epsilonGreedy

Before I submit a plan to vary the approved designed of my garage I need to check if my revision would fall foul of fire egress regulations. The garage is detached, single story with masonry walls 7.2m x 5.6m. There is also an attached storeroom which looks like a brick built lean-to along one 5.6m wall. The store room has an external door and currently no internal opening to the main garage. My plan revision involves replacing the external door with an internal door opening into the interior of the garage vehicle parking area. Would this change transgress fire egress regs? I am hoping that a small store (9ft x 7ft 8" internal) falls below the threshold of a habitable room.

This [Edit: Now works for me]. Hint, use an incognito browser window.

On of the benefits of living on site for a few months is I have observed the local weather patterns experienced at my plot, it is very sheltered from wind but located in a cool air cauldron. The village is surrounded by 100ft hills on three sides or 300 degrees and after moving on site I soon noticed that during still nights the 6am temperature is typically 2 degrees cooler than forecast by the BBC, I assume this is because cold air drains off the hills and settles over the village with a shallow gradient towards the 60 degree gap in the surrounding ring of hills. I am hoping that in summer we will benefit from a sheltered sun trap and experience a warm micro climate, however I need to quantify the net winter temperature deficit and then consider upgrading my self build's insulation. Can anyone recommend an outside temperature logging device? My intention is to note the 4am and 4pm numbers each day then compare with RAF Coningsby.

I have been surprised by the natural insulating properties of MDPE pipe. We have had a permanent ground frost for days and yet the air exposed mains pipe has not suffered more than a few lumpy ice crystals. Given how little water sits in domestic pipe I will be more inclined to purge the system of stagnant water after returning from say a 2 week holiday.

Do you mean it is a big problem in theory or is there plenty of field evidence? I do not imagine there are many brick an block builders pioneering unusual insulation build ups with an empty cavity and 150mm of internal PIR. I am leaning towards a 100mm cavity filled with beads and then 25mm or 40mm of internal PIR sheet between battens with regular plasterboard on top. Would this put me on the safe side of condensation worries?

Not a serious thread though would someone verify my arithmetic because I was surprised by the low volume of standing water in a mains supply pipe. The other night the onsite temperature plummeted to -7 according to my car dashboard and despite keeping the static caravan central heating on all night, in the morning the toilet refill and washhand cold tap had intermittent ice blockages for a few minutes. The MDPE supply to the static is partly exposed to the elements for 25 meters until it hooks into the street mains water supply. So far ice has self cleared as fresh mains water at ground temperature is pushed through the system. As a defensive measure I have started to flush toilets every few hours to recharge the exposed pipework with warmer water at ground (street mains) temperature and this got me thinking about the volume of 25mm MDPE pipe and how many toilet flushes are needed. http://www.heatwizard.co.uk/pipevolumes.html unhelpfully says the volume of 1m of 25mm MDPE pipe is 0.00033. After a bit of playing with the numbers I assumed this volume is expressed in m3 = 1/3 of a liter per meter of pipe or call it 8.3 liters of standing cold water between my meter and the static caravan. The toilet fitted to the caravan in 2003 is unlikely to be an efficient model so one flush should nearly recharge the 25m meters of exposed pipe.

You are being generous, I will snap a picture next time.

I think your challenge is that it takes more builder expertise to morph a structure than build from scratch. Do you expect to live elsewhere during the conversion, if so for how long? Do you hope to retain finished plaster surfaces as the building is transformed or will you gut the existing structure back to masonry that can be exposed to the elements for a few months.

Would using engineering bricks below dpc allay your concerns? If other experts have done their job properly your above dpc flood risk must be very low.

This one was just a few miles from my house in September and looks ready for take off. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxb6aTOOcTg

This (not a Mosquito) was being chucked around at an airshow last summer visible from my plot by a pilot who seemed to be saying "I deserve a seat in the Spitfire".

Not a wind up, I just need to improve my plane spotting. Fly pasts by the Lancaster and Spitfires are so common around here I no longer leave the house to look. Then there are the far more numerous training runs by loud fighter jets from Conningsby, fortunately they are usually coasting on idle on final approach as they pass over.

Well that is odd though I don't doubt what you say, the aircraft that flew over my house had two lovely peering prop engines and the fuselage was a little portly. I know enthusiasts visit my part of Lincolnshire to see a Mosquito but seems I jumped the gun about its flying state. I wonder what it was, the Meteor had two jet engines. Hmmm a little reading up on the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight suggests it was a Dakota. I will ask my ex. RAF neighbour to clarify.

What do you use to track these environmental variables including CO2?

Floor drying would be my top objective for a heated floor in a bathroom. Is 100w/m effective for drying a floor?

This is because PosiJoist sizes PS9 and PS10 are the typical choice in a residential property. What leads you to believe joist size PS8 is right for your design?

Summer must be on the way, when do self builders typically emerge from winter hibernation? p.s. The mozzie had D-Day stripes.

Generally looks good for diy architecture though I am having a bad reaction to the roof angle of the dormer window. Which way does the double height entrance atrium face?

Assume it will end in tears so focus on termination clauses, staged payments and what will be delivered at those stages.

Is this prowarm pipe a deluxe option or does the commodity stuff have the same cross section?

Just testing my knowledge here... Is this limit stated because a longer loop risks a temperature gradient across the floor slab?

@Jamie998 What is your height deficit in terms of achieving a designed 1:80 fall? Is your most distant source of drainage upstairs or ground floor? Can you hook into your neighbour's foul drain closer to the mains sewer and thus deeper?

This includes public sector building control Orgs and drainage manufacturers. I find it odd that the construction industry had to infer the new regulation through the absence of a prior criteria. Can you imagine the world of physics discovering that Einstein was wrong and conveying this by covertly scrubbing E=MC2 in a text book reprint.

Are you sure about that? If true the book I was quoting has confused sewer for drain.

Or you can look at it another way and say the drain entered the foundation at a calculated depth sufficiently deep to accommodate to drainage pipe work up to FFL. For those of us dealing with marginal site gradients these numbers will have been scrutinized late at night many times, in more hilly regions of the UK the issue might be shedding excess gradient ?