epsilonGreedy

I think you need to clarify whether a crane will be required for the roof trusses because cranes come with special working platform requirements. If a telehandler will do the job then your hardcore area can be simplified. It is not clear from your map where the site access is. Concrete wagons and brick deliveries are the most problematic to deal with. After that the regular Builder Merchant lorries just need a small drive to park on before they use their onboard crane to swing loads onto your site. Scaffolding crews need some space for all their components when they arrive. I wonder if you have a 3rd option, geotex over your current grass drive. The spread different grades are hardcore on top. My site drive and longterm house drive was created in a single day with an expert driver in his mid sized 13? ton digger. The area was an L-shape measuring 19m x 12m. By the time I arrived on site at 11am digger man had scraped the whole area down to a level and was waiting for the first hardcore delivery. From memory it took 7 lorry loads of hardcore delivered over 4 hours to form the drive. To finish off he spent another hour driving his digger over and over the surface to firm it up. Job done. Total cost about £2000 in hardcore + £500 to the digger man for his time and machine.

150mm is the height of 2 rows of bricks, in your photo the gap is down to about 50mm and this increases the risk of rising damp due to rain splash bounces landing on your bricks above the damp proof level.

Here is an example of steel support columns being resin bolted to concrete foundations for a domestic extension.

No frame as yet @ProDaveI was just a momentarily outraged consumer who did some planning for full sized 8x4 sheets before concluding (in error ) I had been diddled with inferior stock from my local BM. Anyhow if this thread is to provide any long-term benefit to the general forum population then "beware wooden sheets in both imperial 8x4 and metric 2400x1200 are in general circulation from suppliers". A loss of 40mm in length (imperial 8' x 4' to metric) might be important to someone doing precise measurements for 8x4 sheets prior to order.

I am by no means an expert but does anyone else think the mortar below the cracked block looks a bit sandy i.e. more like a 5 in 1 mix. Would 3 in 1 be recommended?

Thanks yes it seems like the most flexible and least-cost option, particularly since I have 3 sheets of 100mm expanded polystyrene going spare on site. Please see my follow-on thread seeking guidance on the right wood sheet for the job.

Further to my other thread seeking advice on screeding a small section of floor (11 m2) ahead of the main house floor screeding I am now following @Mr Punter's suggestion to create a temporary floating floor capped with wooden sheet. The width of the floor space is a round 2.4m which is convenient so I am looking at 1 x 3.3 sheets of wood (OSB or Ply) sitting over 100mm thick expanded polystyrene insulation sheet. I will probably batten around the periphery of the floor to shop the sheets shuffling around and back in the old thread @PeterWsuggested joining the sheets with thin offcuts.. Given this outline design what material should I choose OSB or Ply and 11 or 18mm? The floor might have to deal with 18 months a regular foot traffic as the primary house entrance.

I thought my BM was fencing damaged stock that had been trimmed down an inch or two.

I am coming around to this idea, it gets the office up and running quickly. Then I can flow screed the whole ground floor later as a single job. The marginal cost of flow screeding an extra 11 m2 is smaller than the other partial screeding options.

Two years ago I purchased some OSB3 sheet (Norboard) and it arrived measuring 1220mm X 2440mm i.e. 8' x 4'. The latest version from my BM had shrunk down to a round 1200mm X 2400mm. What was the point of Brexit if consumers are still being subject to this sort of metrification swindle?

I was planning to take a brick into the paint mixing counter at B&Q to get a colour for my buff wall, then I was going to tweak the brick colour on the computer by making it a bit more grey and darker. That is simple to arrange because the DNO broke the hinge on their last visit, I could not complain because I wrangled a free re-connection of the live fee up through the cavity hockey stick feed into the meter box. I understand that can cost ££ hundreds if booked as a job by a householder.

My cavity wall electric meterbox was supplied by the DNO, it is an offwhite colour and I think it is thin GRP. What paint is suitable for this job?

On another thread someone mentioned purchasing 150mm "high quality tongue and groove" PIR. I have not seen discussion of this type of PIR floor insulation sheet before and I am just wondering what benefit this provides?

