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Well that is a positive start and there is loads of great info in this thread. This sort of thing can cause concern but if you gather the facts the problem / concern can go away. I'll put my own slant on this so here goes. The legislation in Scotland works on the basis that the polluter pays.. last time I looked the same principles apply in the rest of the UK. Thus it is OK in some cases to have a septic tank..(they are not illegal in Scotland and certainly existing septic tanks in the rest of the UK) a big brick tank or glass fibre type bottle sunk in the ground. In Scotland when we want sell a house we need to register the tank.. it can be any tank.. spetic or a tank that treats the water to some degree often called a package treatment plant. In a septic tank the soil water from the house goes into this and settles out, heavy sediment on the bottom and fats on the top. There is an outlet that is designed to sit below the fat layer and this cleaner water goes into a soak away. Now you can see that the only "treatment" that occurs in a septic tank is a process of separating the fats and heavy material.. there is some Anaerobic digestion that takes place but ignore that for now. A septic tank is designed to make sure the water exiting from it does not block a soakaway, the biological oxygen demand, the ammonia content and potential "pathogen" content is not a consideration as this water soaks away safely into the ground. The main consideration is that the soakaway is far enough away from a water course or potable aquifer so as not to pollute and designed well enough so that the water going into a soakaway does not appear somewhere else.. often occurs if you are on a hill. If was buying a house with a shared septic tank I would concentrate on the practical side then look at the legal: 1/ Where is the tank and what type is it? A septic tank, a packaged treatment plant... there are a few different kinds, the modern ones tend to need less maintenance = cost. Water flows down hill so if the tank is in someone else's garden then they will suffer first! Sounds awfull but if sewage is bubbling up in your garden and the neighbours are not playing ball then you can face an uphill struggle.. causes friction. 2/ Next.. a really important is to know about the soakaway. Where is it and how much space is there round about it. Sometimes you find that the soakaway is not within the curtilage of the dwellings that use it.. say in a farmer's field. Now often there is provision in the deeds that allow you to access the field for maintence of the soak away.. but once they get blocked.. which they do eventually then you often need to shift them a bit as the pores in the soil get filled up.. will the farmer let you do this? If the houses have big gardens and the soakaway is within the cutilage of the dwellings that use it then you have scope to relocate the soakaway to some extent. But again where is the soakaway.. in your garden or elsewhere. Who gets their garden dug up? Now it may be that you don't have a septic tank that discharges to a soakaway, rather you may have a treatment plant that treats the water like the public sewage works and discharges to a water course. This is different but not a problem once you know enough about it. In the round if you love the house then start having a look at the practical side first .. then check the legal stuff.. cheeper to use you own common sense before paying legal fees.

For BH folk that have "movement" Today I was installing tell tales to monitor movement or not. Have a Client that wants to refurbish and expand an existing rear extension. But the existing extension we want to upgrade has parted company with the existing house. You can see the "partin some 1.0 m to the right of the light bulb. I need to know if the movement has stopped or is relatively benign before I go ahead and design the upgrade. The extension is on CLAY soil so expect some seasonal movement. The photo below shows a smallish crack at low level and at the top there is some 14mm of separation. Now the Client wants to install a kitchen along this wall so if I don't get a handle on this then.. well.. trouble ahead! The house is semi detached... the neighbours have just introduced some kind of steel box frame next door as they have knocked out the back of their house.. I think they have added load to the party wall foundation. I want to make sure that my Client is protected as if later if something goes wrong.. my Client will get the blame to start with... best to be prudent as "last man on the job gets the blame" . I'm monitoring partly to see if the folk next door have caused an extra problem. You can get tell tales that do corners but they don't give you much room to get a drill in to fix them. Here I have cut brackets from offcuts of metal framing so have much more room to play with. The whole lot is screwed and fixed with construction adhesive.. so I can be sure the screws don't slip. The tell tales are actually quite fragile so you need to be gentle with them.. again the adhesive cuts you a bit of slack here and allows you to adjust the tell tale alignment. I installed six tell tales and it took me about six hours.. you need to take your time as the surfaces you are fixing to are rough and the tell tales need to align. But there was a bit before today. I spent time looking at the job and identified about six possible causes for the movement, there may be more, I need to sleep on it further. The main thing is to think of everything that could cause movement, be logical, look at probablilty and narrow the field down.. I think there may be more than just one cause here. The nity gritty of the tell tales. They have a cross hair that sits over a paper grid. They come with pins that lock the cross hairs over the zero point of the grid. While you screw them to the wall the screws can't be too tight as they crack the plastic tell tales. It's the adhesive that does the real work holding them in postition. I'll leave them for a couple of days for the adhesive to set and then take out the pins. Hopefully the wall is not moving that much that the pins shear or the tell tales fracture over the next couple of days..! When I take out the pins the cross hairs may shift, hopefully not, then I'll record what happens over the next few months while we get the planning permission in place and detailed drawings / structural calcs for the BC permissions. My gut feeling is that things will pan out ok.. but I need to do some monitoring to mitigate risk and be responsible. In posted this as I hope it helps BH folk see how we go about this and how you could do this for yourself as an excercise. If you go about it the right way, photograph and take records then who can doubt you?

