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The majority of the scaffolding is down. A long way to go still

Not complete . Glazing on sides to go in later - very happy with it so far .

Not so long since this was a storage area with a passage still full of mud and cow manure. Curtains up is a big moment. The rest of the place is at first fix with pb coming behind it.

I had never built a stone wall before but decided to give it a go. Stone IMO is way more forgiving than brick or block - by its rustic nature! Think I got away with it...

Good evening all, Today we received a letter from HMRC dated 16 June telling us that our claim has been accepted (with no disputes!) and would be paid to us in 10 working days. Great news, but even better the payment was already in and made on the 16th. Sharing this news here to: 1. Let others know the current timescales of claims. We posted ours a few days before the end of April this year, so around 7 or 8 week in total. 2. To say a big thank you to the members of forum for all the great advice shared. I spend more than a couple of evenings browsing past posts and learnt considerably more about the VAT claim process here that anywhere else, and it all paid off. Great job.

Submitted on the 18th 22nd they emailed requesting i upload 10 specific invoices, uploaded that night. 26th, full claim amount landed in my bank account this afternoon new system seems pretty good!

Worktop went in easily .

Got the drone up yesterday. First time the flat roof has been clear of stuff since April. Also did another tidy up so the whole site is now clear with the spare materials organised by type in one corner out of the way. We should have been getting the drainage finished this week but the flooding in the local area has held the team up on another site. I suspect there will be another delay due to the coming storm. Interesting comment from someone yesterday. I had the magic mastic man have a look round to get an idea of the size of the job. I can apply mastic well enough but he’s a bit of an artist with the stuff and his work is impeccable. He asked me where the heating was. I told him there is nothing in the house yet. He couldn’t believe how warm it was.

Just seen this highlighted on a tax & finance email I get, and couldn't see it mentioned here yet https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-diy-housebuilders-scheme-digitisation-of-claims-and-extending-time-limit/vat-digitisation-of-claims-and-extending-time-limit-for-diy-housebuilders-scheme From 5th Dec 2023 apparently: * The time limit (I think for all claims) will be 6 months from completion, not 3 * There'll be the option to claim online (which presumably will also let you see status etc) * They will apparently no longer require all the invoices at the time of submitting the claim. I assume that will put things on a similar footing to businesses, where they might inspect some claims/ask for a random sample of evidence, and potentially impose penalties etc if they discover you've claimed something you shouldn't have - they don't spell out exactly how that will work. So would still be important to make sure you have & have checked all the invoices, but no longer the need/risk to post off all the originals to HMRC and hope they arrive...

Hi, I wrote an introduction post on here back in 2021 and shared some floorplans for our planned new build in North Wiltshire. As it's been a while, I thought I'd re-introduce myself and do an update post. In early 2023 we broke ground. Since then we built the insulated raft foundation (Greenraft) and the ground floor walls in Polarwall ICF. It's slow going as I'm doing almost all the work myself. We've had a fair few issues, the biggest were our first wall supplier (Isotex) going bust after we’d paid them, and I had to fire our combined engineer/architectural technicians (probably worth a post in itself – but long story short, I can't recommend Build Collective). I’m hoping to ask around the forums for some help/advice on a few things in the coming weeks. In the meantime, enjoy some progress photos! The dig and backfilling, with roller. Sand layer with insulated drainage pop-ups Greenraft insulation for insulated slab foundation. 200mm insulation and 300mm concrete slab Mesh, rebar and underfloor heating Concrete pour And today, with ground floor walls up - ready for the pour

Came downstairs from painting to this

Finally!!!! pretty much 2 3/4 years after breaking ground. I think that i will be having a drink tonight!!!

Like many other people, I have had slow progress getting started, but I now finally have the diggers on site.

