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This has been a long time coming for my build. Yesterday me and a helper moved 450 blocks (over 6 tons) into position between my beams. There are still block cuts to do, drainage, and the brickie to come back this week to do the mortar the edges / vents and grout..... but it feels great to have a solid floor after 5 months of commencement, it's been slow going due the complex basement phasing but hoping things can accelerate now.

congratulations! we're just going through this at the moment and hoping that they'll be finished tomorrow. I completely understand how great it feels! ?

I would just get a joiner to build it on site

Ask your sparky first. A lot will get the hump, quite rightly so as well, if you start cutting and stripping their cables without prior ‘permission’. They are damn well entitled too!! Insurance, competent scheme costs, all the gear to keep and update / recalibrate, running a van, paying your taxes, vehicle costs and more. Why would they not charge you when it’s you that asks them to come to do work ?

I have built on a river. We needed a full site specific risk flood risk assessment. We did a fair bit of engineering for a new flood wall and piled foundation design. It was brown field so we also had contamination issues.

I am a bit dubious about that. Reflectivity is the important part. Or in Cornish, "is it shiny or no". Colour is more to do with what wavelengths of light are absorbed. Not all wavelengths will give a problem, but that is getting into the Ultra Violet Catastrophe, which quickly leads into the quantum nature of photons.

Yes, here it is being lowered into the hole: It stands upright on those 3 legs just on the ground, then you start pouring the concrete in.

With a Highland project and 4 timber mills in the area, I wrongly expected better value. I spoke to one of the operators, and he said that I'd be better buying Russian cls from the merchants than commissioning them for it. Quotes confirmed that. The local timber isn't so strong either as it is too warm and the timber grows fast. Sterlingboard is made 15 miles away, but is going abroad.(China and US they say) For larger timbers perhaps the local places will be better, but it seems we are talking small differences. Own labour and very strict control of design and waste will be essential.

Thanks all. As already pointed out by DragsterDriver we have a buyer who made a great offer so we just want to get it done now so that we can get on with the next chapter of our life. Buying a house while we build was never in the plan but it’s 3 miles from the plot and we can do it without locking up masses of money we need for the build. There doesn’t seem to be much of alternative at the moment. Plus it completely takes the pressure of us.

The threaded stud is clean and has an excellent key and unlikely to fail due to lack of bond, so I think it may be to do with the resin bonding properly to the substrate, with the anti clockwise action forcing the resin against it rather than pulling it out.

The "conical" shaped ones like the conder and the Bio Pure don't need much of a flat bottom to the hole, and don't need you to pour a flat base. We lowered our Conder in, then started pouring the concrete, filling the tank with water as we went. Nobody had to go down the hole.

Yes and typical caravan system. Hot and cold water piping in red and blue "garden hose" There are 2 systems commonly in use. One is "pressurised" where there is a pressure switch and the pump runs until a certain pressure is reached then shuts off. that system as soon as you turn a tap on the pressure drops and the pump starts to maintain flow. I assume there is a small expansion vessel somewhere if nothing else to prevent short cycling of the pump. The other system which my caravan has is all the taps have a switch that closes when you open the tap to turn on the pump. I have not seen any expansion vessel in mine so assume the HW cylinder expansion just vents back through the pump into the water tank. On a boat or in a caravan it's a bit like wiring, rigid stuff does not stand up well to vibration so multi strand flex for wiring and a lot of "hose" used for water. On a typical boat like this with an engine that tank will be a "calorifier" which heats the water from the diesel engine cooling water. On a caravan it's more likely to be a gas / electric heater directly heating the small tank.

Timber has just dropped 46% in the US Prices here will drop when demand drops We looked at TF for our next build But found them to be far more expensive than traditional That was pre Covid Using timber for anything isn’t a great option at the moment

I assume this is a typical ‘boat’ hot water system, but if there is no vent then I wonder how expansion / contraction, when the water heats up and cools down, is overcome? What temperature does the water get to?

Marsh are my favoured suppliers. Small business, really good advice on the phone. Also they deliver themselves (regardless of the merchant you go through) and are as keen as you are that there is access and offloading organised. just an air pipe, like in a fish tank.

