Leaderboard

Beware, keep your other hand well away from the timber, I have had a 90mm nail hit a knot and exit the timber at 90’ (right through a finger 😣)

Hi folks! Lovely to meet you all and I'm really grateful there's such an amazing brain trust to tap into here. We've a village-centre plot in the Peak District. It's also in a Conservation Area, so we have the difficulty setting dialled up to max! But it's a wonderful part of the world with a really generous, open community we can't wait to get to know more. It's our first self-build (last?) and we're keen to be sensitive to the village and offer a great example of low-carbon building. We hope to build with a timber frame and it'll be stone clad. We're currently in the early stages of the planning process, and as our plans firm up, we'll come back to learn from you all and ask a few questions along the way. Thanks in advance! D

Welcome! True enough, but heat capacity is not the only factor. The environmental heat source (assuming heating mode) for a GSHP is not the water in the ground loops, but the ground the loops are in. While the water in the ground loops is great at transferring heat from the internal heat exchanger, the transfer between the loops and the ground they're in is by far the limiting factor. I was all for a GSHP until learned it would have been ~5 times the cost for a moderate improvement in COP and a lot more hassle onsite during the build. The energy bill for our all-electric house was £1000 the first year we moved in (8 years ago). Even if a GSHP had halved our energy usage, the payback period on the difference between ASHP and GSHP would have been something like 30 years. Admittedly that would have been significantly reduced with the increases in energy costs over the last couple of years!

Over the last couple of months we have made steady progress. But, I've been very remiss in taking photos. Last time I posted we were busy building up the walls in phase 1. It's now ready for the lintels, which we waiting a month to be delivered. This one requires some blockwork changes as the overhang is over a block joint. This is the inside looking North looking down over the valley. This is the outside looking in, again some block changes needed. We used thermally broken IG lintels, which were on a 4 week lead time so to fill some of the time we have been prepping for phase 2. We realised we didn't have enough space for concrete lorries and storing the spoil so we moved the soil spoil heap further into the field. This doesn't look much, but it took 3 days and countless repeats of load dumper, move and tip, and repeat !!!! We've also moved into one of the horses winter fields, but we will return to a field when we've finished. Apart from putting block on block and repeat we've bought a few items at auction. We got some windows that are exactly the same model as we are ordering, maybe not the exact size, but we can make them fit. Of course the cill will be replaced. We also got a lovely sink for the utility room. For the first time in months we are dry on site, not sure how long it will last. At the moment I'm trying to order the posi-rafters for phase 1, but I need some input on a beam from the SE who is being very un-responsive. We've realised that we have a beam on our SE drawings which say 'B3' and no details. He initially responded saying it could be either an RSJ or a flitch beam, but that was 2 weeks ago. I was told last week that the rafters are also on 4 weeks lead time. Once we have those then we will be putting some of the barn roofing on as a temporary measure as we'll get the whole build roofed at the same time. I'm horrified at how little we seem to have done, but as I'm no longer working at home I think the work force (hubby) may be slacking 🙂 More soon, when I have some proper progress to show. Jill

So not really then. Sticky tape and super glue, and vaseline for burns, all that is needed. Topical subject at work at moment. If someone has a stroke (or suspected stroke) sit them up, it will not make matters worse, and may help. Get them to hospital ASAP, even if you have to drive them.

Always have masking tape on site, has many unusual uses. Or better still a first aid kit.

Plastic nut caps. We just print them as we need them now: Ready made caps:

Drill in from each side. As long as you're near enough the second hole will pick up on the first. Stick a little bubble level atop your drill if you're that worried & line the drill up left to right with a square on the floor or similar. Put studding through. Affix with a flat round washer, then spring washer then full nut. Ideally stainless. Leave/cut the studs so 3 threads projecting beyond the nut. M12 is 1.75mm pitch so 5mm is fine. Cap with a plastic nut cover.

for coach screws do I use the same drill bit size or smaller?

That’s better than being blasé, treat it with respect, same as any power tool.. Ha, my young son was with me and he said “you need to go to hospital “ but I replied “they know nothing about nail guns” 🤣 and yes masking tape to stop the flow of blood. the good thing about some paslode nails is the glue on them (looks like red paint) , makes them very difficult to pull out, almost like ring shank nails.

I would use 50mm galvanised coach screws with a galv washer.

Perfect, thank you all for your inputs. It has been greatly appreciated I'm fine with how i need to proceed now, so thanks again

@joe90and @JohnMo Any more advice please? Do you learn to be more cautious, or useful techniques, or does familiarity cause carelessness? At present I have used it for about 20 nails and am scared silly of it. I wonder, and worry, if that is the safest stage? I'm knocking up some stud for site toilets. I'm using screws to create the shape, then banging in lots of nails at angles for rigidity. That way my hand is not tempted to go near the sharp end. Yet.

Hi and welcome, Hope Valley is a gorgeous setting

Can’t wait to see your proposal!

ladders are not for that job and cotinuops working at height and reaching out on--use a hop-up or small scaffolding it will be bettter ,safwer and probably quicker in the long run Iknow about pains being an old age builder and first thing is proper work boots easy to end up with a life long problem iif your not careful

Our BCO didn't care about second fix electrics, as long as cables either isolated or terminated..so fire on and get first fix done and do the minimum second fix as you need. Obviously your interconnected smoke alarms have to be working throughout.

