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Double post here alfaTom... as I'm on a roll. Last post was about the ground but once you know how you building works what next.. how do you design to take account of the movement? To start.. what do you want to do internally. First I look at where the movement takes place. If we wanted to change some non load bearing walls inside then look at doing them in light weight frames, could be timber or metal stud for example. But these panels are quite stiff, but not heavy. You have a square and stiff panel attached to an old building that is moving up and down, probably differently at the edges of the panel. An easy way of dealing with this is to introduce shaddow gaps around the edges of the stiff panels so the movement cracks are hidden. The beauty of this is that it allows a huge amount of flexibility in the interior design.. and future proofing. You can change each panel without having to redecorate the whole room. Floor coverings.. well go for flexible floors that can take a bit of distortion.. say 25mm! That leads you down the timber / carpet /Lino tile type route. You could have small areas of ceramic tiling.. but that will come at a cost. Externally you can use drain pipes to hide joints, sometimes plants.. a treliss.. If you want to make structural alterations inside, say knocking a hole in a wall then you end up with point loads on the founds / underbuilding. To get around this you can use a box frame that "tricks" the found into thinking that nothing has changed above. Going back to you original post I would explore every avenue before commiting to underpinning.

Yes do that before you embark / commit to anything. You could potentially save thousands here.. pick the wrong solution and you could lose thousands more! My immediate thought is this.. well I'll start with a bit of background info to explain... and Linconshire is a great example. For all. Often you may think that deeper founds = more soil bearing capacity = more load you can put onto the ground. But in parts of the UK we have "upside down ground" yes deep down there is rock / good sand / gravel etc but this can be far down.. Here the ground nearer the surface has a stiffer crust and below there is softer material that doesn't behave well. In other words digging deeper causes more problems than it solves. A lot of houses in Linconshire / small industrial buildings too have deliberately shallow foundations that sit in the stiff crust near the surface. The load is then spread out so by the time it reaches the softer layers the stresses are reduced on the weaker layers. The reduced stress causes the lower layers (weaker soil) to compress less and this reduces the settlement. @alfaTom If you look at your results you can see that the shear vane value reduces a huge amount with depth. We use the shear vane value as part of the calcultation to determine the bearing capacity of the soil. Also you can see that the soil classification changes with depth. At all levels you have what is called a plastic soil.. more prone to settlement. But the deeper you go the more plastic the soil becomes.. in other words worse. The trial pit result shows that the soil changes to something possibly more favourable at 3.4m depth as it is starting to transition to a sandy layer which is more ameniable.. but you may need to go a good bit deeper to get to something sound. There are loads of houses in Linconshire and elsewhere that are built on the stiff crust. The house does go up and down a bit but the secret is that it all moves up and down at the same rate and that is why many of the houses have not fallen apart. You have two different types of loading on the soil.. from the single story part and a two story part. Both load the soil differently so will move by different amounts, hence the cracks you see. Do you know what came first? This underpinning stuff.. what are the companies proposing? and how much? I think more time needs to be spent understanding how this old building works and the ground under. Then you design for the movement when you want to make changes, save a load of cash. You SE has said that the cracks are not a big problem so the building as it stands is not structurally unsafe. If it was my house I would be asking the underpinning folk.. are you sure that you are not going to make things worse and can you prove it! Looking ahead you may want to extend and go for high insulation and energy efficiency.. say Passive design concept. Here what we do is excavate out the soil, stick in loads of EPS and deduct the difference in soil mass. we play about with and take advantage of the light insulation and balance that with the loads the old house is putting on the ground so we can make a good attempt at making the old bit and new bit move up and down in the same way and that reduces differential settlement. Just if we do this we need to make sure the new bit does not float as EPS is lighter than water.. we need to look at water table and flood risk. Once you get your head round the fact that your building moves up and down you then design your investigation strategy around this. You gather the facts and prove it SE wise.. they did it for the Pizza tower.. we can do the same in Linconshire. for less cost! Crack stitching in this case on this type of soil often just results in moving the problem somewhere else. Often we want the building to be flexible.. like using lime mortar.. so we get lots of little cracks rather than a few big ones. Keep us posted.

All walls including studs Did ours yesterday

You won’t know till you ask/apply, see if any other house in the area has done similar.

