Leaderboard

After the advice of pretty much everyone, for once I am going to admit defeat and have some professionals in for this job. We have found a couple of options we are happy with and will readjust the budget a little to accommodate but its not something we can afford to go wrong. I will take some pictures and update you in a couple of weeks when it's done but thank you so for your advice and help and I now know what to watch for when it's poured and what to prepare

Pretty much as I expected. It is pointless to engage with Climate Change deniers and Covid conspiracists, who never provide peer-reviewed sources and do not engage with reasoned debate backed up by evidence, but cite the Great Barrington Declaration as if it was a statement of fact. As an essential worker, visiting clients daily throughout the lockdown, I experienced more than enough of the horror of the pandemic's effects. I can tell you that the true Co-morbidity cost to my customers was traumatic enough that I still find it hard to discuss. 46 of our clients died in the first week of the lockdown alone, and I stopped counting after that. Is that 'normal for the flu season'? Those who stayed safe at home, fomenting conspiracies, can never understand how truly insulting it is to hear such utter rubbish repeated, let alone as part of a general discussion on a building forum. I'm thankful that I wasn't working in a hospital where I'd have actually had to watch them die, but I can tell you that there are many thousands of bereaved family members, traumatised medical staff, carers, and other essential workers who will never forget the lockdown and will never forgive conspiracy theorists who make light of their cost. Many lessons should be learned from the lockdown, and there may be alternatives to the various forms of lockdown and vaccination schemes used around the world. But all of these should be attempted with the best of intentions - to save lives, rather than prevent inconvenience. This is something for suitably qualified and evidenced discussion between experts - not a shouting match between DIY builders...

Let's not go down this rabbit hole but suffice to say, these are either untrue or at best highly contentious. Just because you believe them doesn't mean they are true.

Politics, climate change and Covid are three subjects where the populations view has been polarised by the media and now the vast majority sit in two camps with hardened views and no discussion is going to change either sides point of view…….. Quite sad really

Well worth a listen to. To use biomass for in and out UK flights would take 68% of farmland (I think is what they said). https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002j755

Absolutely plus 1 The ones we’ve used are online no photos are required

Either rigid or semi rigid can good or bad. It's all down to design. Semi rigid being way more tolerant of not so good design. Rigid, needs good between room attenuation, semi rigid had this by default. Airflow, disturbance really depends on how many bends or changes in diameter you have with rigid. Semi rigid is all generally smooth long radius bends. System pressure drop, resulting fan speed, either can be designed with the same pressure loss - so exactly the same fan speed. Air flow noise, 90mm semi rigid in most instances can be a single run from plenum to outlet/inlet, 70mm may need 2x runs. Rigid should be silent normally. Ease of install, semi rigid wins every time. It's flexible, rigid isn't. Cost to install semi rigid should be way cheaper, no inter room attenuation needed. I had two designs rigid and semi rigid, both to be self installed. Went semi rigid, just so much easier to install - it's silent.