Yes once you can put your finger in it.. it is a structural crack! One thing that I have in mind is that the side walls of the extension are resting on the ledge (scarecement ) of the original house founds and the front of the extension has settled... hence the widening gap as you go up. But it may not be that obvious so I need to rule out all other reasonable causes as best I can. There are some trees lurcking about, different ages and varying depths of founds, leaking drains and Network Rail have been messing (piling for electrification) about near the site apparently.. will investigate next week but will put on a shirt etc and some head gear on so I "look official" before I go for a wonder around the public part of Network Rail property. I will go look at as many possibilties I can think of but want to check that they have been doing next door... very important. I'll keep posting when I can so folk can follow the process and how I reach a reasoned and evidence based conclusion.

It is well worth double checking the water main as it is a lot easier to have, say a 63mm dedicated fire supply than to mess around with tanks and pumps.

We were/ are in the same situation Ian- bordering the 1% and 5% lines. Local BC made no requirement so we chose to just go with membrane- if anything *does* rise and escape it'll get blown away

What about using the 2 that already fitted at the end of manifolds, just screw hose adapters to them when required?

We are putting in 10,000litres aove ground. This is not for misting/sprinkler but for hoses if the appliance arrives empty or runs out. We proposed the volume based on precedent, but the fire authority simply don't respond. A sprinkler will use much less water based on the flow rate and that they are supposed to only operate in the zone of the fire.

Reminds me of the near identical crack in my lounge wall. turns out it was the rainwater down pipe on the external of the wall not fully connected into the underground pipework washing away everything around it, thankfully the Victorians built this house not to badly so after the repair it’s not moved in 18years.

That is a fair old crack. I have got some under the windows of my old bungalow. they are about 5 to 6mm wide. I have owned it for 6 years, and they have never got any worse. to be honest i don't know if they close and open during the seasons. I do know that it is only about 1 meter from a Poplar tree. The soil test just fell into the low shrinkabiliy band, (just) The footings are 9 inches deep. When i pull it down it will be interesting to see if the footings are cracked. My friends old place about 500 yards away, has got similar cracks to yours. Narrow at the bottom, and wider to the top. His have got wider, and wider over the 5 years he has owned it. it will be interesting to hear what the problem is with the place you are monitoring.

I think Cabershield is rated for 42 days exposure and Egger Protect is 60 days. So we went Egger Protect. We ended up going well beyond 60 days, but all edges/screw holes were sealed and it stood up really well so no issues.

https://www.engadget.com/scientists-strengthen-concrete-by-30-percent-with-used-coffee-grounds-221643441.html That should save some money then

Why is it a no go? All our pipes are under the floor insulation, each toilet, shower, and sink has its own pipe into the underground pipes, any cold air trapped by a water trap. One pipe internally goes up vertical for an air admittance valve, very well insulated with rockwool. External vent at back of house in black same as the gutter drain pipes. Job sorted

Have you had a look at the cost of the water mist systems? Also they can be much less onerous in terms of water storage capacity and mains flow rate. There are a few companies on the internet that do them and you can send them your drawings to get a no obligation quote and some free technical advice. How many floors do you have? It sounds like you need something along the lines of an grade D system and the number of storeys will dictate whether you need and enhanced grade D or not, assuming a normal domestic dwelling. Main thing it to plan you fire strategy taking into account the early warning (heat and smoke detectors) and the fire suppresion system. This way you build confidence that you have the over all design right at a sensible cost.

