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Showing content with the highest reputation on 01/17/22 in all areas

  1. I am also a tiler ( past business for over 20 years fitting high end kitchens and bathrooms ) and have never used a cement board / backer board, unless the client has bought them and has insisted, and then I’ve charged for the total pita they are to cut and finish. I do not like these boards as there is zero give and they do not confirm to the substrate well enough for me. The screws are everything in terms of purchase, and you either fit screws every 100mm or at 200mm and bond the boards on with Sikaflex for belt n braces. MR ( green ) PB for me on every single job, and tanking in every area of concern / wet areas. No leaks, no comebacks, and just about to become 25 years of doing them with all my customers still having my mobile number which I’ve had from day 1.
    4 points
  2. Yes I was expecting a huge hike in my PI as a sole practitioner. Couple of drivers were.. a lot of folk are not making a good job of basement and swimming pool design and the big thing is the cladding / fire. As a guide an SE sole practitioner can get £2.0 million cover for under 2.0k a year with 5 years no claims provided you stay clear of swimming pools, tricky basements (deep ones) and fill in the forms correctly regarding the maximum height of building you are tackling and where you lay off the liability in terms of cladding design. Now you probably don't need that level of cover if you avoid the SE side. I would hope that you could get PI for 1 -1.5 K maybe a bit less? for say 500 K cover given that your are a Chartered Architect. Now in reality to work on your own and starting out you generally need the bread and butter work. The garage conversions, extensions and the like. Commercially you spread the risk of getting hit with a dodgy Client that refuses to pay.. all your eggs are not in the one basket and you can afford to take a hit / fight it out while still making a wage. Do a good job and you'll find these bad clients are few and far between.. but get the odd bag egg who owes you a lot and it scunners you. You could go for the high value jobs and only need one or two a year.. but the cash flow.. getting used to working for your self, worrying about getting bumped.. Also if you only do a few jobs a year you don't get your name about that much. Remember that if you do a job for a young go ahead couple they will then often get the bug, move to a larger house and phone you while recommending you to their friends.. On the upside these small jobs can be very technically challenging.You can be highly creative as to how you design so it's not boring. These small jobs can be a real test of a designers skill. Once you get up and running, or now, try and seek out some young keen, intelligent, dilligent small local builders that have a future.. make yourself the go to Architect and as their business grows so will yours.
    2 points
  3. Drill the holes for the screws, pump in some silicon, screw fit as normal. At the cable entry pump in silicon around the cable. You could do ore from above if it is accessible.
    1 point
  4. Look on YouTube at the AqualSeal tanking kit. Basically, once your boarding out is done whether some form of cement board or moisture resistant plasterboard, you tape all corners and junctions (like wall to floor or even perhaps wall to tray) with a super sticky, absorbent bandage. You then paint on tanking which is a liquid in alternate direction coats. End on a vertical brushed coat. You prime and tile over the tanking which is a continuous membrane.
    1 point
  5. If your 76 years old I would put 10 grand aside to cover your gas bill and spend the rest of your money going on holiday, sod the insulation.
    1 point
  6. Mine was 1.4 which I was disappointed with, I wanted under 1, but they guy doing the testing nearly wet himself with excitement proclaiming how good it was.
    1 point
  7. Ooh er, can’t remember and my house docs have disappeared, was fairly good, I seem to remember that it was around 1.5, which pissed you off as you wanted under 1. But there were the few leaks around a couple of windows, and where the air intake came in for your wood burner (a very good reason to not have one, just another large hole to fill up). You filled the holes where the cables and pipes came in at the time, but don't think they were that bad. Can't remember if you adjusted the kitchen to conservatory door, think you did.
    1 point
  8. Ya do, that's perfect. No need for EPS or anything else.
    1 point
  9. OK so the thermal expansion of screed is negligible between 5 and 35°C to the point it is barely measurable. Over an 8m slab you will get less than 2mm total expansion which will easily be absorbed by EPS.
    1 point
  10. That’s probably because you asked for eps100 this is not a stock item, but eps75 is, you just want the 75 as Peter said it’s on the shelf in wickes.
    1 point
  11. Just thought I'd send some appreciation for his work on it.
    1 point
  12. Change your BM. It is a standard product that is available everywhere - just check your local Wickes for stock as a 150mm upstand basically needs one sheet for nearly 20 linear metres of EPS so you don’t need that many sheets. https://www.wickes.co.uk/Kay-Metzeler-General-Purpose-Polystyrene-EPS70---2400mm-x-1200mm-x-25mm/p/210823
    1 point
  13. Just use 25mm EPS and be done with it.
    1 point
  14. The one time you don't want a swearword filter because - after seeing that - swearing is entirely appropriate. Fekkin ' ell. Poor owners. I bet they feel like they've had the stuffing knocked out of them.
    1 point
  15. Yes it is condensation. Moist air from the warmer ground rising to hit the freezing underside of the OSB, condensing and freezing. Flat roof will tend to suffer more than pitched. No wind currently, so the ventilation is not doing much.
