Iceverge

Pics of this plastic collar please. I'm guessing it's a screw in bushing reducer to take the thread down to an appropriate size. You may be able to screw it out and replace it. If you want to have a go as is by all means a do but be careful with applying hemp liberally to the thread as it may crack the plastic. The T&P valve provides a safety blow off in the situation the tank overheats or over pressurises. You can clean the brass threads relatively aggressively with a wire brush. By the way I'm not a plumber so beware internet stranger advice!!!

Yup, airtight paint would give you the option of bringing the airtight layer up and well clear of the floor construction to meet the wet plaster later on. Airtight sealant would work but you might find it tricky to plaster right to the line of the sealant. Dilute the airtight paint 5:1 with water as a primer before applying the top layer . You could always use airtight paint entirely behind the ledger before you attached it to the wall. Don't forget to put some mastic or sealant in the holes the bolts go into the wall too and to airtight paint the chase behind the ledger.

You'll need hemp too. Scrape the exposed threads with a hacksaw blade to get it rough enough to get the hemp to stick. And apply the plumbers mate as you go. It'll end up the same consistency as hair matted in butter. It's a fiddly job the first time you do it. There's a balance to getting the fixture tight enough but not too tight to crack the tank. Beware that if it goes wrong today ( Saturday) you might be without hot water for a few days.

Playing with the AI (as I do a Saturday evening. A glulam beam 100x320mm should be ok to cover the longest ridge span of 6.7m. A 14m long one for the longest ridge would be about £700-£800. And weight about 200kg. A similar RSJ would be £1000 and weight 3 times as much and have awful thermal bridging and onsite workability charactistics in comparison. However it might be able to be bolted together easier. 225x47mm timber should be fine for the rafters. or you can play with different rafter and service cavities sizes etc . This is a low cost high performance option that i like. You could do a plain I joist with a 22mm uninsulated service cavity too, More material cost but cheaper labour. Or

Excellent plan for your sparky but I'd worry about the cantilever effect of having the ledger off the wall. Some calcs might be prudent I think. You could always pre chase the routes for cables behind the ledger and drill an angled hole through the ledger to take the cables. The area just behind the ledger should be fine. You could always carefully not bother and just slop some airtight paint above and below it afterwards.

Your roof will obviously be supported by a wall plate on the external walls and internally the valley rafters and ridges. ( I like gluelam beams, please use gluelams cause dey so pretty 😍. Hang all the normal rafters from these . Effectively you need a path to transfer the load vertically The external walls are easy peazy. The ridges and valleys (red) you just need to able to draw vertical lines to get the load down. I've made blue dots where I think this could happen. You may need to add a lintel over an internal door but it's not rocket science. DISCLAIMER. I'm not a structural engineer any roof collapsing and tumbling on your bed at 3am instantly pulverising you and your beloved is absolutely someone else's fault .

I'm semi convinced that a unit just dumping air into a hall or large room and extracting from somewhere else would work so long as you opened internal doors occasionally. Air mixes pretty well. For airborne noise air pathways are key. Do you have any stud walls routing up to the floor void? Then add mass. Doesn't matter where it goes really, above, below, between, all gravy. Sand above the plasterboard would do the same thing as expensive mass loaded vinyl. Don't loose hope. A good company will turn up. I'm a big fan of quality uPVC. If it was twice the price more people would use it . 3G is good but quality sealing and latches are far more important. Great thread and well done on the work. Keep us posted.

That very much looks like a male thread protruding from the tank. This means that the brass fittings ( I think it's a T&P valve) is female so should be pretty straightforward to clean threads . However .......from the Brochure of your particular brand of tank it appears to come with that brass fittings already in place. This could unfortunately serve as something to manhandle and bash during transit and installation so there is a lightly hood that it will have cracked the tanks. Can you determine from the above joint where the leak is coming from? Is it following the line of the orange or pink arrow?

Have a look at this video. A mandatory annual check I think in the UK. It should explain the T&P valves in there somewhere. Most tanks have male threads as part of the cylinder. These project through a layer of polyurethane foam (insulant) and a lightweight metal skin ( only there to protect the insulation) . Insulation and outer skin will have nothing to do with your leak. If you screw off the offending fitting then you may be able to clean it and reassemble with appropriate sealing. Yes you will need to drain the tank down to do this. If you're not confident it might be worth summoning a plumber as the fitting wouldn't be too hard to overtighten and crack the tank. Likewise the G3 requirements of an UVC are technically pros only in the UK as far as I know.

You need to establish what's leaking first of all. If it's beside the threads of the fitting it's pretty straightforward. Remove the fitting , clean all h Threads with a wire brush and use some hemp and plumbers compound to re attach. If it's the tank leaking you probably need to replace it unless you're good at brazing. Have you checked the pressure and temp relief valves are working ok recently? This could be a symptom of an over pressurising tank.

That's the bottom of the hinges on our door. A hex head goes in and adjusts the door on a cam so you can plumb it up

There's a chance the door is warped. Run a long straight edge across the diagonals and check the clearance underneath is consistent. Of it's just hanging wonky pop the top off the hinges and use an Allen key to "cam" them into the correct position.

