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I heartily wish I'd done what you have: joined a group like this years before I needed to. Preparation time is never ever wasted

A bit more progress - I have (some of) a structural box beam on top of piers \o/ Still got a fair bit of levelling to do (might cheat with some packing sheets), noggins to put in over the piers, and prep for the vertical beams the doors and windows will be attached to. The positions of those are pretty much finalised now - where they were in the original plan, but minus the two additional windows on the curved section. The doors I've got lying around are half-glazed, so I reckon there'll be enough light without those - and if it's not, I could always add a rooflight. I also need to get that final, curved side in (two more holes to dig!) To do that, I'm just going to attach straight beams at a 15° angle going out to each of the middle piers, then straight over the central gap. That seems like it'll do the job with only the tiniest bit of overhang here and there, which isn't a problem - the finishes will overhang the beam too. So much easier than trying to make glulam beams out of ply 😅. i've concluded that I do need to cover at least the top of the box beam with *something*, mostly to stop critters from getting up into the straw from below. Taking another look at @Gus Potter's suggestion of bits of wood; I happen to have a lot of old decking timber and a few pallets lying around, which might do in a pinch. Wondering if covering the bottom as well would be a good idea from the point of view of resisting the timbers spreading out due to the load coming from above. Since this face won't be in contact with the straw, also wondering if I could just use mouse mesh, which is reasonably cheap and, presumably, more than strong enough to help. I might just be inventing more work for myself, though. No progress on reading up on what the wind will do to the poor thing, but I've belatedly recalled that there was a garden shed sat in a more exposed location last year, with just a timber base, and that went nowhere. It just rotted away from the bottom up. This will be a fair bit heavier than that, and I can ensure the roof stays attached by reference to my solar panel design document which calculated wind loading on the panels for this location \o/. The thing that's left to reason about is whether friction between the concrete block and the pea gravel will be sufficient to stop it from being pushed off the base, or if I'm going to need to anchor it down into the gravel somehow. It's getting dangerously close to playing-with-straw time.

The other job I started is boarding out the garage in 12mm shuttering ply and painting it. I got the ply really cheap (£7/sheet) and 40 litres of matt emulsion for £16 from TP.

Hi all Been following forum daily for over a year and thought I'd join up. I must confess I am not currently building but it's my dream and I love learning more about it in the hope of doing it some day. Cheers Ryan

It’s all 15mm plasterboard plus skim and one strip of 9mm on the steel beam that spans the kitchen to make it fit flush with the 15mm on the kitchen ceiling. Another balls up by HH builders we had to correct.

Not law, though I had to study it at university. I currently pretend to be a chef. It is the only consistent work in Cornwall.

Some of the smaller, early cars have problems. This may be down to lack of understanding on the owners behalf i.e. driving them to the limit (which with the original Zoe or Leaf was pretty low performance) and over reliance of fast charging. I am sure that if I bought a Hyundai i10 and drove it flat out for a couple of years, it would not last another 2 years, whoever owned it. One of the hidden environmental costs of ICE vehicles is the serving and repair side. There are literally thousands of businesses that repair cars. It is the nature of ICE vehicles that they need routine service and maintenance. Each business has an environmental footprint. BEVs have less need for routine serving as it is going to be carried out in a totally different manner i.e. a man in a van turns up with the vehicles reports a problem, not just when the clock hits a number. Coming up with spurious reasons why not to have an EV is not going to change anything, we are heading down that path, globally, so why fight it.

You might be onto something there, but nobody in any position of authority is advocating keeping cars for longer than the current average. I suspect they’d rather we kept changing every 3 or 4 years. There’s also the issue of battery longevity, which has yet to really come to the fore. We’ll see how that plays out over the next few years.

You may wish to consider the alternatives that can come with a skylight... Manual or electric opening. Rain sensor or get wet when its left open by mistake. no blind, manual blind, electric blind. Consider the effect of solar gain to the room below as well.... Good luck M

Welcome. What do you do for a living, is it related to building, not that it matters? If we had known, we would have stopped you joining.

All that is true as per @JamesPa 's spreadsheet model. But a lot of this thinking is out of date; now that we can get higher flow temps with R290 refrigerant it is much less important than it used to be.

Managed to get my hands on a tele handler and cage today. The pot above the leak was loose, it just lifted off in my hands and the entire top course of bricks were also loose. All taken down and rebuilt; lime mortar for the brickwork, cement + sika proof mix for the flaunching and refitting the pots. Fingers crossed that stops the leak. Builder coming out to fit a steel beam in the loft to prop the stack up in a couple of weeks.

You should contact BCO before you start any work, but yes, fit yourself and they can sign it off (mine just asked for pictures of them being fitted. I.e. mechanical fixes at correct spacings, wind tight and airtight detail etc.) I'm sure there are plenty of decent fitters around. Most near me come with a can of expanding foam and bog standard mastic to gob around the frame, which isn't what I was looking for. I used Illbruck's i3 system when fitting mine.

Hi, Visited here a good few times over the past months, reading topics and finally joined. Received planning approval for our self build last week and beginning to get the rest of the stuff in order. Mortgages, Building Control, Tendering etc etc Located North Coast of N.Ireland 4 bedroom - 2100 sq ft My background is that I’m a Chartered Building Surveyor MRICS, so while I don’t know everything I have experience in projects of various sizes, compliance, contracts,defects, design, QS, PM/CA. Something that I’ve learned about myself is that I’m very good at making decisions/solving problems for clients but not so much for myself! Looking forward to asking advice and silly questions over the next few months.

