Jeremy Harris

Nothing would induce me to tape and fill boards, either tapered or square edged. Our old house had ceilings that were taped and filled and in the early morning and late evening the light would shine across and highlight every slight ridge. Once it's caught your eye, you find yourself getting more and more annoyed by it. It was the one thing that convinced me that all our plasterboard was going to be skimmed. I just couldn't live with looking up and seeing regular ripples across the ceiling.

I think it's regional @Declan52. I used chocolate for years, and the mice in Cornwall and in Scotland loved it, especially dark chocolate. For some reason, mice down here in the South seem to much prefer peanut butter. I've tried chocolate in the live traps and it just doesn't work here, whereas peanut butter gets them every time.

I'll admit to having done it, when I cocked up and forgot to run the upstairs lighting ring to the two eaves spaces what we have as storage areas. Luckily both had easy rear access to the upstairs ring final, so all I did was fit a switched FCU, with a 3 A fuse, wired with a short 2.5mm² spur from the back of one of the DG outlets, as the light switch in each of them, with a label stuck on saying that the fuse should be 3 A. It's legal, and perfectly OK, if not best practice, but sometimes you just have to take the easy way out. I wasn't going to take the bonded down bamboo flooring up to get access to the upstairs lighting ring!

YouTube really brings out some very creative ways of killing things, doesn't it? I once caught a mouse that was underneath some kitchen units by partially removing the kick board and making up a taped up cardboard adapter to take the vacuum cleaner hose. One end of the hose was effectively sealed up to the void that the mouse was in, with all other escape routes blocked (he'd gone down a gap adjacent to the waste pipe in the base of the under sink unit), the other end was taped to a demijohn, propped up at about 45 deg angle, with a bit of chocolate in it. We were both amazed at how quickly the mouse found the vacuum cleaner pipe and ran up inside it. He practically leapt into the demijohn and couldn't climb the slippery sides.

It only needs a bit of give, though, so perhaps fill the void with bonded EPS beads blown in, or use something like EPS 70, that would have enough give to take up any very slight movement between the ground and the underside of the B&B. I still don't see why vents are needed for a B&B floor, anyway, as there's nothing under there that is going to be bothered by getting a bit damp, is there? Thinking out of the box, why can't that void just be sealed, perhaps with a small vent to ensure that the pressure is equalised? An air void would give some insulation value, and I think you could possibly get away with using the method in BS EN ISO 6946 to calculate the lambda value of the sealed air gap.

I've never understood where mice get enough food or water to survive in a loft. They seem to like eating some types of plastic and rubber. They seem to love black Armaflex pipe insulation, but don't seem so keen on the grey polythene stuff. They also seem to like PVC cable insulation, but rarely bother chewing timber, unless it's to make a hole to access something.

It's a pity that you're forced to have a void under the floor like this, as it does mean increasing the floor heat loss in very cold weather. As it's concrete beam and block, does it actually need to be ventilated at all? The only reason for ventilating a suspended floor is to reduce the risk of condensation on timber joists and floor boards by encouraging airflow. Is there any reason you can't just lay EPS under the suspended floor to fill the void and do away with the vents altogether? I understand that the beam and block is a plot requirement, but this may be a way to get around that by sticking to the exact letter of the plot "regulations" (which are novel, I've never, ever heard of a plot having such draconian restrictions on build methods before - must be a first for the whole of the UK!) but effectively having a non-load bearing insulated slab.

Thanks, sorry for the broken link about the foundations, I hadn't realised the link was broken until just now, but I've now fixed it so it should be OK (it was the link to the Kore passive slab info that had somehow got corrupted - I can't say I'm an expert at driving Wordpress or creating a website, so sometimes things just seem to happen for no reason that I can see!). I think it's possible to hot link into attachments in that blog, this is just a test to see if that's possible with the link to the location of that Kore info: http://www.mayfly.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Kore-Insulated-Foundations-Report.pdf Edited to add: Yes, that seems to work, and I'll try and remember it, as there is loads of stuff stored away in that blog website, quite a lot of which isn't actually attached to any post; I just use the web space as a convenient file share source for anything that isn't sensitive.

Me too, we had a very nasty experience years ago with a dead mouse or bird (not sure which) having fallen inside the wall cavity from the roof space (the cavity wasn't closed off in one corner of a single storey extension). We had a really bad smell in the living room (which was partly in the extension) that I traced to coming from a double gang outlet on the wall, behind the TV. I took the plate off and the smell was definitely coming from the back box. An investigation in the loft confirmed that something had fallen inside the cavity and died, as the smell was up there in the only place where there was access down into the cavity. The smell got so bad that the room was unusable, so I drilled some 10mm holes in a line through the mortar course in the outside brick wall where I thought the thing might be and squirted in neat bleach. That confirmed that the smell was coming from the cavity, as we could then smell the bleach inside. Some silicone sealant all around the inside of the back box was the final measure, followed by sealing up the holes in the mortar a few weeks later. Since then I've been a very keen advocate of traps, either dead or live capture. If using the live capture ones it's worth noting that mice seem to have a homing instinct, so you need to release any captured ones a long way from home - if you let them out in the garden I think there's a good chance they will get back in again!

