Calvinmiddle

Stone Fill 1

I'll add some more, but I have no editing skills so there will be time when nothing is happening - just look at the clouds during them. Also made the error of starting at 8am and finished at 4pm, I had to kick the guys from MBC off a couple of nights at 6:30 as my neighbour was making sure things were done by the book (working hours are 8am-6pm M-F and 8am - 12:30pm Sat with no work on Sun or Bank Holidays - won't be specified on your planning conditions but its some other art of the council - I didn't check it out) so missed a couple of hours work when they were here.

Think along the back fence it was about 1m and up to the camera about 1.5m. Have a few of MBC putting the stone back in and then added the fines - might interest you Ian depending if you can avoid getting piles. You could do the whole of hte foundations yourself. Let me know if you want more added, have loads, included the house going up

I just pasted the URL link in and it did it all by itself

Yeah spot on Stones. Love the way you can see the trailers get lower as they fill with soil. Maybe I should have shown these to Ian when he was looking for a digger - he might have been persuaded to get a larger one You can see the distinct line where the chalky clay starts, will filled the hole back up with 30-50mm stone to just above that line. What you can't really see is that there is a slope so the each of the hole closest to the camera is about 500 deeper than the back to get us level. I ended up taking another 30 t or so out in front of the house so there wasn't a step up to the garden

Day 3

Day 2

Been chatting to recoveringacademic on his blog about the digout I did instead of piling and remembered I had some timelapse clips of it. Though you all might find the damage a 12t excavator can do you your back garden interesting.... Day 1

Benefit with farmers is that they generally have access to some pretty heavy equipment, my friend was able to borrow his neighbours 12t excavator, it "just" fit down the side f the existing house - but it sure didn't take long to keep the fill the grain trailers - 5-6 scopes did the job. He was doing it around the harvest when he had extra drivers, if there was a dew they would come to me and just keep four 15t trailers on the goes with one coming in just as one left. Once the dew had lifted they left to harvest. Started a new thread with some timelapse clips of the excavator at work...

The clay we were on had good bearing capacity but the soil report was that it was dessicated and hence at risk of heave as the soil reverted back to its natural state (no one could explain why it wasn't at its natural state after being part of a garden for 70+ years) SE that did the soil report said it would need piles ( with the added benefit to him that I would ask him to design them). Even Hilliard first mentioned piles when I first contacted him, it was only when I said that with piling quotes coming in at £25k-£40k the project wouldn't happen and we needed to think of something else that he looked at digging deeper to get under the heave risk. We went down 750mm below the EPS and filled it up with 30-50mm stone whacked down in layers of 150mm. He then added more steel to the slab to stiffen it up. Simple solution if you have somewhere to get rid of the soil, we dug out 500-600 tonnes, not sure on the exact amount but farmer friend took away 33 grain trailer loads, trailers rated at 15t but some overloaded so much that rams couldn't lift trailer to tip soil out, they had to get a digger to help it up. Paid him about £5k, and stone to fill it up was about £2k, but a hell of a lot cheaper than piles....

Ian Another thing to thing about is if you actually need piles or not. I was told by the SE that did my ground survey and a couple of others as well that I needed them. But remembered reading Hillards report on passive slabs here that mentions On pages 3-4 how a slab can be used instead of piles by excavating out a soil under the slab and replacing it with stone, or even a greater about of EPS which is sometimes used in Scandinavia. Under our slab is 750mm of stone. You have a few ponds to fill to get rid of the stuff you dig out ?, and also have access to cheap stone, and even have a digger to do the digging! Its something I think you should look at it you haven't already

See quick a few 4.0's and £25 at the moment, I just won and action for a 3.0 for 99p - postage was £18.99 but it ends up still under £20

Got a Ridgid 4Ah for £75 after a bit of best offer haggling. Ridgid seems to be the name these are sold under in USA - not many of either AEG or Ridgid on eBay. Funny as in Australia AEG seem week regarded by the trades and the Bunnings (one for you Jack ?) had a massive section of AEG power tools. Will have to get some decent Makita batteries, I got a pack of a hammer drill, impact driver, charger and 2 batteries. Then got a circular saw and thought the batteries where on their way out as they didn't last long in the circular saw. Then noticed the batteries are only 1.5Ah!!!! I've been having to swap them over after a couple goes of ripping down 2.5m lengths of larch. Could prob do with a new blade as well to be honest...

