epsilonGreedy

That would appear to be the standard process. In my case there is hardly any appreciable gradient across the footings which allowed the dig to skip the strip step. Total digs costs were £650 including the garage which I think was a good deal.

OK here is my read of this... Start the footing blockwork of the internal wall with basic standard concrete blocks on their side i.e. the footing wall will be 215mm wide. Then play with the block height maths to bring the footing height up to the right level to carry the beams on a final block laid the normal way up? This design removes the need for a cavity footing wall below the internal wall. If I sit the beams on a dpc and the adjacent solid garage floor slab is poured over a membrane bought up the side of this footing wall there will not be a path for rising damp.

Although not central to my main question, are such "standard 300mm concrete blocks" different to trench blocks which I thought were always a lightweight construction?

My foundation concrete was poured last Thursday & Friday and I now have a pair of brickies lined up to build my footings. They can start asap because another job is on hold for them. The problem is that I do not know what block types I should order for the garage footings where I have strayed away from my building control diagrams. I got my JCB man to dig an extra internal wall trench for my garage. What I have done here is jumped the gun and made a provision for a future planning amendment that would divide my double garage into a large single garage with a workshop and store to one side. My present building control diagram shows a solid 215 double skin brick/block wall all around. I plan to upgrade this to a basic default 50mm cavity wall and widen the cavity to 100 or 150 around the workshop. The floor of the workshop would be beam & block to the same standard as my main house. The remainder of the garage floor would be laid as a solid concrete slab. Should the footings of the internal wall be the same standard as a main house external wall or can I economize? As shown in my hand drawn diagram could I sit the beams on a single skin of 140mm footing blocks and then build both skins of the internal cavity wall direct off the beam & block floor? I am concerned about designing in a conduit for rising damp if I do this. The internal cavity wall would just be thermalites to 2.4m in height with no weight above. Diagram Notes: The first diagram is a plan view showing the position of the new foundation trench and a basic plan for the cavity walls. The "T" blocks in the second diagram are assumed trench blocks. All poured concrete is 600mm x 600mm and well in excess of the structural minimums for the ground conditions.

I might try that next time. Mr Wise Owl my semi retired building advisor said in the old days they sprinkled some lime along the dig line.

I half agree which is why I will have both in the same size house as yours.

I ran out of white line marking paint on the final wall. When the JCB driver turned up he tossed me a can of his standard colour, no prize for guessing which colour he prefers. I found white is ok but yellow is wrong for grass. The JCB driver stopped a few times mid job to over paint my yellow lines in red.

Are there trees that far north in Scotland? Thought is was all tundra and roaming herds of reindeer.

You have a concrete case to name and shame this rogue with the governing body.

Thanks. I think my prior solo sailing experience helped, when 50 miles offshore at 2am there is no option to quit and go home. A few days later I remarked to Swmbo how we innovated under pressure, at the end of the setting out I could mark out a foundation wall 3 times faster. One tip is to have a roving profile template with measured marks for trench-edge / facing brick / cavity centre / inner block / inner trench edge, this aids reliable transfer of marks to a newly set profile. Another tip is to have a chat with the JCB driver before starting. Mine was happy to dig supporting wall trenches to a dashed centre line, had I known this I would have saved a lot of spray paint. In retrospect I should have practiced setting out a 12m x 8m rectangle on the lawn at home a month earlier.

You purchased a complex financial product from CRL and one of their sub contractors (Alpha) is in trouble. Since CRL is still trading can you not tell them to sort out their own problems at zero cost to you.

A top tip. I just searched for mine, this current 2500 sq ft rental property has a band E EPC rating. The estimated heating cost is £8700 over three years which is close to what we actually paid once electric rad top up heating is factored in. The details in the report are correct though the quoted 75mm of loft insulation is a bit optimistic.

£2,300 which covers a road closure for a minor village lane and a dig through this road to a builders standpipe 6 feet away within my plot. I will get the £350 road closure fee refunded if they can piggyback the work on a prior road closure for the sewerage connection. The largest portion of the £2.3k bill is two new-connection infrastructure levies which relate to the intolerable extra stress on the Anglian Water network caused by my new build. Can you imagine parking in Sainsburys and being accosted by some bean counter who says "you are a new customer, I demand "£1000 before you touch that shopping trolley to pay for all the extra staff and the pending store extension triggered by your visit".

