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I love these type of threads where people have very skewed views on what an architect does, what they should do and why they're expensive. In all seriousness OP, be very careful and thorough in researching what services you intend to offer, from years of experience I can tell you that self builders are probably the hardest group of clients that you can work for, looking at your questions and replies I would say that you probably don't want to target this type of client at all. Do a quick search on the forum of people looking for architects or discussing fees etc and you start to understand why, there are many pain points for clients looking to build a house which need careful attention, if I was going out on my own again I would be much more focussed on targeting the right client (yes it's all experience but the amount of social work involved isn't for everyone)

A very warm welcome.... Yours is the most asked question on BH. The question of cost underpins almost every post here, even the technical ones.So the very best advice we could give is to suggest you waste an complete week or perhaps more reading BH. If you do it in a focused way it really - honestly - will repay the effort. In the first year of reading BH , we avoided bills for at least £17k ( by changing the pile design for our house based on advice and links included on BH) Please though, do always do your own Due Diligence. We are not experts, just hard-bitten , nosey little tinkers ..... Best of luck Ian

Ah, however the manifold gauge shows the same temperature I set on the heatpump. And it’s showing a return of about 7C below that so I think it’s looking good in there. Behold… temperatures in there are as expected with a nice delta between leaving and return temperature. Now I’m thinking what I see in that inlet sensor is coming from the buffer tank instead. So today things took a bit of a turn. I turned everything to the max yesterday before bed and let it rip: pump at 55C, unrestricted speed, UFH manifold mixing valve at 55C too and opened all the flow gauges. Temperature downstairs in the morning was 19C which is a tremendous improvement. What surprises me the most though was the consumption: 2/3kwh every hour. The smart meter notes about 10min of pump off followed by about 12min of pump on at about 1kwh (which I’m guessing is topping up the buffer tank). The UFH manifold then showed a delta of less than 3 which indicated to me that I had the flow too fast so I adjusted the zones little by little throughout the day until I got a consistent 7C delta. Ultimately I think I’ll order those self balancing actuators for this. Usage seems stable and the downstairs has been at at constant 19.5C the whole day. good results but I’m still not sure what’s happened. I wonder if I had to do the work of heating the house first.

I would hazard 25%

And all of a sudden …there’s is progress to be seen … and the workmanship looks pretty good.

Our first architect seemed to think we were joking about the budget and designed a really nice house that would have cost double what we had to spend. Instead of holding his hands up he blamed all the builders for trying to gouge us. We then had a good young architect who was enthuisiastic and was backed up by older hands in the practice. Once we had the design all buttoned up it was passed to an architectural technician who knew a lot of the local trades and had good practical knowledge.

They will accept a design by a Chartered Engineer. The individual BCO is likely to have it looked over by another SE, and doesn't have the qualifications (or any thought ) to dispute it with them.

If the foundation slab was designed by a structural engineer such as William Hilliard (who has designed passive slabs for a few here) then why would the BC not accept it?