Clever / neat idea but I suspect @SteamyTea will tell you how much additional energy you are going to use in taking the coffee grounds up to 350DegC and then deduct form that the mass of concrete, and its carbon content, you won't need if the resulting concrete is 30% stronger. everything is connected to everything else!

Cheers Jenki.

If it's going to be exposed I've used egger protect. And it was fantastic. You need to glue all edges, and use egger glue, it has some colour / additive in it, so if you need to claim against defects they can ensure you used the correct glue. It's more expensive but IMO a great product.

But you still need it to go via the truss designer, none of us know what your trusses are holding up.

Well @flanagaj Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. Briefly: Here Be Dragons. When the soft and Smelly hits the rotating blade it gets everywhere. Not so Briefly 4 Lancastrian 'chocolate box cottages ' all in a row, everyone pooping down the same septic hole, sun shining, blackbirds singing: everything was lovely. One lovely old lady on her own, one young family of three, one codger and his floozy, and us four. All was sweetness, and light. Lovely old lady dies. Son moves in. Throws his weight around, brings his nasty terriers in - 24 hour barkers (working dogs you see ). Also brings his rifle in and starts shooting. (6 months later the Police rescind his license) We apply for PP, and within a week, the neighbour comes and nails our back gate shut. We have access rights across his garden. Why? He didn't like the fact that we suggested we would discharge to a local stream and avoid adding to the septic tank....... He thought he could object to our build most effectively by saying the septic tank couldn't take any more 'volume' 8 years later he struggles to say a civil word to me. So the answer to your question is: it depends on people: there neither is nor can be one clear-cut answer. People change, move away, die, have opinions and are generally inconvenient. Best o' Luck fella. Best o' Luck.

Change of temperature, sewage giving of gases, changes in air volume within the piping (you flush the loo etc), etc. It's not designed to be a pressurised system, it's designed to be open vented. Hence a need for a two way open vent external to the house.

Hey Jimbo - unfortunately, due to the new regs (Summer of 2022), you need to have additional ventilation if the existing flow from the trickle vents are removed (it needs to provide the same amount of ventilation as what exists at the moment). The main question I have here is do I need to have individual room vents for the bedrooms, or will one PIV suffice (having looked at the airflow requirements, this seems above the requirement for Part F). For the ground floor, same query above which is do I need a compact ventilation unit in the lounge / kitchen and utility room? Thanks!

Depends, if it goes to a drainage field also on your property, it will be a nightmare. Do you have a ditch/stream within your boundary you can discharge to, or a big enough garden? My advice, if you really like the property, consult a drainage engineer (or a local sewage company who empty spetic tanks) and ask for a quote and percolation testing to install a new sewage plant and drainage field. You can then find out 1) if its even fee-sable and 2) roughly what its going to cost. If you have a stream/ditch/river within the boundary, I could blindly estimate the supply and install of a sewage plant for £7-£10k.

Self builders can reclaim UK VAT (which is collected by the seller or paid at the port on arrival in the UK) but not EU VAT (eg BTW collected by a Belgian supplier and paid to the Belgian Gov). The standard VAT rate in Germany is 19% so it looks like they charged you UK VAT but to reclaim it I believe you need an invoice with their UK VAT number on it.

Nobody forced me to buy an electric car. I chose to buy one because its better than a petrol car.

What seems to be happening local to me A sale is agreed and then the purchasers solicitor flags that the property is on a septic tank and needs to be replaced in order for the sale to go through Technically speaking the authorities can insist you change a septic tank But most seem to be doing via the sale route instead 12-15 thousand pounds seems to be the going rate

ive emailed NHBC technical to see what there opinion is.

I can recommend bamboo/bead door fly screens £20 on Amazon JVL Provence Hanging Wooden Beaded Door, Zig Zag Curtain Screen, 90cm x 180cm Approx, Multi, 90 x 180cm We have two one at the outside door and then another after the hall to lounge. we very rarely get any flys in the lounge, the odd one gets through the first set and turns opposite way to lounge and we have to coax it back out a window. Lots of flowers and bees in my garden but never remember having a bee in the house. So can recommend two stage defence. Not tried the full screen you mention as we have a dog who comes and goes as he pleases from bed to bed, in and out all day, a Greyhound, very lazy dogs.

