lizzie

I have sent him an email asking why so high.... see what happens

@Nod are you free?

Thanks guys. We laid the concrete a month or so ago, its all been checked with a level there are no issues. He checked it too. There will. be cuts due to corner but I wouldnt have thought it was any more difficult than tiling a shower floor with cuts. He did that quickly and well. He put the tiles down outside the front door last week, same concrete slab, it was 24 tiles only 2 cuts. He laid with just adhesive (rapid set) and grouted straight away. He was gone by lunchtime. Its perfect, slab underneath was perfect and the rest are the same. Says he is not available until July, but he did tell me a few months ago he was busy May/June as he is having an extension at home and putting time in on that. His price for the floor tiling internally was £32 psqm and that included levelling. Seems like I do need another quote.

I am ready to lay the patios. I have circa 100m of tiles to go down. We have put down reinforced concrete slabs with falls and slot drains all ready for tiling. Nothing to do but prime, lay and grout, no levelling needed. I asked tiler who did my bathrooms and some internal floors for a quote and he has come back at over £45 a sq m labour only........this is a lot more that his price for laying the indoor porcelain tiles which was a much bigger and more complicated job. They are the same tiles as indoor just different slip rating. His labour quote per metre is more than the cost of the porcelanosa tiles! Is he taking the p*** ? Is another quote in order?

Mine has been signed off for a month but is far from finished in my eyes.........there remains a diminishing myriad of ‘small’ finishing jobs to be done......garage is a shell, electrics not fully finished, no driveway, garden a pile of muck and rubbish, no patio, cladding still to be fully finished, fencing and gates to be done, finishing off silicone in bathrooms and grout ln floor tiles, no lights working in some rooms......well you get the picture........is it ever ‘finished’? Some of the jobs I was left with after sign off were amazing and we are getting through them slowly but what I learnt was that what constitutes Building regs sign off is not necessarily the ‘finished’ job. For example I didnt have my proper downpipes on just had taped on corrugated plastic pipe, that apparently is suficient for building regs as its a pipe that discharges into a drain, the aesthetics are unimportant as long as the function is there. I think that sort of thing is down to the particular inspector but I could give you other instances of things that passed the sign off that were still a work in progress to me......even after 2 years the house building world continues to confound. btw I do now have proper downpipes.....

@Ferdinand it was done with a trowel and then when nearly dry it was ‘scratched’ to finish it at 15mm grain to match the house render.

Thats a big wow @Cpd fabulous must gladden your heart every time you look out

He used SBR as a base before he put anything on and I am hoping that will minimise staining. I'm told the Krend is less prone to stains but who knows! He was a good man he is a stonemason by trade used to working on restorations of historic churches and listed buildings. Obviously he does some modern render jobs too - he seemed to use a real craftsman's ethos on the job. He showed me that the drips under the concrete copings were non existent in places (moulding fault) he took his grinder and went all along the 12m and regularised the drip channel under the coping. I thought that was really good a lot of renderers would have just slapped it on and not looked at something that wasn't part of their job....or wanted to charge me extra. It's 12m long x 3m high and cost £1600 including materials to render it which i didn't think was a bad price. It wasn't the cheapest quote but I liked him best. It was supposed to be a brick faced wall originally but for some reason the rubbish people who did the retaining wall did a zig zag join brick to block just after the meters cupboards. It is at our entrance and it looked atrocious we had no choice but to deal with it. We painted the huge 25m long x 3m high retaining wall behind the house in dark grey to try and hide the awful block work and now I find there is grey masonry paint splashed on the white house wall (expensive Alumasc render system ). They obviously didn't bother to cover it up properly and I couldn't have eyes in the back of my head or be on site every minute of every day to watch them. I am very upset but what can I do now culprits are long gone.

Ive just had a garden wall done in krend to match the hugely expensive alumasc render on the house. The garden wall was wobbly block and a real eysore. The block had hairline cracks here and there so he put mesh in those areas. He also coverered te wall in sbr before starting. There are copings on the top of this wall as its 3m high. I am going to get the same man to do me raised planters a bit like your photo @Declan52 I will top with those with a ‘coping’ cut from patio tiles so it matches I dont think leaving to top just rendered will be very durable.

