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Showing content with the highest reputation on 10/16/21 in all areas

  1. No need to worry as all the draughts will ventilate vapours away as they diffuse or get drawn in ?
    2 points
  2. I do quite a few jobs with these metal roofs I’ve never seen a membrane fitted Theres no chance of this kind of roof leaking The kingspan will sort out any chance of condensation Though they can be a bit noisy even when plaster-boarded
    2 points
  3. It's a tough one, where and how do you spend your money? I have / do wrestle with this. One starting point is to ask.. what do you want the windows to do for you! Do you need lots of light, do you want thin frames, (say a set of sliding doors with thin 20mm thick mullions) do you need to comply with planning conditions, reduce noise or are you trying to use your windows to achieve a certain U value to make your scheme work? How long do you want your windows to last.. in other words is this your forever home or are you doing this as a step to something else? I'll leave it to you to moralise.. The windows/ doors are a big ticket item. Considerations for me are: 1/ Do you really need 3g? Is this for insulation or sound? If sound insulation then plus point, if just for insulation then can this be achieved with less long term risk..(say by spending your money on insulating elsewhere go for the simple stupid option) beyond the glass guarentee. Put three panes of glass together and they are heavy. The inner pane can heat up like fury as it is in it's own green house, lots of thermal expansion which stresses the seals. Then you probably have some argon gas that is supposed to not behave like a gas does and just stay put! 2/ The hinge and locking technology.. look carefully and you'll see that this has not developed as fast as we would like. Again fine for a few years but look at the size and embedment of the fixing screws in the hinges. It's a weak spot. Three panes of glass? Remember that some windows and doors will be opened a lot.. some on few occasions. Seriously have a look at the screws.. you can have some really high end windows with "tiny screws " .. it's a serious weak spot! 3/ What level of adjustment do you have in the locking mechanism. Take a tilt and turn window/ casement.. can you as a home owner adjust them yourselves after reading the instructions? 4/ How flexible are the seals? Well as a lay person unless you have a good knowledge of the materials that are used to form the seals you won't really know and your window supplier is not likely to tell you! But as a lay guide. Imagine you are sealing a shower tray on a bouncy timber floor. Put in a tiny bead of silicon (aka a small seal) and that tiny bead has to stretch a lot over a short length, put in a big thick bead ( heavy seal) and the stress is less as you have a longer length of bead. Same with your window seal, don't ask it to compress too much and it will return the favour in the long term. 5/ Overcladding timber with aluminium. All sounds good, warranty for say ten years.. but what about the windows performing for say 25 - 40 years? Like say a timber sash and case window that can be maintained with ease. It would be good and I would welcome info from the "Aluclad" type suppliers on their recommendations for long term durability and low cost maintenance in the long term. What do you do when you need to replace a hinge and have lost fixity / embedment of the screws? Yes these composite frames may be fine in Scandinavia but hey.. this is the UK.. we just don't get the low temperatures in the winter with the associated low humidity, we get British weather.. it's a different animal, wet, a bit cold but plenty water in the air. Covering wood with metal which seals moisture in? Really but how do you keep the joint watertight on the aluminium section in the long term when the substrate of timber is doing what wood does..? 6/ Now we all know that for timber to last it needs to breath. We have for a long time used cross laminated timber (CLT).. it's like plywood where you glue films /veneers of wood together. Engineered flooring is a good example.. we often use this when we have underfloor heating. Look at the UF heating specs for engineered flooring and they are quite clear that you need to control moisture, let the CLT breath. But suddenly the window folk are sealing one side at least with an impervious material? Once the water gets in what then? Much reliance seems to be placed on say the glue, how the timber is dried and the fact that the metal cladding will remain water tight. I am at a loss as to how this works in the long term given the different behavoirs of the wood and metal subject to varying moisture contents. Maybe the glue is the thing? The argument does not stack up in the long term for me. Just say you get a leak in your aluclad near a fixing screw for the hinge. The timber will suffer, your window drops.. you don't need to be a technical wizard to work out what the consequences will be for you heavy 3g sash! In summary what I'm saying is this. If you want good looking windows and go for timber over clad with aluminium then fine. But if it is your forever home then we need the manufactures of these types of windows to step up to the plate and tell us how we can maintain them in the long term. If you are just trying to do something that complies with the regs.. well spend a bit more time on build hub.. the cost effective answer is probably here. Calvin. Hope the above helps.. I have laid it on a bit thick but windows and door are a big ticket item so the hard questions need to be asked. If you have a tight budget then look at improving insulation where it is easy and cost effective, cost effective to buy and cost effective labour wise to install. Do a bit of research on how windows should be installed. In particular how you insulate the ingoes and seal the frames. Spend time on getting the workmanship right here and this will pay dividends. A cheaper window well installed will often perform better than an expensive one that is not well installed. Maybe go for UPVC windows, install them well and spend money on the kitchen, or just a nice sofa/ curtains/ just family stuff? Lastly all the best with the project.