'ello folks. Those familiar with my posts may have noticed me talk about our build being chosen for Grand Designs. I was very keen, the missus much less so. To spare you the details, she agreed begrudgingly because I'm insensitive and pushy, then wasn't happy, so I pulled the plug, but she's since had a (entirely voluntary!) change of mind and it's now back on. In a few different threads it popped up, and people had questions (like "why on Earth would you want to do that?!"), and voiced a few preconceptions that haven't been really matched with our experience thus far. Even our architect had a negative perception of the production process, which suffice to say the production team were surprised by. I don't think our contracts include any NDAs, but they do ask that we don't over-share the progress of the build, as that would spoil the narrative of the episode when it eventually airs. I figured I'd start a thread so if anyone's curious (and maybe is considering applying themselves) I can answer about the general process, without polluting other threads with off-topic stuff. About Grand Designs: All the people we've interacted with are very nice, and very considerate. They've been super patient with our internal debates, and they've been super-supportive of the missus and her concerns. They haven't (yet, it's early days) dictated anything to us about timelines. Their only asks have been 'if you can, tell us before something happens so we can decide whether to film it'. The perception that they'd insist on us delaying things for the benefit of their filming schedule seems unfounded. Sure, they said that they would ask if things could be moved if it'd help them out, but they also said that they wouldn't dream of telling people when they can/can't do works. They wouldn't have any leverage to do so anyway! We haven't done anything with Big Kev yet, but the producers are lovely and so far have been unintrusive. Follow you around, ask some questions, and maybe ask 'can you do that whilst I get it from this angle.' In summary, based on our limited experiences so far, I think some of the negative perceptions are unfounded. Let's see if I say the same in a couple of years! But one of my motivations for this post was to help spread the word that so far, they seem good people. About the decision: I'm a bit of a show-off, so I like this kind of thing. I do keynote talks at conferences, host a podcast for work, used to teach martial arts, so I'm comfortable being in front of people. It seemed like a great way of sharing the build and the site. I find it motivating knowing that other people will see what we're doing, and that somehow makes it more real to me. I found it validating that the show wanted to film the build. It felt a bit like 'winning', and that someone thought what we are doing is cool. It'll be good to document it for ourselves, the kids, and any grandchildren. I'd thought about trying to film it myself and doing a YouTube channel, but having done a podcast for work I can now see that'd be a boatload of work to do to an acceptable standard. The missus works in the industry, and is studying for her Part 2 in architecture. The exposure will, I'm certain, be great for her career. Even if she doesn't yet agree! You get a letter to prove that they're filming you, so you can tell suppliers that they might be featured. Each build gets a page on their site, and you can list key suppliers. This should help us secure discounts, and also motivate folks to not arse-up the build - I don't think many people want to be seen as a massive problem on national telly. We've already had some doors open as a result of their involvement. So basically, what we have learned from this is that I'm insensitive and needy of external validation 😆

I've been a contractor for decades and seen hundreds of big slabs going in. I have seen enough to know that your plan worries me. I will step in to help or for interest in most processes but have always kept out of the way during this because it is skilled and brutal at the same time. Good points made above. eg the pipe is full of stone and is stupidly heavy as well as kicking around. The guy on it is usually a super-fit 30 year old. Consider buying 3 barrows and hiring 3 labourers instead of pumping.... you win control too and can compact and level as you go. You will need scaffold boards to move around on. Washdown at the end is a horrible, filthy job, especially the inside and outside of the pump pipe. I mentioned this post to my daughter (Contractor , Project Manager, Architect). Her jaw dropped and she immediately thought of the risks. One she added was how well your insulation layer is covered...… the membrane must be intact and completely sealed at all laps, otherwise the concrete forces through and the insulation floats to the top carrying your reinforcement with it. I have seen this happen. Check your laps and tape as necessary one more time. BUT seriously consider postponing this and getting a professional gang to do it.

You don't say how thick the concrete is going to be ? (We had our pipes tied to the mesh rather than the insulation and had a polythene vapour barrier) I'd have thought you need a detailed military plan for the day with some possible fall back options and everyone pre-briefed. Talk to the concrete company to try to understand exactly what to expect from them. We ended up with an old pump lorry because the newer one was in for servicing, no flow control at the outlet end of the pipe, people had to shout and wave hands across a 30-40m distance to get the pump turned on and off. A significant delay between off and the flow ebbing away. At the beginning you can get a very watery slurry coming out of the pipe at first, so might possibly want to consider dumping this somewhere (out of a doorway or window or into wheelbarrows or something ?). At the end the concrete remaining in the pipe has to come out, so you might want to have a plan for where this can be dumped - we ended up with a considerable concrete mass on our driveway until we eventually got the builder to remove it. Know where the mixer and pump lorry are going to park and ensure it is clear of vehicles. Have plastic sheeting and tarps available so you can protect the road/driveway as necessary from leaks that may occur under the lorries. Know what the options are with the concrete company if things were to go wrong - lorry arriving late or early - having to abort part way through (will they then empty onto your property regardless etc) - job taking longer than expected. Check those volume calculations and know what you are going to do in case of shortfall or surplus. Have boards avalable - we had a 6m board spanning our footings from one side to the other - not sure how that works for an existing building. Do you just work back from the far room, or is it feasible to do one corner room, then move to another corner room while someone is finishing/checking the first, then move back etc - I have no idea as I've never done it. Do you assign a person to each room ? Who does what exactly ? Will they be dressed appropriately - our builders young lad turned up in shorts and shoes and had to have concrete washed off his legs FAST to avoid concrete burns - brickie turned up in long protective trousers, gloves and wellington boots with shovels. Pipes full of concrete are heavy and they can jump about a bit when the pump is running so make sure the pipe itself doesn't damage anything. I had to put some bits of insulation around the corner of our house to protect it.) I am sure you must have any conduits, drains, manifolds, services in place - u/floor heating pipes pressurised - perhaps your cabling and plumbing pipes are going in the ceiling and walls ? Keep the egde insulation higher. Levels can be tricky - have you used a water level to double check them - maybe know what your tolerance might be at doorways. Splitting the pour may cost money - but how much money is it going to cost if things go wrong - likely an awful lot more.

