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Leave it as it is now, the plasterer will fit an angle bead anyway which will straighten and strengthen the external corner

When are passers-by going to finish asking me when we are going to finish? I know, they've just stopped for a chin wag - to be nice, to pay a compliment. Some even are interested in the answer. Sometimes I cant read the mood quickly enough and give the wrong type of answer: It depends [...] What do you mean by finish ? [...] Never. Five years [...] There's an online colleague I have called @Onoff : let me tell you a story about him [....] I had an instructor in the Army who told me I had two speeds; dead slow and stop. He was right. I think in future, I'm going to answer - "When you see me cutting the grass on a Sunday morning" (We have no plans for a lawn) How do you deal with the question?

did manage to find this photo though. Excuse the washing!! ?

Fair enough! Back to your original post. We had the Intu type in our last house and they worked well.

The second (top) DPM isn’t really a DPM. It is a slip membrane designed to stop the liquid screed flowing between the insulation blocks and floating them upward. Tape everything and then pin the pipes down, tbh this is why I prefer the plastic trays as nothing moves.

My builder, despite being “well able”, gets a company in to liquid pour screed, he told me the labour and materials were not worth the faff, cheaper in the long run and guaranteed dead flat. confusius, he say “work smarter, not harder!

yes as long as it looks “right”.

You can buy Hertalan in 20m rolls and they do them in widths perfect for gutters like this. Lead would not be done in 1.5 m bays for this, code 4 is not meant to be used on gutters of that length. You can use an expansion joint to avoid the need for steps.

I had self build insurance from self build insurance? £277.98. Based on £100k of work

No minimum, you just need to make sure the drip channel is clear of the render or cladding to allow drips to fall

Do you not have a self build policy? That will cover it at all stages, but needs to start before the building work starts. I will be trying again soon to convert to a normal polict now we are within touching distance of finishing. but last time I looked, last year even a standard policy was coming out at more than just renewing the self build policy (it is "non standard" construction)

Good practice as far as I’m concerned and in the Scottish Technical standards too ‘Every building must be designed and constructed in such a way that temperature loss from heated pipes, ducts and vessels, and temperature gain to cooled pipes and ducts, is resisted’

Couldnt agree more, and yes we reckon it was a neighbor with a grudge who didnt like him parking the truck in his drive

Correct, we installed bollards on the pavement once to stop parking on the corner, 6 immediate neighbours all agreed to it and we also agreed to see or know nothing if ever questioned, we knew someone (friend of a neighbour) with a big white van with a yellow stripe down the side. Parked to obscure our work and wearing high vis jackets I cut a square into the pavement with a diamond disc while another neighbour broke it out and barrowed it away. Concrete bollards were set into some hardcore and Postcrete which gave it the initial hold then we back filled with a barrow of concrete with black dye in the last bit to make it look more like tar - once it all went off I drizzled roofing tar into the crack. No one ever said a thing!

Good example of poor labelling. Could have written Installed on ....... (Date) Danger ? No, swimming allowed. Danger ! No swimming allowed.

I cut it back with an old panel saw. Cutting plasterboard is not kind to a saw so keep an old one just for that. Don't use your best one.

By the looks of things, if you go the official route, they might say your parking space is too short and refuse permission.

Nah! Just do it, councils are too busy to notice and if the contractor looks “pro” who is going to question it . ?

That was exactly my thinking . Can always change the other external edges if he cries too much ?

Welcome, I may have some contacts, always happy to help

We was planning to use this . However we know of an architectural practice near Wizbeach which has been constructed for about 6 years I think now. We went to go see it to see how it was weathering. Short answer was not very good. There was many places the charred wood had cracked off to expose the wood underneath. It looked a mess and would only get worse. Given the cost etc. we decided on Matt black barn paint in the end , miles cheaper , both sides can be painted before putting on and can be refreshed whenever it needs to be at not much cost to keep it looking sharp.

Disaster waiting to happen! Sorry, it will all go mouldy, best not to compress insulation, in fact use eps, MDF will get damp, change shape and eventually die what will it be for?