Hello Zak. The thing I enjoy about BH is that you can chew the fat without getting your head bitten off. Have copied and pasted you text in italic with my comments/ fat! "Does this mean given its currenlty a banglow I will be limited to banglow (no build upward) option unless I go down the underpinning option which is a not an option at the moment." No. what we look to do is to see how we can redistribute the loads to "trick the ground" into thinking that nothing has changed too much and then we design for the little extra anticipated settlement.. yes my name is Potter but not Harry Potter, but do wear glasses. So I had two full bore holes and third extended via with dynamic probe with two trial pits as marked on the plan. If I need to do more trial holes I would need to get ot sorted via a professional but what is it I am looking for which could not be done previously. Sorry just trying to clarify my understanding. You need to take a few steps back and look at what you have on site, you just missed the earlier steps? maybe call these earlier steps a walk over site study, preceeded by a desktop study. But unless you do this all the time then you probably won't know this. Don't worry though, your GI is of much value. I don't think you have done anything wrong, maybe just got the order / sequence mixed up? I would put together a little "portfolio" on your project. A summary of how you came by the property, what you know about it, what you have done say planning wise, your research and so on. Include a title plan, the sort of things that show you have done your best to get as far as you can. Then a short bit on what you want your project to deliver, make it personal. Take that to a few local SE's and ask them if they can help. Don't mention fee cost at this stage. SE's know this is coming down the pipe anyway. You may well get a pleasant surprise and an SE will drop into your lap, pick up the ball and you can work away together finding the right solution for you. You have an interesting project here that is technically challenging and there are plenty SE's that love this kind of stuff.. provided they get renumerated at a fair rate. In return they will often seek to mitigate their fee by saving you money. So that is 4tonne per sqm. Would this be enough for a banglow only or traditional block and brick two and half (loft) storey house? At 40kN/m^2 ball park you could achieve two storeys plus the loft. Just don't be gready with huge spans, beam and block for serious acoustics. You can still create a great family working home future proofed. The trick here is to get an SE in early and they can work with you to support the Architectural design, which will help avoid you going down blind alleys and racking up design cost. Definitely, I would consider that if it's possible and a cost effective solution. I had a chat with Hilliard Tanner (Ireland) as @joe90 suggested and he was to going to look at it but he mention thin steel cases concrete beam with raft ok top among one option so I am keeping fingers crossed. By all means talk to Tanners but you may want to consider a local SE that also has a black book of local contacts, brickies, sparks etc and reliable local folk.. and hypothetically a really black book of who to avoid locally contractor wise, not that they do keep such a book as this may be illegal. In terms of insulated rafts you may see insulation load bearing values of 130 - 150kPa (150 kN/m^2) at 10% compression but put this in at 250 -300 mm thick and it will squash a lot 25 -30mm.. too much. Now what SE's look at is what can the building tolerate.. say 10mm as this has to be added to any ground movement. We look at the load bearing value at say 1 -2% compression and now were are down to a bearing capacity much closer if not less than the 40kN/m^2 I have been mentioning.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned it, but there is the IP side of things. Some people get a bit narked when they ask an architect to design a house, then all they get is a small PDF, with no dimensions. If people pay you to design them a house, they want full drawings/access to CAD files without any restrictions. That is what they are paying for. My very first post, over at the 'other place', was about open source house design. In a former life, I worked as an automotive engineer, house design is a piece of piss engineering wise. Not as if a house has to corner at 150 MPH, have 2 tonnes smack into the side at 30 MPH, have the safety feature do nothing for nearly all the time, but must work once when needed. My old banger of a car has electric windows that work faultlessly, doors that open with a remote control and disables the alarm/immobiliser, and on a good run, can do 70 MPG. Houses are not much better than caves when it comes to design.