    2 points
  4. Well that last one was a bit crap, what was the point of the cantilever? Looked like he spent £300,000 on trying to make it float when two columns could have probably saved him £150,000. As kevin said it looked like a bungalow just up in the air.
    2 points
  5. Three years ago I knocked on my neighbour’s door to explain that I would be filing a planning application, but before doing so I would welcome any views he had in case he didn’t like anything we were ptoposing, so that we could address any of his concerns prior to filing, in the hope that this would avoid him objecting. He refused to engage (whereas my other neighbour on the other side politely told me they wouldn’t object). Over the next two years they proceeded to object to everything we tried to get approved, including by lying. Eventually we got approval. Today, same neighbour calls me and asks me to render over my brickwork on the part of my extension facing their house because it doesn’t match their house. I tried to politely explain that I had got planning permission for bricks even though most houses in the neighbourhood are rendered with pebbledash and that I wasn’t about to breach my own planning permission to suit my neighbour’s tastes. They were genuinely gobsmacked and started lecturing me that I wasn’t doing the neighbourly thing. Some people are just incredible. The stupidity of the situation is that I can’t see most of the wall that they are complaining about and that if they had taken me up on my offer of consultation at the outset, they could have explained their concern and I could have built it out of blocks rather than facing bricks and then rendered it. In actual fact, none of their objections were about this issue. It was always about the proximity of our first floor extension (which ironically is rendered) to their house. Madness. Knowing my neighbour, they will just keep asking for this.
    1 point
  6. https://www.edmondodonoghue.com/build-it-better-window-door-detailing/ Here’s a good blog post describing it.
    1 point
  7. That’s the Denby dale detail from green building store. 300mm cavity. They made boxes for the windows out of marine ply. I think some delaminated so they refined the detail by treating the edges with something for future designs. I made and used 18mm OSB ones after the windows had been installed, 250mm cavity. I suggest you don’t need them, however you will need something to rest the bottom of the windows on. Are you using precast sills? When the window installers are done you can tape the windows to the interior wall and plaster over. https://www.siga.swiss/ie_en/products/fentrim/fentrim-20 or similar. Then screw a J bead to the frame and install plasterboard as your reveals. The EPS beads will push the tape to the plasterboard giving you fully insulated reveals.
    1 point
  8. Is it a new build? You can add a parge coat to the walls first. This is a very wet layer of plaster. So wet you can put it on yourself like a thick layer or slurry paint. A lot of members here have done that, myself included. The quality of the plasterboard doesn't matter as much then
    1 point
  9. Wouldn’t worry too much - you’ve a massive window right next to it leaking heat.
    1 point
  10. Yes this was a lesson in how to waste money on a completely unecessary design feature (the cantilever) when a couple of pillars would achieve the same thing so much easier and cheaper. But I felt sorry for the bloke, start a project expecting another house sale to fund it, then find that house does not sell and the only way to shift it is drop the price drastically. A bit close to home that one. And i also saw a broken, bitter and twisted lonely man putting on a brave face with the situation he found himself.