I'm panicking for you. That concrete will come faster than you can level it. Then it's too wet to walk on for a few hours for any precise work....until it's not, at which stage it is getting hard and difficult to improve. Cracking isn't your biggest worry. Di not allow any extra water in the mix. It will crack jaggedly at the doors but it doesn't matter.... or you lay a bit of hardboard in the surface to make it crack there. As above, fix level markers to the walls and also in the middles they can come out again. How many loads? 2 I guess. Give yourself at least an hour between them, perhaps 2. A shovel each and a bull float. Polythene over the lot once you can walk on it.

Better to use bits of batten going floor to ceiling with white paint and a datum marked on it? Can use a full length attached to the ceiling timbers and then cut and wiggle free just as the concrete goes hard enough to take foot traffic over walking boards? EPS marker blocks will likely gets smashed / knocked off as the pour goes ahead, with zero time / opportunity then to reset them. Once a pour begins, you ain’t stopping it! Battens are then going nowhere, so with that and the perimeter insulation set up as datum’s the stress should be somewhat removed. Don’t do this, always have this higher than the pour, with a fat permanent marker line drawn on it from a laser line, and then cut off the excess later. If the pour happens to spill over the top (accidentally) then it’ll drop down and bridge your original DPC. Where your original DPC is, I’d black jack the area, 100mm below, and 100mm above as insurance, as once you’ve poured there’s no going back. Use a 75% water / 25% mix of liquid DPM product to prime the areas that you intend to then brush the liquid DPC on to, as brushing onto friable masonry that has not been ‘sized’ will be a pita and it’ll pull off very easily. Priming will allow the product to soak into the surface, providing an excellent key for the surface applied layer(s). A good few £££ to go on this, but I’d be doing this if it were my place. You might find that the dilute mix will go through a cheap electric HVLP gun, like one for spraying fence panels with preservative, which would make life a lot easier. If that works, just make a larger amount of the diluted mix so the gun is constantly ‘wet’ and you can refill without having to measure the solution each time; if the black jack begins to cure in the gun you’re fecked. If you set this job out, and prepare yourself, you can likely do this in one sitting, but if you’re 10% off in the prep and sequencing then it could very well go 2 pairs of tits up. No need for 100mm, just use 25/30mm PIR and then the expansion perimeter / edge insulation either side for your expansion relief. That edge insulation towns corners just fine, so aim to have the middle of the PIR directly where the door will reside. No need to install the conduits afaic, and I’ve been doing these jobs for decades. All you (actually) need is simple foam up-stands there, but they get battered during a pour. I’d say stick with the block of insulation there and use that to get the doorways poured cock-on, (as you’re DIY’ing).

Those last two posts are far too sensible, it won’t catch on in todays polarised society where you are encouraged to take sides and nuance has left the discourse. The wind turbine developments locally to us have integrated storage and solar to maximise the efficiency and presumably return on investment.

Hi all, I'm a first time builder (of anything bigger than a shed or a bathroom renovation) and hoping I can pick your collective brains to reduce the number of catastrophes I encounter en-route! My new workshop will have to be big enough to park my motorhome in it, so I'm needing a door height clearance of 3.1M and it's just over 10M x 6M, so 63ish Square Metres footprint. Upstairs will be a bedroom with large en-suite at one end of a full length apex roof, bedroom accessed via a few stairs down into an existing room in the end of the extg. house, and a covered balcony at the other end, overlooking the Humber Bridge. Current state is that we've got walls up to joist height, concrete block and beams in last weekend under the balcony floor and the steelwork including a ridge beam was also lifted in last weekend. Scaffolder just finished the scaffolding for the next lift of blockwork and I'm about to order easijoists for the floor under the bedroom. I will no doubt have lots of questions...