Hi everyone! Thought time to make myself known as I will inevitably be asking some questions shortly. At the start of the year my wife and I found a project house that had the potential to be the 'forever home'. We got the keys last week so we're finally getting started, and whilst she has it all on Instagram I doubt I'm going to get any decent discussions going in the comments on there compared to here. Now, onto the house... it's a 3-bed detached house on half an acre of land, estimated to have been built around 1950s. It's had a couple of extensions during it's life although we are likely to take them off and start again. Heating is an oil boiler, drainage/waste is via a septic tank, windows are old aluminium DG units and the garage is waiting for a decent wind to fall over. The house does have BT FTTP though so it balances out pretty well all things considered... Did you say subsidence?! Yep. Built on clay soil in Lincolnshire when the house was first built they planted trees. A LOT of trees. I don't think it surprised anyone when they all matured and absorbed all the moisture in the ground. In 2012 the house suffered subsidence with cracking in the walls. This was repaired with helifix tie bars and the nearest trees being removed, but no underpinning. A CSA was issued confirming all was well. Fast forward to now, and there are some decent-sized cracks in internal walls which suggest new movement. Structural engineers have been and gone, and they've said the outside of the house looks good with few cracks and no split bricks, the roof trusses are in good condition (free from stress) but they'd have to assume there has been further movement due to the internal cracking. We purchased the house from the previous owner's daughter so we have little historical information to go on aside from what we can find out. What next? We're in this for the long haul, and we're living in the place while we do it up. I know, I know; we're mad but we have no other commitments or responsibilities so now is the time to do it. It's old, it's leaky and it's in need of some TLC. Architect plans are being drawn up, subsidence underpinning companies have been drafted in and hopefully, in a few weeks, we'll have a date for getting that resolved. The plan is to seal up the house as best we can, then go for ASHP/Solar/UFH/MVHR to get as eco-friendly as possible. Current EPC is an F, as in "F**k, that's a bad score" I'll leave that for another post however in case your attention span is as good as mine...

Knock it down and start again.

With all the properties on your road being of the same design and style, I think you’d struggle. If you were to pursue a design, get your designer to look at a crown flat top. That will still retain the barn hip ends. Also make sure the new front wall is not flush with the existing and therefore set back slightly. The front elevation wouldn’t therefore change very much.

I had a similar issue with my brick west facing wall, it turned out to be a fine crack in the mortar with a brick fill, small gaps tend to soak water through osmosis, crack widened and filled = no problem.

In a well insulated air tight house, you simply won't get that level of temperature change in such a short time. If you have heated the bedroom to 19C to get up, even with no heating in the depths of winter, don't expect it to drop more than a degree or 2 in 24 hours, so no way will you get down to 12C over night.

Try BES. They sell everything!

See.. Https://www.Pavingexpert.com There index is here.. https://www.pavingexpert.com/pavindex Has loads of information and specifications you can give trades to work to. Whatever you choose the absolute must is to get the sub base done right. Anyone can lay tarmac or blocks but if the sub base isn't don right it wont last and will break up and sink. These days you need planning permission for anything that's not permeable (eg standard Tarmac) unless you use linear drains etc to stop water running off site.

120mm Rockwool is probably going to have similar insulating properties to 75mm PIR but will be easier to fit between studs with fewer gaps. So possibly a better result unless you do a good job of fitting the PIR without gaps.

`Thank you @alfaTom. I understand it now. Cheers fella.

That sounds an expensive option? Most buy a used static caravan and then sell it at the end of the build (a few keep them after that) With an old static caravan that you own it is relatively easy to alter them to add things like washing machines, or set up another shed for laundry etc.

Buy some PAR timber and make exactly what you need

Maybe I’m missing something but can’t see why a few degrees of roof pitch would affect anything in this case

Thank you @sharpener! Have posted a for sale ad here incase yourself or @HughF might be interested. Cheers!

mdf liners much better.

Partial underpinning / soil stabilisation raises new issues. You need the entire building to act as one structural element for it to remain stable and crack-free. There's a risk that the part of the building that has been underpinned swaps from being the least-well supported part of the building to the best-supported part, which could still cause differential movement. That's not to say that it should never be done, but it does mean that whoever is designing the solution needs to have carried out a full investigation first. Personally I'd be wanting an independent structural engineer to be doing that, not a contractor.

Aha - On next door's gable wall.

Back in stock at appliances direct, woohoo

As above, so much easier to make and fit doors properly.

I did all the circuit design, first and second fix myself. The BCO told me they didn't do electrical certification so I sorted beforehand for my son in law's friend to carry out the required checks after each stage and issue the Part P Certificate.