    1 point
  11. I’m currently handing a £5k claim against a “damp surveyor” who conned my parents out of a lot of money to inject their walls with useless chemicals. The industry is rife with conmen.
    1 point
  12. Continuous ribbon of adhesive is supposed to happen but rarely does
    1 point
  13. The pir needs a feed to it and it has a switch wire that then connects to the lights. You need to trace all the conductors from the pir
    1 point
  14. The main thermal loss would appear to be from the beam to the column, as it appears to be exposed to the elements. Is that the case? If it can be insulated then that would be great. I don't know aerogel but it appears to be as good as PIR board but flexible with it. Whatever, wrap the column on all sides with whatever you can, and find a way to protect the beam too a Thermal break between the column and the beam will have to be very strong too...so is perhaps a bit special. but anything that is a lot better than steel will help, however thin. But do get your Engineer's approval for it. Actually, tell your Engineer that you want to insulate the steel, and what does he suggest.
    1 point
  15. So can we ask what the problem is as it helps diagnose the problem. did it work and has stopped working? when the switch is in one position assume it’s on all the time as you are feeding the lights direct off the live/line. how are the pir and lights connected?
    1 point
  16. Ewww. Careful. Nasty things.
    1 point
  17. As soon as you start instrumenting a house and wanting to do more them IMO, it is just easier to bite the bullet and install Home Assistant on an RPi 4. You get a Zigbee dongle for it and Zigbee thermometers cost a few £s each. No need for any wiring fabric.
    1 point
  18. You aren’t dry lining, best to change terminology you are dot and dabbing and it’s common to use a complete line of adhesive. Use vapour check plasterboard
    1 point
  19. Sketch or photo please? You can probably fix PIR to the steel before the wall goes up.
    1 point
  20. Best way is to design them out, I tell engineers where I want the structural steelwork, ie inside the thermal envelope. There is more than one wat to crack this egg
    1 point
  21. That would be my argument against accepting their requirement. They do tend to have to accept carbon-saving initiatives. If you can show where the 'future water supply' comes from I think this might be get-overable. A lot of my designs have dotted future solar panels and future lifts, as long as the design is genuine and it is doable. eg roof stronger for panels, and a box-out in the floor for a lift. Don't know your circumstances but might work.....future additional rainwater storage?
    1 point
  22. Can you tell us the product please? Whatever the shape, and this is pressed to look a bit like tiles, this is metal cladding. Therefore it ether needs to be sealed at every joint to be completely weathertight, or it needs to ventilate, and have another weather layer below it. Even if sealed, you will have issues from condensation. My first impression therefore is that this is ok for a tractor shed but not anything occupied or heated.
    1 point
  23. I would suggest a sptay foam carefully applied!
    1 point
  24. 1 point
  25. Personally I would go 2.45 downstairs and 2.4 upstairs. Our house is a little unusual that we have 2.4 downstairs and the two main upstairs bedrooms have vaulted ceilings going up to the ridge, and I like it. The small, spare bedroom has a 2.3M ceiling to give more height on the mezanine but it is only a small room. I think it would be oppressive in a larger room.
    1 point
  26. For reference, at present I have 3 x Unifi G4 Bullet cameras connected via CAT6a back to my Unifi PoE switch and the power draws at present are (cos Unifi makes all this so easy to view): 3.05w 3.26w 3.15w I also have 3 x AP via PoE and they take a bit more power: IW-HD 4.7w IW-HD 4.55w AC-PRO 4.39w Total draw at present on thw switch is 29.27w but this will climb as I put 1 or 2 cameras out eventually and also 2 or 3 more AP. Don't go with CAT5e, do CAT6 at minimum (CAT6a is a bit more of a pain to terminate too).
