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We're first timers in our sixties, renovating a 200 year old Gloucestershire property as our last home. It's very basic (no central heating, damp) with a stone centre, brick semi-added pre 1860 and s 20th C. extension at each end. Removing the plaster and some ceiling my wife has revealed questionable [cough] building techniques which explain some of the cracks and a patched up Inglenook which we plan to restore. Early days but we have a builder and architect for a garden room style extension. We have lots of ideas and plenty of time, but of course not enough money :-) If you've done anything like this by all means tell us we're barmy, it just say hi. Met a couple this morning and got chatting about this, and they recommended this forum highly. I'm learning so much useful stuff from others offline and online. For others I can recommend Mastodon (a non commercial social network - no ads or algorithm getting in the way). Posting questions there has been a great help.

Hi everyone - I'm Tim Newbie selfbuilder here, in the early stages of planning our self-build project in South Wales (But currently living in Bristol). Looking to build a family home to passive house principles, and avoid any Grand-designs style crises during the process! Excited to be part of this forum, which is a great source of info! I look forward to picking your collective brain more as we make our design choices and progress with the project.

Stop trying to reinvent this job. sealing around the service pipes is easy. you do not try and cut a hole in the membrane and seal that to the pipe. cut a 300mm hole in the membrane, poke it over the pipe, then cut a 600 mm square of extra membrane, cut a 120 mm hole in the centre, poke it over the pipe and tape it up, then tape your patch down to the main sheet. easy, each pipe penetration will take 15 mins max. why buy two membranes to do one job. if your finish concrete is rough the pir insulation won’t give a monkeys it will just deform to the shape of the slab when it has 15 tonne of screed on top of it.

Lift the 5a one as much as possible, then same for the socket to see if you can hide this. Plasterer was shite, decorator equally as guilty. Just unbelievable that this incredibly low standard of work could have escaped the 80’s and still be so prevalent today in 2026. I bet neither of those two tossers houses look like this. Utterly embarrassingly low standards from these people. The ‘fix’ is to remove the outlets, PVA the openings, apply EasiFill and allow to dry fully, then sand and paint, then, repeat if necessary, and paint. If you have a PM then send the bill to them.

I was recommended a screed company, I was told they are absolutely shit hot, I met the main man and he knew what he was talking about, I asked about screed curl at the edges and covering the screed to slow down evaporation. he said it wasn’t necessary. so I did some more reading and asked a few questions. they did the screed, an hour after they had gone I hosed it down with a very fine mist spray, I then covered it in polythene and also covered all the windows to stop the sunlight coming in. the result is I have the flattest most level screed I’ve ever seen. you need to satisfy yourself how it should be done, and any short comings in your opinion you need to make up. buy the polythene and install it yourself or do you due diligence and insist on a curing agent. if you think they are good why do they not want to cover it ?

Flanagaj, I think maybe you are trying to be a builder without being a builder. I write with sod all experience except my own troubled extension. We ended up having to ditch a bad builder and then decided (as we had a dry shell by then and good alternate builders were not available for 18months plus) to continue by bringing in trades to get to completion. It is not an easy process because unlike a proper builder... 1/ You do not have a little black book with several good contractors for each and every trade - people you know from experience are capable and you can work with. 2/ You do not have any real clout with trades because for them you are a one off customer - a few £k's or £10k's of business - builders will be known sources of regular business 3/ Some trades people may be wary of a novice builder, or sometimes take advantage. 4/ You lack deep knowledge and experience of your own - of trade specifics, trade tendencies, what to watch for, how to specify a job These things do make it difficult. Finding good trades can be a lengthy process where the only proof is in eating the pudding. These things affect timeline enormously, you can never call in a favour from someone, no one will ever call you looking for work, you are potentially the job that gets delayed in favour of others. For your slab specifics, do you have a concrete mix specification defined that is what they are going to meet. My SE sepcified the mix for us. And where you don't have a contract only a price/purchase order/invoice then I would suggest always emailing to ensure you have something in writing which defines your requirements. In case of dispute at least you then have something more than verbal conversations and a price. You can even then write down what the contractor has told you verbally about the job, answers to your queries, etc. But try and get someone you can talk to, I've always been able to talk to my SE or Architect or the QS that dealt with closing my original builder contract, to get bits of advice or a site visit.

Why can't everything just be moved under the sink? Don't think I've ever seen any plumbing, water or waste behind the actual machines. Yes you lose the cupboard space, but so be it. My machines have a recessed section at the bottom so pipes can travel past it without interfering with the space. For what it's worth I did that in 2 places on the opposite sides of the room in my gaff, no regrets.