Lots of the ideas in this thread revolve around sight lines. For good reason. Lining up sight lines doesn't necessarily cost anything but can really change the feel of a place. It's one of the things that makes a bespoke design different to an off the shelf one. My own build was done to a tight budget (about £20k for 50m², plus groundworks/services). Here's some of the decisions I made to keep the budget in check whilst retaining what I think is a pretty nice finish: -My favourite tip is to avoid small windows. Consolidate all your glazing in to a few huge windows. Non opening if possible. You will get a much lower cost/m² with much better thermal properties. It's an absolute win-win. I was really surprised by how cheap a huge non opening 3G window was. -I'm also a big fan of bamboo flooring. I'm not up to date with prices but about five years ago it was half the price of decent oak, and much sturdier. -you don't need solid oak skirtings and door linings. I went with MDF which was a fraction of the cost and also much easier to fit. Need to screw the skirting to the wall, or messed up amitre? Just fill and paint afterwards. - larch and corrugated steel make very cost effective finishing materials, quick and easy to work with. - it's not necessary to spend big money on kitchens and bathrooms. I've seen people spend more on a kitchen tap than my whole bathroom cost. I went secondhand for all my kitchen appliances, but bought good brand names (Bosch and Siemens). They've outlasted the cheap brand new stuff I bought in my other house.

Perhaps this can inspire anyone in the process of renovation/ transformation. This has taken 2 years from purchase, and the rest of the building is still a shell being fitted out. But, yes it's a liveable space, and the caravan is almost redundant.

With the great weather in the last two weeks, following on from the slab pour, we will endeavour to pour the walls of the house tomorrow. I'm thinking I won't sleep tonight. Mentally listing all the things I wanted to do, and re ticking them off. First 7 cube is arriving at 8.30. 🤞 I'll leave this picture with you....

and the results are in.............. ........0.98ACH! i'm very happy and hit my target of 1ACH. could we have got it lower? maybe, but we calculated the internal volume at just over 1400m3 over 4 stories (basement, ground floor, first floor and loft) and it's got some interesting junctions between sections of the buildings so i think to get in below 1ACH is a job well done.

Good news everyone! We just called their office just to follow up because they didn’t reply from my email. The glass is on order and they will get back in contact to arrange for fitting. (will update you once they have done it) The heavy weight on my shoulders have been lifted!!! Thinking of the court proceedings had given me so much anxiety. All your inputs and advises have helped me so much, so thank you ever so much. This has been a big lesson for me and hopefully this will be a lesson to someone else. Again, thank you!!!

Help BuildHub financially while getting a £50 credit on your energy account! For anyone considering moving to Octopus Energy, please message me for a referral code. Using that code will result in £100 being split between you and Buildhub. When the credit arrives in my Octopus account, I'll transfer £50 to the BuildHub Paypal account and post a confirmation screenshot in this thread (or to you privately, if you prefer) as proof the transfer happened. As you know, BuildHub is a non-commercial forum run entirely by unpaid volunteers. We pay for hosting etc solely through member donations. If this referral scheme is successful, the need for periodic donation drives will significantly be reduced, or perhaps even done away with completely. Thanks for helping to fund the forum! List of referrals: @trialuser @Dobbie

The house has warmed up and stayed warm! I’ve booked the original plumber to come and do a full service in the new year and flush the system (mostly so I can see him squirm). im going to clean it again in a couple of days and see if it’s got anymore in. thanks again everyone

Hah! It's amazing to see the forum is still in full flow with the architect bashing. It's amazing the misunderstanding of what we actually do, fees are not just based on the time taken to do a task, I can do a house layout very quickly, but only because I've accumulated years of knowledge, worked with various planning departments, worked with different build methods on different types of sites, have appropriate insurance, have a network of consultants to deal with any scenario etc etc The fact is that buildhub continually perpetuates the myths that architects only draw pretty pictures and don't have construction knowledge - and that percentage fees mean that architects don't have incentive to keep budget in mind etc. It's just a nonsense and the old heads who dominate the forum giving out poor advice to people at the start of the process which can never be rowed back from. Really the main reason that I stopped frequenting the forum, I'm amazed that there are still some who bother wasting time helping people and trying to defend a profession against ignorant misinformation. The number of times I've heard on here that construction drawings are just a copy and paste exercise is crazy - especially post grenfell and in the throws of brexit. In the case of the op - there are a number of options, whoever you decide to use - make sure that it's someone you can get on with, you're likely to deal with them for a reasonable amount of time. You get good and bad in all walks of life, look at previous work, maybe speak to previous clients. Go and visit the neighbours one which you want to mirror and make sure it's what you actually want too - building is expensive so make the most of it!

Thanks for all the comments, I ended up painting the ceiling with Tikkurila Anti Reflex 2 and it looks so much better!