I've started foundations. I'm just going to get it in April when it is available. It'll be fine...

Check the decibel rating of each appliance as there can be a big difference you can get stick on pads for use in cars to deaden vibration, sticking on the sides of appliances may help reduce noise. if the appliance can be not in a direct line of sight of the seating that may help too

If you want to heat intermittently then it is probably better to have the insulation above the slab. If you want to heat 24/7 and perhaps try to use an off peak type tariff then insulation below the slab gives a greater storage capacity. There are other methods to fix UFH pipes e.g. rails https://underfloorparts.co.uk/product/underfloor-heating-clip-rail-track-1mtr-adhesive

im sure they do units that are just the door/hinges and a small picture frame type carcass for stuff like this. get it 'dry built' so its not glued together. id probably get a 700 wide and stick some 50mm Kingspan down either side and on top. screwfix or tool station do some telescopic draw type runners that sit under the machine to help slide them in and out. then buy the quietest machine you can find. if not just buy a 700 door and some bum hinges and make a panel to bolt to one side. best to buy the sink/fridge/cooker units dry built too as you want to rip the back off to get appliances in.

Hi Nicky and welcome. Are you able to post a few pictures. There are a lot of people on here who will be able to give you good advice.

I would really really really think about siting the washer somewhere else. We have a large kitchen / dining room, as well as a separate lounge, and we moved in early, way before the house was really ready and for a while used that space that incorporated the kitchen as a living room. I really hated having even the noise of the fridge or the dishwasher in a living space, so would never tolerate the noise of a washer in there as well.

@Jilly I think it's not quite right, I've tried to explain why below. 1) The principle is that your post-development drainage rate should not exceed the greenfield runoff rate for design events that are presumably agreed with the BCO. Unless I've misinterpreted your text above, you seem to have calculated the storage volume required using the greenfield runoff rate (i.e. you are trying to store all the greenfield runoff). There are two separate calcs you need - the greenfield and post development. You just need to store enough to that the post-development runoff rate does not exceed the greenfield. 2) QBAR is what's termed an index flood, usually with a nominal return period of about 2.3 years, not 100. There's usually a scaling factor applied to QBAR to get you to whatever return period you need such as 30,100. Note at this point you are only getting a peak flow rate. 3) You need to consider both the runoff rate and volume. QBAR (or the 100 year peak flow) is a peak flow rate, I don't think it's appropriate to apply it across a 6 hour window as that assumes that the peak flow is occurring constantly for 6 hours. In practice you'd expect something closer to a bell shaped graph of runoff, peaking somewhere in the middle. The pre and post development runoff rates are important because the difference between them tells you what volume of storage you need. 4) The 6 hour, 100 year event is referring to a rainfall event. It would be typical to simulate this, along with some losses to try and estimate a runoff curve. Do this for both pre and post development and you should be able to estimate the storage volume. I'd have thought the uksuds tool might do this and will take a look sometime.

I think unravelling quotes for supply and fit metal roofing is a bit like doing the same for windows. You need to understand what they're quoting for. For example, are the roofers expecting you to fit the roof boarding or will they do it? If so what are they proposing? 18mm plywood or timber/sarking board? What membrane are they proposing? Plywood is faster and cheaper whereas timber board is preferred but more expensive. There are also different methods of joining lengths of fascia and soffits, for instance. The simplest and probably most common is a basic lap joint but it's nicer to use a welted joint which can be matched with the main roof seams, but this takes a lot more work. You've got a fair few changes in your roof slope due to both dormer roof and rooflights but without seeing drawings it's difficult to know how many upstands need to be formed, which also play into the labour cost as does the need for valley gutters. Internal and external corners also have an impact on this. Additionally, there's the quesion of pitch as this plays into the material requirements as the girth for flashings depends on roof pitch. There's also the question as to whether they will be buying pre-formed materials or whether they have, or need to hire, forming machinery for on-site installation. So, in short, can you break down the quotations you've received and post them up here? The other things is that a 600mm coil will only cover 530mm after it's been formed with upstands and some flashing girths can be more expensive due to wastage. I guess they've all quoted for gutter installation as the guttering needs to be installed before the roof as the eaves flashing should be tucked over the gutter. I've done a video as a guide to installing a standing seam roof. As a caveat I'm not a pro, I've done it all myself and it's the first time I've installed such a roof, but it should give you an idea of what's involved as I've followed the Federation of Traditional Metal Roofing Contractor's UK Guide to Good Practice.

