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laurenco

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Everything posted by laurenco

  1. laurenco
    Thanks @the_r_sole. It's alu-clad triple glazed with an MVHR system. My understanding was that no ventilation was required at all, and the house would be hermetically sealed by the air test.
  2. laurenco
    We've finally approved the drawings for our timber frame house and the erection is slated for January. Time to order our windows. The supplier and the price are both sorted, but something that cannot be agreed upon is whether the windows are installed before or after the house is rendered. MBC and Velfac are adamant the property should be rendered first. Our renderer says not. What has everyone else done in this situation?
  3. laurenco
    @declan52 unfortunately we don't have the height. With a roof on it, it'd be 1.25m high at best inside. Moving the house forwards on the plot to miss it would take the house too close to the road. Moving the house backwards 3 metres to cover it completely might work, but without the head height it's largely useless. I think we need to abandon it completely and fill it in.
  4. laurenco
    So here's something we found in the ground when levelling our site ... an old swimming pool. I said "under the house" in the title, but it's only under the ground surface level by inches and therefore a basement leisure area is not an option. As it falls half under and half outside our new house's footprint we have a problem. What do we do with it? Remove it all and pay for the concrete to be taken away say. 4 loaders + 1 or 2 days labour Put a metal deck on top and moth ball it. c. £2k materials + 2 days labour. Expensive and doesn't achieve a great deal Fill it in with hardcore and pretend it's not there. Cheap; we have loads of hardcore. Raft foundations will go on top. But will this be safe? We could create a 3m x 2m x 1.25m high wine cellar beneath the kitchen, but I'm trying to guestimate costs and I think it will be thousands of pounds. The glass hatch alone is £2k and that's assuming MBC can work their foundations around this. Has anyone experienced anything like this before? and / or, can anyone offer any other solutions? (nice answers only please ?)
  5. laurenco
    If we do @Mr Punter I'll let you know
  6. laurenco
    here here @newhome
  7. laurenco
    already done bottles!! Good call.. turns out our neighbours all love Port
  8. laurenco
    I love this idea. We have discussed it, and it would be worth keeping and crushing some of the debris - it's hard to know how much to keep at this stage. Would the mountain of crushed aggregate be smaller than non-crushed ie. what we have now?
  9. laurenco
    @epsilonGreedy sounds like you dealt with a logical guy, which is a rarity in the building trade
  10. laurenco
    Okay, I agreed to split the weigh-in of the copper roof, so got £1,900 back for that. The rest—wood and whatnot—he could have. Re: the broken up slab mountain, I've done a deal with him to remove the excess debris for £85 a load. It's cheap I know, but it's also open to exploitation; is the truck the size of a small wheelbarrow? will they fill each truck completely? and will they be entirely honest about how many trips they take to dispose of it. The only way to find out is to put on my wellies, set up camp, and watch ? So that is what I'm going to do...
  11. laurenco
    @Mr Punter was just googling crusher hire prices (!)
  12. laurenco
    Week one of this build, and the demolition guys are already driving me insane! ? The brick-debate ensues... and now broken slabs of concrete are in the mix (quite literally). Whilst they removed the metal (to weigh in), the windows and most of the timber of our former bungalow, we're left with landfill sized mounds of a broken up concrete slab (which we've lifted in order to lay another concrete slab ?) and the demo guys have said they never priced to remove this from site. They priced to demolish, level and site scrape. But not to remove the mountain of bricks and concrete which may or may not have all sorts of old brass chandeliers glinting in the sunlight. What is typical lovely self-builders? Should the demo price include removing the building rubble from site?
  13. laurenco
    Lizzie, this sounds like a nightmare! Pleased you got it sorted in the end
  14. laurenco
    great, thanks A_L
  15. laurenco
    what are shadow gaps?
  16. laurenco
    Thanks bissoejosh, that's very interesting. So we could get away without altering our window dimensions
  17. laurenco
    Thank you - I'll give them a call. They're Wilmslow based, which isn't too far from us. Can I ask what sort of money were they? We've been quoted £30k for c.400m2 of render/renderboard/battening. We'd booked the windows, but need to confirm final sizes, but I really don't want the frame to be 'open' through winter, so ideally I'll get this boxed off
  18. laurenco
    did they do it on the 3rd aug in the end? MBC just put our 3rd sept slab start back ... grr....
  19. laurenco
    I'm having an MBC frame with Velfac windows and a Parex render on my new house. Whilst they all promised to liaise with each other re: final aperture sizes at the time of booking, it's less than a month before we start and no one is willing to take responsibly for the final size of the windows. Velfac say MBC's aperture sizes need to be adjusted for the battening, cementboard and render as this needs to be done before the windows can be installed. The render company will not promise an exact thickness, and MBC are trying not to get involved. How do I ensure the window sizes are right?
  20. laurenco
    Argh, we are getting privacy film on our Velfac triple glazed windows. How do i know if they're laminated or toughened? My window film people haven't mentioned anything about it breaking the glass (nor asked what type of glass is it). The film company are Smashgard Window Films Limited https://alternativetonetcurtains.co.uk/window-films-gallery/
  21. laurenco
    We've demolished our bungalow in order to build a new house. As the garden is large and slopes off away from the house, we want to use the broken bricks and smashed concrete to fill it in. As part of this, we want a totally flat area for our kids to play football on. Our demolition contractor says we don't need to crush the bricks before putting them in the garden. Will this work? Or is he just trying to save labour here and fob us off?
  22. laurenco
    Wow, that a big saving. Thanks for this... will look into it
  23. laurenco
    ? We have, we're still talking about your doors! We've had quotes from Deuren and Em-B who do a similar spec door by Italian firm, Barausse. Both beyond mega. Will see..
  24. laurenco
    Thanks @Pete
  25. laurenco
    @Pete Have you found anyone to veneer your doors? I'm intrigued as to what this will look like, as Deuren are working out really expensive.
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