If you've moved in, and the building is habitable, then as far as LPS are concerned, it's a completed house. BC separate. They visited us in March just after we moved in, we didn't get BC signoff until July. They don't issue you anything and has no real impact other than you have to pay rates. Just be happy you're not in North Down 😂

completion is different to needing to pay rates surely? We're resident and "substantially" complete so LPS want their pound of flesh, but BC aren't interested in visiting until I ring'em and ask for final inspection

The mesh looks fine. It won't hurt at all if this is left for another 3 weeks before you pour. It would be best if you have decent contractors to do this, but it won't fall down if you don't. Setting a target of having the concrete as the finished surface makes this far more prone to failure. Concrete is not a very attractive finish. A 30mm latex screed over will be flatter than any pancake.

Go back and check what they need. I presume this is registration for rates. The construction stage you are at will have been flagged up to LPS by BC during the course of their inspections - normally 6 months before the anticipated completion of the works - but I doubt you have to be complete for a certain dates.

For the last couple of years, every time I've finish a box of pozis, I've replaced them with the torx equivalent. They're just so much more pleasant to use.

Exactly. After a lot of messing with long hdmi cable and a very expensive Blustream distribution matrix, I ripped it all out and just hung the Nvidia shield straight on the back of the main TV. With a bit of jiggery I send audio from the TV to the central amp. Lesson learned, currently going through process of doing the same in the new camper van. Except new car stereos come with an HDMI input but no spdif/optical audio input. Can't appreciate why anyone wants hdmi on their car stereo but there we go.

As I've previously discussed we have an MBC Passive Slab and Timber-frame, but unlike most builds, our house also has a very traditional stone cottage-style exterior because the new build sits between our current farmhouse, which dates back over 400 years and a cottage which dates back approaching 200 years, so our planners required that we use the same local quarried stone. So a topic that often comes up is "how do we do the window / door treatment on a timber-framed house with an exterior stone / brick / blockwork skin?" In this blog entry I want to describe how we approached and addressed these issues on our build. Whilst I make no claims about our approach being the only or the best one, Jan and I do believe that this has worked well for us; we are pleased with how it has all turned out and we don't think that we would do it differently if we were doing this all again. So if you are in a similar situation to us, please consider this as one possible approach. There are a number of issues that we considered in designing our detailing: Decoupling the inner and outer skins. In order to achieve thermal isolation of the inner passive slab, MBC also lays a separate outer ring beam for blockwork, brick and stone skinned houses. The inner slab carries the Larson trusses of the MB twinwall frame, and the outer ring beam carries the stone skin. The inner frame is CLS; the outer stone and mortar, and these two have different expansion characteristics so you should anticipate up to 5mm, say, differential movement between the inner and outer skins. So we decided that we should not use the window and door furniture to couple these. Closing the gap. Even so, we still have the issue of the 50mm nominal air gap between the inner and outer skins and how we close this for weather protection and cosmetics. Our solution to thee two points is to move the front of the windows some 45mm forward of the outer surface of the frame. The stonework then sits immediately in front of this,overlapping the window frame by some 30-40mm. Fixing the windows and doors. We have Internorm KF200 Aluclad PVC windows and I agreed a fitting profile with both MBC and ecoHaus SW who supplied the windows. This comprised a box section (something like marine ply would do here) that framed each window opening at the top and sides as follows. there was a 10mm filling gap for fixing the windows there was a 15mm filling gap at the top ditto the windows had to sit hard at the bottom, but I inserted a 44 × 38 tanalised carrier to lift the base above the internal frame base. This was to give adequate clearance to fit the internal cills. Protecting the windows during the build. EcoHaus SW fitted the windows on day 8 of the the frame erection, so by day 9 we had a completely weather-tight and lockable house. The windows had to be in place before erecting the stone skin, and so needed protection from the stone erection process. The solution that we agreed with the ecoHaus technical manager was very simple and extremely effective and one that I would suggest to anyone else doing this. We simply covered the windows in heavy grade clear building polythene, and this served a dual purpose: It provided total protection against the muck and dust of stone erection. You need a slip surface between the aluminium cladding and the stone skin. (Cf. the first point) The PVC does this. Once the stone skin was complete we simply cut around the PVC on the mortar line. All that is then needed to achieve a total weather seal is to run a thin bead of sealer at the join. Minimising any bridging impact. The windows have fire-break socks around them which acts both as insulation and a gap closer. The doors require special treatment. Here prior to slab pour, we had the MBC team cut out 50mm deep slots at the door openings and we placed extra shuttering in to extend these out by some 40mm in front of the outer frame line. These were rebarred and when the slab was poured, these became a 50mm deep concrete tongue that extends out to the front face of the door opening. The doors then sit on a 30mm upstand on these tongues. The upstand acts as a thermal break, but to minimise any bridging through the tongue itself, we used FoamGlass structural bricks to isolate the tongue from the outer cill and the stone skin. If you do the 2D thermal calcs (or at least I did), the thermal capacity of the stone face overlapping the face of the windows materially mitigates the extremes of the temperature variation, and whilst there is a little uplift in the Psi-factors for the window, in absolute terms this equates to adding an extra ½m2 of glass to the house overall, and not enough to cause condensation risks Maximising internal light. Our old farmhouse has thick stone walls with window reveals and these work well. So we decided to ask MBC to do a similar treatment in our new build. In short not only do they work, they work brilliantly. They let in perhaps 10-15% more light than deep squared frames and they help open out the rooms. They are an extremely attractive feature and both Jan and I would recommend them to anyone considering using a twinwall frame. Here is a picture of the slab during the pour. Note the trays for the kitchen French windows and the back door. Here are a couple diagram extracts showing the window treatment and detailing: and some photos of the wall in construction showing the set forward windows and the finished effect (less the porch that still has to go in.). and an internal shot of the kitchen window detail showing the angled reveals:

I did the same, pulling your finger off the nail is the worst bit. Then realising the best thing you have on site is masking tape, to stop the bleeding and a rubber gloves - So you can finish the job without getting blood everywhere.