I should probably not comment given the heated certainty that too many seem to blindly possess on things like anthropogenic climate change and covid. There is nothing wrong with doubt, doubt is good, science IS doubt. Often the obvious is false, and reality stranger than any fiction. Beware adopting simple certainties in a complex world. People used to think it obvious that the sun goes around the earth, that no bacteria could survive in stomach acid, did rain dances to the gods, and burned witches. There is zero evolutionary difference between those people and ourselves. But I will say that too many confuse their own personal perspective and experience of things like covid with the wider population significance. There are of order 5000 NHS intensive care beds serving a population of order 60,000,000 - so that is of order 1 intensive care bed for every 12,000 people. The number of people in intensive care is completely insignificant on a population basis and even if it doubled or trebled or quadrupled in a pandemic it would still be insignificant on a population basis. Now if you work in an intensive care unit and the demand doubled you would think the sky is falling in - can't cope - no beds - people dying right , left, and centre - stressed out - panicked. And plenty of journo's would be happy to relay your message of the falling sky to the masses. But it would still absolutely be insignificant on a population basis. Likewise if you work in care homes there are 450,000 beds in England - still less than 1 in 100 people - and on average they normally die within 2 years anyway. If you feed them midazolam as soon as they get unwell, they die faster. So it is entirely consistent for some people to think covid was the sky falling in, while in a very true sense it was insignificant on a population basis. I attended a covid funeral by videolink and was very upset and sad for the loss, and the inhuman way the widow was made to sit alone isolated from comforters. At the same time I don't have a problem with simultaneously recognising that it actually was insignificant and minor at a population level. Whether we like it or not, or admit it or not, human lives have a price - yes even our own glorious and virtuous life. The NHS routinely rations care and drugs based upon QALY (Quality Adjusted Life Years). During covid the UK and much of the rest of the world was whipped into a mass hysteria of delusion and panic where it suddenly became ok to spend unlimited sums 100 times higher than the NHS would ever normally do - to save a life. It was and remains a time of utter, utter, madness. Actual science was ignored, psychological operations took place to broadcast fear into every household. The UK spent £500 Billion to negligible population effect, and engaged in hugely counter productive actions, denying people jobs, education, health treatment, social contact, exercise etc etc. Now we are still paying the price for the folly - remember that when your taxes go up again in November. Remember the higher school absence, the ongoing epidemic of mental health social security claims, the kids with lives scarred forever, those dead from untreated cancers, the bankrupt businesses, the huge inflation, the high interest rates. It was folly.

or do as we're doing and have a mixture of both! part of the "garden" will be laid to lawn as i like nice stripes and a lush green lawn but other parts will be wildflowers to attract the wildlife and give us a lovely meadow-type thing to look at. best of both worlds. 😉

There telescopic Take the lid off and see if it is fully extended

Or a QS?

Wait until early-ish 2026 and Ikea (and probably quite a few others) are releasing a large range of devices using "Matter Over Thread" across many categories. They should prove cheap and reliable – as is typical for Ikea.

It's OK. I've seen very much worse. Lasers aren't always accurate and are only used approximately in trench footings. Successive processes get more accurate but For perspective: the published tolerances in timber buildings are plus/minus 10mm.

It’s unfortunate, but the moment you turn your back it’s down to the people you chose; eg that they are able to perform admirably. This is when you find out who you chose, but as said above, often then too late to rectify and you’re left holding the baby. On a job atm where the admirable but defo didn’t happen, quite spectacularly, but now there’s a new team and some (quality) control and it’s been recovered quite quickly. When first there it was “down tools, pick up tape measures, and get the laser out BEFORE you do anything”. Found a few extra hidden faux pas, and then some, and made sure the guys got those deleted before ploughing on. You can spend more time panicking about what’s not right, vs just inputting the energy into getting it sorted and moving to the next item. @Stu84, throw a 0-10/15mm bed down and leave it to go off, then offer the blocks down in another bed, tap it all into shape, and leave to set. Then you’ll have a (level and plumb) blank canvas to work from. By the time you’re on the 3rd course you’ll have all but forgotten about this. Oh, and don’t even dream about taking a beaker to this!!!!!!!