Me too.. to add some of my thoughts to yours. Before you go down the piling route I would make sure that you rule out the other options first and can justify to yourself that you have given it your best shot. @Zak S "To me rebuild could only be justified if I build a standard 2 storey plus a loft kind of house. Given the foot print it could easily reach 600sqm but I onky need 450-500 sqm. But want to have decent size ground floor. To follow up on Joe's point I would also ask myself.. can I design something that uses part of the existing foot print only and retain the existing founds? Then add some new founds similar to the existing to "fill in" the gaps. You have gathered some info by way of your GI report but you also have an existing building sitting there. I would want to have a look at the existing building, determine it's age and also when parts were added and altered. You see this with old steadings.. as say a farm grows they add bits, change it to accommodate larger farm machinery and so on. Different loads are added to the ground at different times. Now this can be a mine of information as it lets you observe how the existing building has performed on the ground over many decades. You can see cracks, where it settles / heaves and so on. You can also calculate the load the existing building is putting on the soil under it's foundations. Already you have some hard evidence on what the ground can carry. This also gives you clues as to where you need to target any further investigation. Could be trial pits dug with a JCB. It requires some experience to interpret what do see, if a lay person don't be put off using your common sense. It's your house / project so have fun with it and explore what you see. The ask say the Geotech / SE folk to explain your observations. Also have a look at what is next door as the ground conditions can change a lot over a 100 metres, but right next door can provide the best clues as to what you may have just over the boundary and thus what you may have a few metres away. I have had a quick look at the GI report (only in terms of the house though) and while underpinning the existing founds is always an option it's labour intensive and if you have high ground water.. a horrible job and difficult to get right. So this means cost £. You have what looks like two water tables on the bore hole logs BH1 & 2. This is not uncommon. Very roughly the rain falls / your drains leak / you have old soak aways and want to put in new ones too. This water soaks into the ground and can get trapped on top of a less permeable layer, like CLAY. But below this layer of CLAY can be fractured rock or gravel overlying fractured rock, like sand stone and at this level lies the main aquifer. Often you find gravels / sands / silts before hitting more competant rock. This is due to weathering of the rock during ice ages and so on. This goes some way towards explaining the refusal term? The lower water strike can be a primary aquifer that the water board use to extract drinking water from so watch out if you want to start messing with it! Always check with the water board early just in case. The upper water level could be attributed to what is sometimes called a perched water table. The water gets stuck by a layer of less permeable material and can't drain straight down to the lower water table.. thus it is "perched". You see I have used capital letters above in places. You can also see this in the bore hole logs. Take borehole 1 log. At a depth of about 1.6m you find "..slightly silty sandy CLAY with fine roots" The capital letters indicate that the dominant portion of the sample is clay, hence in capital letters. Clay is less permeable than sand so it is preventing the water from draining down to the lower level. Now above 1.6 you have ground with sand and sands can transmit a lot of water. Yes there is a bit of made ground but this may not be extensive. Farmers were / are not daft and don't tend to build steadings over made ground. But they do often have a midden outside (MADE GOUND) and this gets picked up on a GI! Also if you pump like mad to keep your excavation dry you can suck out the fine portion of the sand, this weakens it and can cause a lot of trouble. Ideally you want to design a domestic found that is situated above the water level and avoid these issues if you can when dealing with sands. There is much discussion on BH about clays swelling and shrinking but if you can be sure they are deep enough and always saturated this won't happen. I won't go into great detail but you can also find fine roots at depth. Yes they will rot but settlements are negligable and can be accounted for. On the bore hole logs and in the "site work" section you can see they have carried out two types of penetration test. The SPT and dynamic probing. The dynamic probing is complex so I'll leave that for now. But the STP number provides the Engineer with a rough (well very rough) feel for what might be worth a closer look. A rough rule of thumb is to take the STP number and multiply by ten to give you an indicative allowable bearing capacity. The allowable bearing capacity is a measure of what load you can put on the ground (with factors of safety) without the ground failing or you house settling too much. Take BH 1 at 1.6 m SPT = 8 and BH 2 SPT = 9 at say 2.0m. Take the lower value 8 x 10 = 80 kN/m^2 ( 80 Kilo Newtons per square meter) which is about 8.0 tonnes per square metre.. quite a lot! But.. above this where want to put a found (could be a raft) there is water shown in you logs. Sands get their strength (bearing capacity) from partly inter granular friction in laymans terms. For this to work each grain bears on the ones around it and each particle has a density of say 20 kN/m^3. But when the water rises the density is halved (see Archimedes or the nautical members of BH) so you have half the friction. Thus when doing conceptual stuff we divide the 80 kN/m^2 by two when in SAND type soils to give an allowable bearing capacity (ABC) of 40 kN/m^2. Now you can often on a low rise building you can get a simple ground bearing raft with insulation under to work (with a fair wind) using an ABC of 40 kN/m^2. Make the insulation thicker and you are in passive house terratory. You may ask.. what about the roots rotting? Well we just design the raft to account for the ground settling a bit and the odd soft spot. You keep the raft as high as you can and away from the ground water. I would kick the tyres on this first before committing to piling, even if to rule the idea out and free up brain space. I hope this gives you a bit of further insight and is of use.

This incudes one of my great hates: percentage of build cost. This example states 8% for commercial work. Most of my business (retired) was picking up unaffordable projects and reworking them to the original stated budget. Typically a £2M best tender price from others and 'could we do it for £1.3M'. Usually yes. The poor client had already shelled out for lots of consultants who were then paid off and not involved further. So if that example had gone ahead with the architects design they would have charged 8% of 2M = 160,000. That covered our inhouse (Architects and Engineers) and external design and the oh &p, within the £1.3 example for complete design and build. No corners cut btw, just knowing how to build things and what stuff costs. So what is the client to do about rising costs (usually inherent in the design) that make the architect a higher fee? The worse the cost control the higher the fee. If I was a very cynical architect working on %, I would involve lots of consultants to do the work at client's expense, include expensive specialist contactors likewise, and go to main contractors who charge a lot but don't need supervision.. That makes more money for less work. And they call me cynical. Moral. Get a fixed price quote and scope of work.