To add, if you do just decide to DIY something and there is an underlying structural issue that then reappears later, you may be invalidating the NHBC insurance (or at least giving them a lot of ammunition for an argument) and exposing yourself to much higher costs down the line.

To break his arguments down by section 1. He makes the mistake that declining N.Sea production is a choice - it isn't the rate of decline is slightly modifiable but not to any significant degree. We are arguing over the green line or the red line. He also makes the mistake that our high gas and electricity prices are due to us deliberately running down our production. Aside from my point above, they are high due to the high price of gas and the international price of gas is not changed by the UK output. The price is set by the international markets and those are (nominally)supply and demand. Even at best, our output is too small to change the international price. It should be noted that the rise in electricity prices and gas prices was very closely correlated in 2022 because a much larger proportion of our electricity came from gas. In 2026 the rise was much less direct because less of our electricity comes from gas. He talks about the supply chains for renewables being dirty and having emissions. This is a variation of the landman rant (and the "EV's will never pay back the carbon used in making the battery" argument before that). Study after study shows wind turbines, solar panels and EVs are all net negative for carbon well within their lifetime. It also ignores the carbon and pollution from fossil fuel extraction as a comparison. 2. He talks about "what happens is the gas prices fall?" Well, they will eventually for a while,until the next crisis. Then they will fall again until the next crisis and so on. So far we have had 2 massive "once in a lifetime" shocks in the current decade -that we are only half way through... Does anyone want to bet Trump doesn't do something stupid I'm the next 2 and a bit years. What would happen to oil prices if the world's largest oil producer suffered massive political instability? Say a the kind caused when a leader who loses an election tries to cling to power using a paramilitary police force or even elements of the armed forces.... Who wants to say that is fantasy land? 3. He seems to get mixed up on the cost of capacity. With renewables capacity is a more statistical figure than gas plants etc. With ccgt plant the peak cavity is easy. Just an engineering question -"that plant, at full chat, will produce 2GW of electricity." With renewables there is a theoretical capacity - what if everything was perfect, but that's only a few % of the time. A better question would be "what is the 95% available capacity" ie the level it can produce 95% (or whatever arbitrary figure you want) of the time. So my 11kwp solar array has a 95% figure closer to 1kw (during daylight obviously). Essentially we will have to dump a load of capital into building these assets. Once e have built them they will provide cheap energy for decades. Or we could kee the capital and dole it out to buy oil and gas as we need it. That's our choice. Right enough for now....

It is worth pointing out that we started the transition to low carbon generation nearly 2 decades ago. Apart from some very small scale wind farms, hobby PV and a bit of hydro, we had virtually nothing. Since the we have added 55 GWp if wind and solar. Now the name plate capacity if RE cannot be compared directly with thermal generation, but it contributed close to 40% of our generation. It also contributed to our pumped storage as well. I have not looked at storage capacity in a while, but must be close to 1 GWh now. I cannot see any reason why we should not hit 90% low carbon generation by 2040, except if there is not the political will to do so. I think the political will is there, we tend to hear the naysayers more because they are the vocal minority, the majority says nothing. I am going to repeat what I said about cost. Wind and PV are the cheapest forms of, and it is coming in bold , NEW generation. It is not competing with the same contracts as legacy generation.

