Roger440

The actual construction rather depends what comes up, but most of them are steel portal, with either steel cladding, or sometimes, especially the newer ones, concrete slab sides up to 1.8 meters then timber of steel cladding. You do see the odd one thats concrete portal. To all intents, an industrial unit! Is yours a steel frame building? Or an old stone/wooden barn? If so, yes, i can imagine its difficult. Thats exactly why i wouldnt want to take one on, much as i rather like them, i certainly dont have £450K to do one up! I already rent a barn here. To be honest, i have a problem with renting. Just the same as renting a house, one is loathe to spend money on the building to make it nice when its not yours, and ultimately you have no security that you wont be turfed out at some random point in the future. The biggest driver though is i dont want my barn/shed/toy store/workshop somewhere else. I want it at home. Which is why building a house is pretty much ruled out. If i ever bought a plot to build a house on, id want to buy something with outline permission at the very least. They dont, as a rule, come with 2000sq/ft barns included So im try to use a bit of lateral thinking to achieve the desired outcome. No doubt there are more attractive building types, but, thats a compromise i can live with if we get the other things we want.

Having considered forever, the various options for building a house, the one thing that trips me up everytime is our requirement for a small house & big barn / shed. By big i mean circa 1500-200sqft. So big! The planning system is not really geared up for this. Maybe not impossible, but an uphill struggle at best. So my options are to buy an old farm and renovate/ adapt etc. This is do-able, but as is always the case with old buildings, there will be lots of surprises, and therefore expense along the way. Whilst i can, if i have to, cope with the surprises i can do myself, im keen not to have expensive surprises as im wanting to get to the stage of not working full time sooner rather than later. So, one solution is to buy one of the Q class modern barns, fill only part of it with house, leaving the rest empty. Having seen some that do fit the bill, with fully approved plans, at a practical level, once the plot/barn is bought, my thinking is, this really shouldnt be too expensive? However, ive not really found much info on this. Has anyone here done similar. Now i appreciate you "can" make this expensive, but my thinking is that all i actually need to do is build a nice insulated box inside said barn. It may or may not have a concrete floor, but, especially if single story, this seems like a pretty simple build? I'm not looking for anything clever. " bedrooms, kitchen/diner/lounge and may a small cost room. From a building regs point of view, whilst not being an expert, is there any obvious tripping points in this, admittedly loose plan? Ie, things that one would likely encounter on a conversion of this sort versus a new build. I'm also attracted by my perceived reduction in risk. as always, there can be surprises in ground works. At least with this you have a decent modern structure in place before you start, thus in my mind de-risking it. And also that i can do most of it myself. With the obvious cost savings that will bring. Thoughts. Am i nuts?

Sounds like a "misinterpratation" of something. Just had mine done and its more than 5m away!

garagejournal.com flooring section will give you plenty of ideas!!

I investigated it some detail for retrofit in the cavity in my old house. Couldn't convince myself of any other system, especially has the bricks were rock hard, so much more likely that drivng rain would come through the mortar joints. I seen to remember it was £8K to do the whole house up to the roof. The other spinoff was air tightness improvement on an old house. The worry i had though was where the joists went through the wall, there were gaps. Lots of them. Realistically, they would need filling/taping before doing it otherwise loads of the stuff would fill up under you floor! Much easier on a new house where that problem wont exist. Ive toyed with doing it at my new please as there is a degree of flood risk, but the front half of the house is solid 9 inch wall, so probably wasting my time as that will fillup with water anyway! Just going to concetrate on re-plastering with lime, so it can just dry out again.

That link is wrong on so many levels. The new rules coming into force do not mean your septic tank is no longer legal, UNLESS its discharging to a watercourse. Their proposed worms are for the soakaway. If you have a soakaway, then the new rules dont apply. Plus of course, id like to see anyone prove that the worms have made a system compliant for discharge to a water course. Do they have an EA cert for this? Errr, No Irresponsible marketing and taking advatage of peoplesognorance.

Interesting. This i assume is because its resistant to water unlike plaster? I was going to do mine in lime, so after its got wet it can just dry out. Hadn't though of doing it this way.

When you say rendered, do you mean inside or outside. Assuming outside, what did you do on the inside?

Im unclear how you think this wont cause damp issues? Where will the moisture currently exiting the wall go. Assuming you have no dpc of course.

The OP doesn't say ifit has a DPC or not, but id guess not. In which case it must be a breathable solution. Anything gypsum/cement based will very likely cause damp issues. Indeed i have this problem, where the walls were covered in some sort of board with, in places a void behind, leaving nowhere for the moisture to go. This applies equally to exterior. Mike wye and theres another who escapes me do all this stuff. https://www.mikewye.co.uk/product/lime-plaster/ The key on old buildings is dont try to stop the moisture, you will fail. Unless you fancy retrofitting a DPC.

As Dave said, perculation test as a matter of priority, ie, BEFORE you buy it. If you cant install the required soakaways, you cant build!

You can get cavity wall insulation that goes in as a liquid and then becomes, effectively expanding foam. Aside from some of the obvious advantages, it fully waterproof and ones of its claimed features is for use in flood prone houses. So it would be full fill and flood proof. Arguably, you could just do the 1st meter, then normal cavity insulation from thereup. Its expensive! https://www.completeinsulations.ie/spray-foam-cavity-wall-insulation/

Im with you on this!.News to me too.

By that would i be correct in assumimng inside the CU it would no longer be necessary?

Mainly because as they run up the wall, they will have to do a 90 degree turn which will look awful as they will stick out. It certainly a very visible area. Then of corse the same again inside. Currently its a plastic CU, though i guess i could change that. Even if i came in closer to the floor, ive still got to turn a 16mm cable through 90 degrees. I suppose could try going through at an angle, but its conventional brick and block with cavity. Still look crap though.

Thanks for the pics. Follow the logic on heatshrink on the single conductors. Hadn't thought of that. Like yours its all "inside" the cupboard with electrics in.

Im guessing thats the basis for the argument?

Bet thestuff was clean though :):):) The parts washer is actually purpose made with a waterbased cleaner.

This is what i was trying to say. So what you are suggesting you both believe to be acceptable? If so, thats good There is a school of thought on the electricians forum that it isn't. Using logic says its OK though.

This too !

Possibly. but logistically it makes no sense. Plus the summer house and sewage supplies are already in. But need re-doing. Neither comply with much in the way of regs, and the sewage supply has only just been put in! So much for Part p registered electricians!

Well 10 "might" be OK. But given the equipment likely to be in it, and the possible distance (depending where it ends up, 16mm buys me a bit of margin. 10, not so much. To put it in perspective: 3hp compressor Possible boiler Lighting (lots 2 x 3kw fans 3kw parts washer Ramp And if it goes at the other end of the garden, 200 ft away

Im not worried about the load end. Just the house end.

Think we are talking cross purposes? As there is no garage yet, im only installing the cable to it while i can. So ALL the supplies need to come from the house.

Ive got a second CU. It used to supply storage heaters, so got bags of capacity. Its still connected on the incoming side, but not on the outgiong. Terminating all these supplies in a box just to swap to twin and earth is going to get awfully busy!