Ask Building control. THEY decide what is acceptable not your builder. If BC say stairs are okay as per the plans that they appear to have approved, then tell your builder to build to the plans. Just to clarify, the "Certificate of lawful development" is in effect your planning permission. That is not building regs. you have notified building control? Have they seen the plans? if not get it all approved before you start.

if the landing is only needed because of a door, make the door open into the room instead of onto the stairs.

We are being held to a 1 in a 100 year event plus 40% allowance for climate change! 150+ cu m of crates at that rate. This is becoming one of those things you just have to agree to get all of your paperwork lined up and then just go and build what is realistic and rapidly backfill. To be fair - I am happy to live with a puddle in the garden once in 100 years instead of burying £10k of plastic in the garden. The whole thing is madness.

Why..??? Never pay up front for anything ..! Site insurance is cheap - just get it in place and take the hit on a month or two. You should already have the site insured anyway.

We’re getting there! flooring, kitchen and stairs, just bathrooms to go. It’s great to see it all taking shape as the finishing jobs get done. Not that it’s all gone to plan. The first job we tackled was to get the floor down. We wanted to get it done before installing the kitchen rather than having to work around the units. As the kitchen is part of the open plan living area on the first floor it meant doing the whole area some 70m2. It’s a lot of flooring and we needed something that was easy care and tough. After a fair bit of looking at the options, we opted for lose lay vinyl. There seem to be three vinyl options, adhesive plank, click and loose lay. I didn’t fancy sticking down such a large area and we have a couple of floor access panels that I wanted to keep access to. The click version is not dimensionally stable and requires an expansion gap and it’s not designed to have heavy objects such a kitchen units on it. Loose lay ticked the boxes, dimensionally stable, OK with heavy objects and as it turns out the simplest to lay. Karndean and Amtico both have loose lay options but they come in at £30-£40 per square metre. By lucky chance we found a commercial flooring supplier Quadrant who have a loose lay flooring system Salto with a spec pretty much identical to Amtico Access but at £22 per square meter. The planks get laid onto a three metre grid of tackifier, a non setting glue that just stops the tiles from sliding rather than actually gluing them down. If a plank gets damaged you can simply lift it out and replace it. Laying the floor could not have been simpler. In a couple of places we found that the tackifier was just not enough and we ended up fixing one or two end of row planks with a patch contact adhesive. With the floor down we could then start on the kitchen. With no stairs in place we used our electric winch to get the cabinets and appliances to the first floor. We bought the winch to get the 80kg MVHR unit onto the second floor and it has been invaluable in getting flooring, doors and many other heavy bits safely upstairs. With the units all upstairs we made a start putting the kitchen together. We had gone through a couple of design iterations and of course the one we settled on meant that the electrical sockets we put in when plaster boarding required moving to meet the 300mm minimum distance requirement. It’s easily fixed with a splash back so not a real problem. Our appliances are built in, a first for us. So we started out by getting the fridge freezer into its tall unit. There certainly is not much clearance, having carefully got the fridge correctly located I discovered I could not fit the hinges with the fridge in situ, so had to drag it out of the unit. Unit doors fitted and fridge shoe horned back into the unit. You then have to connect the fridge doors to the unit door, a bit fiddly but it all working nicely. Pushed the unit into place only to find the lead was a couple of centre metres short of the spur socket installed for it. Dragged the fridge out, made another hole in the carcase and re-routed the cabling, put fridge back in unit, push unit back into place only to remember the unit had not been secured to the wall after the second cable hole had been made…needless to say there was a bit of cursing as the fridge was dragged out again! A least if we ever have to fit another we’ll know how to set about it. The kitchen has a long set of linear units, which should have been a doddle to install against a nice straight wall. Unfortunately the wall they were getting installed against was the one that didn’t get braced properly on the final pour. Needless to say the units all required spacing out from the wall to form a line. A task not made simpler by the design which has two rows of bridging units over the hob. These are mounted on a wood frame constructed to fill the gap, which of course I cut before remembering the wall was not true. It didn’t take much work to re-jig it thank goodness. We also had to construct the shelving unit as this was a bespoke piece, to make the position of the boiler housing correct. With the linear section of the kitchen built, it was time to build the island. As it turned out this was a much more straight forward proposition as it didn’t involve and dodgy walls. It did involve cutting down a unit by half and cutting the composite worktop. We discounted doing an under-mount sink as we were cutting the worktop and any router chatter would ruin the worktop look. In any event the island went together nicely and the kitchen looks the part. One by-product of having the kitchen done was the completion of the electrical circuits. We duly called back in our electrician to do the final checks. With a couple of minor changes it was all passed. A significant mile stone to pass regarding building controls. Our electrician has