epsilonGreedy

I have become seduced by the wonders of thin-joint blockwork in the last 24 hours and I blame @Brickie when in another thread he advised a single skin of regular blockwork should not rise beyond around 3 to 5 courses without temporary support, unless he added it is thin-joint. This comment led to much YouTube research on thin-joint. My problem is that with special heritage bricks suffering long production lead times I might be waiting 3+ months to progress my build above the beam & block ground floor. It is claimed that thin-joint blockwork can progress to 2-story gutter height as a single skin, then a roof can be loaded on this single skin structure before regular brickies catch up and reinforce the inner shell with a facing brick tied cavity wall. I would not place that much faith in the thin-joint system and put the roof on but I could envisage spending August/September building up my walls to the point that the first floor joists can be fitted. There must be some negative aspect to the thin-joint system?

The Human Race produces an inexhaustible supply of mentally defective people, it is not your job to fix them all or even those examples within 500m meters. There is no need to question your actions, just view these people as would a nurse doing a shift in an asylum so look down on them and their mental disease with empathy but maintain a professional detachment. Your game plan is to help them move on and spend their £50k on a new property, this means you do not want any local anti-social crime reports logged on a police web site that might deter potential buyers.

The Chinese and some privately funded US research teams are at the cutting edge of thorium fission reactors. The quest for the next round of funding means it is difficult to assess the true state of progress. This podcast on thorium is approachable for the lay scientist, though best skip past their regular intro stuff which sounds puerile to the first-time listener. They typically get serious about 5 minutes in. https://player.fm/series/net-rocks-65612/thorium-molten-salt-reactor-geek-out

How old is Mrs X? I sense some mental decline if she can flip from convivial conversation about gardening to vile accusations about your parents within minutes.

Your Lincolnshire Wolds hills have disappeared, getting rid of the spoil must have been pricey.

I did wonder after posting if using a precious £600 rotating laser for internal 1st / 2nd fix jobs was a bad idea. Laser line levels are a quarter of the price, looks like I need two decent lasers.

Hmm that is disappointing for a £600 piece of kit, my home made water spirit level was good for a 20mm accuracy across 10 meters. Is it more accurate when not attached to the digger arm?

I am beginning to think I need one of these, is £500 to £700 the going rate for something decent? I am trying to create a list of tasks for a rotating laser to justify the purchase: Translate official OS height to reference marker within my plot. Establish height differential across foundation plan. Check level of scraped back soil plinth. Check trench depth across foundation plan. Measure height of concrete pour to obtain mm accuracy of trenchfill height across foundation plan. Guide further fine tuning of below dpc plinth level as courses are laid. Check levels as block and beam floor is laid. Measure gradient of drainage trench falls. Check internal block course levels as above dpc elevations are built. Measure levels prior to fitting first floor joists. Check window/door aperture levels and squareness as brick/blocks are laid. Post weather tight, help vertical/horizontal aliment of stud walls, plasterboard panels, kitchen units. What have I missed?

I prefer this method because the idea of leaving a swell-able piece of height indicator timber embedded forever in my foundations just feels wrong. My DPC will be higher than usual due to minor flash flood concerns which means even with trench fill there will be a few extra courses of bricks to adjust out a small error in the foundation concrete height.

I intend to follow what the two man team did on the adjacent plot. They had a small pulley attached to the scaffolding and hauled up the bricks 6 or 8 a time using one of those purpose design brick grabbers with a lever handle. The scaffolding already included a storage bay at height which was ignored until the the roof tiles were loaded onto the scaffolding. Mineral fiber batts fitted as the wall goes up. This is where I now reckon I have misunderstood the process of fitting batts. I was imaging a process where say 3 courses of blocks went up, then the batt was fitted around any wall ties and flush up to the face of the blocks and finally the facing bricks were laid. What troubled me was the thought of the batt pushing up against the freshly laid facing bricks and also not allowing space for the snot cleanup on the inner face of the brick.

I like a grand hall as well and visited a house this year that incorporated a near copy of the hall shown in the OP's plan, it made sense in that house because the total floor space was 5000 sq ft plus. The grand hall concept taken to its extreme leads to an early medieval manor house layout. I stayed a few nights in such a house built in 1980 and it was an excellent formula with a main central living space running through the center 60% of the house end to end under a vaulted roof. Special function rooms including the kitchen led off this central space.

I agree partially and we are juggling with the same square footage. After some long debates Swmbo and I decided that a modest open plan kitchen/dining + snug area would suit us most of the day and the other half of the downstairs area would be assigned to a proper sitting room. Cooking smells need to be confined.