It may not be a win for the people living with the ASHP, the storage heater uses cheap rate electric, it is likely the ASHP will use peak rate. Unless flow temperature is very low sub 35 at all times, it is likely to cost more. Especially if they stay with E7 tariff. As @SteamyTea says £100 every week is unlikely. If it is real an ASHP is unlikely to fix the problem. Maybe a service of the storage heaters would be a better solution.

Not with that sort of claim. I suspect they topped up with £100 worth of prepaid electricty one week, and then claim it lasts a week. I ran into this problem when I was monitoring some social housing.

It's easy to make your own from regular PAR timber for way less than £80. I've also seen them made from plywood. But don't use MDF - it doesn't have the strength to hold the hinge screws.

Do you mean the test to get the Modified plasticity index instead of the normal plasticity index? If so then it's just the results of the plasticity test (Ip) multiplied by the percentage of particles that made it through the filter in the first place.

I have 3 modules (10.65 kWh) of Pylontech Force L2 and am quite happy with them. They have balancing in the BMS and the difference between min and max voltage is typically 30 mV or less. I think you will need a lot of storage if you plan on driving the HP with it, ours is not sufficient by a long way. Another 10kWh would give about 30kWh of heat during the day, from memory the payback time using it for off-peak time shifting is about 6 years. And you would need a lot of PV to keep it charged. We have a Victron 5k Multiplus II GX inverter/charger, this is rated at 4kW continuous which is enough for all domestic loads inc cooking, but IMO with an HP you would need their 8k unit.

Post spec on here, I might perhaps be interested myself if @HughF isn't. Also try this forum and diynot.

Judging by the controller picture, these are OEMd by Midea... For flats, I would go for an a2a VRF multi head unit from a commercial supplier (Daikin), and a sunamp or direct UVC for the hot water.

They are like everything. External blinds will get dust & debris on them and will need to be maintained. Our recommendation is as follows. Bring the blinds down into the closed position “dark” and wash them with water. Use a garden hose or a steam cleaner, a pressure washer is fine but at its lowest setting. Then use warm water with soap/detergent with a sponge or cloth & clean every slat and in one direction, same method to clean the guide rails. Rinse again after complete clearing with soap/detergent with warm water again. Once a month is recommended (i.e. when the window cleaner is around) but every couple of months is fine.

pack it up off the tiles a touch (toughened glass doesn't like point loads)either with glazing packers or the special clear packers that "disappear" into the sealant. If you use ordinary packers you can remove them and fill the voids once the main length has gone off.

Lots to unpack here from yesterday and today's replies... First off thanks to all that have responded, it's appreciated and the wealth of knowledge here is astounding. So the previous owner who built it was a builder by trade and he's built a few houses in the village. I know he built the bungalow next door and that has been underpinned with no further movement apparently but no details on the rest. @Gus Potter wow - those are some detailed responses there! To answer your questions: The 2-storey part of the house came first. The 1.5-storey extension came after, believed to be completed late 1970's just before the chap passed away. The underpinning company we have been talking to is Geobear, who do a resin-injection form of underpinning rather than traditional mass concrete. This was after the SE said that the resin injection may help to stabilise the house & lift the ground slab. Below is their suggested works, which involve resin injection across the majority of the front elevation as well as around the gable ends. Total cost works out about £30k inc VAT I honestly did not know about the "upside down" ground aspect and this is something I definitely need to look into more, especially as we'd rather use that cash on other parts of the property if the underpinning is going to cause issues with the rest of the property. The use of shadow gaps and hiding expansion points is a great idea, and one I had already been thinking about when it comes to replacing the front porch. There will be some non-load-bearing walls going as well as some load-bearing walls. We are looking to extend the utility bit into the Store/hall area as shown on the above map and extend out to the west from the dining room (this is a gable end so hopefully not as much load on it) Plans should be back from the architect soon at which point we will be able to have some informed discussions with SE on the best approach for what we are looking to do. There is a chance the foundations for the Kitchen and boot room extensions are not deep enough for a 2-storey build so they'd both have to go which would give us a chance to tie it into the rest of the property in a more sympathetic manner to work with the movement. These stories plus Gus' explanation of the movement are definitely making me think twice about the footings/underpinning aspect. I had thought solid = better but I can see now that perhaps we need a better solution. Whilst the SE originally surmised the ground had dried out to cause the subsidence initially I am not sure if the soil survey backs that. Perhaps some light reading tonight once finished with work! Are there SE's that would specialise in this sort of soil or should all chartered Se's be good for working out the correct loading and understanding of the soil? p.s. Happy Friday!