In other words they expect the "tilting fillet" to be a board (or tapered board) not lots of individual wedges.

Don't just do it to keep the BCO contended. A month after our sign off a cloes family member unexpectedly ended up in a wheelchair and it all became relevant. We'd happily followed the regs, and even made all bar one threshold level access, but there were a few additional things we then did to improve accessibility.

You will get weeds between the pavers regardless of how they are laid. That's a promise.

crack on. As above by @benben5555

I think it is common practice to just rest it on the fascia / ventilator. Also in my opinion, don't really need the tilting fillet as the felt support tray is quite rigid.

+2 I've seen it done with simple angle irons bolted top and bottom but best get it designed. From google images...

Tell the truss designers to design in a steel reinforcement plate. 222mm deep 750 long with a 110mm hole in them, glued and bolted both sides. He probably thinks you just just want to blast a big hole in his bottom cord, everything is doable as long as you then don’t nit pick his reinforcement design, by then saying the metal is too expensive. Do a sketch of your proposal and send send it over to them.

Ask him about changing the pier to a steel post, bolted to the foundation and lateral restraints at the top into stud work.

The pier will need to be built up from a foundation. If I were the SE I'd check that the pier is sufficient alone without any lateral restraint (without knowing the loads and geometry no way I can know but it could be feasible). The studwall is tied in for robustness of both the wall and the pier. If I were relying on the studwall for restraint then I'd be insisting it is tied down to a foundation as well. Most likely I'd just make the pier bigger. So I suspect your SE is happy the pier doesn't need restraint. Just ask - I don't mind answering a few straightforward questions ( although having to explain every aspect of a design does become a time sink and often the answer is 'yes this is materially overdesigned but a few extra blocks is cheaper than a defective structure....it works and builders don't mess it up'!)

>>> Does vaulted mean following the roof pitch (like a tent) right? Yeah.

So to recap: we bought an old house with a bit of land at the back. We tried to get permission to knock it down and do a new build passiv house in the backland. The council said no no no, we lost an appeal, then put in ridiculous plans for a massive extension with basement on the existing old house, plus a large stable block on the back land where we wanted the new build. Council said yes yes yes, thats fine, please go ahead.... Having never built anything major before, we hired a 9 ton digger and a small tipper truck and set about digging a hole. The basement would start over 4m back from the existing rear wall of the old house and as long as we graded the excavation where possible and used plenty of sheet pilings, it would work out fine. To get rid of the clay soil, we just spread it out on the land at the back saving quite a bit on grab lorries. We originally planned for a four week hire of the plant, but we ended up taking about six weeks. Prior to digging I made a few test trenches to check the soil and water level. We also found an in depth soil survey from a major development next door. Once we had the hole dug in the right place, and sorted some temporary drainage, we set about levelling and pouring the basement slab. This was designed to be 300mm concrete on top of a tanking membrane, with tons of rebar. We just followed the drawings and building control came a few times to check it all. The waterproofing was overseen at each stage so we could get the warranty as well. We poured the slab in winter of 2022 and had a few cancellations due to frost. In the end we made an insulated temporary roof over the basement and used gas heaters the night before the pour just to be safe. The concrete went in very well, i think it was two loads of waterproof concrete, then we could start on the nudura walls. The hardest part of this section was wiring all the rebar together and getting the 20mm OD L bars in place which connected the slab to the nudura walls. These were doubled up all around the perimeter every 8" and a pig to get in amongst all the rebar mesh. Assembling the nudura walls was very straight forward, once i got my head around the idea of a common seam - where due to the plan measurements, the nudura blocks needed cutting and joining together. We had done the nudura course and the rep was very helpful with all my questions. Once built up, building control came out again and we ordered another three loads of water proof concrete for the walls. Where the walls joined the slab, we used an expanding waterbar and kept it dry until we poured the walls. We hired a concrete pump for the pour and because it was a basement we just used the nudura walkways and scaffolding to allow the pump hose to get round the whole perimeter. I was concerned about blow outs- especially on the first load dropping down into the bottom of the wall so I over did the shuttering on the outside of the nudura - including 220mm x 50mm floor joists screwed all around the perimeter outer edge, plus lots of OSB shuttering at all the weak points. It all worked well and it was a major relief to get the walls filled up.

