LA3222

I'm currently putting some 47x50 timber battens around the window openings to close the cavity around them. I've offset them by 10mm so I can stick some aerogel insulation there which I have left over to help with thermal bridging. My query is should I cover the face of the battens with some DPC in order to mitigate water potentially coming through the blockwork? I seem to recall reading this somewhere which is why its bubbling at the back of my mind but cant find an answer anywhere so wonder if I have misremembered?

If you only need a few bottles I have half a dozen spare

I didn't put one in at the time as at the front of the house I have a strip about 2m wide and in there I need to put a retaining wall, foul drain run and rainwater pipes as well as the perimeter land drain. I am going to install one and connect it to the rainwater run so it all goes to a soak away but figured it would be easier to place when I put all the other stuff in so I can make sure it all gets placed where i need it. My build is on sandstone, when i did a percolation test it drank the water up so I'm having to use the min value for f of 15 (this is off the top of my head so figures/letter may not be correct) however it was storm season when my agg turned up and even though i specced 'clean' there seemed to be a fair bit of dust stuck to it all. I'm concerned that when i compacted it the surface became less free draining than it should have been. Belts and braces, I'm putting the land drain in around the perimeter and I'm sticking one behind the wall too.

Another mistake I made, attaching the UFH pipe to the top of the mesh. When you use 50mm mesh spacers and add 8mm mesh onto that you end up with just 34mm of cover in a 100mm slab. Something I didn't factor in - A292 is 8mm diameter, but it overlaps in a criss cross so actually takes up 16mm. Then when you chuck in the laps where mesh has to overlap, suddenly you only have 18mm of cover to the mesh. Put a 16mm UFH pipe there and you're buggered. These are are the sorts of things no one tells you to be careful with so you dont realise until too late. I spotted this issue as I was doing the mesh but it was too late in the game to change the plan. I considered running the UFH pipe through and under the mesh but that would have been way too problematic. So I ran it over the mesh avoiding laps where possible. Even so (and this is where it is relevant to your comment about running a rule over the edge - I thought this too), the concrete guys were concerned there wasnt enough cover so poured the slab 10mm higher than the upstand all the way across (it didn't really pour over the edge like you would think!). I got them to remove the bit over the upstand so I could then foam 10mm of insulation back in giving me my upstand back. A major pita, not difficult but just an unwanted job. This created another problem, where they had removed the concrete over the upstand it was jagged due to the stones in the concrete, I had to mix up some load bearing grout up and go around the edge pouring it in to give me a clean finish again. It worked, but there was a lot of unnecessary work created due to the way I put it all together. In hindsight, fixing the pipes to the insulation under the mesh would have saved a lot of work. With my job, I organised the boom pump and concrete and powerfloat, the guys came in and did the work. They were busy from about 8am till 12pm then nothing to do until the concrete cured enough. They started power floating at about 14:30 and finished about 20:00.

@Tony Kan insulated raft can easily be done pretty much solo. Areas where a bit of help is good are setting your profiles out - using a tape measure solo is a long and tricky process, much easier with two. The concrete - I had 3 blokes turn up to do mine, after watching them I am glad I didn't try it myself. The finish wasnt laser flat but flat enough that laying floor finishes should be fine. I had a mix of A393 and A292 mesh in mine. Thankfully the widest A393 strip was 600mm so I could move it myself - a full sheet is 70kg, not too heavy but the shear size makes it extremely difficult to move solo. A292 is about 40kg so even full sheets can be moved solo (it does get snagged etc but doable). If you can use an insulated raft rather than piles it should be doable. Piles I have no experience of, but if you have a good set of drawings showing how all the steel ties together I'm not sure why you couldn't tackle it. Cutting steel and placing it is easy - just keep checking the drawing. Another mistake i made between layers was to plough on to the top layer assuming A393 was top and bottom in the thickened strips - it was actually A292, by the time i paused to check I'd cut all my A292!! A lot of unnecessary work created having to lap and tie them all back together. I just used a 9" grinder to cut the steel and a potato stack tie twist to do the ties. Dont follow this approach, there are thousands of ties and it takes ages, hire one if those hand held tie twist machines, I wish I had - it can be used to tie the UFH pipe too. I should add some pics of finished slab to the other thread, my house is going up at the minute though so very busy! Good luck with whatever you decide, contractors are a PITA and I've had the same difficulties you are facing, you'll get there in the end.

I had a quick look on my phone but the free version has loads of locked cells - not sure from glancing whether they are the ones you need to be able to change. I'll open it on my laptop tonight and compare the two then to see how it is.

My bad, I missed that part on your initial comment. Sizing the soak away up is easy then, I created my own spreadsheet to do the calculations using the formulae given in the BRE Digest, but it looks like you've been given a link to one. I'll have to check that out to confirm my own calculations are correct.

Do you not need to conduct ground infiltration test in order to correctly size a soak away? It's all well and good knowing how much water is coming off the roof but a key component of the problem is how quickly that water drains away?