It depends! But here is a rough outline of how we go about designing steel fire protection. The following is in the context of the self builder, not multi storey, multiple occupancy structures. Ok, the process / theory is.. roughly this. The starting point is to understand how steel behaves when it gets hot. Someone ask me / others a while back.. why does my oven not start to melt / distort when I cook a pizza hot? The above is what we call a fire curve (SCI, Steel Construction Institute data ). There are different fire curves. They vary depending on fire loading (how much and what types of stuff can contribute to a fire, how "intense and rapid" the heat delivery) but the above is one we would refer to in a typical domestic self build. You can see that up to about 350 Celsius the steel maintains much of its strength, which is why your oven does not "melt" and fall to bits. After that the steel strength starts to plummet. When we fire protect steels as @saveasteading says This is correct. All we are doing it to stop the steel from getting hot enough, then soften too much, and thus not carry the loads on it for the time required by the building regulations for example. Now we can either select a geometry of steel member and make it very heavy such that there is so much mass of steel that it does not get heated quickly enough to soften to the point of failure. In lay terms. If we had a solid round bar of steel say 150mm in diameter it has a large cross section area compared with the exposed surface. This is what we call the heated perimeter / cross section area ratio (Hp/A), the Euro codes have slightly different way of presenting but they mean the same. They are presented using the ratio Area / Volume, A/V. But if we have the same cross section area of steel and weight in an I shape (a universal beam) it has a much larger surface area and thus will heat up much more quickly and thus lose strength more quickly. Now we ain't going to be using solid 150mm diameter steels. What we could look to do is is insulate the steel. This could be by way of fire proof plasterboard or intumescent paint. But also we could build the steel into a masonry wall and maybe have only one side exposed to the fire on the inside of say a garage. Or we could have the steel built into a floor that in itself insulates some of the exposed faces of the steel. Below is a screen shot of a table that shows how we need to consider the exposed sides. They key here is that the lower the section factor the slower the steel will heat up. The section factor changes depending on how many sides of the steel are exposed. But to go back to what @Great_scot_selfbuild asked., which was how heavy does a steel need to be so it does not need fire protection? The info below is taken from Corus literature 2003 as an easy generic example. The bottom line (Hp 61m^-1) is of interest to us here in a domestic self build. Using a design temperature of 550 deg you can see that the bottom blue line hangs in there, all other things being equal for 30 min. So let go back now and find a steel section with a section factor of lower than 61 m^-1 to try and get a handle on how big a column needs to be for example. A 203 x 203 x 86kg/m is a candidate if it has three sides protection (section factor 60), but that is a heavy steel. You also need to handle this safely on site. Ok let's see how a box section compares. Ok we can get down to 60 for three sides exposed protection.. not much difference. But if we reduce the sides exposed the numbers get a lot better. I've not shown them here. That main remaining key bit is what we call the load ratio mentioned above as 0.6 ratio. When we design a beam / columns or pretty much any structural member in your house we design for the normal expected loads. The self weight, permanent loads and the imposed ( live loads, people, book shelves etc) but in a fire we recognise that the floors, roof etc are probably not going to be fully loaded with people for example during a fire, the permanent / self weight load is still there. So we can make a reduction in the load if a fire occurs. Its based on probability and the loads that could be reasonably expected in the case of a fire. We call this an accidental load case and the safety factors get reduced for example. If we designed everything for the worst case buildings would be too expensive to build! The load ratio is the load (stress generated) during a fire compared with the ultimate capacity of the member. Often we design beams to be restrained by say a timber floor.. but if this has burnt away we can't count that. To conclude: The above I hope, gives you all a bit of insight into what we need to do / think about to design steels for fire. The take away is that sometimes it works using a heavy steel to avoid the expense of fire protection. The design can become much more complex if bolted / welded connections need to be taken into account. This kind of design consideration is a bit complex if you've not done it before, it's not common bedtime reading! It can be a tricky subject once you get into detail, something that many Architect's, BC officers are also not too familiar with. But it's a fundamental part of producing a safe design. My objective in writing is to try and help BH folk gain a bit more knowledge so you can ask and phrase any questions you have to your designers from a lay person perspective. You make a good point. Yes steels expand in a fire and will change shape and distort the surrounding structure, to the point it often has to be later demolished. The objective is that the building hangs in there so it does not fall on the fire brigade, set light or fall onto a neighbouring building not least.

Sorry I don't mean I am personally hoping the English and Welsh get these wind farms and pylons in the numbers we have been "given" in Scotland. What I am saying is while for so long England in particular has banned them, they have instead been built up here so the good folk of England who largely make the rules, have not seen the blot on the landscape that they are, and if the good folk of England don't see them, they obviously think they are good.

To an extent, outside of a very small number, none of us, no matter how well read are able to be experts on any particular topic, so we have to take our views from those who we see as experts. I have not read all of the source material, conducted my own experiments or submitted my theories to scientific challenge so any assertion I make is potentially a call to authority. The same is true for the other side of the argument. All any of us can do is weigh the situation in front of us, which seems to be following a common playbook. First - deny. Next, obfuscate - its not anthropogonic etc. Finally, fatalism - we cant do anything anyway. Some things are clear however: It is hot. Much hotter than when I was young, and hotter every year. There is a physical mechanism for this heat being caused by C02 emissions Modelling and predictions of the C02 effect are matching reality If it is C02 and if we don't do anything we are in for a very bad time If it isn't C02, and we reach net zero, we are in for a pretty good time still It does make me laugh (cry) when people blame renewables for high prices. The UK spent at least £75 billion on supporting energy prices just during 2022-23 due to gas prices. It is also the case that renewables knock out the most expensive conventional electricity generators, so the wholesale price of electricity is reduced by renewables, which gives the impression of a subsidy but the reality is the reverse - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/oct/wind-power-delivers-ps104-billion-net-benefit-uk-consumers I do get frustrated with people who just raise problems like there will never be a solution. The nature of progress is you don't always have all the answers, if you never started a journey unless you knew how it could be done then nothing new would ever be invented. It is also a demonstrable fact that renewables are more suitable from a security perspective. More distributed generation, less reliance on critical things like pipelines, LNG facilities and so on - we're literally right in the middle of 2 wars that are being defined by attacks on energy infrastructure. Really?

