pilgrim

Thank you, yeah I have planned to set some bolts in the concrete to tie it all down

I am working out how to build a shed in my garden and I am unsure of the best way to do the Damp Proof Membrane below the concrete slab. So far I have the base planned like this with the DPM coming up the wall at least 150mm. My plan is to over clad the OSB with a breathable membrane, batterns and tongue and groove / weather board. Then a french drain around the outside. Is this approach sensible? what is the best way to protect the membrane from being damaged? or will the shingle in the french drain be enough? This will just be a shed (for now anyway!) so I want to keep the concrete close to ground level to make it easier pushing equipment in and out! Thank you

Hi, I have two old fireplaces in my house that I want to skim. One is in the master bedroom and I have removed the old open coal fire and plastered the walls, but I am not sure what would be the best product to use to make the floor level again. It will probably be carpeted over so not worried about the look. Is concrete the best product to use here? The other one is in the living room and I want to put the wood burning stove back in place but not sure what is best to use to skim the old bricks as it will need to cope with the heat from the stove. I am thinking that I will then paint this finish rather than tiling behind the stove. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thank you

I am in a similar situation, I just keep a couple of bags in the boot of my car, one for dirty clothes one for clean, the added advantage of this is the dirty ones occasionally get washed at home!

hehe well im the "plumber"! just had the heat pump kit provided by a local green energy company so I can get the BUS grant. I'll see how cold I get next winter and see if I need additional radiators, for now I'll run the pipes under the floor so they are easy to fish out and connect up if needed. If Im cold next winter I'll start another thread here!

Thank you @Nickfromwales Its about 3m of vertical pipe down to the UFH manifold, radiators are about 1 m lower than the LLH. I'll leave it capped for now just want to make sure I leave enough room for the radiator controls if and when I decide to do it. As long as I can get my hot water working in the next week I will be happy!

Thank you @Nickfromwales I think that makes sense! There will be approximately 5m pipe run from the LLH to the manifold. Which I have planned to run in 22mm Hep pipe

Is anyone able to offer me some guidance on this schematic? I am confused by the pump set up after the buffer tank labelled 26L LLH on the diagram i was provided by the company that supplied the kit. Ive got a pump on the UFH manifold so with the pump in this position wont that mean I need to have both running to run the UFH? can I move it to after the tee off for the UFH and then set it up so that the radiator thermostats control that pump?

I am after some advice about the best way to connect up my heating system. I've got an air source heat pump to hear underfloor heating down stairs and radiators upstairs. I know that I probably won't need the radiators upstairs but want to put in the plumbing now while I've got the ceilings down just in case! The hot water cylinders are upstairs so I was thinking I could split the hot feed coming out to send one feed downstairs to the underfloor heating and one feed to the radiators. There is a pump connected to the ufh manifold so can I remove the pump by the 26l cylinder shown in the diagram and add in another pump to just feed the radiators? (Badly drawn in red on the diagram!) There will only be 3 radiators upstairs. Downstairs I have a 4 port manifold with all ports in use as I am going to be building a single story extension on to the kitchen at some point. Also what diameter hep2o pipe would be best to supply the ufh manifold with? Sorry if the pictures aren't clear but I'm on the mobile at the moment and haven't slept much recently 😂 Thank you V3 - T Pilgrim - 335056-Drawing.PDF

The old bathroom waste had the toilet connected to the furthest pipe and the bath draining into the open drain, now putting in a new soil stack that I want to also connect the bath into, also putting in a downstairs toilet just a bit further out of the top of the shot, to all link up. So I was thinking of cutting the pipe just below the Y joint and using a coupler to join the plastic pipework, just wanted to make sure I wouldnt be causing any future problems with movement or different materials causing issues down the line. Plumbing is still new to me! Hopefully it is just ground water, just seemed odd it only happened in this area, hopefully it wont be any fuller in the morning!

Back to the digging today, there was no concrete or shingle protecting the old soil pipe. Do you think it would be worth digging out all the way to the manhole/inspection chamber and replacing all the old pipework with some shingle? Also weirdly this hole is slowly filling with water, bottom left in picture, this level is above the level of the communal sewer and the water smells clean. There are no rivers or ponds nearby so im surprised to see the water seeping into the hole.

@richo106 Hopefully you will get some good news soon then. It still infuriates me that this uplift is passed on to new owners, especially when you can be certain that the old owners were not paying any council tax. In my case the house had been left unoccupied for 23 years, just paying their council tax demand for the first year would have used up most of my renovation budget. It is a shame that most council officers are not as understanding and forthcoming with information as the people who work in building control.