I think the reality is that groundworks is a often a rough and ready process - maybe on a fine day with the right team it isn’t, but on a bad day or with a less skilled team it just is. 1/2 an inch is a good tolerance in groundworks, anything better is probably uneconomic. It is upsetting to a certain kind of person and I’m one of those. I have internal drainage out by up to 200mm in horizontal position and the same in invert level. And I suspect I have not discovered all the faults yet. I wish I hadn’t trusted my groundworks guys and looked over their shoulders more. Will it result in impossible-to-fix problems - probably not. Has it cost me much extra time and effort - definitely yes. I’ve resolved to buy a total station and do my own detail layout for the ‘next build’. My surveyor is good but a total station to use to check a position or level any time I want would be better.

I really think that you are overthinking this. Let the builder sort it out, he can get it level before it gets above ground level.

Here is a simple flow requirement guide. Passivhaus bedroom requirements are just about correct for our house, so good guide. Double bedrooms not (rarely) used treat as a 1.5 person bedroom. If your house is large with only a few people, once building control is finished and house has dried out, you should look to set the flows as per passivhaus otherwise you will end over ventilating. You don't need to wrapped in spreadsheets, you just end up going down never ending tunnel, keep things simple round numbers. Overall flow Inlet the same as outlet. Lounge flow more than a double bedroom - your awake so produce more co2, and water vapour and instead of two of you there maybe 4 or 5. We flow 70m³/h in to your lounge. Set boost 10 to 15% than normal.

Returned home yesterday. You guys have had Noah’s amount of rain 😂 Main pita leak FIXED ! So just those upstands next summer 😆😂

On the topic of self design, self install, this forum gave me the confidence to DIY this part of my build. In no particular order, here are some threads that I found useful. In addition to the two Robin Clevett videos, I also found the detailed podcast and associated articles on HousePlanningHelp very instructive. Ben had a rigid system designed and installed for his build. There are some interesting design compromises that give you an idea how malleable a MVHR system can be. https://www.houseplanninghelp.com/hph202-designing-the-ventilation-heating-and-hot-and-cold-water-systems-for-bens-house-with-alan-clarke/ http://www.houseplanninghelp.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Alan-Clarke-2.pdf Link to the Good Practice Guide, MVHR for single dwellings (Passivhaus Trust) document http://passivhaustrust.org.uk/UserFiles/File/Technical Papers/2018 MVHR Good Practice Guide rev 1.2(1).pdf Here are some specific notes I collected during my research: House planning help podcast notes Active carbon filter for external intake, with log burners nearby. Turn unit to lower setting. Filter on kitchen extract. Boost when lot of people. Boost when cooking. Set fan speed 2 high enough to remove moisture when showering. JHarris - BuildHub post The issue regarding the number of extracts versus supplies is very important. Extract rates will be higher per room very often, because building regs mandate the minimum extract level for kitchens, bathrooms, utility rooms and WCs, and these rates are significantly higher than the supply rates you would normally want in bedrooms, living rooms etc. It's therefore best to have more supply vents than extract vents, to enable the system to be balanced more easily. That way the flow rates through the supply terminals will be lower than that through the extract terminals, meaning noise will be lower. A bit of noise on boost is normally acceptable in a bathroom or kitchen, but less so in a bedroom. Silencers must be fitted as close to the MVHR as possible, before the main ductwork. MVHR kitchen valve is located at least 600mm away from the cooker. HeatSpaceandLight - blog post comment We put filters on each extract valve (where dust from the room will naturally accumulate) which can be taken out easily and cleaned/replaced to keep dust out of the ducts. We also put a grease filter on the kitchen valve to keep grease and dust out of the ducts. Finally, the unit has F7 and G4 filters which keep pollen, carbon dust and other nasties from entering the system/fans from outside, and these can be replaced and cleaned also.