I am quite happy to do a design for you…..please let me know if I can help…..

I would have done a design for free!

I was interested also, so I had an internet search. Compared to one of my units (Titon HRV), see images below. Heat exchanger size on the Rega is very small. Insulation between air streams almost none. Casing insulation almost none. Just about as basic as you can get - maybe and most likely poor performance as a result. Fan motors on Rega mounted in the steelwork, Titon mounted within the insulation, giving better noise attenuation and vibration dampening. Electronins away from where any water could collect etc etc Rega unit Titon HRV unit

Depends what you’re doing, of course. But, we tend to use (for a timber frame build) 3 x sets of bought in sawhorses with sheets of 18 or 25mm ply on top. No vice, maybe the occasional clamp. We’re largely cutting sheets of ply and C24 at this point. Not much use for an mft yet. A tool strongbox for somewhat nickable tools, some wire shelves for non-nickable tools and supplies (these are both undercover now) and a 20ft container for less used tools, fixings etc.

Just looked back at our gas and electricity bills in 2023, we had £89 Direct Debit for gas and £180 for electric. Since then I have added more solar and a battery. Plus we now get export payments. Plus got rid of boiler and installed an ASHP. Battery and additional solar cost me around £7500. Fully installed. But current DD is a total of £52. Instead of paying normal rates for electricity I pay 10p per kWh, can only do this because I have a battery. So in simple terms I am saving £214 monthly, or £2568 per year. Nice round 3 years pay back on the additional solar and battery. And an added bonus, this month via Axle VPP, have earned an additional £20 directly from having a battery. So taking this into account in the the above, now pay back becomes 2.7 years.

The impact we can have on our own lives, especially as self builders is pretty big. Some of the first things that come to mind are 1. Designing in good passive means to heat protection. Lots of insulation with good decrement delay. Limiting glazing, espically in bedroom's. Appropriate shading. 2. Active colding, even a fused spur and a short 70mm duct will allow an A2A unit to be installed at a later date. 3. If opting for batteries get a change over switch to cope with power outages. 4. A store of water, even a rainwater butt will allow toilet flushing if the mains is cut off. 5. Raising the floor level well above current food level. 6. Shuttering for windows is something t.o would like to have e done. Maybe PVC rollers but even a stack of appropriately sized OSB sheets stacked in the garage would offer a a lot more protection than glass windows from extreme weather.

Not to the detriment of the functionality A lot of "cheap" designs have fresh supply vents almost immediately above doorways of bedrooms etc, and near zero air flows across the room. If you need to have a long run, and want quiet operation, you simply double up on the ducts. This is something sewn into the heart of the build fabric, with near zero chance of 'putting it right' retrospectively. It will also be on 24/7/365 for the rest of your life there, so maybe not somewhere to cut all of the meat off the bone Buy a good quality Brink unit from Air-Haus.co.uk, oversize it(!), and make sure to install proper attenuators on the supply and extract ports for super-quiet operational sound in the rooms.

It's easy. You can certify it yourself with an anerometer and a spreadsheet. I think there is an MVHR design sheet floating around the forum somewhere. Tl;Dr, make sure your duct runs are as short as possible and your diameters are as big as possible.

Nonsense argument. 🤦‍♂️. ”Disabled visitable”, “Disabled adaptable”, or “Disabled persons home”? Do you expect a wheelchair bound visitor to your home to be able to reach your oven isolator? A disabled persons home would be built around their own, stated, specific needs, such as @Benpointer. Apologies for terminology, I’m never sure if I should be saying “less-abled” or other. If the home owner is 5’ tall, the electrician should suggest things to suit their stature, much as this week I have asked my (non 5’ tall) clients if they’d like to accept my suggestion that we raise the vanity units by 30mm to suit their ‘tallness’. If you told said 5-foot nothing lady she doesn’t need wall units in her kitchen because she’ll never be able to reach them, I’d expect her to punch you in the bollocks, without bending down, and then go get a step stool out for you to sit on until the pain subsided. .