@FM2015 I'm just about calming down. Breathe.. It's up, the walls are straight/ plumb, but the day had some issues. Used hoppers and a 360 until it broke🙈. I'll write up a blog, but we got 12.3cube in the walls, the 360 gave up with about a cube to go. Managed to finish with a manatu, buckets and shovels. Also managed to pour a foundation wall for the path with offcuts of the ICF. So beer time.

I see a few mentions of the expense of MVHR. I self installed a simple system complete for less then £1500 in a 260m2 house. It has no sensors just manual boost which we use occasionally, otherwise it stays on trickle rate 24/7, even when some doors and windows are open. Really happy with the air quality (which I monitor with sensors), best value for money in the whole project and a no brainer in a new house IMO.

All the reading of posts on here at the design stage and the hard work implementing the experience of others on your own self build can be summed up / justified with just 1 image. Even when building on a very tight budget. This is my energy usage @ The Windy Roost since we got here. Upto January 24 we were in the static, we were never really warm used Air to Air heatpump for heating, hot water and cooking was LPG. We also had around 4 summer months of our cabins being used, again electricity for heating and cooking, DHW is LPG. The blue line makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. That's our electricity for the self build, a whole house fully electric and blissfully warm with ample DHW. (With some limited cabin usage). To all self builders going through this, it's worth the effort👍.

Works no problem, I even have 300mm pipe spacing, 100mm concrete and again no issue. But they are a bit of a learning curve. Few things I found through experimenting, you need to be aware of. Changing floor temperature and house is quite a long process (many hours), so a normal thermostat is just rubbish and you get big under and over swings. You really need to use a 0.1 Deg hysterisis thermostat. You cannot use room compensation as the algorithms cannot cope with the long reaction times. Don't bother trying to do temperature setbacks, they generally don't work the way you expect. You cannot switch the heating on at work and hope to have a warm house when you get home (unless you do when you arrive at work). There is zero point zoning, run as a single zone. Two options of how to operate, charge the floor and use like a storage heater, or continuously feed the floor at a low temperature. I have done both and they work equally well. 5 degs difference in flow temp is the difference in the two methods. I am on E7 with ASHP, battery and charge the floor at 33 degs (overnight), for between 7 and 12 hrs depending on outside temp, automated with a timer thermostat. Generally it takes another 12 to 18 hrs to cool enough for the heating to come back on again. The wife was quite shocked the other week when it was near freezing outside (6pm) and I told the heating actually went off at about 10am and was not coming back on until after midnight. You can't do that with 50mm screed.

They look good the HEP20 ones...

Heya , I'm 'self-self building' small dimension timber frame structures [Doug Fir] to learn how to eventually build a house ... car tyre and gravel foundations , 63 by 38mm studs , joists and rafters - sheep's wool + straw bale insulation , tyvek and slim board cladding for walls and the roof , - with 8mm timber panelling and clay plaster frames on the inner walls and cathedral ceilings , plus oiled 20mm boards on the floor ... refurbished 2nd hand doors and windows .

I thought I would post a pic of a Billy bookcase hack that I finished recently in case it is of interest to anyone. The total cost was under £500 - £200 for the bookcases, then architrave, skirting, paint, facing strips, lights, caulk etc came to a bit under £300. Billy's are pretty ugly on their own, but if you cover the edges up with proper wood then they don't look so bad. If I was doing this for my forever home I would use a solid wood bookcase like a Hemnes instead. The first job was to figure out how to get the bookcases to completely fill the wall recess that I wanted them to go in. This involved calculating how wide the spaces between the bookcases needed to be to work with the available Billy sizes, which are 400mm and 800mm wide. A lot of this was dictated by what facing stripwood I could get straight off the shelf without having to rip it down along the full length. It was a lot of headscratching and I had to make a spreadsheet in the end to figure it all out. I then moved the electrical socket outlet that was on that wall to the top of the bookcase so that it could be accessed after the bookcases were fitted. I made up all the bookcases, screwing the shelves through from the sides and back to keep them from bending. This will mean they can't be moved about but I am fine with that. Billy's often look bad because the shelves go bendy and I wanted to avoid that. I then took my time levelling the bookcases on a base of CLS framework, then screwed the bookcase units together with spacing strips in between so that the facing strips which covered the edges of the Billy's were the exact right width without needing cut down. The whole unit was secured to the wall with angle brackets. I fitted CLS right around the outer edge of the bookcase unit to give the architrave something to fix to. I then cut strips to cover the front of the shelves and painted those, along with the vertical edge facing strips, architrave and skirting and then fitted them all. I did start filling in the unneeded shelf support holes with caulk, but it was a massive faff and didn't make it look that much better so I gave up on that. The lights were bathroom cabinet lights out of the B&Q bargain bin for £3 each but were much too cold with fixed leds, so I bought a piece of theatre lighting gel in orange for a couple of quid and cut wee discs to fit into the lights to warm them up. The lights are wired together and plug into a smart plug that is powered from the relocated socket at the top of the bookcase. You can't see it behind the architrave and the lights can be turned on by telling Google to 'turn the bookcase lights on'. A good party trick. Here's the finished article, with the 'before' pic at the bottom for context. I'm pretty pleased with it, given the cost. The edge facing strips give the impression that it has been made with solid chunky timber and the round edge shelf cover strips also hide the fact it is made with particleboard. I've done a wee bit of other decorating in the room too. 😉