I be in favour of leaving a quite a few perpends open for drainage. I recall an extension being built and the ground water was literally squirting out of a perpend when soil was excavated. The original building was a ground bearing slab too. I was amazed. Understand it did so for days after. No damp in the original building either

Memory is fading, so just dug the quote out! These are 2016 prices, but £200 for mobilisation, £9.5k for 24 × 12m piles (credit at £10 per linear metre if less depth reqd) plus £13,650 for 111 linear metres of ring beam. No idea what % to add to get to current prices though... Also just found the quote from one of the big boys for the same job...£52k.

How far below ground level are you there? As @joe90 our foundation trenches filled up with ground water and had to be regularly pumped out. Not an issue once you are out of the ground.

I don't know, sorry. the last time I spoke to our M&E company they specifically said Zehnder but it might be only because that's the unit we're having and when I spoke today I didn't ask about other manufacturers.

Bullivant are not cheap when it comes to sorting the beam, and so it might be worth getting costings from another groundworks company. Of course, having the one team on it to finish makes life easier, and you only have one company to deal with, but as with everything, that does come at a cost.

I am in the middle of self building. I am frame-up and weathertight, and now embarking on first fix. I did employ a part-qualified RIBA architect. She was a qualified Passive-House designer (which is something I would personally always look for in an architect) to do the CAD work and produce the design for planning and the D&A Statement. However, I managed the planning application and process myself and coordinated all the site investigations, etc., myself. And I am now project-managing the build myself entirely alone. My biggest recommendation to any architect from my own experience is NOT to stick to the RIBA steps-of-service. In my personal view, they are too rigid for a one-off small-scale self-builder-led project. Instead and more flexible iterative approach should be used in partnership with the self-builder.

I bet they wouldn’t require one if it was there money

With the passive slabs you may have to remove a lot of material and fill with compacted stone. If you are piling, the augered method causes less disturbance to neighbours than driven.

I would be very careful with this and wouldn’t believe a word of it. I used the triton TT liquid which is very good, then being a tight arse I used a solvent free black jack type product, it looked ok for 4 months but has now started to eat into the eps, I have to cut it all back and remove the blackjack stuff. It really needs to be water based and not bituminous based. Pain in the arse lesson.

Report worth a read on ventilation performance. Atamate_SDAR+Paper+2019+(1).pdf

I see a string line, hooray. Get them to fill the perpend joints. The wall is supposed to be solid. Nice bond joint at cross wall: not many would do that.

Ouch! A lot of people are wrong but you are right?* I have been thinking on this while walking in the sun. This is not the forum where you will meet your clients. Self-builders do so for very specific reasons. 1. Cost saving 2. Control 3. Hands on 4. A dream The first three appeal to people who will take a chance, be immersed in their own project, and be watching detail, quality and cost closely. Almost by default they don't want or need to be hand-held throughout by a single party. Some will be know-alls that don't take advice. Others will be exploring every aspect and wanting to now why, why, why. Most will be earnestly striving for a good job at a very cheap price. Your market is therefore to do a simple design (most likely tidying up a provided sketch) and leave, but technicians are doing this already for low fees. Or to do amazing flights of fancy where budget is irrelevant, and lovely big fees follow, but these clients are not on here. *actually this isn't your fault it is taught at uni. I have come across quite a few who think they are special, almost in inverse proportion to their skill and value.

Yes I’m kind of getting the message that it’s not clear what an architect is to self-builders, and that’s where a lot of people are tripping up. As in, ‘what do you want from your architect? = to be a surveyor’ ! I think you can get it cheaper and more accurate from a surveyor, it’s not lazyness it’s practically. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked with self builders for a long time now, I do understand the market and how to design what people want and can build, I know they can be tricky. I think what I’m getting, is as long as I am clear about what I offer, and honest about the price, it should go some way towards sorting out the confusion. I don’t know… Maybe 5k is quite high for people to hear upfront but it’s what my firm offers at the moment, and I would include 3Ds and visits. I’ve met self builders who spent 15k and didn’t get plans that worked for planning. I’d say that was expensive and a rip-off, they weren’t even nice houses.

