Nickfromwales

Use galv box-section for the walkway and composite decking boards? You can have goalposts either side of the downstairs openings, just use round tube painted white to mimic downpipes and have the goal bar offset. A quirky design feature could be a P-shaped platform to absorb the wider end with a planter or something sat there, if you wanted to.

My point was more about recourse as well as 'opinions' born of these various 'professionals'. Ultimately, who governs the governors.....? And how does Joe Public know who to ask / trust / rely upon.....? MI's and SE trump BCO. If the architect is tasked with designing to current b regs or above, then they are responsible for defects in their works via the PI insurance.

You could have a 40mm 'tang' at the top of the plate, so it is a Z, and grind the top of the plate into the wall so it hangs, and then the mechanical fixings are more of a shore than a sheer connection, splitting the load between the two. I'd get that made in stainless vs galv, as I simply wouldn't want an ounce of corrosion to upset the longevity. Not a huge uplift in cost, as a steel plate would need to be fabricated and then sent away to be galvanised anyways. I'd use resin anchors rather than percussion or expansion fixings, with those left to fully cure before cranking down the nuts to send it home. Beware dissimilar metals making contact, and get the holes in the plate oversized to allow nylon sleeves to be used as inserts to keep the mild threaded bar away from the mild stainless steel; these two are not friends at all! Possibly look at using stainless threaded bar and nuts / washers, but check sheer strength and suitability. You could remove the render where the plate is affixed to further increase the purchase, and use a bond such as Sikaflex EBT behind the entirety of the plate to weather seal it and for further mechanical / bonded fixing. It's not a huge ask here tbh, but better safe than sorry, or better still to avoid doing it twice.

The rain chain is cool. 👌.

You can discharge the down pipe into a grated back gulley, to trap at least some of it, but most soakaways can cope with leaf litter as it does break down over time.

Hi. If the neighbours don’t kick off to planning dept etc about it, then see the following. (If there’s any chance of annoying the neighbours with it then consider a glass balustrade). I would avoid penetrating the external leaf of the house as that’ll need to be made weathertight, plus it would be a cold bridge in the wall which isn’t great. Instead, I’d get a steel wall plate made and fix that into the wall, with a profile that allows for a good amount of mechanical fixings to be installed. Have a tongue protruding at the bottom of it, an L section, so your timbers can fix to it, and then your foundation the other end needs to be ‘concrete solid’ to prevent any movement of the finished structure away from the house. Is the length 3m? As said above, looked more like 4-5m total, eg when tucked into the foundation into the bank?

Yup. MDF skirting sucks. Ok for architraves but anything getting whacked by hoovers etc, particularly on external corners, needs to be able to take the abuse.

Yup. Tight as. Do you know the trick for cutting the scribe? Eg you cut it with a mitre saw and then run the coping saw along the line? I use the mitre saw to cut up the vertical line first and stop short of the detail, as that gets a nice clean edge, but this method also allows you to correct an angle if you’re meeting up with a previous piece they’d not perfectly plumb.

I ran cables to 10 ground floor window reveals for a previous client. The 1st blind company rep was a fecking wet-wipe, and said that depending on blind type and other nonsense it "could be" a D/C low voltage motor or an A/C 230v. Given this info I ran an independent 3-core 1.0mm2 cable from each opening to the plant room, so each blind could be fed by whatever source the final chosen blind needed to be fed by. I could think of nothing worse than charging all that lot up for the rest of my days tbf, and my Ring doorbell is on borrowed time as even charging that (takes bloody forever) get right on my tits.

Hi. These suffer massively if there is untreated hard water, due to the multiples of small bore pipes running through the heat exchanger. Which model is it, and how many pipe connections do you have, and size? Have you tried running water backwards through to clear out any other possible debris? Are you checking from the immediate outlet, or from the output of a blending valve? You may be out of warranty if you have belayed getting the water softener in from the point of installation, tbh.

Stuff of nightmares..... A friend of mine rendered the outside of a bungalow, with a friend of a friend mixing for him. Got to the end of a long day, scratch-coated the 4 sides and seemed a productive day. When cleaning up my mate noticed a load of cement bags and asked why there were so many left over (assuming builders merchant over-delivered) only to find out he'd been laying on a very, VERY weak mix all day. Next day he went back to remove it all with a 4" scraper, but said labourer refused to come back and help for free as he'd "done his bit"......