I DIY fitted a MVHR. It works really, really well, however do not under estimate the work in installing. We went from a house that had mould in the bathrooms (no extractor fans) to much better air quality. Running the ducts in the loft was the easiest, for a given value of easy in the loft. Running ducts down to the ground floor took a while as hiding ducting in cupboards and also ensuring the loft end worked was more effort. Fitting the intake/extract vents in the roof was straightforward for a roofer! It took five weekends; One for the intake/extract/condensate drain/unit setup. One for the upstairs rooms (two bathrooms, three bedrooms). Another for an extension bedroom (should have hired a core drill for going through an outside wall that is now internal). Another for downstairs ducts to kitchen and lounge. Another for a downstairs loo that involved dropping part of the ceiling to fit the ceiling duct as I could not access above it. I think I could do it in half the time or less as now more confident. All my parts came from ebay, isells, BPC, Screwfix. I did the design myself with a spreadsheet of room volumes and flow rates. I went slightly below the suggested flow rates for "Normal" rates and over for Boost. I overspeced the ducting to reduce noise (ie twin ducts to all rooms as running these is not much work relatively). I fitted noise silencers. I would go higher for boost, to clear damp air quickly, however above 90% flow rate it is noticeable noisy. We have virtually zero condensation. The odd, tiny bit behind some plantation shutters on some cold nights. Some condensation on a door lock that is a cold bridge in a yet to be vented room (its the hardest to get to) and sometimes on the letterbox flap (needs more insulation!). If you have reasonable loft access and only need to do runs in the loft this will help reduce install effort allot. I assume you could have the intake/exhaust through a gable end which should be quite easy (given value of easy). Think of the condensate drain and where that goes (I suggest a soil vent spigot to keep it warmish). It is great, but allot of work. I would have a strong think of doing it again, but on balance would do it again. I did consider four individual room MVHR as these would be quite allot of work to install (core drilling, running electrical feeds) and these are expensive units. I think this would be cost neutral compared to my MVHR. Maybe slightly less work, but not much. Running costs would be more due to more fans. It would not have improved the air in non-vented rooms compared to MVHR. Your air leaks might be an issue although depending on units you can set them to run intake fans faster than extract to positively pressure the house which will help with internal air quality. This would be slightly less efficient as you are losing air that is not going via the heat exchanger. On either method consider the filters the units have. Mine goes upto M5 (A "Pollen filter" ie 50% of Pm10). Newer models have HEPA level filters. You could DIY a HEPA filter on the intake from BPC/Isells bits. Sorry that turned into an essay...

I’ve completed the ecological building systems method on my ground floor. Results are amazing, can walk on it bare foot when it’s -5 outside and be very comfortable.

Staircase in. Feels like a big ‘step’ literally. Really happy with it. Nice job. Made locally and not too dear.

