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Showing content with the highest reputation on 08/02/24 in all areas

  1. Result!! We managed to sell the Cattery for 2.5k and I spent 5 days partly dismantling it, before the buyers dismantled the rest. They left it a bomb site and even changed the code on the combination lock so we couldn’t get onto our land! I then took three days off and fully cleared the site. So I’m well chuffed that what could have cost a large amount of money actually left us +£1200 in credit after I deduct two 10 yard skips and a 4 yard plasterboard skip.
    3 points
  2. Can I just mention that there are no economic benefits of having a mixture of underfloor heating and radiators, particularly in a small property when there is little point in having multiple zones. If you like underfloor heating and don't mind digging up your floors to install it then all well and good. But the heat pump will need to make the water hot enough to meet the requirements of the radiators and it is how hot that heating water needs to be that determines how economical your heat pump will be to run. Unless you have really large area radiators they will probably want hotter water then your UFH could get away with but if so then you need that water hotter.
    2 points
  3. never ever pay any subcontractor a fee based on a percentage of your build. Total rip off, they are scamming you based on the postcode. Same plot in a London postcode gets them treble for same amount of work. They get away with rip off services because they can, similar to solicitors taking months to do a completion that could be organised in a day etc.
    2 points
  4. I like that BH members say nothing if there is nothing to say. I've had a day with the machine. 4 cores successfully removed and the quality and thickness is all good. I didn't bolt it down, instead using 14.5 stone carefully placed on the stand and applying the lever pressure gently. If I was 11 stone it wouldn't have worked. I am now the BH expert on the reality....a hole should take 10 minutes but 4 holes took 5 hours, including umpteen hassles.
    2 points
  5. Hi, I've done quite a bit of building - renovations, extensions, replacing rooves. Always DIY, low budget, usually working alone. Built a tiny off-grid cabin in a lovely piece of a valley - 23 acres of oak forest surrounding a meadow which is full of insects and wildlife. I'm aiming to keep it that way, with a few fruit and nut trees scattered about. But we can't officially live there, so I bought a building plot nearby. The plot is nice and was cheap. The intention is to build a cheap timber house close to passive house standard. The plot is sloping 8 degrees, and I wanted a minimum of digging and concrete, so it's built on oak piles. The floor space is under 50 square metres, so I'm not obliged to hire an architect or structural engineer or have air-tightness tests etc. But I do want the house to outlive me, and as the builder I am responsible to correct any defects that appear in the house over the next ten years. So I'm here, mostly for feedback and advice. Brexit only allows me 90 days at a time in France. I'm generally happy to come and go (though the principle of losing freedom of movement offends me!). So some of the building I'm doing in the UK - making up I-Beams, and making doors and window frames, and taking stuff with me to France with my van and trailer.
    1 point
  6. Hello all. I know that a lot of folk talk about using D4 glue but this can lead to trouble. The designation D4 relates to the durability of the glue..durability is related to for simplicity the weather exposure.. you can buy D4 from say B & Q, Tool Station, Screwfix and loads of other places. Now I'm fine if you want to use "D4" that is bandied about on BH for sticking some non structural floor boards together. I'm not OK about you using this sole designation D4 (durability) in a stuctural application. A Tesco / Asda etc plastic bag is durable (probably deserves a D4 rating) for lying for years at the side of the road but it's not structurally strong! Glulam beams for example are bonded together with a structural glue that conforms to for example BS EN 301 which deals with glues that have structural stength AND the durability rating which is D1, 2, 3 & 4. Why would you not want to use a glue with both a structural and durability rating that the Glulam folk use? A structural glue requires both stength and durability. Structural glues tend to be resin based.. like old fashioned Araldite that your Mum and Dad used for fixing their glasses... Cascamite structural glue does the job and has both a structural and durability rating. Please folks can we stop recomending D4 when we are discussing bonding structural components.
    1 point
  7. My son (25) doesn’t drive and has no interest in learning. He works in London and commutes in by train. About a third of his friends can’t drive either and more than half don’t own a car. Car ownership is trending downward. Cambridge is relatively well set up to commute by public transport or cycle.
    1 point
  8. 🤣 They were Steico I beams which were 45mm x 300mm. The web was 9mm which left 18mm each side, so the ply plates ended up flush with the flange. I didn't have any say in the construction of the frame which was done by the SE and the TF company.
    1 point
  9. Why do you need more? Make it bigger 🤷‍♂️
    1 point
  10. FORGET the electric boiler. Direct heated HW tank (just a HW tank with 1 or 2 immersion heaters. Electric panel heaters on the walls where needed. No need for water and radiators. Keep it simple. Then put the "newly refurbished" flat on the market before the winter and the tenant finds his heating bills are 3 times what they were last winter.