The live capture traps I have are the Rentokil ones, and they work very well as long as they are on a smooth surface, ideally not out in the open, as mice prefer to run around things like walls, so place a board or something vertically alongside it for better success. They can be bought pretty much anywhere, but here's an online link: https://www.homebase.co.uk/rentokil-live-capture-mouse-trap-pack-of-2-_p326823 I put ours on a small bit of scrap laminate coated board, and that seems to work well.

Could be either LABC, the pseudo company set up when building control was privatised, or a building control company (there are lots around). LABC is the new name for the trading body within the local authority that provide self-funded building control services (i.e. they are not tax-payer funded for normal building control activity, but funded from the fees they charge). There's only one difference between a true private building control company and your local branch of LABC, and that is that only LABC have any enforcement powers. The private building control companies can pass or fail something, but have no powers of enforcement for a persistent failure to comply, so they have to pass that to LABC to deal with (most rarely bother to do this, I think).

We looked at fitting a built in vacuum, but then stayed in a holiday let with one and decided against it. We found the long hose a real PITA, not so much stowing it, as it was on a retractable reel set into a wall, but just dragging around the place. TBH, we had our heart (well, OK, SWMBO had her heart set) on fitting one, and especially liked some of the add-on's, like the sweep inlet for the kitchen. In fact I've made one of these up for the home-made dust extractor in my new workshop, in the hope that it will encourage me to keep the floor a bit cleaner. When we came back from holiday we had a rethink and decided against a central vacuum and instead bought two cordless ones plus a small, but very powerful, mini-Vax. We have one cordless one upstairs and one down stairs, and they are plenty powerful enough for most jobs, and extremely light and easy to use. The main advantages are having no trailing cable or hose, which makes a tremendous difference to their ease of use. Having one upstairs and one downstairs makes life easier, too. The best bit was that two decent cordless vacuum cleaners plus a more powerful, but small, Mini-Vax, was about half the cost of a built in vacuum system.

Mice can climb walls and get in through small gaps externally, the saying is that if you can get a pencil through it a mouse can probably get through it! In our old house we found the entry points to the loft space were tiny gaps at the eaves, where they were climbing the walls (aided by some climbing plants we had growing up them) and then getting in via very small gaps in the soffits. Having got rid of the mice (using live traps and peanut butter bait) - took about 5 or 6 goes to catch them all) I went around and sealed up all the soffits and cut back the climbing plants. Since then we've had no problems in the loft at all, but they have got inside the house a couple of times, on both occasions we assume they got in through a door or window that was left open for a short time.

I doubt it. It's pretty much exactly how non-durable timber with no surface treatment will behave when it gets cool and damp. The problem is that the company failed to highlight that surface treatment would be needed in order to maintain an even looking appearance and only stressed the long term durability. It's undoubtedly durable, but unless regularly cleaned or surface treated it's always going to attract sporadic black mould growth, as nothing has been done to the timber to make it have any surface anti-mould properties at all.

Mirrors my experience with Trading Standards. I tried hard to engage them over the import of Chinese battery chargers that were being sold via a well-known auction site, from a "seller" in Southampton. These were bloody lethal, with the line and neutral crossed on the unit I bought, no earth protection, no double insulated either and with a 50/50 chance that the negative battery charge lead could be at mains potential (mine was). They weren't interested at all with dealing with a consumer complaint. One reason was that the "seller" in Southampton was just a drop-shipping warehouse, and the seller was really in China. This is extremely common, apparently, and the give away is when you see an apparently UK-based transaction being handled during Chinese business hours - it means the seller is not in the UK as claimed, and just has the goods in a UK warehouse for faster shipping. What's worse is that you have no come back at all under consumer law, as although it seems on the surface that you've bought goods from a UK seller, so the UK sales of goods and services regulations should apply, in reality you've been conned and have purchased direct from China......................