I would not do that. I deliberately haven't in my own application. My reading of both the Caravan Act and the Town & Country Planning Order is that they categorically permit you to put a caravan on site to accommodate people working on the building. Further permission from the planning department is therefore unnecessary. However, if you do include them in the process, they can then put conditions and restrictions on it, so the less they know about the caravan, the better, I'd say. One thing I'm not clear about is whether PPP is sufficient, or whether Approved Matters have to be granted - both acts state that permission has to be granted before a caravan is permitted, but the wording seems open to interpretation regarding the level of permission. If you want to keep the planners ignorant of the caravan, then, ipso facto, you'll have to wait until you have full permission, but apparently few planning departments are doing site visits at the moment, so maybe PPP is adequate. A touring caravan would certainly be easier to get onto site (and remove for a while, if it seemed prudent to do so). I've also considered having two cheap tourers and using one for sleeping and washing, and the other for living and cooking - but I can see that some neighbours might be uncomfortable about an apparent encampment suddenly appearing.

Agreed re contaminants/chemicals attacking the concrete. In some regions/ situations it is even necessary to put dpm between the ground and footings. With the dpm below, the concrete will forever be dry and inert. Another reason for the dpm being under is so that the concrete pour is clean. Sand and stone should not mix with it and diminish the concrete quality. Also, delivered concrete has a precise mix of ingredients, including water. If poured onto a dry stone or sand surface it will lose water and the mix is changed. And then there is allowing the concrete to slip on the surface while it cures and shrinks, reducing cracking This matters a lot with a commercial building. A lot of it doesn't matter too much with a house, where loads are low, and there is a layer of insulation, then screeds and floor coverings. ie an inferior job gets by , usually. But why not do it as well as possible?

There is a lot to be said for that. I have sold 5 properties in my time, and only ONE was quick and easy to sell (and that was more to do with lucky circumstances rather than a buoyant market)

+1 to this. Put one below if you want but it will be sacrificial other way is use a 25mm layer of Jablite / EPS70 on top of the stone and blinding then do the DPM - protects and provides insulation at the same time.

I’d make them cheaper and more solid and I would wait for timber prices to fall Just seen an add on FB Someone has 11 Knackered sheets of 18 mil OSB Will take £500 ? Reminds me of The multi finish being sold online at £25 a bag Now back down to £5.75 a bag

That's too rough. You need a layer of crusher run or fines compacted over it. Hire a roller for a day. Much more fun.

I hate blinding, I live vb in floors

Could have been a fault on the ring, and the customer didn’t want to pay for fault finding/running in new cable, safest way to make safe is to change to 2 radials

You do for the short bit of pipe!

Blackjack is good. im guessing your builder is an old schooler who is new to all this modern way of doing things and used the mortar to tie-in the upstand. Easy enough to rake the mortar out, insert the DPM and point up again

I'm a bit lost as to where the 50mm air gap is? Is this a suspended timber floor? How deep are the existing joists? Cleverer people will be along shortly. Just Google "routed chipboard UFH" and go Images. Use btw 22mm boards not 18mm. Putting underlay then carpet direct onto foiled EPS is a bad idea btw.

The few times I have moved house I have utterly utterly hated the process. It is either a good time to buy (depressed markets nothing selling quickly plenty of houses to choose from and you can often get them below asking price) OR it is a good time to sell (everything sells instantly over asking price) I have not encountered a time when it has been good to buy and sell at the same time. The last 2 moves have been self build where we bought the site, organised services and the static caravan and then moved onto site, detaching the buy and sell process. Put the sale on hold and wait until you have the plot ready to move onto. You will probably get more for the house in a few months.

It’s the same everywhere We've friends that have come back from living in Africa and they have been living in a hotel for 11 weeks With no sign of a rental

You're supposed to use a metal insert in the ends of the grey plastic pipes. It sort of reinforces the end where it goes into the plastic elbow. Indeed it would help at the red rubber pipe junction: Or as said above use a short bit of copper pipe instead of the plastic (going into the red). As an aside if you haven't already then invest in a cheap Vernier type caliper, invaluable for measuring pipe dia etc when asking questions. Random link. You can often pick up Lidl/Aldi for a tenner: https://www.amazon.co.uk/LEDLUX-Professional-Stainless-Digital-Caliper/dp/B08ZJDVPLJ/ref=mp_s_a_1_10?