Now you need the will to live these days. I don't do this regularly (primarily as an SE) but for one reason or another I end up representing Clients that are making a claim on their warranty. I've done this for the last 15 years or so. I spent some 20 years as a building Contractor before that, cutting my teeth and learning how devious folk can be at times. In some ways I'm a poacher come game keeper. It's not part of my core business, I do it as it's good for my soul and I don't like to see domestic Clients getting taken advantage of. That said, over the last 15 years I've recovered on behalf of Clients a few million quid. The amount of money is less important, for me it's about justice and holding folk to account. What I've noticed in the last few years is that some of the warranty providers are more and more sub contracting out to Claims handling services. 25 years ago lots of the warranty providers withdrew from the market. At one point there was the NHBC and Zurich pretty much. Now we have lots of new entrants.. and it seems to me that there is a bit of a race to the bottom. The terms and conditions are a bit of a minefield for the unwary. There is a common case where they initially come over all friendly but then tell the Client they need to employ an SE like me at their own expense to provide a report. This happens even if the Client has provided photographs that clearly show there is a problem. It has come to my attention that they (Claims handling services) are ramping up the; deny, defend and delay tactics.. always been the case but recently I've noticed that they are cherry picking part of my SE reports and trying to fob the Client off. Even to the extent that they will quote part of a paragraph of my report.. which totally changes the context. Often young folk just can't afford this so they throw in the towel. It's a disgrace. Now this may be a genuine lack of understanding .. or a deliberate intent to defraud the Client. I'm happy for them to dig themselves a hole as often when doing a warranty Claim I'll turn it into an HSE (safety) issue. This makes folk personally liable and risks the HSE getting involved.. a big black mark if you are a warranty provider. My question is. Are folk finding Claims handling services helpful or not when you think you have a case for making a Claim.

Nope. Needs a building control application first, with support from an architect or architectural technician (the latter will be cheaper and simpler). Then, you reach out to a few 5-6 reputable local builders for estimates / quotes etc and come back here with the results for us to see who's good / bad / ugly. ONLY use a builder who will take you to other jobs, let you meet other customers, and avoid the cheapest quotes!

Skips: I hate them. Specially this one: after ten years at this game, the last one (maybe) And I love them (other peoples). The day before they are picked up, I dream about them. Sad Bastard ======================================== Monument to ten years toil You hold the decade carved from sleep, Heavy tax of muscles, laughter, cash, and tears. Buried in your belly, dark and deep, Miscut rafters from the early days, Hardened mortar from a novice phase, (I know how to mix mortar now) Are stacked like layers of a lifetime spent. Each rusted panel of your hollow frame Has watched us age, yet stayed the exact same, (apart from the rusty bits) A silent witness to a spine well-bent. Ten winters bit our hands upon this ground, Ten summers scorched the dust into our skin, While every spare pound that our pockets found (well some of it was found down the back of someone else's sofa) Was swallowed by the walls we stood within. Now blueprints yield to final, finished stone, ( well cladding aksherly) And you receive the scraps of what has grown, ( to be fair some of it was rotten) The final clearing of a warrior’s field. Go ride the lorry down the tarmac track, Take all our toil, don't look back, For out of waste, a home is finally sealed. Still not signed off. Stuff it. Ain't gonna sell it anyway Little Miss Muffit. ( her from the LPA) Now other peoples skips - I just love em.

Number one. Not just because the more grey colours seems to contrast with the block, and overpower the eyes (this will lead to your eyes looking more at the smaller surface area of the wall and be distracting, rather than the feeling the blockwork is the wall, and the mortar just s supporting role) But because there are green tones in the first that will age better. Over the years this will allow nature to grown alongside it in a complimentary way. If you intend an ultra modern gravel and slab surrounding design, then fair enough, but anything growing next to the grey would seem like a weed in a lawn and out of place. (just purely my opinion and feel free to ignore)

Are you letting it go silver? Have you viewed final "colour" with mortar as well? Image of our attached just as eg. Took us a while to choose whole "package"

It is subjective but firstly is your whole frontage brick, may make a difference.... We only have a plinth, (9 at highest where ground slops at back of house) so we chose high contrast mortar that "matched" the cladding. If it had been the whole house, would have been too stark for us, and maybe the planners. Having said all that my vote would be nit no.1 (too warm), no.3 if your looking for high contrast, no.4 if you want it to "blend"

Fire Resistance.