Anything less than 170mm joists will require the floor to be built out of a mix of Unobtainum and Exoticainium and constructed by a team of F1 engineers or nano robots. Can you provide an accurate Sectional drawing of the building and I'll have a go at those stairs. You seem to be making loads of compromises based on where you want the bed and window to go. A headboard backing into a 1000mm knee wall is fine unless you like jumping on the pillows like a loon. You'd be surprised how little time people actually spend admiring the view from lying in bed. More lightly from a nice desk or chair or even the bog.

Am I correct in thinking this is "Up" for both stairways? It'd be much easier to package if you stacked them rising the same direction.

That's closer to art deco in my view. I'm not a fan of zinc roofs, expensive and the oil canning you get in real life makes them look shoddy in my opinion.

Cool a design brief. Maybe a pro like @ETC will be along shortly. I googled Arts and crafts and have spent a total of 10 minutes studying it. Are you sure this is the style you are after? The standout features for me are: They look like they're made from a child's box of wooden building blocks. Triangles, rectangles and semicircles all prominent. Materially they're true to the crafts movement, Zinc roofing, metal railings and huge prominent glass walls are a nono. This follows that clay tiles or thatch for the roof. Stone, brick or render for the walls or even mock tudor style and stout heavily timbered windows. Features like steeply sloped roofs rising from low all the ways to the apex are common as well as, round towers, elaborate chimneys and prominent off central gables. Symmetry isn't that usual. Wilder cottage style gardens are normal, often bordering right up to the house. Here are some modern examples that i like. Of course these awkward shapes would be an expensive nightmare to build to high levels of water protection, insulation and airtightness but that is a difference argument altogether.

There is two real reasons that all the neighbours objected. 1. It's higher and appears more massive than their houses. 2. It's an ugly Frankenstein. with bad proportions and an ungodly mess of materials. You are the guy turning up to the classic car meeting in a Monster truck covered in LEDs and blaring speakers. You need to read the room before you apply again and try to fit in rather than bending the world to fit your will. You could fight it legally but I'm guessing those houses are full of bored spouses who would love a cause to rally behind and have the lawyers and cash to delay you for 10 years. For the millionth time demolish and build fresh. This is a multi million £ house. Incorporate a basement and drop the ridge height to about 8.5m to match the house to the left of yours. Give you architect some more breathing space and see what they come up with.

Can you provide a ground floor plan too, if you're routing soil pipes internally you can route support posts internally. Likewise around the stairs opening, I'm sure space for a post could be found here. Do you have any sectional drawings? I get that your head room is tight but is it "that" tight? 200mm spaced joists screams wrong solution to me. I'll 'd be inclined to stay from the party wall if it's only single skin. You might do more harm than good.

With neighbours like that who needs enemies.

The more I consider this the more I wonder why we don't use bolt together steel trusses for loft conversions. Say something like 50x50x5mm angle iron, precut and all holes drilled. Carry them up the stairs and bolt them together in situ. Cost might be £300 per truss but say 15 of them £4500 could be absorbed in the cost of the conversion. Relatively light weight and (guessing here) should easily be able to span the 10m in OP's house. You'd need to take an airtightness layer on the outside and Insulation on the deck like a warm roof but there's no rocket science involved. Something like this.

A question I had was do you have an ensuite or anything that requires pipes in the loft conversion? Do you have a room layout for downstairs post renovation? It might be easy to add a post design dependant ?

Oh, another option that dawned on me earlier would be to have deeper beam like an RSJ or Glulam as an intermediate support protruding to make a bump of the ceiling of the room below. Not ideal but it may allow for enough strength to complete a tricky job.

Oh by the way I'm most certainly not a Structural engineer so please only use my thoughts as suggestions! If I was going to build this in post apocalyptic world where all structural engineers had been vaporised ( sorry Gus ) and was to resort to my "jump on it and guess if it's strong enough" method I think I'd be tempted to run some vertical supports all the way down to the footings to avoid too much extra weight on the existing walls. I don't know if this is an easy option with the design of the rooms downstairs?

Ok here's a proposal. Install a Filch beam of 180x30 steel and 45x170mm timbers midway on the short wall, I assume the intermediate wall is strong enough to hold it. Bolt 45mmx170mm ledgers to the perimeter walls and use joist hangers to hold them. Add an airtight membrane behind them and you'll have a continuous airtight barrier from the existing first floor Floor with 22mm Caberdeck or similar Add wall plates on top of the caberdeck and a 120 x240mm ridge beam. This will allow you to drop 220mm cut timber joists conventionally on as a roof. That's my detail for the eaves And here's how I'd run a membrane to ensure excellent airtightness. This is the roof buildup i'd use. Floor thickness ~200mm. Roof U Value = compliant No crane needed. Excellent air tightness, noise protection, fire performance, heat protection. rodent protection. All off the shelf materials apart from filch beam.

As with everything the devil is in the detail. Using closed cell foam to encase timber is the most common cause of decay etc. Unfortunately with the exception of the 'hub the entire industry is full of morons who can't see nuance or indeed understand any science. They both had BBA certs in the past, i don't know if they've expired or just were withdrawn for another reason. In a masonry wall it's quite safe, especially alongside PIR as it'll only be bonded to one face of blockwork avoiding any shrinkage cracking that you get with full fill foam in wide cavities.