When the sun is below the horizon and 450 divided by 2 = 250 it is time to quit for the day. My assistant setting-out surveyor and I had a minor domestic incident in the gathering gloom at a foundation profile where our joint mathematical error became apparent. The gloom was both visible and mental. We had no choice but to soldier on marking out the foundations because although it was 9:30pm, tomorrow was dig-day and the JCB would be onsite at 7:30am. I had seriously underestimated the time needed to set out the foundation plan for a main house and garage comprised of 5 interlocking rectangles and 4 internal supporting walls. As the clock counted down to dig-day some fag packet maths revealed I needed 35 profiles, 70 stakes for the profiles, the rock hard ground required that all profile stakes needed a pointed entry = 140 cuts with a saw and oh don’t forget the 140 screws. The elastic sail measuring tape in my toolbox had thrown out my initial schedule and meant the first setting out attempt was scrubbed because I could not get stable diagonals. A new 30 meter long £35 steel tape from Screwfix was the answer when paired with my proper surveyors grp tape. Three days after that trip to screwfix and after 3 days of punishing heat, we drove home defeated with an incomplete set of walls marked out. At 1am my mind was churning, should I cancel the dig and be branded in the locality as the hapless self builder who messed around the pro’s. Could we live with a trapezoid kitchen 25mm out of true, yes, but what about the stairs condemned by my arithmetic error to run up the supporting wall 25mm out. The alarm woke me at 3:15am, I was back onsite for sun rise and even the vocal sheep in the adjoining field seemed to be mocking me. Before Swmbo turned up at 5:30am dressed for the office I banged in the remaining profiles and we then marked out the missing walls in a new colour (those line marking paint cans gunge up quickly). The JCB arrived 40 minutes late which allowed me to walk the foundation plan with a superficial air of confidence that masked my inner fatigue. Mr Digger was not phased by the erroneous foundation line, he just rubbed out the bad line with his foot and said he would align the bucket edge to the good one. The sun was up, the sheep had shut up and it was a relief to hand over to the pro’s. The day just go better. Building Control arrived at 11am and decreed 1m trenches would suffice because ground conditions we so good, the clay looking stuff was actually silt. We could have got away with 225mm of concrete but I had ordered enough for 600mm foundations. Mr BC was in such a good mood he gave the assembled crew a quick lesson on how to distinguish nice silt from evil clay. Many visitors passed by and declared I had the best looking trenches seen in Lincolnshire for years.

And the result was... The JCB munched through my subsoil like a 3 year old devouring jelly & Blancmange.

Did you encounter some ground work complexities? I assume you are excluding the plot cost in your figures.

3000 sq ft?

With my scheduled dig just a week away I am starting to wonder if the ground can get too hard to dig or perhaps lead to unplanned overtime as the dig slows down.

I cannot explain it though I experience similar at the chilly end of the scale. In winter a kitchen at 18 degrees first thing in the morning feels too cold, the same temp on a sunny May morning is ok.

Hmmm, at this point you unwittingly tied your debating shoe laces together and tripped over your own question. I think we would agree one of the most dangerous phrases used today "our research shows...", typically originates from social science. Social Science is a science, it is however a new and immature science attempting to explain a very complex subject matter namely us. As a consequence social scientists are more often wrong than right, when their science leads to social policy chance in a country the outcome is often unintended and damaging because they have perturbed a poorly understood highly complex mechanism. Think of it this way, the original hardcore sciences of physics and chemistry explain the Universe as it existed when earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago. Biology, botany and zoology explain the more diverse world created by DNA and reproduction. Anthropology and history specialize in the most intelligent ape created by DNA and reproduction or more specifically what those apes have done with their run-away cognitive ability. Social science and political science try unsuccessfully to explain the trouble those apes got into when they started living in 1+ million communities.

So do I if it is possible to conform with planning condition ridge heights.

No it is called scientific consensus based on the application of a process known as the scientific method. Data is just a contributory element of that process. The challenge you now face is transposing scientific consensus into social consensus. That is a far greater challenge because the human brain is the most complex artifact in the known universe and that complexity increases by a vast factor when those brains interact in large social groups. Comprehending all this is much more difficult than understanding the physics of a black hole. Reading the two books mentioned earlier in this thread would help you on an intellectual journey which in turn would help you promote the science of global warming but for some reason you are reluctant to do this.

A vital point, a bit of Googling indicates a typical caravan height of 2.65m. Apparently in a marginal case a caravan can be wheeled into a garage on metal hubs and I can squeeze more out of the height by delaying laying the final concrete floor (if indeed the build control inspector is ok with a non suspended slab).

Yes and your suggested solution was the creation of a definitive single source of truth for global warming presumably sanctioned by the State or supranational organization. This is the type of science what the French tried in the early 1700's, it failed and the industrial revolution began in Britain. The very notion that someone, who considers himself aligned with science, should reach for the Regime Ancien and its scientific dictatorship indicates you do not understand the philosophical foundation of science. You want to stifle free speech on global warming and force feed your truth on the deplorables. This never ends well, the end result is either more Donald Trumps or the Elite staring up at the blade of a guillotine when the deplorables get angry.

Fair point and I need to maintain an egress route in the event of a fire. The internal floor plan of the garage is 6.8 x 5.4, I would leave the lounge end poking out a bit to let in natural light.