Spalling is often caused by surface cooling only, and doesn't need freezing temperatures to occur. Water has a maximum volume at around 4 deg C, so if the surface gets down to this sort of temperature after curing has started, then expansion of trapped moisture just below the surface can cause spalling. However, part of the curing process for concrete is exothermic, so the slab will heat up for the first few hours of the cure. The secret is to stop that heat getting out in very cold weather, hence the suggestion of adding a layer of straw over the top of a sheet. Any insulation material would do the job, as the slab will not lose heat downwards, both because the ground will be around 7 or 8 deg C under the slab and because of the insulation. If you can find some spare sheet insulation that would work, as would erecting some form of tent over the slab and putting in some form of heating. It doesn't take much, if you can keep the air above the slab at a temperature above about 6 or 7 deg C then it should be fine. Brickies used to cover newly built walls with old sacks and a tarpaulin to keep the wall warm enough overnight in very cold weather (maybe they still do), and it's only really the first 24 hours or so you have to worry about, after that the risk of any problem occurring is much reduced.

That's a black surface mould, that's very common and more often found on stored timber ordecking. As there is no antifungal treatment applied, and the thermal treatment process has no effect at all on the surface resistance to mould growth like this, then this is exactly what I'd expect to see on a timber like ash that has no natural antifungal resins etc that would tend to prevent it. The mould not going cause rot in the timber, but will stay on the surface, because the thermal treatment makes the internal structure of the timber resistant to the growth of mould beyond the surface. It will tend to proliferate on any surface that stays slightly wetter, or cooler, than any another, and the change in grain structure between adjacent panels will be more than enough to cause the surface moisture or temperature difference needed in order to cause the effect you're seeing. The black mould species is probably very similar to the types found growing on cool, damp, bathroom surfaces, and the patterning where the battens are is most probably due to slight surface temperature variations in those areas It should wash off fairly easily, but may leave some staining, and will be a recurring problem, as thermally treated non-durable timber has no inherent resistance to surface mould growth at all, it needs some form of surface treatment to prevent this. I think you may have been mislead as to the properties of this material, most probably by a sales person. There's nothing that I can find anywhere in the company literature that suggests there is any resistance to surface mould growth, but there do briefly mention that customers may wish to consider some form of surface treatment or stain, which sort of skates around the problem that they know that surface mould may be an issue in some climates. Ash is a non-durable timber, with virtually no inherent resistance to rot. In it's untreated form it's durability rating is 5, as poor as you can get, about the same as balsa wood; many softwoods are a great deal more durable. The thermal treatment improves the durability rating to 1, but has no effect at all on the surface properties. There are no resins or mould-resistant compounds within ash, so even thermally treated it is still going to attract surface mould growth, much the same as the way softwood decking does. You can try and fight the supplier, and the advice that @Ferdinand has given is about as good as any I can think of, or you can clean the surface up and treat it with something like Sioox, as already suggested. My personal opinion is that you've been misled as to the difference between durability and surface appearance, but proving that could be a significant challenge.

Not sure if this is a useful tip or not, but I chose to completely floor our kitchen before even taking delivery of the units. Instead of fitting skirting boards where the units were to go, I bonded on 50mm x 50mm white PVC internal angle, with neutral cure silicone. This effectively sealed the stone floor from the walls all around, so if there's a leak water can't get to the plaster or under the stone (I hope!). It also makes for a very clean area under the kitchen units (I know you can't see under there..........) and hopefully it won't become a haven for woodlice, spiders etc. In the utility room, where the non-built in washing machine fitted next to a unit that had a side panel that went down to the floor, I did the same trick and lined the floor to wall/panel area where the machine slides in with the same 50mm x 50mm white PVC angle, again so that any water that leaks can't get at the walls or unit.

That mirrors my experience with untreated larch. There is a great deal of colour variation still, after three years, with the sheltered areas under the eaves still looking quite reddish/brown and the exposed areas (especially the East elevation, which gets most of the early morning sun) having been the quickest to turn grey. On the South elevation there is a lot of variation, the full spectrum of different colours really, although it is very gradually all toning down to around the same grey colour, it just takes a long time. Water staining is a problem. We fitted standard gutters and they are not up to taking the flow from the 45 deg pitch roof that is mainly covered with solar panels, as the water runs off to fast in very heavy rain. the result is that they overflow and there are clear stains in the cladding where this has happened. I'm fitting deep flow gutters, but wish I'd done it earlier before the staining occurred. My hope is that it will fade out with time.

My best guess is that yes, it will, but I think it will take more than a year or two. We still have areas where our larch is quite a bright orange/red colour and others where it's almost completely grey, after three years. I'm inclined to think it might take five to ten years to weather to an even colour all over. A few years ago our local authority re-clad a number of local bus stops in larch (I suspect they got it from the same mill as we did) and similarly it seems to be taking several years for the colour to even out, with some of them looking very patchy at the moment.