We are meeting with a professional concrete guy tomorrow so to discuss the job. With a bit of luck we can convince him to take the job on and do it for a reasonable price but we're not sure yet. But at least we will get more info and advice and perhaps some local contacts. A screed mix might be worth considering. Yeah I read through orangebooms experience so I'll definitely be vigilant about that! My underfloor heating will be stapled to the insulation which should hopefully avoid the issue of the pipes and I'll be vigilant about making sure the rebar stays down. Thanks again for everyone's advice, I'm certainly taking it all in and will let you know what we get after meeting with the professional tomorrow

But it has - there's been a massive reduction. The 2025 report (PDF) from the Climate Change Committee includes the latest information on that (pages 10, 29 & 30) Progress to date [on emissions reduction] has been primarily driven by decarbonisation of the electricity system, with renewables replacing both coal and, increasingly, gas. The electricity supply sector has been the key driver of overall emissions reductions and has seen sustained progress over recent years. Emissions in the sector are now 82% lower than in 2008

Thank you so for the responses. Definetley confirming my thoughts on how difficult it will be. I'm working my way through all the points one by one so will likely be back back with me questions. We have a couple more semi experienced people on board and are in the process of trying to get a professional or two to come as well. And just planning everything to the tiniest detail. I've lost many hours sleep to this recently and really appreciate the advice. We have some phone calls to make next week and see what we can figure out

I’d love ours to be on grunge designs if they paid the £20k they should. I think it’s a bloody cheek that they don’t pay to film. I guess there’s enough peeps who are happy to help them make TV cheaply. Perhaps those self builders too financially focussed to do it for free are less likely for their project to go wrong and create the jeopardy/failure storylines that I imagine keep the viewers glued, so a bit of self selection helping our cousin Kevin (with apologies to The Undertones). Our build is way too boring a design anyway, to my eye a lot of their builds stick out like a sore thumb, resembling either an office block or the atrium at my local Asda. Once ours is built I’d prefer peeps to walk by without noticing it, because it kinda looks right in the row. At the best of times I don’t enjoy tripping over people who are in my way, and I imagine film crews wouldn’t take kindly to being dumped on the road every time something I need to focus on is going on. If they gave me a video camera to wear on my head while on site it might work for us, not otherwise. Probably easier to contemplate if it’s your subcontractors that will be inconvenienced rather than one’s self. In reality Each to their own. May your project go well and may you end up happy with the result.

Not sure if it's that unpopular at a population level as there was a >15% reduction between 2008 & 2019 in the UK. However the reasons are unlikely to be entirely environmental; the research hints that cost & health concerns may be factors. I'd guess that shrinkflation may be another, since portion size is a key factor behind the reduction.

In case anybody reads this thread in the future as they too want a raised outlet, here is the drawing that I finally received from one of the Graf reps. A picture speaks a thousand words. One2clean with Raised Outlet_ Specification.pdf

You can easily sort that out with your foundation blocks

May I make a suggestion for some light reading that is pertinent to this discussion? 'Not the end of the world" by Hannah Ritchie... she's what you would call a techno-optimist. To summarise... yes, things are bad, and yes, they are going to get worse. But we are perhaps the first generation capable of actually creating a sustainable world. There are some amazing encouraging signs already. We probably won't hit the 1.5⁰ limit. But the closer we can keep to that, the better. It's better to have 2⁰ of warming than 4⁰. Global population is slowing markedly, and many countries including China have already passed peak per capita emissions. As populations level off total global emissions will fall, even without any major changes in energy use. And we are getting much more efficient with energy all the time. (Just think of how little energy a new build home takes compared to one from a few decades ago! Or a modern EV compared a 1990s Escort that did 35mpg!) Finally, there is plenty of low hanging fruit still available in the fight to cut emissions. It might be unpopular but reducing meat and dairy, and food waste, would be an enormous benefit. The world currently produces more than twice the total food calories needed for its population. But we feed much of that to livestock, and too much goes to waste. What's generally lacking from current discussions is data. Too many people argue from anecdotes. The numbers are all out there, we don't have to guess.

GitHub copilot does all this integrated using chatgpt5. Or use Claude.