Amtico Spacia are the cheaper brand and the planks repeat more often than its more expensive sister-offerings You are also hampered by the laying pattern you have chosen. (IMO) Straight patterns show up repeats and duplicates more obviously. This is one of the reasons we chose a herringone laying pattern for our Amtico Spacia. Over time and especially as you fill your room with rugs and other furniture the repeat highlights will become less noticeable Regards Tet

Glass set down into CT1, excess evident. Excess wiped away when wet, with lots and lots of baby wipes. Apart from the rising internal corner and the internals of the niche, all of this ensuite was a near zero silicone finish. All observing minimal grout at junctions, clear CT1’d with anything excess removed, and still looks 👌 (imo). You can just about see where the colour matched silicone diminishes on purpose before meeting the floor tile, so the change isn’t so obvious.

From the OP article "The Energy Secretary on Wednesday said he had granted planning permission to the One Earth Solar Farm development to be built on prime farmland across Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire." (emphasis mine) So prime farmland eh? Must be some of the most productive land in the country. We'll starve without the breadbasket of thr East Midlands that is Newton-On-Trent. Let's have a look at the map of agricultural land quality. The project is the area south of Newton-On-Trent either side of the river. As you can see the land is green which is grade 3 "good to moderate" Grade 3 is 2 sub grades A and B the maps don't distinguish but here's the description Grade 3a (Good): capable, but notable limitations that reduce cropping flexibility or consistency. Grade 3b (Moderate): more restricted: typically fewer arable options and/or less reliable output As you can see neither of these could be described as "prime". Every single time anyone tries to build anything on farmland people start banging on about food security and the land as though it were the best soil in all Europe. In reality nobody is going to put their solar farm on grade 1 land when there is lower grade and available.

OK. Fire first. If a building near a boundary is on fire then it must not be allowed to spread to adjacent buildings or materials. We assume an empty plot will be built on. So the wall on that boundary must stay standing even if the rest of the building is collapsing and trying to push or pull it over. So, let's stick with steel portal frames. The turning forces in a collapsing building are huge and we have a very chunky column fixed down very robustly. Beneath that the foundation also has to be over a big area to resist turning. That is a fixed base. Again to confuse the staff in the warehouse by staring.. you will see that the column is chunkier on that wall than on one facing the car park. On a gable wall everything is lighter. Where it isn't a fire wall, the portal column can be skinnier at the base, with few bolts and the foundation is also much smaller, only taking vertical loading. That is a pinned base. Not usually literally pinned but sometimes they are. On a 30m span shed the boundary foundations might have 5m3 of concrete each, and mustn't cross the boundary, while the others have 2m3 or so. it's all money. My business used tapered columns (and rafters) for best value, and they were thin at the bottom to deep at the top, except on fire walls. The depth of section mirrored the forces. The fire wall cladding is fire rated, and the columns usually need to be protected too. That's all a bit messy and bitty but I hope makes sense.

I will get to procedural vegetation honest. Had a sphere to drive over terrain working i.e. physics remap as you move so effectively infinite also. But the sphere bugged me. Trying to procedurally generate something decent was always poor - like the original face attempt. So, bought a rigged and animated model to use! But also I got excited about procedurally generated creatures so invented creature lab! - some quite funny!, needing work of course. But AMAZING!

Where things are at... https://youtu.be/nl__O_QGIR4?si=G_CGnPuO8etvYzmV

I've done a few buildings ( schools and factories) on steep slopes. My principle has been to build a platform at the higher level, then a conventional framed building on top. That keeps it simple and vastly more economical. No basement as you get into a different level of complexity and risk.( digging into the ground, waterproofing, stability, access) So that is conventional strip footings ans walls up to level . Then beam and block or precast planks make the surface. You are then out of the ground and on a solid surface. With a raft you have a big hole to dig then work in. If the slope is steep there is potential differential movement of the ground. If the slope is extreme then you can perhaps have a natural extra storey or part of one. Worth mentioning perhaps that in a couple of those jobs the original designers had assumed the dig and raft technique or retaining walls and mass fill to make a platform. I met one during negotiation and discussed the principles, and he was simply surprised at the cost difference, not being a contractor. Beam and block then a conventional kit above is my suggestion.