    1 point
  27. I think that you can go as low as you like except at the top of the stairs where in needs to be 2m once saw 1.5m high bedroom ceiling got all excited as I thought we might be talking U-valves
    1 point
  28. Boost is higher voltage at same frequency I think. Like a torque assist
    1 point
  29. 2.3 should be fine, 2.4 used to be the base minimum but now there is no minimum and 2.3 is only 100mm less. The room shapes with be something of a factor. A large room with a low ceiling is more of a problem than a small room with a low ceiling because of the way it feels.
    1 point
  30. Yep 600 We normally cut them on the floor into 1200 lengths Then push the middle up leaves 100-150 upstand either side They go in quite quickly once you get started
    1 point
  31. Tank is easy to descale, if you call the help line they send a free kit. Is the thin hot water hose from tank to tap not replaceable? I called them today and an engineer call out is £150+VAT plus parts on top but two week wait. However they will send me a complete new tank for £250 in 2 business days provided the courier can take the faulty one back for refurb. Pleased with that, was expecting a much higher cost.
    1 point
  32. No, I was just trying to help you out in case you end up with 'must insist on a calibration certificate even though I did actually see you do the test and so you might have made the figures up anyway' type of BCO! ?
    1 point
  33. Having recently done my own windows, and mainly on my own, I'd would say it depends entirely on access and space around your house. With my installation it was such that I couldn't use any of the commonly available lifting equipment e.g. telehandler, spider crane, tracked lift, glazing robot, or a genie type lift (I hired one of these thinking it could work). I had to make my own lifts using Kwikstage scaffolding and an Elephant chain hoist using a hired in 4 pad suction lifter. I used Hird for my equipment hire who were very easy to deal with and much cheaper than GGR who I found wanted to over-sell equipment (and operator) and were a bureaucratic nightmare for a self-builder!
    1 point
  34. Just bare in mind, that health and safety requirements indicate that mechanical lifting should be used. "If" anything was to go wrong because the risk was not assessed correctly, it will result in the wrath of the HSE. That's why lifting equipment is recommended (installers usually prefer to manually lift, as it saves time and generally not that heavy) & self builds are generally not as strict as commercial. Genie lifts are good but I'm not a fan of the restrictions they present. You need a solid flat ground externally to use them and you need to be very close to the building to utilise them. This is the same with glazing robots (even the offload versions) & why we prefer a telehandler & vacuum attachment. Spider cranes are good, we tend to use them for curtain walling but generally you need to offload the windows and doors which are palletised & we need a telehandler for that anyway and a weeks hire for a telehandler & vacuum sucker is better than the stop/start and repositioning required with a spider crane (it's just slower). Sensible.
    1 point
  35. I fitted all mine, big windows 125kg, big doors 250kg. I paid for fitters on the door as i wanted the extra warranty, the company wanted to charge for a spider crane and suction device, I told them we would supply extra labour to lift them. When the fitters came they said even if I had of paid for the spider crane they would prefer to lift them manually, they said the Crain is only any good for second storey windows in the region of 200kg, any less they just pick them up. 4 lads with a large sucker each and our door was in. Windows lifted to this second level with a genie lift.
    1 point
  36. Are they doing the neighbourly thing? They could be encouraged to reflect on that. What would they do if they were in your position? Sometimes people feel a sense of entitlement to tell others what to do. The less encouragement they get the better. One worker at a site was said to have called a meddlesome neighbour an unspeakable name. Since then, no more open meddling. But such strong action is probably best left to workers who are here today and somewhere else tomorrow. Bullies keep bullying until someone turns around and makes them reflect that there is more than one perception of facts.
    1 point
  37. We fitted a 3M wide 3G slider with 4 men and 4 sets of suckers. Obviously took the sliding sash out to halve the weight to lift in one go.