The wording in the law for the empty house premium says it can be only be applied to a house that has been left "unoccupied AND unfurnished". as long as you can prove it was left furnished then the premium cannot be applied. As soon as I raised this point to the council officer they dropped their case. Thankfully it was written with an and not or! As far as I can tell this will not affect the VAT reclaim process, that requirements for that just state you have to be able to prove that the property has not been lived in for more than 2 years. It does not mention the condition that the property was left in. I have not finished my renovations yet so have not filed my claim, in my case the power was disconnected so its fairly easy to prove it was not lived in.

@richo106 Hopefully you have some pictures saved of the rooms furnished, or the old estate agents listing. This will be enough to get the 300% uplift cancelled. My house had rotten floors, broken windows and no heating but this was not enough to convince the council to unlist it for council tax, but they did give me 3 months for free as an uninhabitable discount.

My building control inspector told me to install gallows brackets when I removed my chimney breast earlier this year, and has signed off the install. In this situation it sounds like you would need to remove it all and then maybe install a lightweight decorative chimney stack on the roof if you want to keep the same aesthetic.

@richo106 was your house left totally empty? or was any furniture left in the house? I had exactly the same situation as you but the law says the house has to be left unoccupied AND unfurnished to be liable for the 300% premium. My house was left with some furniture in it so I was able to successfully argue this with the council and eventually got the premium removed but it took a few months and the threat of court action before they finally backed down.

I had a vivaro van for years but it is now being used as a shed, thanks to the head corrosion issue. Also unless you get the long wheel base varient of the vivaro/traffic you cannot fit a whole 8x4 sheet in the back it is something annoying like 50mm too short.

@Ferdinand Thanks, they sound very good from other posts on here. Ive ordered some samples, so will see!!

@Ferdinand did you go ahead with the Nuance panels? and if so what are your thoughts on them? I am looking for wall panels at the moment. Thanks

@Nickfromwales @Mr Punter That standing water was actually caused by a blocked sewer, after I read these messages I lifted the man hole and the level was only a few inches below the cover. Ive had it unblocked now and the water is gone, it was just an elbow. Ive now started the process of installing the french drain and digging out the old pipes.

I asked the same question to my building control inspector recently about my small utility room / pantry and he sent me the attached page in reply, and said "Your plywood will meet D-s3, d2, but any standard higher than that will require expensive paint treatments, or overcladding with plasterboard. Looking at the table above, if your utility room has a floor area under 4m2, plywood will be fine, but if your utility floor area is more than that you will only be able to untreated ply cladding up to an area equivalent to half the floor area. So as an example, if your utility room has a floor area of say 10m2 then only a maximum 5m2 area of untreated ply would be allowed." Hopefully that will be the same for you.

Thank you for the links to documents and the advice @Conor @crispy_wafer. I will check with my building control guy whether he would like the new joint encased in concrete or not. I have to cut the concrete against the wall back and put in a french drain so I will also cut around the connection and see what I find when I dig down. 🤞

I am struggling to find the right key words to find the bit I need to connect my new soil stack to the existing vitreous clay soil pipe in the ground. I assume an adaptor would be best here to ensure a good seal. I have attached some photos of the existing pipe and a rough sketch for the new soil stack that I am planning to build. Any help on this would be much appreciated.

Great thank you @Olf will the stepping up from 32 - 40 - 50 mm pipes help to stop any pressure buildups causing water movements in the other units when one is draining?

Hello, I am looking for some advice on the best way to route the waste water for my bathroom. I have attached my planned bathroom layout. This bathroom is on the first floor, with the kitchen below and a small utility room below the shower / toilet end. The short wall that the toilet is on is the external wall with the drains connection below it. The floor joists run north/south across the room so I do not think I can drill through them all that close to the wall to allow me to run all the waste water under the floor, but I could be wrong. I am happy to have the toilet waste going straight through the wall. I want to connect up the shower bath and sink to a common waste outlet through a separate hole but avoid any back pressure causing waste to flow up into the bath when others are in use (as happened in the last house I rented!) I do not mind if I have to drop down through the ceiling of the utility room in the corner below the shower, I am also happy to build a stud wall off the bathroom if this makes it easier to route the waste water, nothing is ordered yet so all sizes can change, measurements are to the existing walls. Thank you