very true, Blackjack BBA cert covers use on insulation

Effectively what we did (with zero experience) - the structure is key but once in place you can sub out all the first and second fix, or DIY to your competence level. Home builder's bible (an essential read) has a good explanation of how house design can minimise or increase costs - some is plot related (slope, access, services, etc) and some is the house shape and size itself (square, L shape, gable ends, roof complexity etc etc). You will also become familiar with the time/quality/cost triangle - wisdom is you can have two at the expense of the third. In your case this may be time or quality. You may decide that you can live with a budget bathroom and kitchen for a few years with a view to upgrading later. Prioritise spending money where it it is difficult to revisit e.g. fabric - insulation & airtightness, good windows etc. There are many strategies to work to a limited budget and to enable an extended timescale. One is to live on site (if possible, caravan etc) to reduce ongoing accommodation costs. Second is to partially complete and leave some bits until more funds available - however this needs consideration as, for example, getting trades back to plaster one room may be less economic to getting them to do it as part of a bigger job. Third is to buy and resell vs hire (things like caravan, site storage, scaffolding, a digger etc..). You need to watch the VAT situation as while new build is zero rated for materials and labour (NOT professional services or hire - lots of details on the HMRC website), you get one shot to claim VAT refund on materials you have bought but only at the end* of the build and some very extended builds can cause complications with the claim. Trades must always zero rate their services to you and any materials they provide as part of their services, you can't ever reclaim VAT charged by a trade, even in error. *a number of different ways to determine this event, some in your favour and some against. Going 100% off grid may need to be a longer term objective when economic to do so, does your plot have any services at present? How will you get water? Have you got a quote for power? Local sewerage should be straightforward but will need appropriate ground conditions to discharge effluent etc. Good news is you've come to the best place to get as much information as possible from people who have been there and done that!

A local SE will know the makeup of the ground, and if that material found, provides certainty of what is beneath. eg If they have hit stone and stopped, is the stone there in bands or solid. The survey company might have stopped in this kinowledge.

I agree with this, as a consulting engineer I hate when you see "Sales Engineer" on a sales rep's email signature, or some random manufacturer who has trained an 18 year old how to quantify and quote roof coverings as a "design engineer". Everyone in the construction industry now is apparently an engineer. I had someone tell me about their son who was an electrical engineer, I asked who he worked for and didn't recognise the name, I asked where the office was and she oh he is just on sites, I discovered he was an electrician, there is nothing wrong with that, but he was not an electrical engineer.

Plus yourself that may be adding 100W.

Just a small update. So far with temps down to -2C outside, I'm able to keep an internal temp of 19-20C (during 8am-6pm) and it takes approx. 4.5-6 KWh using an oiled filled radiator set to a 900W output. I do also have a computer and monitors that use 150W, but that's pretty much it. I'm looking forward to install the last strips of external wall insulation as well as sorting out the attached store room.

Like @Marvin there's zero tolerance for noise in this house! Our unit is mounted on isolating mounts in the loft and whilst this is right above our bedroom you can't hear it. In normal use the air flow isn't audible either (we throttle at the MVHR unit end - not at the room terminals - which might well help) and whilst you can hear the air flow when boosting it's not offensive in any way and is not something that causes any issues even at night etc.

I should say Heat Recovery is good and should be considered Benefit of heat recovery ventilation would subject to the house air tightness It is an expensive investment. If money is tight, it may not be the best use of money. For a house without continuous extraction (MEV) or MVHR, trickle vent should be opened / manually adjusted to maintain sufficient background ventilation. A trial and trusted method although not the most energy efficient.

I don't see any profiles set out so how do they know they are building the walls in the right place? The exact centre of the strip foundation is not always the right place. Our brickies set out all the corners first up to DPC level then filled in from there, using rotary laser and measuring staff to get them level, then string lines between to get each course straight and level.

yes we're fortunate that we're really close to the quarry and I used to work there as well so know the lab staff. They pulled some samples from the batching and tested them for me which was all good. We were using a 200mm core ICF and, along with the right mix e.g. 10mm agg etc, could get good flow around all the nooks and crannies. Its been interesting as we've had to cut back the EPS to do some fixings that the SE insisted had to go direct onto the concrete and we've not seen any honeycombing anywhere.

We are going to start fitting thousands of ASHP's to replace fossil fuel boilers, yet there are not enough ASHP's available to meet the present demand. Good well thought out plan.

Really with just 1 course of ICF below ground you have some options to ensure all is ok with no dramas and I expect with no warranty issues. All compared to those with a basement or 2 that have bigger risk. You'll be fine ?