I just noticed that my last entry was 1st June and now it's mid August. Where does the time go. Once again we've lost time on the build, HID did too much breaking and hurt his back and we got a new puppy who is a huge time waster. Although I WFH I also have to visit clients so quite a bit of puppy sitting going on. Then there has been the weather, total opposite of last year. So, down to what has been done. The first main wall is now up to lintel level. First all the door frames then the inside skin This one has the external wall on one part and the insulation so is covered. HID has found fixing the string levels tricky, hence some of the early blocks are not totally level, but improving as he goes through. We have also been breaking up the floor of the hall & snug to be Layer 1 already gone, now layers 2, 3 & 4 to break and clear as well as knocking down the 2 internal walls that are not in the right place being corridors to feed the pigs. Also lots of drain pipes and heavy duty foundation concrete. getting there done and digging on the other side to start prepping for under pinning, the current foundations are 200mm They need to be min of 500 and possibly deeper, until we get to good ground as agreed by BC The nearest soil is definitely showing hints of clay. of course we have an issue though, if you look just above puppy, you can see the drain culvert, totally buried in concrete. We knew that there was a drain, but how deep is it and how much effort to dig out The other necessary task was clearing the space for the water pipe trench. After booking the water they came and inspected and showed us where it joins us. That turns out to be behind the long shed so we had to clear. Not as bad as ScottishJohn, but a small area similar that I can't find the photo of, but completely covered in brambles and a sloping bank dug out to be level enough for trench digging. Anyway this is the after the pile of bricks turned out to be an old culvert, we dug out brick by brick to 1m then just decided not to go any further. It was solid laid bricks about 1m square, so not a well as solid and not foundation as nothing there, but laid properly so must have been for something. The sheds on the right are storage from the last 20 years and will need to go as that will be our driveway as we don't want to share the existing one . We are holding off digging the trench until we get and answer from OpenReach about their ducting as we want to lay that and both water pipes in one trench. NSW water are happy to see photos of trench and pipe and they realised that digging all 120m trench will probably collapse. When you note what you've done in a 2 month period it has changed, but it's not much for that length of time. If it does continue at that rate then I reckon about another 4 years 🙂 Thanks for reading. Jill

Yes not all Councils have introduced the CIL. Some still use S106 instead and some both.

If you are in Northumberland you don’t need to apply for an exemption at all. Was just about to apply for mine but checked with the planning office and apparently ‘Northumberland County Council is not a Community Infrastructure Levy Charging Authority’ Don’t know if other county councils are the same, but it surprised me.

Talk to a planning consultant. You can find one for your area on the RTPI website.

I have done many big projects with b and b, always dense blocks. Then a cement wash over the lot to fill any cracks, seen or unseen. Then brush in sand and cement to the bigger gaps. Not only houses, but offices and assembly spaces, I think the biggest area was 800m2. The eps blocks seem very expensive. Therefore over that area , any price difference can be a lot of cash. My belief is that housing developers use b and b for certainty. The certainty that some subby of a subby isn't building on loose fill. Do they use eps blocks? I don't know. My default is always to build on the ground, which adds insulation in itself and doesn't have airflow under the slab, even though not fully acknowledged. B and B only to overcome site conditions or on steep slopes. I had not heard of using metal fibres over eps blocks. Is this for strength or crack control? It is very expensive too.

My planning says that we must have a sprinkler system because of the distance from our nearest fire hydrant and because a fire engine would not be able to access the house due to the driveway and the restrictions placed on that. Please can someone explain to me how they work, in simple terms, how do they get the water, how do they know when to run, are they all linked so if the one in the snug goes off will the one in the master bedroom 20m away also go off. Do they need electricity. Do they ever fail, we will have a wood burning stove and sometimes the smoke 'leaks', will that set it off. If they go off, will insurance cover any damage done, assuming it is an accident and not a fire, which is obviously covered. TIA Jill

I have a neater pile of bricks.

No idea. Sorry. But the path edge is going to be nice if that helps.