I like to close threads off. The one thing that annoys me a little about some threads on here is people start them, lots of people contribute suggestions and you never find out how it ended and it’s helpful to know for the future when other folk have a similar problem. They replaced the window and the tint matches perfectly. However, they also damaged all the aluminium cladding and window beads in the process so I lost my rag a bit about that. They have all subsequently now been replaced too. This all started back in April when the windows were delivered two days earlier than planned and just before the scaffolding went up. I didn’t want to take them as the likelihood of them getting damaged was high. But Heb Homes knew better and said they’d accept the risk. Sure as eggs is eggs a window got smashed and everyone on-site denied it was them. The scaffolding company said it’s what insurance is for 🙄 I pointed out that it wasn’t the money as the timber kit company were covering that. It was the consequential hassle this would generate for me trying to get this fixed and I was right about that as it took 6 months and wasted hours of my time. No idea how much this cost Heb and Nordan but a lot. The good news the two incorrect glazing units were put to good use in some garden rooms in the local town.

This thread is about trust, not plumbing. @Dee, Forgive the change of focus to my experience: I write this to illustrate the point about trust. I paid my way round my first degree by cleaning the windows of the Great And the Good in Oxfordshire. Often, I (stupidly) gave a year's credit impressed as I was -then- by customers' status - many of them landed gentry. Think of the largest estate in Oxfordshire - it's an offical palace linked to Wellington. Well I cleaned there, and the Lord Lieutenants, a very famous bankers house(s), and a good few Peers of the Realm, not far from where Clarkson lives now. I had been working there for two or three years. At the end of one year, I asked for payment. The non-resident owner (he lived in Charlbury nearby) asked me how much it was. I've forgotten how much now..... He grunted, took a large roll of £20 notes out of his back pocket and peeled off £100 LESS than he owed me. "I'll owe you the rest" he said looking at the floor. I looked at him and his wife who was standing nearby. Her face flushed red, and glared at him . "Your Grace," I replied, "Gestures like that are designed to remind me that I'm down here, and that you are up there - and we knew that before I stated cleaning your windows: could you pay me the rest please" He hadn't heard because he had disappeared down the corridor. His wife silently took out her checkbook and wrote a cheque for double the difference. Next job, that day was the The Lord Lieutenants place - as it happens right at the end of the estate private drive. I was still angry when I got there. He sensed it and asked what was wrong. I told the story. "Hmm , he grinned " he just wants to make sure you come back: had he paid you in full, you might never go back. And he knows half the Board at St Cross (my college)- if you put one foot out of line, you'll never work in Oxfordshire again - you're not just cleaning windows - youre selling TRUST AND clean windows. Now, pop down to the wine cellar and choose yoruself a good claret" Top bloke. Sir Ashley Ponsonby that was. When I got my degree, he put on a silver service tea for my whole family at his private residence. Taught me an unforgettable lesson. Unless you have come to know and trust a tradesman, initially retain an appropriate amount. For the first time someone works for us, I usually ask for the trades day rate, and pay promptly for the labour. And pay for the materials after 30 days if all is well.

I listened master. 40mm coming through the block and beam straight in to a 50mm bend and then 50mm all the way to the soil pipe.

After some debate, Jan and I decided that we could press out the sag in the cells if I made a suitable jig, so I made up an H frame that is held against the side of the SunAmp by some tape strapping, and which could hold a pressing plate (a square of OSB3, and with two bars that allowed a set of folding wedges to apply the pressure. I then brought the SA to temperature and used the wedges to load up the pressing plate and push the cells back true. All that remains is to allow the cells to cool back to solid phase and then I can reassemble the SA. A bit Heath Robinson, but simple, very cheap and effective. Job done. Here is a pic (note that the wedges are pretty much at the end of their travel as the cells are back in shape and position :

Sadly in the summer, my brother's wife died very suddenly and unexpectedly. She had been something of a hoarder and none of the family had been to visit them for some years. They would only come to us. When we went to his flat we found it was a mess. We had professional cleaners in and then I arranged to have it totally refurbished, so that it would be easier for him to look after once he moved back in. He has been staying with my parents for the last few months. We were very worried about his health, but he is doing much better now. The flat actually smelled like someone smoked even though they don't and I think the air quality affected their health. They purchased the flat when they got married 22 years ago and it had not been touched since then. Further they refused to open any vents and properly use extractor fans so they had a big mould problem. We replaced the kitchen and an en suite, replaced all the flooring with hardwood and have had the whole place redecorated. Hardwood was expensive, but will be a lot easier to look after. The previous carpets were stuck to the floor beneath them. When the flat was built the woodwork was painted cream eggshell, it looks awful as it is so similar to the magnolia walls, that you would think someone had emulsion the woodwork. Took three coats to get it white. As well as organising everything, I did the new kitchen design and put up the light fittings. I reckon spending just a few pounds on lights massively elevates a place. The kitchen and en suite floors had to be replaced as they had started to rot due to water leaks. I also luckily discovered a leaking soil pipe just before the new kitchen went in. Just need to order some new furniture now and put up some curtains. Found a small building company to work with who were very good. Very impressed with DIY Kitchens. The original kitchen had bizarrely been installed around 50mm into the room to avoid cutting the pipes into the back of the units with the oven jutting out a further 150mm due to the soil stack. I fixed this in the new design. It was quite a bit of space to lose in a room basically only 3m square. I think the before and after pictures are pretty obvious. The before pictures are after the professional cleaning.

