Roger440

You sure about the pea gravel? That gets blocked up pretty quickly. I always use 40mm stone round my drains.Which is what im led to believe is the right way. In my experience the perforated 100mm drainage products are all much of a muchness.

The building game is awash with such things. And everyone telling you you must do X or the world will end. Dream up a product/service, get an "industry body" to say its essential, then push it hard. Like OFTEC for oil boilers. The building regs and the BS standard say what you have to do. OFTEC have, shall we say, embellished the requirements. No doubt for their own/members bottom line. But everyone just refers to OFTEC regs. But they are not the actual regs!!

Ive never used one on any of my tiling jobs. I had my garage (11x6m) at my first house tiled throughout. By a proper tiler. Adhesie straight onto concrete. Though maybe its different when you are putting high point loads on them?

Extends well beyond markets too. They appear to be wilfully blind/stupid/corrupt (delete as appropiate) to "consequences" of decisions they make. Which everyone else can see right at the start. 70 million people to choose from, and we end up with 600 odd morons/crooks. (delete as appropiate)

There must have been a fair bit of dishonesty going on for it to result in all that! Although it was pretty clear it was going on.

Agree with Johnmo. Why have gas? A decent electrical connection will do everything you could need. If its there in an existing house, sure. But pay for it?

It might be highly regulated now, but there still no recourse against building control as you have observed and precedent set in law. Not sure id call it a gimmick, but its largely a pointless excercise. They can, and do, sign off any old crap, and there nothing you can do about it. Other than report it to the regulator. Who may or may not take action. But no recourse is available to you as the homeowner.

Post ocober 23, they are very restricted in terms of what they can say. Guidance is a definite no no. Of course, old habits die hard and im sure plenty still do.

If they are holiday lets, this^^^^

I recall my first foray into doing something requiring building regs, a timber frame, timber clad outbuilding. Council bloke said 3 meter trench foundations. I might have been a bit green back then, but that sounded like nonsense to me. On questioning, he said it was because of the trees alongside. (mostly Ash). I said, if i dig a massive trench ill be cutting through all the roots which will destabilise the trees. "Not my problem" was the answer. 3 meters or you dont build it was the message. Needless to say, binned him off and went private. Sensible discussion about what was and wasnt acceptable followed. As far as i can see, asking for deeper trenches is to absolve them of thinking, and reducing their liability, entirely at your expense. If i was doing it now, as you say, full plans route. Fortunately the previous owner built a massive shed thus neatly removing that problem.

In England i would say that 95% of houses are "not compliant" in some way or other. If every job that should have building regs actually did, the whole system would collapse in short order. Different when talking about new houses though.

Indeed. The OP says it was done in March, which is rather early in the year to be doing lime id have thought. And painted straight after, so you might well be right.

Hmmm. Interesting to say the least, but not in a ggod way i guess. Done some limework, but cant suggest anything. Might be worth posting on the period property forum, though some are hardcore limeists, who will insist only limewash will do. Though in fairness, it wouldnt have done this.

Absolutely this.^^^^ Council BC are not immune either, but the incentives applied in a different way.

Its certainly seems worse in the uk. But when building control have NO liability to the homeowner for what they sign off (council or private) one cant be surprised that some are willing to sign off anything. OK, post october 23, they do have some liabilities, but still not to the homeowner. I dont think it fixable. As you say, the experience has gone, and for most of the actors, no pride in the job.

You didnt mention pumping it out? Yes, slow it down, but you cant stop it.

If the underfloor area is dirt, you are literally wasting your time. In the event of a flood, the water will simply rise through the soil. Bit like one of my neighbours who had a 500 year old cottage with stone flag floor. When the floods came, the water just came up through the floor. Fortunately, she was smart and well used to it, so furniture on blocks, wait for the water to leave, light two open fires in fireplaces to dry out. All original lime plastered and rendered walls, so dryed out easily. Id definitely be doing similar to what i described. And removing the rockwool. Unless the flood is 30mins max, stop trying to stop it coming in. You will lose, the water will win.