One deciding factor could be the speed of your project and how long the underlay will be exposed to the elements. At this time of year 4 months exposure to sun light would push the UV durability specs of underlay. In the winter frost action on a fancy laminate underlay is a real risk according to another forum member. I would also be concerned about the cumulative effect of wind on an exposed underlay including uplift caused by open window apertures that lead to positive pressure in gusts and negative pressure on the downwind side of a ridge, hip or verge. I guess that your extension is single story and more protected from wind than a main roof.

I have a pane of glass to fit in a temporary wooden window frame, it is 700mm x 400mm. Should I paint the wood where the glass will be fitted before adding a fillet of putty or does putty adhere to bare wood better?

I hope to start fixing some trial slates tomorrow onto 50mm x 25mm battens with rafters at 600mm centres. The slates are 500x250. Before I decide on which hammer to buy I am puzzled about why roofing hammers have checkered face. How does a checkered face help when nailing slates.

My comment about the chimneys being high was only from an engineering and construction perspective. When I discussed chimney height with my architectural technician who produced the building control diagrams he cautioned against lowering the height from an aesthetic point of view. They engineering bricks look good, have you had a chance to view the effect from a distance?

Your chimneys look very high, I guess that was needed because of the steep roof pitch (50 degrees?) and the need to get the pot top just over ridge height? Was it necessary to call your scaffolder back to create an extra platform part way up the chimney?

A good BuildHub forum thread on chimneys has been missing. Thank you for all these details. Did you start with 600mm tall pots? I ask because the original architect diagrams for my house have tall Dickensian pots. Think I will need 700mm pots more more to achieve the overall profile shown below.

I am commencing a phased project. Step 1: I have built a practice 30 degree hip roof with a plan size of 1.1m x 1.3m i.e. about 4 slate rows to the ridge and 4.5 slates across. One end of the practice roof features an OSB wall abutment. I will be cutting a few soakers for this and will have a go at shaping a lead roll top ridge and hip flashings working my way up from code 3 to code 5. Step 2: If step 1 is a success I will slate the roof for a single story section of the house 4.5m x 3.3m plan size. This is a larger version of the practice roof. Step 3: The main house roof, 95m2 L-shaped with 3 hip ends and three chimneys emerging from the eave ends of the 3 hips. These is also 1 full valley plus another opposing shallow valley resulting from a single brick step in at the start of the smaller block of the L. The two valleys meet with a saddle at the lower ridge of the L-shaped junction. Think I will need to get a pro in for the complicated parts of the main roof.

Possibly the most boring BuildHub tool question ever. Over the next few weeks I will be doing a small amount of lead sheet work i.e. soakers and stepped flashing. All the pro roofer videos I watch on YouTube feature rudimentary tin snips that look as though they were forged in the early years of the industrial revolution. However on Amazon most snips appear designed for a NASA space mission. I an inclined to buy something like this: However the market appears to prefer this style:

I like the en-suit style @ProDavewas it inspired by your visit to the Pompidou Centre in Paris i.e. flaunt ones structure.

I am not that far ahead. I thought I read in this thread or viewed a Peter Scholey video where he shows the tray with a short 35mm or 40mm upturn on three sides and a downturn on the main wall side. Jump to 4 minutes 35... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAdcYazFIio In general I wonder if you are trying to create cover flashing out of the tray in error. This next PS video shows an independent rear gully cover flashing fitted over the back gully lead, note how it wraps around the sides and over the side step flashing. I doubt your lead tray flaps would do this so well. Jump to 6 minutes 50... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lov8yAFI-I Thinking about your situation some more is it legit to tuck the top flange of the cover flashing under the full tray in the same brick course? We need an expert to answer that.

Go outside after dark, place a torch close to the brickwork and a cast a light upwards over the courses to the eaves.

You are good at knocking up these diagrams, do you do this in your job? Re. the height of pot support, I make that 250mm including the flaunching. Is this amount of pot support recommended? I ask because it results in a lot of material up there that might hold moisture.