I think I have 2 wows my kitchen and my view......and I do love my shower.... 3 then!

We got cad from ours on request no problem at all.

Thats high. I would not feel good with that! About 45% is my optimum level. Which website are you using for those stats - are you able to post me a link. Thanks

@PeterW good article thanks. I think the Frankishe is plastic? Good news is humidity level in house is now 42% and much more comfortable. I have mvhr fan on lowest setting, windows open (and its raining outside)

@PeterW thank you I appreciate this input it is so helpful. I am pretty stupid with all this stuff I thought I as sensors came on the list I needed them!

I had individual prices for items needed, heat exchanger and sensors etc and I added it all up and then a bit for labour came out to £1200 ish which in reality means £1500 ish if the last 2 years are anything to go by! Agreed it would have been much better and probably cheaper to have done it at the start ....looking back I mentioned humidity control when speccing system. I didnt notice it had been dropped in final decision making. I relied too much at that time and didnt question things as much as I now know I should have. Its not installers or suppliers fault I should have picked it up and reinstated it.

I have a cold roof on top of the MBC warm roof. MBc provided us with a flat deck and then we built another shaped roof on top to meet our design/planning requirements. Cold roof definately needs ventilating. We have large overhanging soffits and have a continious ventilation grill running all the way around (thats how the buzzing stripey things got in to nest). I believe that TRADA have some guidelines for the amount of ventilation needed. We have a lot and it is crossflow too but we are venting +250sqm of roof. Our vent strips are painted the same colour as the soffits so they are less visible. They are invisible unless you look up under soffit you would not know they were there looking at the house as fascias are not affected. Not sure if photo of ours is clear enough to show vents. Can you vent top and bottom on the internal face and lose it in your finish rather than through the cladding which I agree with architects would not be a good thing to look at.

So much info to digest here thank you all. I have had a price for enpalthy heat exchanger and its very expensive. My installer is recommending that we try playing about with things to see how much better we can get humidity levels without mvhr running then we can start tweaking on mvhr settings. He thinks we should be able to get some results from doing the sort of things you are suggesting. The change of heat exchanger is deemed to be the drastic last resort..... by him not me but at about £1500 all in I am inclined to agree with him I am going to print out the suggestions here and work through over the next week or so monitoring results. Currently I seem to be on quite a high default fan setting. I am going to start by knocking the mvhr off for a day ot two and work it back up from there. I already felt a benefit last night from lower fan speed and windows cracked open on tilt in bedrooms we dont use and leaving doors to those rooms open for air flow. There must be an answer here somewhere, both clean air and decent humidity must be achievable. Thanks all for your input it is much appreciated.

I started with hope and joy and a few modest must haves......2 years on older, poorer and possibly wiser I was just desperate to get to the end. Of my must haves some are here and some are not. I learnt to my cost that unattended builders take the easy route which does not necessarily facilitate the must haves and then it can be impractical, impossible or just too expensive to undo what has been done. You need a padlock on your wallet and eyes in the back of your head...oh and give up the day job. Its what I ended up having to do as things were clearly going wrong. I have no experience of managing contractors some (most) took advantage of my inexperience and some (very few) were really nice.

They have all gone home and left it for today.......I have just tried with various things myself but no luck.

I think its nearer the house where its stuck. Digging up started continuing tomorow, the ducts are a long way down?

Oh I wish!! You are right though this whole build has been a nightmare! If it wasn't for my superstar carpenter which has been an absolute rock and still is here doing all the finishing work others have left I think I would have jumped off the roof (bungalow so no real damage) LOL

This afternoon they were pulling the last cables (alarm and gate intercom) into the plant room - lovely draw cords all ready to go. Cables now stuck in ducts somewhere between garage and house. Wont pull forward and wont pull back...............not looking forward to tomorrow

Burning wood is in large part responsible for the state of sub saharan Africa. No trees lead to soil erosion combined with poor rainfall leads to famine. Plus those of us with compromised lungs are tortured by our neighbours burning wood which impacts on breathing.

I looked at solar film and I was concerned by one thing I found on a website saying that the window may heat up even more outside and it could pop the seals and invalidate the warranty.

Our local independent builders merchants has a brick match service, take in a brick and they will find you a similar one.....