    1 point
  38. Ok so previously this plumber has replaced the bottle trap and the chrome plug/silver thread waste (twice he has replaced the chrome plug/silver thread waste and I do believe it was all sealed. In desperation last night we messaged a local plumber, one that comes highly recommended but is booked til Feb asking for advice. I sent him the pictures, video and he asked for pictures from the top/of the sink itself. I explained the dripping doesn't start immediately, rather seems to occur shortly after running the tap. His comments mirror @PeterW as this is what he said: I've seen this before.. its a faulty basin where there is a small crack in the shell of the basin as it has an over flow in it. Replace the basin.. I've messaged Hudson Reed to see what they say as it their sink and it hasn't been fitted 12 months. Thanks for the video, I've got PTF tape from plumbing in the boat so I'll be fitting any new sink like shown there. I should be an expert by then as I'm doing a complete fit out of the bathroom on the boat with new shower and folding sink and fitting a whale gulper pump. Wish me luck ?
    1 point
  39. It's taken a few hours so I'm no architect either. See what you think. The door to the study has sidelights and is glazed/frosted to light the hall. as are the double doors to the kitchen. I would provision for an external porch too.
    1 point
  40. Telehandler and MRT4 vacuum sucker from GGR, you’ll need to have hired in equipment insurance or telehandler and slings. Important to understand distance from forks to glass and protecting the glass. One wrong move and you’ve smashed the glass or dropped the unit. If you have balls of steel, man power.
    1 point
  41. Vacuum kombi sucker on a crane or robot arm? @craig will be along shortly I'm sure.
    1 point
  42. Valinor, my walls are going up as we speak, I'm using full fill PIR insulation, cost me a fortune. The whole thing has been a complete and utter nightmare. My first self-build, 3 years in planning, bought into the science of everything, had multiple site meetings in the months running up to the build, had everything on site ready, colour coded notes for everyone. My architect said in 50 years he's not seen anyone better prepared. Totally pointless. It just doesn't work practically with the way the trades work, and they will not adapt to you. For example if brickies are on price work, all they want to do is lay brick, and QUICK. Air gaps, mess, thermal looping, you'll get the lot, even if you try to do the insulation yourself (I've been fitting my PIR myself around them since the first row). If you have the time, sell your PIR, at a loss if necessary. Get the brickies to concentrate on laying brick straight and accurate, lay the wall ties properly, wipe mortar away on all sides. Once they're off site, pour EPS beads in from the top ensuring all gaps are filled. I've debated and been advised by our knowledgeable friends on here to take mine down and start again. Not an option for me, so I've paid fortunes for full fill PIR, now I'm going to have to pay lots more and install insulated plasterboard on the inside to reduce the cold bridge effect, and lose internal space for the pleasure. EPS beads all the way.
    1 point
  43. You did the right choice: XPS have twice the compressive compressive strength of PIR and does not degrade in contact with water
    1 point
  44. Yes, fit the 3P now. You will loose a bigger difference in timber offcuts and dropped screws during the build. And if you like making things in a workshop, 3P machines are cheaper.
    1 point
  45. He's serious. http://tonyshouse.readinguk.org/tonytray.pdf What a legend. Pardon my ignorance.
    1 point
  46. That floor should be fine with a min 15mm wallboard, though this can be reduced if you put insulation in the cavity. There can be concerns if you fully fill the cavity with the transference of vibration via denser insulation batts to the two walls leaves given its a single stud frame. It may be better to err on the side of caution and partial fill with a small gap. Also going 75mm -> 100mm is only a marginal gain in relation to acoustics really. Going from thickness 25mm - 75/100mm makes a difference, as the thicker the insulation and / or cavity, the better the comparative sound reduction performance at lower frequencies will be. Though a lightweight (timber / metal stud) is never going to be comparable to a masonry construction at low frequencies. Also remember these are bare minimum, and it is advised to go above these. Also consider your internal doors, go for solid core rather than hollow.
    1 point
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