    1 point
  16. I used 12.5mm Aqua Panel (Knauf I think?). Had to cut with an old circular saw and carbide grid jigsaw bits. That and Starrett cutters. Quite sharp and dusty. If the timber studwork you're screwing it to is fractionally off it hairline cracks. (It is tbh still held together by an integral reinforcing mesh).You need special screws for it too and often special joint filler between boards. I would though use it again.
    1 point
  17. We had exactly this. My plan was geotec membrame, top soil, seed. However that got delayed and after a single spring / summer plants have completely taken over and it hasn't moved a jot and neither are we getting any soil washed away. So if you can leave it a bit then do and see what nature does. Might save a few quid and effort
    1 point
  18. Next stage finished and allowed to set for 24 hours. This layer was much easier to apply than the 2 basecoat layers, buttered on nicely and gives a nice texture to the wall - you may not see it in the photos but the white has soft whisps of grey so it's not an entirely uniform white. Now I just need to sand this down lightly and apply what look to be runny types of resin, not quite the same as epoxy resin. The instructions are slightly confusing as with this kit I have 2 types of finishing coat, one durable, one extremely durable. I've been supplied with enough to apply two coats of each but the instructions only suggest one coat of each. If I apply 2 coats of each, I'll have to wait 12 hours between each coat, which obviously extends the finish time by quite a bit, but I'm erring on the side of caution so leaning towards 2 coats of each, just to be thorough. Pics of the second microcement layer:
    1 point
  19. Yes, I could be there daily to be seen. But honestly, if I had to dispute anything with the builder, I would probably cry (menopause has a lot to answer for ?). My husband is fantastic with people and sorting things, I am the one that does all the emailing and researching, but he will be working full time and wont be able to oversee things.
    1 point
  20. Most make upwards of 250 per day
    1 point
  21. Is it battery compatible? If , for example, you boil an kettle and the battery is supplying some or all of the power, when the kettle switches off the battery cannot drop its output immediately so discharges to the grid as it ramps itself down. So you don't want that to be seen as spare solar power by your diverter and you probably need to have the diverter turn itself off for, say, 30 seconds every 10 minutes to check that the export is still there. If it's not you were just draining the battery.
    1 point
  22. First time I'd ever cut tiles and I decided to do tiles in the wet room corner!
    1 point
  23. Site rates walls £20-25 Little more for mosaic Private rates seam to be higher
    1 point
  24. Jenki Lot's to look forward to. Looks like you are pretty close to the sea so check the plastisol specification regarding corrosion near the sea and where you stand on that re cladding warranty on the pods. All the best.
    1 point
  25. I use cold formed C sections from time to time. Couple of examples. One was loft conversion with rear dormer was really tight for height. Could not go above the ridge line and had to maintain 2.0m ceiling height on the inside. Eventually after exploring a good few options I plumped for a 140mm deep cold formed cee section with insulation on top.. a warm roof so the steel is within the the insulation envelope thus avoiding many condensation issues. In many ways it was the geometry of the conversion that forced this solution, tricky connection details, other ventilation issues and these kept closing down the more convensional solutions you see on many attic conversions. Another example.. Client requirement to minimise disruption to the floor below and maximise attic floor to ceiling height. Need to span some 5.0m with some relatively big point loads from dormers.. and the structural walls below are all in the wrong place. The existing attic joists are 200mm deep with lath and plaster ceilings.. that must be kept intact.. no cracking! The existing attic joists are supported by transfer beams mid span. See some posts on BH where the roofs have a purlin supporting the rafters. The transfer beam is just like the purlin but at attic floor level. The problem is that this transfer beam has to go as if not it will end up in the middle of the new floor. To overcome this shallower back to back cold formed Cee sections between the existing joists to span the 5.0m are introduced. This works well as the cee sections clear the lath and plaster and leave room to run electric cables and small bore pipes. Also, as the walls below are not in the right position the cees in places function as cantilevers. Now this all sounds awfully complicated but it's not. The sections are straight out of say the Albion / Steadmans brochure. One key here is also to use their standard punching pattern for bolting. Remember that these sections are used by the kilometer in industrial buildings all the time. One thing though is that you have to do your own calcs for these when say using them as cantilvers and off piste applications.. and the calcs can be very lengthy and time consuming unless you are familiar with cold formed steel design. Lastly to get the best out of you local builder it's good to provide the fabrication drawings for your cold formed sections in say the Steadmans / Albion , other formats. All the builder has to do is then send the drawings to the supplier. This is standard practice in the industrial sector. Often a local builder who just does say extensions is less familiar with cold formed steel in these applications , but if you hold their hand a bit they often engage. @Annker Keep exploring this as on option, even if to rule out at the end of the day.
    1 point
  26. 1 point
  27. Thanks - that's reassuring. Engineer says 45 degrees should be fine. Plan will be to pin it, spread as much topsoil on as we can stretch to and seed with wildflowers asap.