well after a year of notdoingverymuchreally this week marked a milestone- final stairs.

Very nice garage, I am quite jealous. That’s on the list for when I get a plot near to me somewhere. Currently on the hunt and hoping to find something in Wales that is very good bang for the buck and to build the forever home in the background. Been busy creating homes for others for a long time, my turn soon hopefully!

did this at our old place, got a price for ceder and nearly fainted. bought a load of 4.8m treated 2x1 roofing batten. put it through our DeWalt portable planer and it came out lovely and smooth. stained with osmo and you cant really tell the difference. used a battery brad nailer for invisible fixings. whole lot cost less than £100, the osmo being the dearest part.

Hey, go easy on yourself. S**t happens. Nothing and no one in life is perfect. Ever. You can only do your best. Try to shrink things down in your mind and imagine you are advising a friend. Sure it's annoying and very unlucky, but it will get sorted out and repaired. And it will look absolutely fine. I bought a little endoscope in anticipation of problems like this, to help diagnose things, but have only had to use it to look at spiders so far. I think self building does your head in a bit. 3am is a bad time.

If you read my posts, In my location they wanted £2k for a pump. That's £2000 pound. Sorry I've baffled you, we can't all be superman @Dave Jones😍

Acting in self-defence is a reaction. Buying a taser and waiting for this chap to come back is pre-meditated, eg you'll be off to jail in a heartbeat. How long you spend there will depend on whether this individual has an underlying health issue (pacemaker etc) and you've inadvertently killed him. Stand down with the Charles Bronson approach!! If all he did was shout and try to intimidate you then it shows he's just got a screw loose and is highly unlikely to take this any further. After the red mist subsides, most episodes become water under the bridge. Take some time to reflect on what went on, and realise this was a case of mistaken identity and not a result of something you did (unless the Uber driver cut this guy up and you were there for him to vent at?). Building gates higher is something to do to protect you against creeper burglaries and trespassers, but they don't shout and scream, they work in near silence. This guy was clearly just a showman, as anyone seriously pissed off and after revenge wouldn't have spoken to you other than to say "have this", upon where you'd have received a swift smack to the chops, or 2. The only issue here is (setting aside emotional upset and you both having to eventually 'get over this') if he comes back to vandalise your property / vehicles. I'd just buy a couple of cheap battery Ring cameras and a outdoor POE WAP, cabled through a window which you can then just close over the cable, and run those for a month or so until this anxiety subsides. Which it will. It's just raw right now as this has clearly shaken both of you up badly. After days, then weeks, then months of nothing happening you'll realise this was just a one-off altercation that shouldn't have happened. The police will 100% pursue this chap through his reg number, so also await their response. They may even suggest restorative measures, where they accompany this guy to your house / you meet at the police station etc for you to discuss it on neutral grounds and to allow both parties to speak. Once you offer assurance that you couldn't have possibly done anything to this chap he will then have to apologies and then you won't have such anxiety any longer. He will then be bound over to keep the peace or charged and put in front of a judge, you'll likely be asked to decide as you'll have to press charges when he is tracked down. Possibly after speaking to him you may decide that him being bound over would suffice.

