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if you cut the flooring you will weaken the hole floor as the t & g flooring strengthens the floor by tying all the joist together. use a sound brake under the soleplate of the partition

If steel is encased it doesnt need anything (think of rebar inside concrete). If its exposed then it can be either coated or not. Most new bridges are now left unpainted because it has been found that the rust layer protects better than deteriorating paint.

Just a rant really unless anyone has any ideas as to how to sort this out. Still plodding on with my parents' place. On Friday, they noticed that their application to build a carport next to the already approved house was open for comments. I said this must be a clerical error as the application was made 12 weeks ago and the coment period had long since passed. Emailed planning (they will not accept phone calls due to COVID and as of two weeks ago Edinburgh planning said they are too busy to answer individual queries about applications) They emailed back that the neighbours had not been contacted originally and they had just sent this out. I was gob smacked. The architect tried to email and call the planning officer for two weeks before the moratorium on speaking to officers was put in place with no response. Prior to this we made an application in early 2019. After the 8 week determination deadline the architect tried to contact the officer and finally got him after 12 weeks when he said he was going to refuse the application without ever speaking to anyone about it and giving us a chance to revise it. We then had to start all over again which took months. On the approved application last year, he emailed the planning consultant to say it was recommended for approval after 12 weeks. Then he said that they had forgotten to send out consultations and this further delayed things so it took a further four months for approval to be granted. One of the consultations that was not made was with Scottish Water. Admittedly the architect/consultant did tell the planning officer that they had sited the house considering the position of the water main on site, but they are a statutory consultant. They then emailed us four weeks before starting on site which has resulted in a three month delay, redesign and extra costs that could approach £20,000. The variation application is now sitting with the same planing officer. Finding out on Friday that our application had been sitting for 12 weeks without the neighbours being consulted was the last straw. I emailed back asking what had happened and could someone call me. No response, despite the first email being answered n 40 minutes. I emailed the planning officer's boss with a summary of what has happened yesterday asking him to call me. No response. I tried calling him today, straight to voicemail. If I don't get him in the morning I will be trying to speak to the head of planning. Consistently the architect has said that we have to keep them onside, but frankly their actions are disgraceful. My parents are 73 and 74 and distraught. They think they will be dead before the house is built.

@Onoff posted a new blade off to you by Royal Mail so hopefully you will get it by the end of the month? It should go well with the completely refurbished brush cutter.

Wet plastered onto the blockwork is much nicer than plasterboard on dabs. You will know the blockwork is properly sealed. If you have plasterboard on dabs the blockwork can let in a fair amount of air. Any small holes will can let external air in and it just circulates behind the plasterboard.

I normally use lead mate (Everbuild) Some of the cheaper ones can be a bit messy

We retrospectively cut doorways into load besting walls, so a bit of chasing will be of zero detriment. Electricians will do that 4 times or more in the same wall before breakfast. Zero BCO or structural issues / concerns have ever been raised in the last 25+ years of doing this exact work. Time to put more tonic in with the gin

That's a good point.. I was just looking at your smart curvey ones.. but you'd likely then have 2 courses, of course. Nah sod it I'll just fill the gaps.

They’d use piss coloured cement then most prob ??

It's better and worse in other countries. Holland is great at proper town planning - we used to live there. Belgium is weird, you can do a lot without permission but on some sites you must leave the sides of your house blank (no windows) in case someone wants to build alongside you, if you look, you'll see these houses with nothing either side but they have blank walls.... Odd Simon

I should add, we've done 2 requests for pre-application advice. The first officer got it wrong and we had to go to appeal and they completely dissed the LPA as not knowing what they were doing. And the officer came to different conclusions about infill in the Green Belt on ours and another application at the same time in a different village. For ours, 32m frontage was too large to be infill (there's no size regulation of course). For the other a frontage of 100m was fine.... Their application was fronted by a local architect, ours was from us - go figure. The 2nd was on the actual application after we'd won the appeal. They'd brought in a contractor and she really screwed us over, it's too tall, it's too deep, couldn't you flip it side to side, which caused many iterations of the plan and resulted in something sub optimal in terms of space.... and on top of that, the original outline application and appeal are invalid because they don't show the red line all the way to the public highway!!!!!! In the end we thought screw this pre-app business for a lark, put in the application and it was granted permission - I wonder if we'd just not wasted the money and 6 months of time on the pre-app if we'd have got what we really wanted by just submitting the plans we wanted. And through all these pre-apps, the best we got were curt emails with their decisions about our plans - absolutely NO discussion. Simon

I think there is a misunderstanding on what I am asking. I am not looking for tips to maximise profit by completely passing over contemporary design in favour of a producing a twee country cottage, however desirable they maybe to some, I have absolutely no interest in following that design path. What I am trying to focus on, is whether the people out there who favour contemporary design, would pay a premium or value certain material/architectural details and specifications, because there is a shortage of that type of housing in this area. So far the consensus (rather surprisingly for the self build community) seems to be no?!