    1 point
  11. Metal Detector work in progress... Carbon tube and 3D printed parts including coil frame. Still printing some parts.
    1 point
  12. Quotes are in ! So …. Cherry picker and replace flue around 5 - 7k (expletive deleted) me So electric boiler /water tank and electric radiators it is …
    1 point
  13. When I used rainwater for a river/mini water fall I passed it through a sand to stone filter above ground and stored the water below ground using a 12 volt PV panel and mini battery pump system to pump water up to the filter and through the waterfall to the storage tank below ground. This meant it ran on sunny days... The sand to stone filter was self draining and when turned off all the water was below ground. Depending upon levels you could make a below ground storage tank fill by keeping the top of the tank at the same level as the supply pipe (bit like a rain water butt is filled). When running 1.5 meters horizontally and dropping twice about a total of 0.5m into a pond area at the bottom about 200 litres over sunny or windy days the water soon vanished.. Good luck Marvin
    1 point
  14. Thanks Ian, I actually emailed Patrick Bradley to try to look to engage him but got no reply! His Grand Designs Container house is only an hour away from us. I absolutely get you on Local Vernacular helping the planning decision. That is exactly why we want to go agricultural. If we get the plot we're after, we'll be up on a hill, above a farm. Last house towards the wild NI/ROI border. Want it to be as in-keeping as possible. The plot already has planning for a house and foundations are already there, otherwise I would have looked at minimal impact screw foundations, to try to sweeten the planners a little more!
    1 point
  15. As said above it won’t need support the brick pillar and concrete lintel is doing their job, just fill the hole with bricks if you want to tidy it up.
    1 point
  16. Gravity HW usually has the tank right above the boiler, and when heating HW it is just convection that makes the water flow, and the pump only comes on ti circulate hot water for central heating. If the pump is coming on now, look at why might be an electrical or controls problem? The big disadvantage of this system is you can't control the temperature of the hot water other than by adjusting the boiler flow temperature, and you can't have heating on without hot water.
    1 point
  17. It won't need to support the load, that is what the big concrete lintel is doing. What is this bit? I am going to take a guess and it's a porch and steps at the front or back of the house, not the main structure of the house? Someone has made that gap for some reason, what is inside when you remove the loose bricks? is access needed for something?
    1 point
  18. I remember a video of a very gifted Irish architect ( I'll look it up later) who built his house out of containers. In planning terms, the issue of local vernacular is quite important locally - may not be where you are. For us, it was a useful lever in securing Planning Permission. PS https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/features/grand-designs-architect-offers-his-shipping-container-home-for-auction-to-help-the-homeless/34297141.html
    1 point
  19. You can phone the electric supplier to get the times. They are not always 7 continuous hours I previously had a one hour and a six hour night time on eco 7. I have a smart meter and times have changed to now on 1.24 to 8.24 I was told 1 to 8 BST but we have an old system and you hear the contactor switching and the smart meter confirms this just wish it would send the reading to supplier.
    1 point
  20. not forgetting this very important piece of information. Could reduce heat loss by 25% - 35%, so 7.6kW heat pump could be reduced to only 5kW - 6kW
    1 point
  21. Really? I trust you @Onoff, but I'm going to do a little experiment today. A little competition as it were between some Sika Resin stuff I have leftover and CT 1. Thanks for the image - brilliant idea - @Pocster, I'm going to CT1 a naked Barbie to the RSJ on the water feature. There's one in the kid's toy box upstairs That'll light the feminist fires among Debbie's lecturer mates when they visit and have their girls-who-lunch meetings. Mind if I tell them it's all your fault? Second thoughts I'm dobbing you in anyway.
    1 point
  22. Absolutely. Although not sure how successful the tech has got!
    1 point
  23. Lagoon, swale, pond? As well as the soakaway. The rain disappears now presumably. Or a long French drain, like a drainage field or spread several directions.
    1 point
  24. Yes, sadly, or perhaps not, none of the chaps who took part in the Hatton Garden job seem to be members. Image from the FT.
    1 point
  25. Well done! Who told you a proper core would take 10 min? This is a proper core sample not making a hole for a duct say where you can afford to be rough. Coring a slab for techinical investigative info takes time. If you thrash into it you won't get a proper slab depth. Every 10mm matters when you are coring a slab for strength analysis / verification. From memory the going rate is £100 - 150 a core on a 150mm anticipated slab depth with a recovered sample (in good shape) for the operative time. If you have managed 4 in a day then that is not bad. Each one needs to be logged, photgraphed etc and they need thinking time too!