Thanks all. Assuming such a reference height can be translated to a corner of my house foundation, what next? The approved plan shows a spot topographical height for DPC at one corner of the house and further heights on the elevation diagram up to gutter height. From this info I will be able to calculate how much of the soil at the high corner of the house footprint needs to be removed but how do I indicate this to the digger man? I have seen some sites marked out with coloured stakes within the foundation foot print, are these higher/lower hints to the digger operative? Following this and assuming I have a level soil plinth it then seems quite rudimentary to observe the trench dig and ensure all are about 1 meter deep. Is there any need for laser cross checks at this stage? Finally in my mind I will need some height stakes bashed into the bottom of the trenches at say 2m intervals to provide a concrete fill level. This stage seems critical and a job for someone with a laser level?

Actually what is needed is a study of pre osteoarthritis individuals who have not yet presented to the medical authorities about joint niggles.

I am a one-man walking laboratory and science experiment to the efficacy of glucosamine. Over 15 years I have experienced episodes of minor joint niggles and on every occasion taking the potion for a month or two resolves the pain. Then typically I get out of the habit of taking the stuff and a joint pain returns within 6 to 24 months, I must be on my 10th cycle pain/glucosamine/fix by now. A few years ago I followed up one formal science report that was critical of glucosamine and found the original NHS experiment was faulty. An NHS consultant in rheumatoid arthritis tried a controlled experiment on patients who were under his care and no benefit was observed. This was an unsuitable patient group given they would be experiencing advanced joint disease by the time an NHS consultant intervenes in their care. glucosamine and chondroitin is for people of normal weight who have sensitive joints for example in the morning before the body warms up. p.s. for some reason the syrup version delivers a fix more quickly.

This modern Briton is frequently ordered by Swmbo to peel spuds in the kitchen sink or I have to deal with the consequences of her hopelessly optimistic expectations that a dish washer can expunge all known baked on food residue.

Post world war one in the 1920's. The TV series Downton Abbey portrays the sunset days of that life style and even Lord Grantham could no longer afford his traditional complement of footmen. However we are a nation of class conscious snobs which meant the aspiration for a formal dining room was expressed in residential architecture for another 50 years post the Wall Street crash and great depression.

No window to allow focus on something beyond 3 feet and nothing to view 90 degrees left or right. Natural light obscured by the body of the galley slave. 50% of the kitchen worktop in a linear 12ft run. The OP's house must be 2500 sq ft, at this size most modern Britons want a convivial family space connected to the kitchen.

Or maybe due to the fact that butlers and footmen became too expensive to employ. ? The isolated formal dining room is a legacy of the times when domestic staff brought food to the dining table.

A kitchen sink facing a long wall = no. Sometimes a necessity with an existing house or small kitchen but should be designed out given a cleansheet.

As a prospective hands-on self builder the two most frequent questions I am asked are: Who is your main builder? Who will be setting out for you? The answer to both questions is = me. I am not troubled by the intellectual or practical challenge of setting out the plan view of my house but "doing levels" remains a mystery. I have a prescribed ridge height with my planning permission and lack of gradient for the foul drain is of more concern than too much gradient. On the positive side the max height delta across my foundation plan is 300mm according to my diy water level survey. Can anyone point me to a tutorial on doing levels for residential property setting out or a YouTube video? Other info: Building control diagrams are being prepared. Foundations will be trenchfill and a beam & block floor. p.s. I understand that step one for the digger man will be to create a level area prior to digging the trenches.

Yes it is called glucosamine and chondroitin, works on old men and limping dogs (the canine variety). Give it 3 weeks to take effect, reconditioning natures big-end bearing takes time.

Oh dear, from my perspective you are in self-build Nirvana. You have a sustainable low cost life style living onsite in a mobile home, a weather tight house and a few loose ends to complete.

@ProDave How do you feel right now Dave? Like a London Marathon runner sprinting up the final 500 yards of the Mall, high on endorphins with Buckingham Palace ahead and the crowds cheering or. Or a tired solo circumnavigation in the Western Approaches hoping to reach Plymouth but concerned you might get shipwrecked in Ireland if you fall asleep.

I have read that it is preferable to lay facing brick courses first then bring the inner block course up to the same height. I have also seen a brickie team do the reverse on a site near me where there were fitting full cavity batts as the wall went up. Is there an accepted industry preference re. blocks or bricks first? The thing in favour of facing bricks first that I can picture is that with the batt in place there are fewer courses to clean up snots against the obstruction of the batt.