Feel for you. Much will depend on just what stage of the work you are at. Seems like the beam B1 is in place but no extension roof? I had a quick look at the extract of the calculations. I can't see page 7 but the loading used to design the beam looks about the right magnitude holding up a bungalow roof and the load from the flat extension roof. The mention of a second storey is probably just the SE maybe just calling the bungalow roof the second storey? The beam is checked for at least three criteria. Strength checks.. moment capacity Mc 429.9 kNm, buckling strength Mb 145.9 kNm both of which are greater than the design moment applied to the beam = 121.5 kNm Deflection is also checked against a limit of beam span / 360 = 19.6mm, calculated deflection is 10.883mm I get 10.9mm .. close enough. However B1 has plates welded to the top and bottom flange which stiffens the beam quite a lot. Thus you would expect that the beam deflection would be less still and if it is less still why are they (the plates) there? One reason may be that the SE has decoupled the calculations and assumed that as the loads are not over the.. call it centre of gravity of the beam and we are only seeing part of the calculations. This eccentricity causes the beam to twist more and the SE may have designed the plates to resist this extra twisting and left the remainder of the beam to carry the other forces. The main thing here is that I am not casting doubt on the SE's calculations but would ask out of curiosity if this is the reason for the plates. Also the plates are shown as the same width as the beam flange, nominally 173.2mm. To get the plate flush means cutting a long standard flat bar down lengthways.. more expensive and also if the plate is flush your standard fillet welds are not appropriate. You need to use partial penetration welds or similar which are more expensive. Normally I would use a standard 200mm wide plate which give loads of room for the standard fillet weld, especially as we know that not all beams / plates are truly straight. Again I would ask.. why was it done this way and are there other underlying reasons for this design approach that are not immediatly apparent. Now this is really a mute point as the steel is paid for and B1 is in place.. other than it will let your SE know that you are now better informed. It is what it is. It's a great pity that neither the Architect or SE alerted you to this low height much earlier. But what options might be available to raise the soffit of the beam. Well it could maybe go up quite a lot until the bottom is almost level or just above the ceiling of the extension. Here we would do a bit of joinery work to brace the existing roof trusses as we would be disrupting the joint between the existing roof ceiling joist and the rafter. Turning to demolishing and rebuilding the supporting walls. Ideally we want to avoid this as these walls are probably offering sideways (lateral) support to other walls so when rebuilding you have the problem of re tying your new masonry into the old. In other words you risk making matters worse. Under the padstones the inside edge of the wall forming the sides of the opening can flap about and that will be bothering your SE. If you can live with it can you narrow the opening under B1 by say 100mm each side. What you could look at is either introducing some good solid timber posts fixed to the wall or maybe a couple of light steel channel sections, timber is cheeper. Now we have stopped the supporting wall from flapping about and they will carry a lot more load... which means they may not have to be demolished after all. If the builder can give the SE the hand mixed recipe they used for the padstones and the concrete looks well compacted it will probably be the same strength as the existing brick and thus they could just stay in place and put another cut down lintel over the top once you lift the beam. That could be one solution worth exploring. I would aim to keep on good terms with the SE , builder etc.. but start asking a few informed questions. It may be that your SE comes up with some good / other solutions.. free of charge in the interests of good will. Hope this helps and things pan out ok for you.

I have worked for our local Council as a tree inspector and Japanese Knotweed adviser and treatment coordinator in the Housing Department also dealing with boundary issues but now nearing retirement. Claire and I started looking for land 4 years ago and picked up a corner plot in a quiet village near the Preseli hills, thankfully not in Pembrokeshire national Park. We have a budget of £250k for the build and 3 years along the road with planning permission taking 18 months but it's a difficult site to develop due to seasonal springs, high water table, split level and made-up ground. Wish us luck because we will need it. Going for a Hemp build with MVHR 4Kw air sourced heat pump, and underfloor heating. Solar and battery was planned but as other costs increase some of the 'would like' things are being crossed off the list. The log burner was crossed off yesterday after reading this forum. I hope I can contribute to the forum and share what knowledge I have as well as learn from your experiences.

In my book (white male, <50 years old), you have this the wrong way around. Wired switches are always going to be more reliable and long lasting than wireless, however something digital ("smart") will allow a pair of wires to each switch to have infinite uses, and be software reprogrammable if needs change, without need for a wire per light Like others here I use Loxone, but other options like Rako exist. All that said Lutron have gone wireless only and it is the trend with other tech (ZigBee Zwave Bluetooth and Matter) so maybe I'm the luddite. I just hate wireless tech when a wired option is possible

never pay a percentage for anything. Fixed fee irrespective.

I used full width oak sleepers on ours, I bedded the bottom ones on their sides then did the top laid flat like a T I doweled the top to the bottom along with screws from inside upward so they were hidden