I used 2" fine for 500mm and then finished off with 1" fine for final 100mm. Your price for hardcore seems very high - I paid £14/T plus VAT. Yours works out around nearly double that.

Ha. In all seriousness though, my static has been plumbed into a side branch for a year now and I do get backwash up the main branch inlet to the temp plug and some washes over the top of adjacent branches ( not sure how and when I've watched, the flow doesn't seem particularly violent). I would like to think that when the main flow from the house is connected up it wont be an issue anymore but based on my own observations I would only connect the house to the main flow rather than a branch.

If you want I can pop the lid off my MH and take a picture if you like - it's been a while since I rinsed it out so I'm sure there will be some crud splashed about in there by now?

As mentioned, they shouldn't have nailed into the floor but that doesn't help you now - the ship has sailed so to speak so all you can do is pressure test, hope for the best. For any future readers who may come across the same issue, the framers asked me the other day how deep my pipes were and could they nail the floor for props. I told them they couldn't and suggested they brace off the soleplates they had put in all over for the studs. So they braced off those and the scaff in a few places.

That's what I thought too. I can attest to the "splat" you get by coming in at a side connection. I have connected my static to a side branch as I positioned the IC for the house - I have to periodically rinse it with a hose as the inevitable happens and solids splash over the sides!

I have - but I daresay I am an outlier in this regard. This comes back to how in my opinion self builders tend to ignore things to convince themselves it was cheaper than it was. Off topic though so I'll say no more. I've just bought a brush less impact driver as I have a lot of long screws to put in. I dare say I will add to that family before long, perhaps a multitool though I've never used one before, not sure what i would use it for but everyone seems to say they are a must have!

You can DIY the insulated raft fairly easily. I did most of the raft myself, the only outside help I had was: 1. Operator for the excavator 2. Groundworkers to do the concrete pour and powerfloat. Everything else was me with a little help from the missus and father in law. Altogether it took me about 6 weeks, the main reason being the excavation/stone subbase took 2 weeks and it was peak storm season which was a nightmare to work in and I made a couple of mistakes which cost me time. My slab is 180m2, if it had been good weather and I'd planned the lorries how I thought rather than what the plant operator said then it could probably have been done in half that. I made mistakes aswell which cost me time, think I covered them in the thread previously referred to.

I have a bathroom but no bog in it or sink. It's got a bath/shower and sauna in it. People need to use the bog then the bedrooms all have ensuite and there is a toilet down stairs.

You have my sympathies @redtophowever little that will help though. Self building can be a challenge at times and you have just hit a turbo rough patch. If you are at joists level then I cant see why you wouldnt be capable of doing it (although getting help would be the ideal situation for your own sanity). If you have detailed drawings of joists layout etc and take it steady you will get there in the end. There are others on here who have done their joists themselves, learning hard lessons along the way, @AnonymousBosch springs to mind as someone who has installed his joists. I am sure he has detailed his experiences along the way within several threads on this forum. Good luck to you?

My scaffolders are here now finishing up and I suspect the TF team will be working through the next couple of weekends. The neighbours are nice enough though so I cant imagine they will get upset as it's only temporary! I guess a lot depends on how your neighbours are.

You are in a very similar position to where I was @davejura I managed to get foundations done, services in etc all on my own funds. I needed the mortgage to come through for the big 2nd stage TF payment. Ecology are very good to deal with.

1. Interest is only paid on what you draw down. 2. SAP report from a SAP assessor is all that is required (some may suggest doing your own SAP - not worth the hassle imho for a tiny saving - mine cost about £120). 3. Estimate - I used estjmators online as it gave me the bones of the costs, I then downloaded that into excel format and tweaked accordingly. You can do it yourself but for a couple of hundred quid the estimators online one gives you a really good starting point imo. 4. Dont need a warranty - if you intend to remortgage you will likely need a warranty. I took out a warranty purely so I can remortgage post build to a much more favourable rate. Yes it is a few grand for nothing, but over a 30yr mortgage, dropping down to a better rate will far outweigh that cost.

I think I've hit a wall with blocks. Seems to be a fair bit of local delivery going on further south but in Lincolnshire nadda!!

The thing is, I need a brickie now. The TF company are putting the house up next week, so while everything is stopping I can keep someone employed till the summer. Seems I am constantly one step forward and then two back with contractors. A right PITA but I'm sure a resolution will appear before long. I look forward to the time where the person holding the build up is me and my efforts- hate relying on others.

So, the brickie I had lined up decided to email me today to inform me that in the current climate he needed to increase prices. Ok, I thought. I'm not in any financial difficulty and can afford a slight increase. Looked at the numbers. 57% increase in cost. Really. Er...no thanks. 3000 brick & 3000 block, lintels, ties, detailing etc for £7k originally. Now wants £11k.

I have only done some fag packet sums on this myself so far, but I've started off on the assumption that all water in the pipe run is cold so if you know what the flow rate is, you can calculate the volume of the pipe and then how long it will take to purge the cold and replace with hot.

Standard wind for round here - absolute PITA at times!