been brilliant and supported our work through the build. Not something that all electricians are prepared to do and we were fortunate to find such a good one. It’s been cold and despite the high level of insulation in the house we were getting uncomfortably cool and decided it was time to get the gas boiler connected. We calculated our structure requires about 68w/degree input so very minimal heating should be required, making heat pumps not cost or energy efficient, hence the gas boiler. The boiler feeds two towel rails, no radiators. All the pipes had been put in place long ago before plastering and painting. A bit of a risk but we pressure tested everything before we put the plaster board up. When we finally got round to filling the system and pressurising it we found we had a leak and water was running down behind a radiator. Careful removal of plaster board revealed the cause, I had put a plaster board screw straight through the pipe! With the damaged pipe cut out and fixed, plasterboard and plaster re-done. I put the radiator back up and pressurised the system again only to find another leak. This one took a little longer to find. Again it turned out to be pipe damage, this time on the other radiator, and was one of the radiator mounting screws. Not impressive and something we’ll conveniently forget. At this point the system was holding pressure and all looked good, time to call in a gas safe man to commission the boiler. Called a couple of local gas fitters only to discover they were not prepared to commission a boiler they had not installed. Tried “check a trade” and one of the gas fitters replied saying he wanted to see the installation before taking the job on which is fair enough. Well, he turned up looked at the installation and said he was prepared to do the commissioning, he also pointed out that pipes within 1M of the boiler should be copper and not push fit fittings. We’ve been reciting building regs in our sleep since starting this project and had completely missed this requirement. We had done the gas pipe in copper of course, but why the water pipes? Still no point in arguing….so out comes the carefully installed kitchen cupboard and pipes replaced. Pressurised the system and guess what a leak, this time in a push fit with the new copper pipe. The pipe had caught the o-ring and cut it in two. Easily fixed but none the less annoying when you can’t see any benefit from changing the last meter of pipe to copper. All fixed time to call the gas man in, only to discover his colleague had a covid contact and they were all waiting on test results. Two weeks elapsed before he could come back and the boiler was commissioned at last. Bliss watching the room thermometer slowly creep from 9C to 18C. It certainly makes turning up on site a lot more welcoming. Last but not least we got our stairs in. We had bought the stairs from Fontanot last year and had agreed that the manufacturer would store them until we could take delivery. So they had been sitting in packing crates in Italy since last June and we didn’t get them delivered until October. They were well packed and all we did at the time was a superficial check of the contents, no damage, all present and correct. The stairs are modular and very minimalist, they give the impression of floating in air. Each stair tread support is connected to the next with an M20 bolt through the steel tread supports and spacing shims. It gets built from the top, so you start by installing the head bracket, then each tread until you get to the bottom step where another bracket secures the foot. On the ground floor this is fine, on the first to second floor it isn’t as the stairs don’t terminate on a horizontal floor. The manufactures representative had been on site so was well aware of this, the drawings also showed this but the stair kit shipped was identical to the lower stair. We contacted the supplier who was very responsive and would get back to me with a solution. Time ticked by with no word, so we contacted them again. They rather sheepishly admitted they had no “stock” solution and would have to make up a special bracket. Time ticked by again and we contacted them for progress. What they came back with was not elegant to say the least and would have spoilt the line of the stairs which are a feature of the build. We took a look at alternatives and realised that modifying one of the standard head brackets and mounting it inverted would provide a much better looking solution. New head bracket ordered from Italy along with a tread support. The tread support was modified to bolt directly to the head bracket. Progress at last. Modified bits arrived and unpacked, modifications just perfect, but they were the wrong colour...doh! So we are not out of the woods yet. It will get resolved just it is proving a rather painful process. Back to installing the ground floor stair. Working from the top, the steps adding one at a time using hand rails rods to maintain positioning. The bolts get torqued to 140nm, even so the stairs moved around rather worryingly. Every third step we put a wooden prop to support the construction. By the time you get the bottom step there is a LOT of weight in the structure and it did not feel at all firm. The bottom tread support bolts in to the floor. In our case this is an insulated concrete raft, which is fine as it is strong and plenty deep enough. However it does have a lot of re-enforcing rod, needless to say we found it on two of the four holes. Drilling through with a masonry drill should be possible, but we didn’t manage it and ended up ruining two good quality 12mm HSS bits to get through it. I’m sure there are better ways to do it, over an hour per hole. At last we could bolt down the bottom step. With all the steps secured we left the props in and installed the had rails and four stabiliser brackets. With some trepidation the supports were removed and a tentative test at climbing them was made. They were solid as a rock! Result.