You also need to be sure that the new floors aren't going to move; movement in a floor with UFCH pipes embedded in it could eventually be very problematic. this is a very good point and one overlooked too often with renovations and building changes. a guy who works for us recently asked me to take a look at his parents new conservatory that is sinking away from the bungalow. It’s not! The conservatory builder has seen the poor ground and slope so dug very deep footings onto solid ground but the 50’s bungalow is sitting on top of the clay and moves with it, so it’s the bungalow moving and the conservatory staying still.

The batteries need to be purchased with the solar to be eligible for zero VAT iirc. I don't think you can claim that back if you purchased these in 2 separate transactions, but there may be a caveat if they came from 2 different suppliers and they're installed and commissioned together at the one address. I'd avoid the Pylontech batteries as I don't believe they are 'balanced charged'.

Your experience is normal. The term Good Tradesman means: good at BOTH the job as well as being a good communicator. A straightforward manner helps too. On our job, most were excellent. One or two weren't. But you always think that you are the one at fault and not them. I'm very lucky in as much as the locals who walk past our site to whom I chat, have exactly the same moans and groans about exactly the same trades people.

What is on the inside? another masonry leaf? If so does the crack appear on the inside. If so you may have a problem on your hands as the tying together of the building needs to be checked. How long is the wall? On the other hand it could just be the blocks shrinking and the crack manifests at the weak spot.

I'd try some brick cleaning acid.

Usually yes. I grew up in Essex. All borders seem to be brick. The horrible light brick they use there. We have Cornish Hedges down here, and I have spent the last 5 days walking past them. They can look quite good if the right stuff is planted into them. Maybe a minute one of them. I do very much like @Big Jimbo's idea of a moat. The chickens would like that.

Maybe they are working from home! On a serious note it’s probably not you, most tradies have had it too good and gotten used to picking and choosing what jobs they work on.

Yep, unless you're brown/blue colourblind just do it yourself and pay BC for a sign-off...

Lets see these cracks. Cracks on old buildings is not unusual - it could well take a decade to settle down completely but crack stitching + underpinning might just mean more cracking. I try and reserve underpinning for actual subsidence (loss of soil support due to washout etc) or undermining/basement work. Tackling ground movement with underpinning is a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I'd certainly undertake the following prior to doing anything drastic: - trial pits to determine actual foundation arrangement - a programme of crack monitoring for at least 6 months, ideally 12, to determine whether it is seasonal movement or not - ground investigation to get accurate information on soil type, plasticity and water level Underpinning is a substantial upheaval to a building, let alone cost, and a few thousand on investigation work is well worth it. Slightly surprised the structural engineers didn't suggest this. Edit - good suggestion regarding wall ties. This would normally effect the outer leaf but it would not be unknown for inner leaf corrosion to be noticed first, especially if the outer leaf had been repointed in (relatively) recent history.

subsidence. I know the feeling

In case you were wondering, yes, this came from appliances direct. It was about £550 or something. I didn't use the supplied extension set, I simply re-flared the ends of the indoor unit pipework. Pressure tested it to 100psi with pure argon (I'm a welder, I have it in stock) then vacuumed down for 20 mins. Float the low-side gauge up to 20psi then remove the pump+adapter from the service port. Then crack the valves and back seat them. Easy when you watch enough youtube.

We've have tenants that struggle with a combi boiler and a single non-programmable thermostat! Complained hot water wasn't working at various times. Eventually worked out they were turning the boiler off at the wall when they didn't want heating. <Facepalm> Then there was the lady who complained her heating was erratic, sometimes not coming on when she wanted it. Quickmcheck showed no problems. Then I asked to see the thermostat. "What's that?" - I described it. She looked puzzled then rummaged around in a kitchen drawer, pulled it out and said "oh you mean this?". She didn't know what it was, so stuck it in her random drawer of stuff.....next to the oven! Heating wouldn't come on for a couple of hours after after she'd cooked! 😂 The ideal would be two buttons "I am too hot" and "I am too cold"!

I've done loads of illegal electrics over the years

@alfaTom Welcome Welcome Welcome. Looks like a nice spot from the top pic. Excellent News. Have you considered burning it down?