I have an AEG nailer that I got in Australia - this one. And it has been great of the build - It's main job has been installing a 100m run of feather edge fencing and it's been great. I got this charger and a 4.0Ah battery (not the 5.0.Ah as in the pick). But something is wrong with the battery - I put it on to charge and it does a check on the battery, decides it's fine and then starts to charge it. But after a few minutes the lights that flash when it it flashing change to fade on and off - which is what they do when they are fully charges. I take the battery off and press the tester, all the indicator lights flash on momentarily, then it drops back to 1 light showing. When i put it on the nailer there isn't enough power to fire a single nail. So it's obviously that there is something wrong with the battery, but the charger doesn't tell me it is broken after it checks it. So wonder if some think what happens to the Makita batteries where an internal "fuse" goes after they have been put onto charge after being too dead. Explained better by Jeremy All Makita packs with a charge fault, bar none, have this fault because the first two cells in the pack have dropped below their cut-off voltage, usually because they've not been used for a while and the small drain from the internal circuit board has discharged them. If you then try and charge the pack three times with one of the Makita chargers it will flash a fault code and on the third attempt it will write of the battery. Over on the old sire Jeremy wrote this when I asked about how to look after my Makita batteries. Yes, Makita 18V packs need a charge every 6 months or so if you're not using them, or else cells one and two in the pack will shut off because of the constant current drain from the internal circuit board, If this happens, then when you plug the pack into the charger then the fault light will come on. DO NOT try and charge the pack again with the Makita charger, just connect it to a low current charger and charge it at around 19 to 20V maximum for a few hours, across the main power terminals. This isn't enough to cause harm, and anyway the Makita cells are brilliant, near-bomb proof. The low charge will revive cells one and two after a few hours and then magically the Makita charger will report that the pack is fine and charge it as normal.. No damage will have been done, and the pack will equalise and charge as normal from then on. But I forgot to ask if there is a way to charge the batteries if this "fuse" has gone - and maybe I can use that way to try and resurrect this AEG battery.

Ferdinand Have just sent you a PM

Just seeing this now, will do it tonight, thanks

We seem to live in a area where 3 houses that look the same on google maps on the same road have 3 different bandings. All the ones I'm asking about are a Band D, see little point sending them anything that might prove they are right...... There should be enough variation within the D band to find something the same. Current house is a Band D and is slightly bigger. But apparently that doesn't count as this is a house and not a bungalow.....

That's what I have done, and I got the response, "they are much smaller than yours" I need to see what they are looking at, because they look similar sized to me...... So either they have got a stupid size for mine, or they are just being awkward as possible so they don't have to change the band. I have little to zero trust of this kind of process. I can see why they don't put on the website the size they have as well as the banding. Then it would be easy for me to give them a list of similar sized bungalows for them to compare to prove they are trying to give me a high banding.

All good ideas, but this is a bungalow, and although there is more of them than i thought they don't come onto the market that often. So rightmove isn't any use and besides somehow the agents around here have convinced sellers that floor plans are only needed for larger houses. I had to fight to get one included for no extra charge in my 3 bed house we are selling. The thing is the VOA banding is public knowledge and in the public domain, but they seem to base this off some measurement they have - I want access to this as it will be a damn sight easier for me to compare the sizes if I have this info as well. And seeing they are putting the onus on me to show them comparable sized bungalows it would be less of a waste of my time to be able give them the details of the similar sized ones than have someone say "no they are all smaller than yours" on the phone without telling me the flipping sizes!! So the question is will they give me the sizes of a list of 50+ houses? Surely I could invoke the Freedom of Information act if they start to play silly buggers couldn't I?

My thinking is that she is saying that the houses are all smaller than ours. Is it ok for me to ask of the sizes they have for 50+ houses as well as checking the size they have on file for ours?

Just got off a the phone with the Valuation Office Agency who asked me to identify similar sized properties as I'm challenging the banding. Helpful enough person on the phone but after she looked at 18 comparable sized bungalows she said only one was of a comparable size. I asked her who came up with the size she said it would be from the survey and when I kept pressing her I didn't get anymore info. I then asked what size do they have and she replied aghast that she couldn't give that information out over the phone, and that I would have to write in. So I found about 50 houses in total that I think are comparable to mine, first I need to get the size they have for mine and challenge that if they have over estimated it if they measured the external walls (does the number of bedrooms matter?) But I'd also like to see the size they have for the other houses as I'm sure some of them are definitely of a similar size to mine. Does anyone know if they will give me that information out if I write to them? Which would allow me to compare the sizes.

But the MBC slab is signed off by their SE isn't it? I know my BCO had no issue with it at all - he was familiar with it and just wanted to check that the stone it lays on wasn't just placed on the top of the soil (creating a mound of stone) as they had seen that before and the stone started to run out when the concrete went in. Maybe time for a new BCO I'm thinking.....

Just saw this - thought it might interest you all. Land Rover pulls 100-tonne train The Telegraph The Land Rover Rover Discovery Sport diesel was standard, part from being fitted with guidance wheels to literally keep it on track. Read the full story Shared from Apple News

I got my Siberian Larch from Bennetts, they were by a good bit the most competitive on price. But that was for PAR boards to do a board on board detail. But they will cut it into a profile of you want. My larch started off very pale, like a pine, then darkened down to an orange colour (a bit like Western Red Ceder) then it lightens up again to a bit darker that it's original pine colour before getting a silver colour, esp on the grain. Dont really notice any variation at the eaves I have to say. The colour change seems to be from exposure to the air. By my kitchen widows there is a wall that has a 1.2m overhang and it faces north. Wood changed colour there like the rest of the house.

I don't really need the float level, but for the sake of a couple of ££ I'll go with with the same as everyone else to future proof it and keep it easy for you so there is only one version. Regarding the power source I'd prefer a plug in