+1 on the good advice from @Ferdinand above. Cases like this can be challenging to resolve satisfactorily, more so when the supplier is in another country. Cleary the finish is bloody awful, and nothing like that you were led to expect from the brochure, but the legal position is going to hinge on what you were reasonably expected to receive, and there is a certain leeway for brochure photos to be "touched up", sadly. In this case It does look very much as if the product has behaved pretty much exactly as I'd have expected thermally treated non-durable wood to behave in the UK climate, but not at all as the manufacturers suggest it should behave. All the talk about installation method is, I'm sure, a red herring, it's the manufacturer/supplier trying to shift the blame for your poor results from their misrepresentation of the product to your own installation. I doubt the installation has any effect at all on the severe surface discolouration you are seeing, that is something that is pretty normal with thermally treated wood, or even non-thermally treated wood. The only discolouration that could definitely be put down to the fixing method is if there was staining from the fixings, something common with some timber species, like oak, but that does not seem to be the case at all with your cladding. It's important to note that thermal treatment only does one main thing to non-durable wood - it makes it more durable, that's all. It does change the natural colour slightly, but it's primary purpose is to make a cheaper, non-durable, timber behave like a more expensive species that is naturally durable. It does not make it "maintenance free", or guarantee an even colour at the surface at all. Even naturally durable timber, like Western Red Cedar, will change colour unless surface treated regularly, and may well discolour unevenly, depending on slight differences between boards and the exposure of each face. We have larch cladding, which is moderately durable, and have not treated it. There are areas where the colour is very different around the building, but after three years it's gradually starting to even out. I think it will probably take another three to five years before it's a fairly uniform silver grey, but we did know this before we fitted it.

If venting in the garden, then it ideally needs to be at the end of the foul drain run, and to avoid odours, hide the vent in a hedge or flower bed, as soil and vegetation are pretty good at eliminating odours. The external vent doesn't need to be very high, just high enough to be above flood level. An AAV at the top of the stack inside the house will resolve the possible partial vacuum problem, without contributing to the heat loss or affecting airtightness.

Welcome, sorry to hear that you seem to have been mis-sold this product. I've done some research on thermal treatment of timber that is normally classed as non-durable, like ash, and it's clear that although the timber may have it's durability and rot resistance improved by heat treatment, that does not mean that it will be either maintenance free or resistant to surface growth of lichens etc. There's nothing intrinsic in the way any thermally treated timber is produced that gives it any surface protection; the process is one that just improves durability and rot resistance. The surface of any thermally-treated timber will behave much the same as any other untreated timber, and will end up with surface colour changes, the growth of harmless lichens and surface moulds and may well need cleaning from time to time. If you live in an area with good air quality than surface growth of lichens etc is more likely. The good news is that these should clean off easily, leaving no damage to the underlying timber. In my view, you may have been made promises as to the performance of this cladding that were unreasonable, and, depending on the evidence that your supplier gave you (not the manufacturer, as the liability rests with the supplier/installer in law) you may have a case for the product having been misrepresented to you, and hence mis-sold. This may not be easy to prove, especially if any sales pitch given to you was verbal. Technically, a verbal promise is every bit as binding as a written one; the problem is proving exactly what you were told.

Essentially there are two different requirements in the Building Regulations themselves, but these aren't 100% clear in the guidance in the Approved Documents. The first requirement is that the foul drain has to be vented to atmosphere, such that there can be no build up of pressure inside it - the idea is to allow any gases to escape via a vent. The second requirement is that there has to be a means to prevent a partial vacuum forming in a soil pipe when a toilet is flushed or a basin or bath emptied. Common usage was to combine both of these requirements into a single vent pipe that does both functions, and either run it through the roof or run it up the outside of the house if the soil pipe is external. However, there's no need to do this at all, you can split the two functions and solve each individually. You can fit a vent pipe, to allow the foul drain to be at atmospheric pressure, pretty much anywhere along the pipe run. You can even fit one beyond the entry point of the soil pipe inside a hedge or flower bed, at fairly low level if you wish, or run an external vent pipe outside the house and up above eaves level. To resolve the partial vacuum problem you can fit an AAV inside the house, well above the highest outlet, in a position where it can be accessed for maintenance. This will open if there is a partial vacuum in the soil pipe and allow air to be drawn in, then close to prevent smells from escaping. An AAV cannot stop any build up of pressure in the foul drain, so if you fit one then you need an external vent as well. The advantage of fitting an AAV and an external vent is that there is less heat loss. Internal vent pipes act a bit like chimneys and constantly draw cool air up through them, so unless well-insulated they will draw heat from the house and can act as a focus for condensation. If you have an existing vent to the foul drain, then you should be fine with an AAV for the new upstairs bathroom. It needs to be well above the highest drain and accessible for occasional maintenance/replacement, so you can't build it into a wall without some form of access cover, plus it needs a reasonable air supply.

Can you get hold of some straw? Concrete gets warm as it cures, so if you can put some sheeting over the top, then cover it with some straw or other insulation, you should be fine. The chances are that the slab itself will warm up enough to stay well above the local air temperature.