As someone who has been flooded, please stop, now. Glossing over the rockwool in your cavity for now, the house as it stands can dry out post flooding. Your proposal, both the bitumen and the EWI will ensure in the event of another flood, that it cannot dry. Ever. Lots of problems will stem from that that dont need explaining! Yes, i know the thinking is keeping the water out means it wont be wet. This is utterly futile, it will get in, probably first through the void under the floor.. On my last house, if you accept the water is coming in no matter what, the question is what to do about it. My house was slightly diffrent in that it had a solid concrete floor, but what i did is: I created a sump in the lowest point (front room in my case) which would be in your ventilated void. In this sump i had two electric pumps which would pump water out through tubes in the wall higher than any flood would reach. Additionally, as we lost power during out flood, i also added a battery powered pump with a controller that switched on if the power went out. The simple theory was based on our flood experience. On the night in question, we found that 2 screwfix submersible pumps could remove water and pump it out faster than it came in . My final installed pumping capacity was 8 times that. So, in the event of a flood, yes, water will come in but as it will immediately be removed, your water depth is limited to a few mm. This massively reduces the damage a flood will do. Addtionally, i tiled all of the ground floor, and, as i observed during the flood, there were a few places water came in such as around waste water pipes through walls. The biggest was water coming up past the concrete base between the concrete and the walls. I sealed all this using a sika product they put in expansion joints on runways. So i significantly reduced water infiltration rate as well. Stuff like the newel post on the stairs, i cut 20mm off the floor and installed a stainless spacer bar. So the wood wont soak up water. During my time there, i admit, i never had to use it, but im 99% confident that it would have done as designed. My target was to be sitting on the sofa 4 hours after the last drop of water had left. 4 hours to mop of and clean up the silt etc. get a couple of dehumififiers for a few weeks and sorted. It was, because of the risk of flooding that i DIDNT insulate, in particlar the old part of the house that has solid walls. Whilst there would have been significant benefit in doing so, anything i did would increase drying time. In your case, the products will simply prevent it entirely. If you accept you cannot have a completely watertight house, and you cant, at least retrospectively, find a way to mitigate the inevitable. Im not saying my way is the only way, and clearly yours is complicated by the void, but please dont try to waterproof your walls.

If thats the case, then it would certainly explain the standard of work. Question then is, how did we arrive at a postion where one group of people working on houses can self certify, but others, including the major house builders cant. Has the distinct whiff of corruption. Either way, the results merely prove self certification doesnt work. Mind you, nor does building control!

The interesting thing seems to be, that those works carried out under eco4 scheme do NOT have building control sign off. What i simply cannot find out, is how that can possibly be. Its notifiable work. So how can work done under eco4 not have BC sign off? Of course, its no surprise that such work is generally poor, to put it mildly.

Good. About time they started looking into this. Meanwhile, they wil announce another scheme!

The fact that most are poorly installed cant be a surprise, except to the morons signing off said schemes. Everytime free money is on offer, the cowboys arrive. Every, single, time. Of course, with EWI, its compounded because its a job that really does need careful analysis, and fitting. And the potential damage of it not be so, very significant. The visual aspect is valid, but we cant stop people upgrading houses, otherwise noting will ever change. But i certainly wouldnt do it to my house!

Good thing you dont live in wales then. Plaid affiliated quangos are pushing this one hard. Ie, support destroying the countryside with windmills and pylons, and offer token bribes of free money to not complain about them. Under the cover of claiming they will be "community owned". Given that Plaid will likely have more seats after the election than anyone else, there a possibility it might happen. We will gloss over the "interests" that various key figures have in said energy companies. Quite why a small community wants to own or part own a liability like a field of wind turbines is beyond me. The liabilities will be huge. Anything serious goes wrong, said community will be bankrupt. Still, if we elect lunatics, then lunatic ideas get implemented.

Premixed lime putty.

Ive found it great. You can send a sample off and they will match it for you too. If you are exposed, you might want to add some pozzlan, but given you loction, i guess that doesnt apply?