Thanks big jimbo I'm big into diy so hgulky can chime in my two pence even if not self build know how

The argument has changed now. Of course there is a lot of inequality in the country/world and systems can in particular be abused by the ultra wealthy. The problem with taxing them is they can move around and they have so much money they don’t need to take much income relative to their rising wealth so have neither realised gains nor income to tax. Hence my idea of netting tax paid against inheritance tax. These people haven’t paid the double tax that people complain comes with inheritance tax. They haven’t paid any tax. Not only that but the people inheriting money won’t have paid any tax on it as they never had any income at any point. So this issue could be improved upon, although it’s tough as they can easily move country. The charts on wealth and income inequality show that it has been pretty similar for a long time. Maybe we were less aware of it as there weren’t so many rich people flaunting their wealth on TikTok. They just hid it better previously and tbh that kind of conspicuous consumption is probably getting people’s backs up. However, I don’t like conspiracy theories and the suggestion that working class people got into being landlords so the Tories started to make it worse to be a landlord is nonsense. As is the suggestion that rich people are suddenly hoovering up cheap houses when house prices are barely off their all time high.

I spent nearly 5 years working for a billionaire.. He told us that us contractors probably payed more in tax that he did, and that most of his friends were the same.. All the works done on his millionaire mansion was paid for by a company that made a loss.. Owned by him. All legal. If you think the rich are 'getting by'. Like the rest of us, you have no idea how it is working in the real world.

To my eyes this is deliberate.. Over the last 20 years there has been a huge increase in the working class getting second homes and buy-to-let mortgages (thanks to low interest rates) have been encouraging this. The top end of the spectrum (with no mortgage costs because they buy outright) are not affected by the recent changes, in fact, excess capital is allowing them to snap up the additional properties the small scale landlords are forced to sell. I might be labelled a tory basher for saying that, but the fact is, the last dozen years has only widened the rich poor divide and the political situation has been steered to encourage it.

Your sketch appears to show the first spindle about half way between the first tread in the flight (Step 2 ) and the second tread (Step 3). If that total rise at that point isn't more than 600mm then it's Ok in E & W, however the NI regs may be different......

I want one too! The recesses are a stroke of genius. They really appear to open up the space to create a light box below the roof light. Can you post a couple more photos of the detail around them please?

Physics and Economics books.

I'd only add that you need evaporation upwards from the cavity, so put the polythene over it like a tent, but with air-flow between it and the wall. block/poly/block. Perhaps drill some holes in the mortar where weep holes would be, immediately above dpc, and they can be filled again later.

Use concrete blocks to hold down wide DPC over the cavity. It will all dry out eventually. If it got really soaked, could you drill a few holes at the bottom of the wall?

I’ve seen lots of people do this, loads on you tube and insta, lots do it badly and a few do it well. What i see the good ones doing. Build some additional accommodation so let’s say your having a double garage. Build this first, then drag the static over to it and join them together install a wood burner in the garage, with a washing machine and a small drying area, leave the door open to the static, or even cut the door out twice as wide, the warm air keeps the static cosy, little front room in the garage and sleeping only in the static. .

Plaster boarding finished yesterday and plastering starts today.

That is the reward spelled out in a nutshell. You get a very deep and long lasting satisfaction from it, you don't need to broadcast it as others can see what you have achieved when they visit.. your hard work will speak for itself. You just know you have done something few folk can do. It is your castle, home and unique.

It’s the main contractor they’ve used for years. It’s been an utter shambles since last March. I can only hope that people happen across my posts on here when searching and it puts them off going with them.

Should be good at working out contracts. Do you get to wear 11 fancy waistcoats while drinking ginger beer. That tort them.

It is still pretty cheap when you think about it, 3.6 MJ for 30p. A Big Mac has 2.06 MJ and it costs £4.59. Tesco Red Lentils have 0.322 MJ in 80g, that works out at 30p, for an eleventh of the energy company content, and you have to boil them up at home.

I took off a wooden cavity closer by the bay this morning. Turns out it's not just the bricks in the bay that are soft it's the whole wall. Think the render is holding the wall up! A generous gap was left between the UPVC frame and brickwork, plugged with mortar(?). Look out for the daylight below! Lucky to have foam here, it's missing for most of the rest. The mortar-filled gap is over 2cm wide at this point. The out of focus bit is where the face of a brick has disappeared. To get a nice straight edge to the window opening they didn't cut cinder blocks to fit. Oh no, they took small ones, lined up the edge and left a couple of inch gap to the next block... covering it with plaster in the room. Despite the strong breeze blowing through and out of the cavity, it smells a bit - damp I think. I've temporarily stuffed HelloFresh insulation in the cavity. My plan had been to shove 100mm PIR in as a cavity closer but the brickwork is too uneven for a 100mm sheet to fit. Will rockwool do the job as well? And between the window and brickwork where there's the mortar and a little old foam: best to fill this entirely with foam, or does it need something more solid like chunks of PIR too?

Went to site at 7am this morning, just as the windows arrived, a day early and today is scaffolding day. What is it with folk and their inability to follow clear instructions. Anyway an hour of moving stuff around and we’ve off-loaded them. Lorry driver told me he did a delivery last week to a field. Phoned his contact and the bloke went quiet and said he never achieved planning permission and forgot about the window order. 😂