I got an answer back. From a bot it would appear but it was a pretty much instant response: "Good afternoon, Regarding your question about running two Indra Smart Pro chargers on a single-phase supply: yes, this is possible with each charger using its own CT clamp on the same incoming meter tails for independent load curtailment. On a single-phase installation: - Each charger can independently monitor the total load on the supply using its own CT clamp and will adjust its charging rate as needed to protect the main fuse. - Each CT clamp should be installed at the main supply, before any junctions, and as close to the main cut-out fuse as possible, with the arrows facing the grid (incoming supply). With this setup, both chargers will independently perform load curtailment based on the total current measured by their own CT clamps, so there is no requirement for a dedicated multi-charger load-sharing configuration in this scenario. If you have any more questions or would like help checking your planned setup details, just let us know and we can escalate this to a human agent for you. Thank you for contacting Indra Renewable Technologies Ltd. Best regards, Indra Renewable Technologies Ltd AI Agent"

The big detour would cost more. ICs are plastic and about £150, plus concrete, gravel and labour. Needed whatever you do. Another matter is the gradient. Assuming that the drain was designed efficiently, by taking it a longer route you are flattening the slope and it might not work. Say £1,000 diy. Double or Treble that for a good contractor. Add fees for the licence but building control will cover that with the building work. I'd still be digging to find that pipe. But first feasibility on budget and permissions.

Fixing it in the open position will guarantee to make your house hotter during the day. Bypass should only be used (and should automatically turn on) when the outside temp is below the inside temp. Your MVHR shouldn't ever be delivering 31 deg air. In normal, non-bypass mode, the MVHR will work to maintain any existing temperature difference between inside and outside. In summer that means it will transfer most of the heat from the incoming air to the outgoing air, significantly reducing the temperature of the air delivered to the house. So if it's 30 deg outside, and 20 deg inside, the air delivered into the house will be something like 22 deg, depending on the heat recovery efficiency of your unit. Summer bypass only comes on when it's cooler outside than inside. Depending on the unit, you might be able to adjust the temperature at which it kicks in. To maximise effectiveness: Reduce airflow when it's really hot outside, cooler inside, and you want to minimise incoming heat. Turn it off if you like, but you risk a stuffy, humid house. Personally I'd avoid that. Summer bypass won't operate in these conditions. When the temperature outside drops below the inside temp and summer bypass kicks in, bump up the flow rate to maximise purging.

What a belter of a photo! Now funnily this serves as a good example, all be it on a smaller scaler, as what not to do if self building or extending your house. I make some points. It's debatable. Technically to me it looks like a Universal beam, if you look at the flange width cf the web depth.. it look looks a beam, a column is more squat in profile. I can see from the photo the beam has buckled perpendicular to what seems to be a heavily loaded transfer beam at ceiling level. My gut feeling is that either the designer has made a massive cock up in calculating the loads on the, now call it a column. More likely is that they have not understood the top and bottom connections. They may have designed them as pinned, but then inadvertently introduced a stiff connection or some off centre loading ( called an eccentricity) that introduces a bending force in the column and not spotted it. This extra bending force reduces the capacity of the column to carry load. But on the other hand the Contractor may have thought they know better and just gone off and done their own thing. My experience of Contractors / project manager is mixed, I used to be a Contractor myself. Some think they know it all, some are arrogant in the extreme (pride comes before the fall) some are sensible enough to just make a call to the SE, which I now am. Now the photo is of a big building, heavily loaded. But when I design houses, wall slappings for extension etc the loads are much less, but I design with much smaller steels, thus pro rata they are doing just as much work. The design is lean. But if you listen to your builder without checking you are taking a big risk, don't be swayed by bravado, a builder telling you they know better. At the end of the day if the builder changes the design in any way and something goes wrong their insurance won't cover it, and possibly your home insurance won't either. It also critically unsafe. My advice is, if you want to deviate from your design drawings then call the designer, just lift the phone! IT'S THAT SIMPLE

Ok a bit of food for thought. You have a steel column, likely supporting a structural load. Let's say as a minimum you need some fire protection? Say 30 minutes. Now you can achieve that in two common ways. 1/ Box it in with say Gyproc Fireline board. Which probably gives you a detailing problem, which is why you are probably wanting to use Aerogel as it saves space. 2/ Paint the steel with intumescent paint. But for intumescent paint to work it needs to have space to expand into... you see the dilemma? As a rough rule of thumb the intumescent paint thickness needs to expand some 50 times to work properly. It needs space to do this. So you can't stick Areogell to the steel per say and you need manufacturer approval to stick it to intumescent paint. Now often BC etc don't pick up on this. But if something goes wrong, there is a fire, the steel fails and the building falls on say the Fire Brigade.. then the buck has to stop somewhere.. as an SE I'll be on the radar, Architect's also, and you if you have taken it upon yourself to become a designer then you are facing a huge liability. Now the above is a worst case.. but if you get a smart BC officer that knows about this stuff then they might be minded to fail your design unless you can prove otherwise. There are cases where the steel is well protected by masonry and very heavy and thick and thus possibly as at Paulie I think in Paulie's case the steels are so heavy they don't need fire protection. The load we use when designing steels for fire protection get reduced as they are called an accidental case. In lay terms we don't design most steels for the building being fully loaded up and a fire starting at the same time. I would go back and look at what your steels are doing, the loads and so on. Also have a chat with your SE to check if what you are proposing might invalidate their design for example. I appreciate you may not like this news.. but it's up to you and your risk.

