and square, too. This photo was taken a bit earlier during the afternoon of the first day of the frame going up. You can see some of the internal walls that haven't been installed in a stack at the back:

Depends whether or not the timber frame needs structural internal walls. We have two structural internal walls that support the ridge beam, and these walls both run right across the house from front to back.

A cheap shed. With a heater, a kettle and some chairs. Who’s tools are being stored ..? If they are yours then they may be insured but only if locked away properly. You will need either a VanVault or similar otherwise the insurers will not cover them. If it is contractor tools then they are not your liability and you can’t insure them unless you have hired them in.

They seem content sitting in the familiar surroundings of their white van cabs.

For studs (and maybe only studs), @JSHarris's trick with little neodymium magnets?

My Bosch one is fine: the pouch it comes in is extremely valuable - and maybe to you if your tool-bags are as much of a mess as mine.

Could be worse, you could be known as "that bloke who's fitted upskirt glass". Eh, @pocster?

If you've a service cavity in the ceiling create a recess about 100mm wide by 50mm high (or whatever your service cavity allows if less) the full width of the ope. You can have the curtain track or a blind that disappears up into the ceiling and still have the glazing go up to the ceiling. As it's a recess which isn't seen you can hide a power or data cable should you wish to automate the blind or curtain in future. Put in a few timber noggins to grounds for blind or curtain if timber frame. Just a word of caution that going over 2400mm in height reduces the number of window suppliers who can offer a guarantee at that height so maybe do research on your window companies first before committing to the additional height. Otherwise I'd go for it.

ta! You could have chosen to write if instead of when . Wounded I am now, wounded I'll get round to spraying and powder coating when you finish yer shower boudoir OK? Deal?

The firework instruction phrase "light the blue touch paper and retire to a safe distance" comes to mind. It's been a real baptism of fire, however our builder says it's the worst time and it should settle down now. All in all it's been a productive week and almost all work has moved us forward. The digger arrived to dig out the raft area at 8am as requested and work got under way. We had muck lorries scheduled for Tuesday and it quickly became apparent that we did not have enough space on site to build a significant spoil heap. After a bit of phoning around found a local company who could supply vehicles. Our builder had asked us to take care of paying for the muck lorries which was fine by us, getting the lorry company to accept that it should be a zero rated VAT service was more difficult. Contacted HMRC and had a discussion and they were adamant that it should be zero rated and that if VAT was charged I could not reclaim it as it would have been at the wrong rate... Managed to resolve the problem in the end. Now we had lorries arriving and clearing the soil we were able to make real progress. Tuesday the rainwater harvesting tank arrived, we knew it was big and boy was it big! The tank needed to get dug in just 2.5M deep and 4M long, a very big hole. Fortunately the ground conditions were good and a nice clean hole was achieved without the need to grade the sides. By Wednesday we were ready for site setting out. An interesting activity and an example of technology being used because it's there rather than essential. Making sure the house position is millimetre perfect seems a bit over the top when string and triangulation would get it positioned within 10mm. Where it really does help is positioning services and getting drainage levels set. A second visit on Thursday had all the levels set and perimeters marked, by the time the guy left the site I had changed my opinion and consider it money well spent. More and more lorries to take muck away, the tally now sits at twelve loads and we are mostly done thank goodness as at £240 a 12 ton load for the clay it was making a bit of a whole in the budget, a quick calculation of the volumes validated the figures, so it really should not have been a surprise. In hindsight I'm surprised our builder didn't ask me to organise in more lories in the first place. If I do this again I'll order the lorries in advance rather than madly phoning round for spare capacity so that work can continue. The foul water pump arrived on Wednesday, having the levels all sorted from the site setting out I was able to cut the input to the tank, so it's all ready to get dropped into a hole once it's been dug and a concrete base is in place. The next task was to get all the drainage runs under the raft in place. With the raft due Monday and the builder having to go to another job on Friday to supervise another ICF concrete pour we were running out of time. Hopefully resolved the problem by getting a crew in on Saturday to get the drainage done. Stone for the raft substrate should star arriving first thing Monday, so fingers crossed we should have the raft ready for concrete which is booked for Thursday...we shall see.

If you move to glorious Scotia all will be well...no meters for domestic property here. If you have a hairdressers in Possilpark though you will have a friendly plumber who will fit the meter bypass tube for 9 months of the year in exchange for the wife getting a free Brazilian for his birthday ? Note to editors Possilpark is a lovely district to the north of Glasgow famous for a ancient meteor strike which created Possil Loch, a haven for wildlife and visited by Charles Darwin in his tours before he wrote that book. Also known as an area of multiple deprivation. A Brazilian is of course a native of the South American country who may or may not be fluent in Portuguese but also used colloquially to refer to the shape of *cut* a lady may employ in the *lets get it off cos it’s his birthday * area below the waist. Further note. in Possil (short for Possilpark) the beauticians have a cartoon drawing...unfolded on A4 paper and displayed privately to ensure the customer and the therapist are on the same page pre waxing. This is due to previous violent repercussions after misunderstandings between a Californian and a Brazilian... not the look one requests resulting in much dissatisfaction ??? Sorry boss, serious question but it is Friday ?

Is there a garden tap anywhere? We had a sink at the end of our last garden in a gazebo. At the start of winter, we turned off the supply under the kitchen sink and opened the tap in the gazebo - to protect from frost. We had some plumbing work done a few months later and unbeknownst to us, the plumber turned the supply back on under the sink. We were going off to the Caribbean the next day completely unaware. When we got home, we looked at the garden and scratched our head at the waterlogged shrub bed. It took a while to realise that the tap was running full blast. The drain, being in a garden gazebo, just went into the bed. The water company actually gave us a credit for the bill surprisingly enough as it was completely accidental.

On a Wren ( aka wretched ) kitchen, I chopped the base décor ends, as you say to get the extra free mileage, and added around a half dozen additional décor end details to the customers delight. When I asked Wren to accept returns for the 11 various wall and base décor ends that were surplus AFTER the extra details were executed, they got their "lead designer" ( guy was a total penis ) to ring me to tell me I hadn't followed the plan properly and they should all have been utilised. I had a 'quiet word' with him and they were picked up around a month later, as they don't let you return direct to store. It was during the 'quiet word' that I mentioned that the "lead designer" ( 11 years experience mind you...……….) had purposefully omitted the customer's washing machine from the kitchen plan. When I asked where it was going he said "in the utility room, out of the way"......to which I replied "you've been here 3 times for a survey. WHAT UTILITY ROOM ?!?" as the customer didn't have one . Dickhead. Great trick with expensive kitchens, and can be an easy way to half the cost of décor ends ( which are usually massively overpriced for what they are ). Another trick is to work out if you have any shadow gaps to make up at the ends of the runs and to slice that out of the middle of a décor end panel during the 'halving'. Then spend the saved money on beer. Cheers!

PVGIS will give you average daily amounts by month, as well as total annual yield. You can play with slope and orientation to give you a good idea of the best angles to use. In fact it looks as if the new PVGIS 5 will give hourly outputs, but I haven't tried it. http://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_static/en/intro_tools.html#PVP I'm not convinced by east/west splits because in the winter there just isn't any sun from those directions and in the summer you'll probably be generating too much anyway. I choose about 45 degrees slope and SSW orientation ('cause that's the way the bank faces). I made a frame of scaffold poles, as the commercial systems were too expensive, and I wasn't convinced of the longevity of wooden posts. Used U-bolts to attach the panels to the scaffold poles, drilled holes in the frame for them.

Or don't have a 5mm gap and flush mount the architrave?