If A/C voltage goes to it there is no polarity. Polarity only features with D/C equipment. Hope that helps.

What if the roof had excellent falls towards the scuppers, and the scuppers offered zero resistance to the flow of water, and then the scuppers had a fall designed in which promoted 'stuff' leaving at a rate of knots in an orderly fashion? Copious rainfall should, in theory, then be your caretaker.

But really annoying when a bit of GAF could have reduced the pooling to zero? .....gravity and resistance would be key to a successfully discharged deluge of rain, regardless of whichever direction it was delivered from. Different physics and dynamics methinks. A turd leaves the bowl with the provision of energy created from the flushed water, with those forces being concentrated within the confines of the bowl and downstream 4" pipework, further assisted by gravity of the requisite falls. Flat roofs have a lesser amount of energy per m2 to call upon in the pursuit of getting 'random shite / other debris' from A-B, so when a roof is designed to almost get rain to B, it's got feck all chance of conveying anything else; this is even more of a problem when the journey has some of it going up steps / hills. Would need to be a hurricane, as the parapet walls deflect a lot of the wind in actuality. Nevertheless, when the wind subsides, the water will follow the path of least resistance; down the slopes, and into the outlets and downpipes, like a good little boy. If the roofer wasn't also a turd......

Very little gunk goes down an utility trap / sink tbh, so the issue is largely from food waste from the kitchen sink. A decent bottle trap will allow regular maintenance, if so ever necessary, which means I would say "no" to the benefit/downside squire. I have lived here for 19 years and have cleaned my kitchen sink trap out prob less than 3 times, and that's probably because of lollipop sticks not gunk/stink related issues. "People. stand united in the fight against gurgling traps!!!".

You hear the water discharging with those, so I never use them nowadays.... Not so bad if they're in a utility room with the door closed, but horrible if it's an adjoining or open-plan kitchen / dining / living space afaic.

Sounds like finding a couple of decent carpenter/joiners would pay huge dividends. They should be able to help with setting out and founds etc if you find the right guys and they're open-minded. Carpenters seem to be able to turn their hands to a few things. DIY'ing the foundation is relatively simple, and you can still get good (excellent) results with a simple strip + block & beam structure if you want, using EPS blocks instead of concrete blocks, and putting a further 140-160mm (or more) atop before screed/slab. Airtightness will be of paramount importance, more so than huge amounts of insulation imho, but I would also steer away from PIR and try to go to a fully blown cellulose filled structure with better decrement delay and acoustics. Time will be the one thing you can't save on, so that's the con here.

Get a QS to do a full bill of quantities, including the prelims, and then get a stiff drink and read all the things you didn't know about that need to be factored in.

That's a combination trap, which has the issue of the dreaded 'gurgling' when the appliance is pumping out. The ideal situation is, where the discharging water is the other side of the trapped water, so it is inaudible to the room.

Hep trap will be ok, but would be my second choice tbh.

Remind me to come and visit your simple cube sometime, lol. 🙄

The biggest issue I see with these installs is the outlet is formed first, which creates a high point. Then the main roof material gets laid to them and then that has to climb up over that step, albeit a few mm’s, but that’s enough to cause water to pool in between / around the outlet(s). On the next one I’m getting in the drivers seat, and the 18mm OSB3 deck will get a load of attention to furring, levels and falls, and then the lot will be getting a second sacrificial layer of 9mm OSB3 which will be cut around 300mm square away from the start of the outlets to create a step down there. The outlets will be formed to stop short of the step where the 18 meets the upstand edge of the 9, and left to cure, with layers built to lose say 4mm of the 9mm OSB step. Then the main roof covering will go to the cut out sections, get dressed in over the preformed and cured outlet material, and then be welded / bonded down to have the steps falling down not up. I’m quite fed up of roofers pacifying me and saying it’s fine, they all just think that standing water and leaves needing to be washed out all the time is fine, as the roofs can handle standing water. IMO that’s a load of crap, we can do better people!!

Follow the details provided by your architect / SE and double-check with your BCO. If a fire is involved to the point that flames are at the ridge, then there will be nothing to save anyways, so I doubt capping that head is of any importance; unless otherwise stated by your principal designer.

That’s a chunk of change, no doubting that. If you could negotiate that down to £10k I reckon the convenience / stress / time factor would sway me towards “one-stop” shopping tbh. Let us know how you get on with options and estimates plz.