Late to the party on this one, but I have spent a long time muddling through pan connector heights. I am guessing your original plan was to put a 90 swept bend into the swept tee and that would have made things too high. Or was it going to be a 90 degree pan connector straight into the soil pipe branch? Comfort height toilets can help, but not as much as 40mm I don't think. I think swapping to a 45 degree branch is a good shout from the not blocking perspective, but also would have lowered where the bend would have ended up had you gone that route (image below). With either branch option, you could have rolled the branch about its axis and used a 45 degree bend instead of 90 at the cost of pushing the pan further into the room a bit. Some other options to have on the thread in case someone else gets stuck like this. 45degree options: SP163 https://www.floplast.co.uk/product/bend-1 https://mcalpineplumbing.com/wc-connectors/rigid-wc-connectors/45-angle-rigid-wc-connector/ You can also get a tight radius 90 degree bend (OSMA 4S160B https://www.jewson.co.uk/p/osmasoil-pvc-u-spigot-bend-tight-radius-90-110mm-black-PO4S160B) You've ended up with a really nice result though, so it's all worked out well. Floplast parts shown (SP190, SP210, SP161).

Lenleys, Roper Road, Canterbury.

Hi, thanks for all the discussion so far! It's giving me lots to think about! When it comes to points about the small size of the extension - the idea is not to increase the value of the house, as I have no plans to sell, and definitely don't want to move. Although turning a poky single bedroom into a reasonably-sized double might increase the value, actually I want a 'hobby room' which is ideally long and narrow (I intend to build a model railway around it!), and when a figure of £30k was mentioned I decided that was acceptable to me. Any other kind of extension would be difficult - house is link-detached so cannot go out sideways. A loft conversion would be possible (some others in the road have done this) but the height of the roof ridge is very low - and I'm 6'1". Extending out backwards might be possible, but the garden is small and a first floor extension there would definitely annoy the neighbours. I did think of 'filling in' the base of the new extension to make a bigger downstairs hallway, but wouldn't find this space very useful, and it would also block some light and views from the living room window. Also the intention is to match the appearance of my neighbour's extension. Re the course of the sewer - this runs along the front of a group of 4 link-detached houses, then into the road. My neighbour's extension did not have to worry about this, as they are on the end of the row, so the sewer commences at their manhole, it doesn't go under their posts. So looking at the Southern Water website, it looks as though I could apply for "build over" permission myself, and pay the £771.60. I'm not sure if I have all the documents they detail on this page though... will have to go through what I have... also unsure what happens if they refuse permission; is the money lost and I have to get revised plans, with the posts moved, and start again?

What i saw at the show when i looked inside their unit. Cheap looking bent tin and electronics that looked like a 4th form GCSE project using an Arduino. Untidy & cheap looking. Their summer by-pass was an extra cost add on, dont like that. Rega vents design was a branched idea as well which i expressly did not want.

That’s mostly just down to using good quality thermostatic showers vs ‘manual’ mixers. Decent ones will work with quite erratic flows and temps, so I always advise my clients to spend some money on such daily drivers.

Can you post a drawing of what you are going to build. The figures you present seem high at first glance. But I often do these types of design, they can be very time consuming, although small, and thus the fee cost is higher in proportion to the floor area. To put this into context. I have a potential Client that needs a modest new build and the design fees are similar to your over all fee. An interesting number is £120/hr for site visits. Now the 120 rate is fine if for time spent on site as there is travelling and then inevitably writing emails etc when back in the office. But if it is also booked at £ 120/ hr for travelling and then writing emails when you get back to the office then that is different. Do that and don't be afraid to ask questions.

Lay the floor flat and level, ramping it up at the door will look like dog shit, you will see it, you will notice it on the skirting around that reveal. 10-12mm step up is absolutely fine at that cill area.