I've lived with it in a highly insulated and airtight house for about 6 years, and there's no way I'd ever voluntarily live in a house without it in the future. It costs a bit to buy and run, and you need to replace filters periodically, but I think it's a small price to pay for consistently fresh air all year around.

That is my view as well. Some self builders, like myself, know exactly what they want, know how to do it so don’t need an architect, I employed one purely to convert my pencil drawings into CAD for the planning application but he even got that wrong. Others need the “artistic touch” and that’s what architects do. On television they tend to get budgets so wrong it’s frightening.

@TomFurtherField several here have used them and found them good, he even claimed stuff I did not know I could, more than covered his reasonable costs and easy to deal with https://www.vat431.co.uk

No boost here, no sensors or remote control panels. Just run it at a slightly higher speed to average out the overall effect of humidity. Took a few months to find the right number. Works fine. Now it never gets touched and we completely ignore it. I could hear it at night in bed so I built a DIY silencer which works a treat. Filters have to be changed which adds to the cost. Ours were €22 a pop so about €88/year. I changed to car pollen filters that fitted at €32/year. Electricity about €30/year. Realistically if you're using a heat pump or mains gas there's probably no payback on the cost of energy. However. 1.It means you can avoid holes in the wall or windows for ventilation. These leave you completely at the mercy of a the wind and will make your house drafty and need to be overheated to achieve the same level of comfort. You will need to have a bigger boiler and radiators also. 2.Controlled filtered mechanical ventilation means your house's air is far cleaner. Less pathogens, less VOCs, less spores. A brilliant article here. https://passivehouseplus.ie/magazine/insight/natural-ventilation-does-it-work. This was a big pro for us with kids and me with hayfever. 3. Humidity will be actively controlled. Less dust mites, less insects, less mould. This means not only less cleaning but also that the structure of the building will be protected. Far lower lightly hood of any decay of timbers etc. 4. No traffic noise or whistling of wind through trickle vents. I'm sure there's more but its a big thumbs up from me IF specified and installed correctly.

Someone who picks up the phone when I call

I got the same type of response from a the builders of some flats in Lancaster: right on the riverside by a main road to Morecambe. I told them that, if the builder hadn't got the issue sorted within the week, I'd have an advertising-type banner made up so that all the commuters passing by could see what sh1te service the company was giving. Monday morning the banner was up for thousands of people to see: the local press were due to come round later that day. Lunchtime Monday work started on the repair. Banner cost me £50. The best £50 I ever spent.

By the time you’ve paid for materials and lost much more internal space, the insulated boards soon appear much cheaper eg better value for money ( imho ). A good dabber ( +1 labourer ) will put a lot of sheets on in one day, so you can economise on that cost by making sure materials are to hand, be there to clean up as the guys are working etc. I would only stud if a BCO had spec’d 75 or 100mm , but up to 50/60mm I’d be dabbing for sure.

This one is not FD30.

A long time ago I got someone to strip a bungalow roof and they did it free in exchange for the tiles. They were only concrete plain tiles so I doubt it was worth their while.

This is our architect's site: the clarity about pricing was one reason we decided to use them ....

I recall my mother's ironing board having an asbestos piece on the end to rest the hot iron....I also recall scraping at it causing flaky dust, there was a nice little hole to pick at for idle little fingers. Of course I didnt know it was asbestos and I’m sure my mother didnt either or she wouldnt have let us near it and it would have been out of the house in a flash. I have a progressive lung condition but not asbestos related (as far as I know) my condition generally only comes out in middle age. I was mid 40’s but all the signs were there a good 10 years before. I do think back to the ironing board sometimes and wonder if any of it got into my lungs and has yet to manifest itself......middle of the night stuff! At least I have an enhanced annuity as they dont think I will live long enough to collect a goodly sum from them over the longer term......I intend to do my best to prove them wrong!!

+ 1. Thought I'd replied to this, sorry. I drill holes the same size as the foam nozzle, 8-10" apart, and pump in the foam that way. I get some bits of gaffa tape to cover the holes immediately after withdrawing the foam gun to stop the foam from spewing back out and messing the board up. After 20 mins or so, I remove the tape and clean off any foam that's proud, then just scrim prior to plastering ( or leave if your putting coving up afterwards ).