MikeSharp01

That is an option but the power floating did remove the fat in places so we will have to go down a good way. I am not sure how far you can go down with diamond polishing. I think my plan at the moment is to scabble it down to an even surface, IE remove the powet float finish, and then see where we are. Jackie is not keen on the terrazzo look and I think that is where we would need to go with it.

We poured our slab on Thursday but despite our best efforts we had a couple of problems and as a result our plans have changed. The polish we achieved was not good enough across the whole house and we don't want / can't have level changes between spaces, we knew the risks, so we now need a screed that can look like a polished floor and be less than 35mm thick if a topping is required or 50mm if it's a finished surface. Any ideas on thin (ish) screeds / polished concrete like screeds? I guess I will have to scabble the surface to ensure any render takes which is a pain but at least we are out of the ground.

Thanks all. @PeterW I can make a continuous loop so I may do that and then pressurise it a bit. Thanks @TerryE we have the UFH pipes tied to the lower mesh and pressure testing yesterday @ 7 bar went OK once we found that the pressure tester had a slight leak, one, one more loop to test today - concrete pour is tomorrow so no great exposure for the pipes.

All sounds great but a couple of things I am still not clear about. Presumably I do not need to keep rhe pipes under pressure during the pour they are only 70mm down on the slab. Secondly I will be pressurising each loop separately as we cannot leave the tails sticking out during the pour. I can leave the water in but not pressurused.

Seems to be a lot out there on this but thought I thought I would ask here and see if I can approach a definitive answer. 5 bar / 6 bar and for how long. I will test our UFH pipe work tomorrow and so need a test pressure and duration. Don't say 5 bar for ever! Our pipework says it's good for 10 bar but I doubt a circulating pump will manage much more that a couple of bar worst case. I guess the test is to look for leaks and stretch / expand l the pipe.

Looks very interesting - why don't you ask then for a proposal against a draft spec. Are you going for a full passive level build?

I have asked the BCO what thy want me to do. Here is a better sketch: of what I am doing - just like the Visqueen Video

Yes - so I understand, the weight of the concrete will crush the overlap, in my case further pressing down on the double sided tape in between the sheets as well. Hope the BCO see's it your way.

Yes I have that, well the visqueen equivalent, between the two sheets all along the joins and the tape that is failing just along the flapping edge as it were. Here is a quick sketch.

Just wandered out onto site and spotted a problem with the DPM seams. They each have two tapes making the seal one double sided a bit back from the edge and the other single sided along the edge. The single sided is showing signs of lifting (see pic) in patches. Both tapes were rolled / rollered on as per the Visqueen video (all tapes are Visqueen). I wonder how important the single sided run is, is it just protecting the double sided inner row? Do I need to take it up and do it again?

Sounds like a special floor so unless you realy understand the dynamic and static loads the floor, and any structures stood on it or close to the beams, will impose the £200 sounds like your best option - done and dusted!

Looks great @JSHarris they are great machines aren't they.

That paper was 18 months ago - do you see any evidence of it going further - rather it is going back to green as a result of digital mould, or any other evidence of this being taken forward energetically by our political class. Nope - thought not.

Hi Cazza - Welcome to THE forum fellow Kent type. We live in West Kent, know Sevenoaks planning very well and are building in Whitstable so know Canterbury planning quite well now as well. Look forward to hearing more about it and helping if I can. Costs can be anything you like realy but you probably need 250k for 130m2 as a starting point doing the finishing work yourself, more if turnkey or less if doing much of the work ++ if you have exoensive taste in fittings. Don't tell the architect that budget go in much lower to constrain their fee expectations. The big unknowns are getting out of the ground and if the old house had any asbestos.

Probably true but the water company have a statutary duty to provide you with a stop cock at which point their responsibility stops. This may be adjacent to the meter or some way away. Our neighbours had this same problem and they called the water company and just asked them to turn off the water supply. The water company spent several days trying to find the stop cock and could not find one anywhere in the line from the main so they had to provide one so that our neighbour could cut their supply to work on it without cutting the rest of us off.

I notice no reinforcement along the ring beam in your section drawing. I am no structural engineer but I would have thought this was a requirement probably both above and below the neutral axis. As you say without good reinforcement the concrete will need to be much greater volume. If it's an ISOQUIK design they must be carrying the structural risk if the thing fails.

You know it struck me, as it may have others, that had they mustered the sense to put the pieces in the other way around it would have looked better at least. Given this one is inevitably drawn to the conclusion that these work people were not the brightest.

Sorry didn't realise it was analysis tought it was fact - must be the heat. I suppose there is a chance that the 'system' we use is in reality just an output from another higher order system about which we know nothing but I thought we lived and breathed as a western capitalist democracy. Perhaps, now I reflect, Enver Hoxha had the right idea - try a few systems and see which works best, shame he didnt try capitaliam. Of course they did go that way after he died.

I think there may be an issue with this approach thinking as the structures might be similar but the cultures are miles apart. Dreadnaught said what the Toyota model (quality) was based upon. This is precisely what does not happen in the construction sector while it is writ large across the car sector. All of the communications across the whole car supply chain have the quality process built it and everybody signs up to it if you want to be part of it. I am convinced that house building could be more like car making if the mind set could be changed to accommodate it. That said the idea that we get the houses we demand seems about right.

Most do now, or variants of it. By definition the problem must stem from capitalism as it's the system we follow It's just that in the construction industry the core model is broken because of the sub contactor model which takes a capitalistic road at both ends and allows the quality to suffer in the middle. So the main contractor makes a profit by driving down the costs in their supply chain and the tier 1 and lower sub contactors drive down their cost - so as to max out profit, by skimping on everything from training through to quality of materials. As you get further from the main contractor your margins are further squeezed by risk factors arising from any one in the chain above you hitting cash flow problems.

They clearly cut the block supporting the lintel they could have cut a thinner one and then a row of blocks on top of the lintel to maintain the coursing. Why does building have to be such an imprecise / make work type business. Exactly my point you have to fix it rather than have it built right in the first place.

We got all the way through to stage 4 with our RIBA architects for around £14K. I get the feeling that they base their fee on your budget - seeking to charge a specific % of it. If you go to another one tell them the build budget is tiny and see what happens to the fee. I have been very happy with our architect - we love the design, although in places they have been a little scrappy with details, the overall experience was very positive.

Welcome to THE forum. Fascinating project challenges. On the concrete issue you can pump it quite a long way on ground based pipes which might help. What is the ariel view like is there possible access via other properties that surround you from a road they are on?

Could you not fit an isolating transformer based shaver socket in place of the existing socket. They are legal in bathrooms aren't they? If not just rely on Caveat Emptor, I guess the previous owners did.

Save yourself the angst - red lines.