If this is a new build check your SAP for the thicknesses of roof insulation to be used. Your SAP assessor will have used certain thicknesses of insulation to calculate the TER and DER. However for 175mm deep joists I would normally expect to see 125mm Kingspan between the rafters giving a 50mm air gap behind the insulation and anything from 32.2mm to 82.5mm Kingspan insulated plasterboard across the face of the rafters giving U-Values ranging from 0.16Wm2K to 0.11Wm2K. 0.18W/m2K is required by TBF1 for extensions. Don’t forget that you can always batten down the rafters to achieve a larger rafter depth if your design calls for insulation that is thicker than the rafters.

Put the DPM above the floor slab.

Take the plastic fitting out and cut 1/2” off the end and reintstall.

Similar topic here a couple of weeks ago.

As it is very Important to you don't leave it to guesswork, get your house design thermally modelled. PHPP would really help with this aspect, even if not considering achieving PassivHaus levels of energy loss. External venetians and roller blinds have large head boxes. They are best "designed in" to the building fabric, they're not such a good look as a retrofit.

I'll say it. If you are doing that much to a bungalow, it might be better off doing at a demolish / replace.`

We had our PHPP calcs done, and found we needed to take account of the solar gain. So this is what we did - picture taken from the kitchen where I am typing this post... Yes, its a large overhang - its called a Winter Garden - fancy name for overhang. Kevin WhatsHisFace would call it a Breeze Corridor. Anyway, whatever the name, without it, we'd cook. You are looking through six sheets of glass on the left hand side (one slider moved to the left handside), and no glass to the right of the vertical : that's 2 and a bit meters of open window - 27 outside and 22 inside out of the wind.

Just be aware for those looking at UVC for a heat pump, Telford do a 300 litre with twin immersions as a standard product for around £50 more. Single immersion Twin Immersion Telford are fully configurable to allow placement of the pipework where you require, and will also add additional pockets for around £30 each if you want more monitoring.

Pump, and flow switch, and a relay between the two. Items which need to be bought, items which consume energy, and items which fail. Every time a component fails, your perceived saving goes into the pocket of the engineer........and you know he will be back again at some stage Plus you'll have the extra, significant, associated losses of the external 'gubbings' and the cost of running the secondary pump which needs to run flat out usually. Due to convection, the external stuff turns into a waste radiator when the tank is static ( after being charged and the stat satisfied ) removing the heat to its surroundings. I get the knee-jerk attraction of part charging via the upper 1/3, but the whole point of providing low cost energy via the ASHP is that you can harvest the max amount of energy in the shortest window, eg the Go! tariff charges the whole larger cylinder once a day at 5p/kWh + the multiplication of the SCoP ( so DHW at ~2.5p/kWh on a good day minimum expected ). With that said, I have zero love for the Mixergy tank, and waaaaaaay less love for the PHE solution and additional costs / losses. Absolutely no sale there AFAIC. Folk get lost in an seemingly 'miserly' pursuit of maximised costs savings, and it's just a waste of time, effort and money. If you have cheap electricity and an ASHP, or PV and and ASHP, then you would surely want to maximise the yield and stuff the UVC full to the gunnels at each opportunity. These only lose a degree and hour max, so in 24hrs ( and with an suitably sized UVC aka energy buffer of 300-400L ) the numbers are far better eg that would be the most 'bang for the buck'. Telford stainless cylinder = lifetime warranty too, zero maintenance!!! This solution sells itself. On top of that would be the default of the immersion being used to convert PV into DHW directly, during the summer with the immersion only, thus not unnecessarily fatiguing the ASHP for the full 12 months of the year. That will promote reduced servicing and maximise longevity of the parts you least want to replace.

there's another (slightly risky) option- take a mallet to the top of the tank and drop it an inch...

I'm not convinced anything will fall much. The manufacturers will have vastly improved profits and little incentive to invest in increased production....we will buy their chipboard and timber at some time, when we give up on the price returning to normal. Norbord, who make Sterlingboard and Caberfloor have been bought by an even bigger company, West Fraser, and their new owner published this. • Sales increased 61% from the prior quarter to $3.779 billion • Earnings increased to $1,488 million, or 39% of sales, from $665 million in the prior quarter I feel we are in their hands.