That's only for alloys known as 'weathering steels'; in appropriate conditions the rust develops into a protective patina. It needs to be used carefully - particular attention to water shedding details and corrosion losses built into the thickness of the steel. It's a pig to weld, too. But agree on the post - surface discolouring isn't serious and once encapsulated, shouldn't corrode any more.

Yes you can. With a programme such as Adobe Illustrator you can import the PDF into illustrator and then export it as an AutoCAD .dwg file. Two types of PDF files exist. Vector based and raster based. Vector are lines and text that would be printed from AutoCAD. A scanned pdf or image is made up of pixels and can't be converted back. When converting PDF back to AutoCAD with illustrator you'll lose some of the autocad layers but that's fine as some companies strip this out anyway when sending you the original AutoCAD file. It will also be to a particular scale. eg 1:50 so after you convert it back to .dwg file format you'll have to scale it by 50. Some other annoying stuff happens like hatches are all converted to lines. If used to AutoCAD commands it's the same as everything in the drawing is exploded. This can make hatches difficult to modify. Text is also converted and not editable. It's all still fine though as you strip out the hatches and text and have all the lines of the house or building perfectly which is what you want.

Agree. Picture above looks fine to me - just surface rust, and that will eventually form a protective layer that will stop any further penetration unless it's really exposed to the elements or you're right on the coast & getting salt spray

Yes it's in the NPPF - although it's not exactly in the form of LPA's shall.... Amusingly the decision making section starts off: 38. Local planning authorities should approach decisions on proposed development in a positive and creative way..... It then continues under the heading 'Pre-application engagement and front-loading' 39. Early engagement has significant potential to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the planning application system for all parties. Good quality preapplication discussion enables better coordination between public and private resources and improved outcomes for the community. You might like to send a copy of that to your local councillor and the leader of the council and ask the questions you've posed here. You can read the rest of the decision making section of the NPPF at https://bit.ly/3vN0Pjt Simon

+1 on themodernhouse.com love having a nosey at the listings, some beautifully put together houses and interiors

Never heard of this, have ordered some for my petrol strimmer (that seems to “eat” line If your nylon cord keeps breaking, submerge it in water for a few days/weeks. It's hydroscopic and dries out over time, increasing the moisture content will make it less prone to breaking.

https://www.constructionenquirer.com/2021/05/25/timber-batten-prices-soar-through-the-roof/ Talman said: “Timber battens were the second-highest material shortage after roof tiles with a third of contractors reporting shortages.”

Maybe, maybe not. A friend of mine is a co-owner of themordernhouse.com, an estate agency specialising in architecturally designed houses operating across the UK and western Europe. We spoke to him when considering how modern to make the exterior of our house (we live in a very conservative suburb, adjacent a conservation area full of large 1930s houses). His take was that a modern-looking house will alienate a proportion of the potential purchasers, for sure, but there's a small minority who will pay a premium. The more modern and "architectural", the smaller the pool of potential buyers, but the more that minority will be willing to pay. Obviously this assumes you haven't built something whacky or completely idiosynchratic.

Not that I know of. Think the only things they care about are the 8 week target for processing applications and possibly the overall number of houses approved per year.

I spent a year in pre app back in 2007. Planning staff would quit and we wouldn't even find out for 4 weeks. Then had to wait for new staff to be recruited, deal with the backlog etc. before sending us a useless reply. It might be better to hire a planning consultant than to spend a long time in pre app? In my area some planning staff are shared with other counties and some only work 3 days a week.

25mm x 50mm battens is fairly standard. Stop them short at the top and bottom of openings to allow air to fully circulate. You will normally go round the outside of the openings with the same.