Hi all, We have just started to build a two-story timber frame in Donegal in the North west of Ireland. We are building to passivhaus standards and have an experienced passivhaus builder. I have gained loads of information from this forum and hope to get some more as the build progresses. We have a lot of south facing glazing (by design - to capture views of Donegal bay) and have added some shading to the ground floor southern windows. PHPP calculations demonstrated that overheating can be mitigated by adding some cooling from the underfloor slabs. We intend to use a Mitsubishi 8.5kW ecodan and have a Brink passive certified MHRV specified. Phpp and plans attached. Two storey-Floor Plans, Sections, Elevations 280620.pdf

I could make that a dropped kerb in about an hour with sthil saw- -just cut an angle on the kerb stones that are there -- would I bother -- i doubt it

Given that you are already using the drive and the curb is already very low why bother?

Ours is similar. I can't really see any benefit it dropping it 30mm or so. Is it just about 'regularising' the access?

imo that is already a drop kerb.

I think I’m going to steal that and use it as my own. We do get asked the ‘when will it be finished’ question almost daily.

I took my Landrover out for a drive one day and a mouse poked his nose out from behind the speedo pod.

Yep I have been paying just over £500pa self build insurance for 6 years now. Hoping I can move to a normal buildings and contents policy soon for less but I think it will be lucky to be less. I am still insuring our old house (on a small hotel policy) and that's just shy of £600 pa now.

I started cutting the lawn around the new house LONG before it was habitable and long before we had even moved into the static caravan. The logic was I had just about finished the ground works and wanted to sell my digger, so it's last job was spreading and leveling the piles of topsoil that had been waiting since excavating the foundations. Then it could depart happy that it's work was done. Of course once the ground is flat and bare, one has to seed it with grass and then mow it. you would not want it left to just grow weeds and all need digging up later would you? Nor would you want to press on building the house only to get to the end and realise you still have a bomb site outside and needed to hire a digger to deal with it. I think our neighbours have given up asking when it will be finished. But at least it feels like it's moving again, I have been putting up some scaffold around the sun room in anticipation of the windows arriving soon and being fitted. Re odd perceptions and odd questions, neighbours when passing often say to me when it's blowing an absolute hoolie "great day for sailing" erm no it is not.

Quick, get a spirit level

Nothing wrong with my grouting, it's the tiling that's crap!

Wasn't that his step-dad? I think JC was an early 'Influencer' and went on to be a Superstar. I belive he speaks highly of your grouting though. ?

They are just ignorant. Get it spec'ed up properly and submit it, basically they are holding you back because they don't know. If they were smart, they would let you do it and learn. Typical public sector worker.