    1 point
  28. A thermal store is a very bad match to a heat pump. For a thermal store to work the water it stores has to be quite a lot hotter than than the hot water delivery temperature or else it will only have a tiny capacity before your hot water starts to go cold. And heating the water in the thermal store much hotter is not what heat pumps are good at. Many of us find heating the hot water to 48 degrees in an UVC works well and when you run the hot tap you get pretty much a constant 48 degrees until it runs out and then goes cold quite suddenly. The G3 won't add much cost if you can find a plumber you get on with where you do the bulk of the plumbing and just get him to connect the cold water with all the pressure control gubbins and test and certify it. Several have done that. I just asked a plumber I have met on several jobs and he was happy do do it for not much money. building control will expect to see the G3 sign off.
    1 point
  29. It’s looking very nice! Good luck with the next steps.
    1 point
  30. A very warm welcome.... Yours is the most asked question on BH. The question of cost underpins almost every post here, even the technical ones.So the very best advice we could give is to suggest you waste an complete week or perhaps more reading BH. If you do it in a focused way it really - honestly - will repay the effort. In the first year of reading BH , we avoided bills for at least £17k ( by changing the pile design for our house based on advice and links included on BH) Please though, do always do your own Due Diligence. We are not experts, just hard-bitten , nosey little tinkers ..... Best of luck Ian
    1 point
  31. It's doable for £200K, but that needs to exclude the land, design fees + surveys and the cost of getting utilities to the plot. For energy efficiency you need to look at and understand Passive House designs. A visit to the NSBRC in Swindon is a must.
    1 point
  32. You will need a switch fuse to connect to the caravan, you need one with a metal enclosure to take the gland of the SWA cable. Terminate the SWA at the supply end but at the caravan end, insulate and do not connect the SWA (use a large plastic stuffing gland) and connect the caravan to a TT earth. Get a door on that cubicle, the meter and it's connections are not waterproof and it would not surprise me if BG refuse to connect a meter without a door on the cubicle.
    1 point
  33. Having laid UFH pipes I don’t think it would be possible to thread pipes as you want. How difficult would it be to take that top mesh up then put it down again? (I recon faster and easier than trying to thread UFH pipe under it ?)
    1 point
  34. No, it doesn't. I tested this with the big cable that was crossing under our plot and which had no wayleave or easement. When pushed the DNO admitted that the cable had been put there many years earlier without any formal authority, so they relocated it and reduced our bill for moving other stuff accordingly, plus they waived the normal charges for drawing up a new wayleave.
    1 point
  35. No, not quite - national grid own all the 400kV and 275kV infrastructure and some 132kV, once it steps down to 132kV, 33kV, 11kV, then the end user voltages 415V then it is owned by, for example Scottish Power, Southern Electric etc... albeit these guys are also energy suppliers they also operate, regionally, the network. So in Scotland it is common to see Scottish power working on lines etc. I don't know who it would be in your area. So that is better than it being national grid network as they are not moving for anyone - however, it depends what is up there, you see all supplies are 3 phase to a point, lots of older houses even have 3 phase directly into them (now they just pick 1 phase for balancing reasons and run in single phase cable from the street as it is cheaper and easier and safer really) just because a house only has 1 phase coming into it, doesn't mean that it wasn't tapped from a 3 phase cable only meters away from your front door, so this is why I am interested in your cables because depending on what is up there it could potentially have been installed privately to take a connection to a dwelling - the DNO then installed a meter on the end of it all and the assumption is it is owned by the network operator, but it may not be! I was involved in a rural project where we specified SP approved poles and cable, ran a pole drop and installed in SP approved methods, SP approved duct and more SP approved cable and ran in a cable to a property that SP then came along and connected up for the customer. It was far cheaper than getting them to do it - ultimately it meant it was privately owned from the local tap on a pole, albeit the DNO had equipment in the building that was theirs - bit of a ramble but my point is that in rural environments is common to see private water, electric and phone networks, albeit a supplier will then utilise it, IF they can see compliance to their network spec. If your cable is private, and with no paperwork to suggest otherwise, you may end up in a situation you can arrange for a new ducted section to be installed - you do the hard work - they pull a cable through the duct and drop it at pole A, run underground for your site, and it comes back up at pole B. I cannot promise anything, but we have an account to a network operators database which may let me look into your cables for you, the issue is that in rural environments (and city amazingly), believe it or not, the operator often doesn't actually know where half the cables go to and from - I was absolutely astounded when I first learnt this. If you PM me the grid coordinates of part of the line in contention, I can see if I can pull it up and see if there is any info on it.
    1 point
  36. Wayleaves do not continue when the property changes hands , so if you have recently bought the land even if there was a wayleave with the previous owner it would not continue when you bought the place
    1 point
  37. Pretty common to have no wayleave or easement. I've experienced this three times in places we've owned, including our present house. I managed to negotiate with the DNO on the basis that their existing pole and underground cable was crossing our land without authority, and had part of the cost of putting a new pole in place and running overhead cables underground absorbed by them, on the condition that we agree to a wayleave with them.
    1 point
  38. Picture taken from Facebook, no comment yet on how it started.
    0 points
  39. I used 50mm 'cause I'm special.
    0 points
  40. Culture and better weather. And the language is easier to understand.
    0 points
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