    1 point
  26. our RIBA architect wasn't percentage based so shop around. we paid under £10k for everything up to and including building control. any assistance after that point we paid an hourly fee. worked out great for us
    1 point
  27. Your building inspector may take a view that it doesn’t need guarding. It’s from road to house not house to road. we’ve got a sign off conversation with our BCO re a wall which isn’t part of the ‘garden’ or ‘driveway’ and his view (although he’s taking advice) is that it’s not within the scope of ‘guarding area’
    1 point
  28. Was that 01:00 GMT or BST? Metering times are usually GMT.
    1 point
  29. I’m doing the same. Big reno and replacing oil boiler for ASHP. Octopus were useless and couldn’t do anything than put the current EPC into their quoting, which of course, resulted in a grossly oversized ASHP. in the end I got a few local MCS registered firms round who were more than happy to run the heat loss calcs based on plans. The one I went with even laid the insulated ASHP flow/return before I laid the slab! They’ve yet to come back to install the rest because I’m still not ready 💀
    1 point
  30. Slight typo - vented should read unvented, for anyone else reading
    1 point
  31. Temporary phone case printed in black TPU "rubber":
    1 point
  32. The question is for how long. It is why aging characteristics are important.
    1 point
  33. Just to add to the above, gluing any materials together is more then just wiping the dust and oil off and squirting a bit of glue on the faces. Overclamping can cause problems as it squeezes too much adhesive out the gap, making gap shorter than the cured polymer length. Different polymers will have different directional mechanical properties, just like the materials they are joining. I like using adhesives, but would be very wary of sticking structural elements together on site. A year or so back, I stuck some ply to a plastic bench (down at the cafe in the woods). I must get down there and see if it is still in place. I also stuck some ply to a paving slab and left it propped up against the my house wall, shall try and dig that out and see what has happened.
    1 point
  34. I’ve approached this from the other direction. When we started planning our build, (informed by TV programmes like Grand Designs) PH seemed like a daft idea, requiring houses with two foot thick walls, two acres of meadow for the GSHP, and 18’ deep concrete slabs and acres of glass so they looked like an Asda. I suspect that’s still the image a high percentage of the population who have heard of PH have. But I figured there would be elements that would be worth using on our modest home. We were committed to disconnecting gas from the word go, and that meant an ASHP as I’d already learnt that GSHP wouldn’t work for us. Airtightness and MVHR was clearly the way to go, so they were the first elements adopted. I was very keen on a long underground pipe to feed the MVHR but concluded that that wasn’t yet proven technology and wasn’t one that the MVHR suppliers were happy with so ditched that, sadly. Turns out our design had a sensible form factor anyway (2.75 if I’ve calculated it correctly), so that made me smile and feel we weren’t so bad. We’ve not that much glazing and can’t take advantage of solar gain because of the restrictions of the site, but we do have an east/west ridge on our bog standard 40degree pitched roof so south facing solar PV should be productive and offer a quick payback especially with the slate saving. Cold bridging is boiling my brain right now, and I think that’s the area I would fail most on as we will have to have a cheap strip foundation b&b construction and I’ll do my best but it won’t be the same as a polystyrene raft based build. What I’m ending up with is, I think, sort of a PH Lite, on a sensible budget, and where it won’t translate into volume house building is the extra time I’ll put in to airtightness. But as the practices become more widespread and the kit makes it easier and MVHR becomes a basic then I’m sure airtightness will steadily improve. So I’m starting to think that our house will be not an inspirational green build icon, but simply one of the earlier examples of the new basic houses of next decades volume builders.
    1 point
  35. You also need a bigger piece of lead, so that the fascia board is protected where it meets the tiles. You may be able to place the lead under the tile as a soaker, if the pre-formed valley projects further.
    1 point
  36. I think it is ok to build these IF they are in a substantial and self contained town or city, with good access to all facilities by public transport or on foot. AND they sign a contract acknowledging that they won't have a car, and that agreement is enforceable. AND that the Town Plan is somehow able to ensure that services remain in place. People buying them will pay a fair bit less because of the cost of the parking space. They will have bought into the concept. Anyway, people with nice cars generally want to see them out of the front window, or know they are secure, and will not park them a street away.
    0 points
  37. They don't know how many people I've seen. It wasn't my intention to see so many but I'll just keep on going until I find the right one with the right price. BTW C has come in with ~£125k + VAT. I did like C and went to see one of his sites in progress - was very impressed. Just waiting on L now. L is a different type of outfit with salespeople in branded cars. At the moment it's between C, H and possibly L depending on their quote. I get the impression some of the itemised quotes I'm getting are from professional QS. One of the companies did actaully say they outsourced this. Again, if I get enough itemised quotes in I should have a feel for labour and materials. That said, some of the quotes are organised differently so can be difficult to directly compare across some items.
    0 points
  38. That's a bit bonkers, take mains pressure water, drop the pressure, use a pump to make it high pressure again.
    0 points
  39. Where is all the cat shit buried?
    0 points
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