You can see what your render company says We are currently plasterboarding a TF site The spec is for 30 mil of the 45 to be in the timber and they are only holding Pb Cement board is very heavy 25 mil is asking a lot

25mm should be ok, how are you venting at the top? Ensure that the battens are fixed back to the structural members of the timber frame and not just pinned to the OSB. Your render company should have a detail that you can follow, even better is to get them to design the system and warranty it. Be very careful with your choice of renderboard - should be Knauf Aquapanel or similar.

Unless it is an area with lots of bespoke one off designs with unique architectural features, for purely build for sale, I would stick to brick walls and tiled roofs. You will not alienate any buyers with that. Then by all means concentrate on quality, good windows, good insulation and air tightness, under floor heating, ASHP, MVHR but expect probably 50% or more of buyers to take no notice of that and be more interested in the kitchen and bathroom units. Most people on this forum are self builders wanting the best for them, not too bothered about cost, resale value or resale difficulties because for a lot of us, resale is something our children will have to worry about after we have moved out in a box.

Cheers markc.. glad it looks in keeping from your pov. To think I was going to lino this too before being persuaded to go with these old tiles. Shows my choices aren't up to par.

If your French is up to it, there is a VERY detailed TOP 15 mvhr list on a Belgian DIY site that includes the Salda Smarty. You need to ask for a password to read it - they want to keep commercial activity off the site. They gave it a very good rating - high quality products, excellent documentation and clearly built for cold climates. The downside was a bit noisy and disappointingly expensive. Being rip-off France and Belgium, the price is around 2,700 euros!! It's an absolute bargain at bpc. The website is bricozone.be/vmcdf and the list is titled Quelle VMC-DF choisir ?

The thing that i would not be happy with is that tiny water outlet.

https://www.sma-uk.com/solar-systems/export-limitation.html try this

your supplier will make them to whatever dimensions you give. measure the height of the opening in 2 places and the width in 3 places and go with the smallest measurements. then you deduct 10mm (or 5mm if your feeling confident) then that is your final width and height including sill. all measured in millimetres, inches would blow some peoples brains out. then screw them in with 120mm long concrete screws 150mm away from the corner welds 3 or more per side. get a pack of plastic spacers and some low expanding expanding foam.

It will eventually leak there because water always wins in the end but probably not in a timescale to bother you provided the roof workmanship is tidy. It would be nicer to have the fall right but, to be honest, I would take a view on it personally.

Concreting is one of the most difficult jobs to get right. Even if you are experienced and well set up it can catch you out. Late delivery, pump gets blocked, wrong mix, wrong weather, not enough skilled labour, poker doesn't work, goes off too quickly / slowly.

There's more to worry about in life! No idea how the clutz managed to do it, but forced mesh and pipework to come up through the concrete. Then tried to cover up the shambles by trying to cover up the bits poking through with some more concrete on top...funnily enough I didn't end up with a very level finish....

Couple of points to bear in mind 1) It is unlikely a flashing will be tight enough to the wall to draw water up. 2)The flashing (more upstand in this case) should be sealed to the horizontal surface and act as a tank.

Working around standard sizes for a new build makes sense, but as you are converting, changing the hole sizes can be a pain and look terrible, thats unless you are intending making them much bigger anyway in which case head for standard sizes where possible.

if you are buying windows its the hole size, let them know it is the opening size and they will deduct an appropriate amount for fitting room.

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Hi.....sorry no name.... Thank you for the feedback - a labour of love it was during construction and it will be for some time moving forward as we complete the fit out. Bracing is required if you have about 6 to 8 courses to fill. However, with the onsite crane (the new approach) you can pour every 4 courses which means no bracing and less worry. The advantage of woodcrete over the plastic ICF is that it allows air and water to escape - leaving behind a strong concrete mix with no air gaps. Definitely the way to go. If you think a phone call would help to talk things through just let me know. Regards Tom

You mean a home delivery ? Not a young man lured into your trap ...

So if it’s like the UFH and bathroom, it will be turned out tomorrow, a photo posted of it and then nothing..... then you’ll see them installed in 2024 using a scratch built hoist that uses the rear axle of a Capri along with some “spare” RSJ and powered by an 18v battery drill ... ?

As you may soon acquire 300k I was wondering if you were interested in investing in “ Pocsters Basements Ltd “ ? please note : All investments carry risk , you may receive less than your original investment. Not regulated by the FSA.