I might read it later, without prejudice, other than it being fairly clear from your summary that you agree with it's premise., which might just be that we don't need more wind farms. So I am prejudiced already I feel. Hence I'm guessing also that the author isn't much worried about our gas and oil being cut off. My philosophy is to aim for "nett much less" , as zero is impossible except in a disastrous return to the stone age, and because the major powers like things as they are. My garden has enough free compost to save buying 10 bags a year, and veg from june to september. I already own the petrol and battery powered equipment, so that doesn't count as a cost. I put on a jumper before turning on the heating. That is approaching nett zero isn't it?

Not something I've done lots of but this looks quite challenging to me given all your walls are in place and you've got to work your way out via three or four rooms, much harder than having access from all around the slab. You've quite a lot of concrete and limited access and working time while aiming for a finish you can tile on. How are you setting your level throughout the building? You don't want high spots and I'd be prepared to accept being a bit low in corners that are hard to reach if you're feeling pushed for working time and budget for some self leveling compound. It looks tricky to get back through to trowel over too. Would it cost much more to do two pours? looks like a single doorway divides the top and bottom of the floorplan. That might take the pressure off a bit and let you see how the first one goes. As @Iceverge said this is messy if it goes wrong.

The fall on the inspection chamber would be the wrong way. They are designed to flow 3 into one not 1 into 3! It may be the requirement for a rodding point and a place to see if the water is dissipating and the drain is not clogged up. I have accesses each end of my surface water soakaway for these reasons. I would have offered two Y junctions with the straight on rising to a rodding point. Good luck M

As @Nickfromwales I did similar but surface mounted up/down lights. So there are no electrics in the roof section at all. I put a service cavity there but never used it. Didn't even put any MVHR up there. Don't put lights high up, you need a scaffold to replace bulbs etc.

To knock down a burnt out shell of your house, then get the foundations inspected then re build your house to the spec it was using a principal contractor to do the whole thing will be £700,000 all day long. just because your going to build it cheaper using your head and a bit of carful planning doesn’t mean the insurance company can do it like that. if you suffer a total loss you don’t want to be under insured. have you had a quote to build the whole thing with zero involvement from you, it bet it will be £600,000.

I’ve done a few projects with these cathedral type aspects, and have supported the clients with lighting design / electrical installation etc. Check out plaster-in up lights; I’ve used Tornado lighting and the results have been great. Lots of light but no obvious source or offending lightbulbs to stare directly at. For this client I installed 4 small surface mounted uplights at the base of each ‘spine’ and then you’ll see the pockets along each wall which is where I fitted the plaster-in units. Some other examples for your information.

Her weight in gold Hospital administration by day But true self builder at heart When I broke my hand She slated the entire workshop with me only fit to carry the slates and cut

There are quite a few programs that can edit embedded data. Think some can change location data. Perhaps try something like EXIFtool? Obviously work on copies to keep the originals unmodified.

Blimey things have moved on. Used to be that you just nailed a fish box to the nearest fence post and the guy from the Hydro would stick a meter in there! Or maybe that was always just a Highlands thing 😂

Welcome to the forum. Having vertically challenged builders won't hold you back, plenty use stilts for plastering. 😁 Good luck with the project.

I think you maybe somewhat overthinking this. Have you calculated what bridging you actually get? Then ask yourself are the gains worth it to remove the bridging?

But the token limit is still there! Token limits are somewhat meaningless because it depends on the tokeniser approach (Byte Pair Encoding - BPE, Wordpiece and perhaps directly code aware tokenising, etc) which in turn might lead to a striking difference in the semantic outcome EG more statistical vs less statistical (they are all just statistical). For code it can be less granular than for direct language because it can tokenise for the coding languages syntax so each syntactical element (if, else, for ...) can have its own code which drives much faster processing, and of course, much larger contexts - still not large enough for larger projects. If your coding style is consistent enough EG naming conventions, structures etc or has a domain specific corpus (EG you always doing things around walk on glazing) you could customise your own tokeniser but you would probably need to use an open source model for that or get very clever, not saying you aren't, to go in that sort of direction with Claude by perhaps pre-processing, using much shorter identifiers and avoiding any rarer characters. In the commercial sphere you want it just to work. Oh and don't forget to turn off the 'train from conversations' privacy box or we will all be learning from your work, but hey that is one of the problems of the LLMs they eat their own output!

Yes wise words - same would apply to replacing the boiler when the previous one worked (but was 15 years old), HW tank (currently 14 years old), circulation pump (was 20 years old) and many other items - none of them will recover the costs in terms of savings (well except maybe the pump because the old grunfoss pump was a watt hungry little bugger. However from my own perspective I'm getting close to retirement so currently trying to mimimise extraordinary household expenses in retirement by choosing wisely whilst I have the disposable income to facilitate the purchases. Of course I can never eliminate all potential expensive surprises in retirement but if I get the main ones done I'll feel a lot happier with a far lower income stream

Yes It covered everything except the land Even blinds and curtains Carpets for the first floor Though they are not really build material’s

We’re rebuilding a Victorian bay window with a focus on thermal efficiency and restoring some period detail. To achieve this, we designed and cast our own bespoke window cills using GFRC, 3D printing, and innovative materials like glass bubbles to reduce weight and improve insulation. This post shares our design process, casting experiments, lessons learned, and the final results. Design I used SketchUp to produce the design for the side and centre cills. The bay has external wall insulation so the cill was designed deep to accommodate 10mm aerogel, 50mm PIR, render and the offset from wall. The 10mm aerogel was something I wanted to try out, and doesn’t add much compared to just using 60mm PIR. For some reason the grey versions of aerogel with a 0.015 thermal conductivity are not easy to find, so settled with the 0.019 grey blankets. We are targeting below 0.15 U value. The EWI gets us to 0.16 with additional internal insulation needed to be below target. The cills themselves are a thermal bridge 210mm deep then 100mm of structural insulation for a 0.34 U value, I haven’t yet decided on the further internal insulation to get below 0.15. I am trying new things out with this and will try VIPs. I have a budget for trying out new insulation. 3D printing The first concept of the design was printed out in a 3D model, including a wall return, stools for the jambs and mullion and underside drip. And later its mold to test the casting process. Structural insulation The plan was to install the cills on the exterior half of the wall, then given the deep cills a section of structural insulation was fixed into the wall to provide some support for the cill in case they were used as a step. Here this is fixed to the top of the wall and replaces the 50mm of PIR which otherwise would have been used. Casting Once the cill designs were done, I made a mold of the cills for casting with concrete and sand. The mold was 3d printed and via some experimentation manage to find a way to get a stone effect for the face coat. The idea of casting my own cills started while looking at GRFC concrete countertops, so my mix included glass fibres. The hope is that they prevent cracking, but the cills are already substantial so they probably don’t need them, but I kept with my original mix design. I don’t think the glass fibres added much to the process, except additional complication. If its reduces cracking then that’s helpful. Glass Bubbles I later tried an experiment using glass bubbles. Half the sand was substituted for glass bubbles to improve the thermal efficiency of the cills, (only a little) but its main advantage was in reducing the weight so it was possible to move the cills around with some ease. It also helped reduce deliveries of the sand. I was using a white sand which was an annoying bulky delivery. The glass bubbles tended to rise to the top of the mix, here the top is the bottom of the cill which was problematic for creating a flat surface. I later experimented with covering this to produce a flat surface but I manage to instead amend the mold design to be fill from its back. The advantage of this was that the slightly uneven surface was in an area where it didn’t matter and also the glass bubbles would be situated more evenly towards the back of the cills thus helping with the thermal efficiency of the cills on their internal side. Test casts I had about eight different cills cast before being totally happy with the design and the casting process. I experimented with using cast stone dust, but with a bad result (probably from my poor face coat application) so I moved away from a “bath stone” look to a white to be further finished. Completed Cills Once the cills were done, I was able to see how to progress upwards for the rest of the bay window. At the start we were happy to accept the bay would be a thermal bridge requiring lots of internal insulation. The benefit with this design is that much of the insulation is now external saving on the floor space. It took some time, which I have and I am happy with the result. Since I installed the jambs and mullions and making the header/lintels copying the original design in the area. Plus the cost is much reduced. The original plan was to spend 30k on the bay window build, as a standard build, that cost without windows relying upon insulation being done separately afterwards. Instead we have managed to spend 5k on tools and materials, including £500 for a 3d printer but lots of my time.