Crofter

Hi Kerry, I seem to have missed this thread. I'm on Skye too- whereabouts are you building? Happy to share advice and have a general rant at the unreasonableness of delivery costs

Obviously planning would be required for all of these things, and a BW for the wastewater treatment. What I'm hoping to clarify is the standard that the facilities block needs to be built to. As many of us know, it can be pretty hard to upgrade an old building to meet modern regs if you are converting it into a house. But does a toilet/shower block need to meet the same standards as a house?

Asking for a friend, who is considering getting into the glamping business. This would involve a number of pods and/or yurts, which would obviously be building regs exempt (as portable buildings), as well as a facilities block for toilets, showers, and perhaps laundry and basic cooking area. if the facilities block was likewise a portable building, then it's happy days. However my friend is keen to convert an existing stone byre for this. I know that as soon as you put sleeping accommodation into a building, or it exceeds 30m2, then you are into regs territory- but what about toilet, shower, laundry, kitchen?

Yes, why would you use copper pipe and plastic fittings? I've actually gone for the opposite- brass compression fittings onto Hep20 pipe. Seemed like the best mix of avoiding joins and having small enough fittings to fit into my 25mm service void. Although I think I'm going to manage to arrange it so that all of the fittings are accessible anyway, with nothing boxed away behind the PB.

Dunlop Purafort steel toed wellies, in yellow, as endorsed by every fisherman in the world. Wouldn't be seen in anything else!

There are 24v and 12v units out there, so it would be either directly wired in, or powered using a DC-DC converter.

Hi and welcome to the forum! Hard to answer your query without understanding what your priorities/requirements are... cost, longevity, ease of cleaning, aesthetics, sound transmission, comfort underfoot? If the look you are after is wood, then there's not much better than good quality oak, as I'm sure you already know. But it's not necessarily that durable- it can scratch easily enough if you move a piece of furniture, or get a bit of grit caught under a door. It may not be compatible with your heating system, if underfloor. It may be too noisy for the rooms downstairs. And if it's good quality, then it won't be cheap- probably £40/m2 or more. You can find oak at half that price but it will have a 2mm wear layer which won't stand up to sanding out damage. Another option would be bamboo- similar appearance, can be much cheaper (starts at about £22/m2) and far better durability. I've opted for this, although have yet to lay it, and @JSHarris has done his whole house in it. Compared side by side, oak does look better IMHO- but you can't have your cake and eat it. If noise transmission is an issue, you'll need to consider a good quality underlay, or abandon hard flooring altogether and go for carpet.

The primary purpose would be to address condensation whilst not losing too much heat. My thinking is that a small MVHR unit acting as the primary means of ventilation would shift a decent amount of air, but without lowering the cabin temperature right down to the same as outside. Am I right in thinking that by maintaining a higher cabin temperature, an MVHR system would shift more water vapour than a normal extractor fan? I do have a rudimentary heating system, which is diesel fuelled with its own flue. This makes a modest difference to the cabin humidity by raising the temperature, but is not enough to overcome the condensation produced by cooking or breathing, unless the ambient temperature is already quite mild. Overheating is, as you say, not likely to be an issue where I am! I am toying with wiring the MVHR up in two ways- manual boost for when the boat is occupied, and on/off via a VSR otherwise, so that is acts as a dump load for the solar panel. That might be more hassle that it's worth actually because in winter I will have barely any excess power, and that is when I would need it the most. And it might be that for an unoccupied boat, where cabin temperature is irrelevant, it's best just to rely on the dorades and the forehatch which can be left slightly ajar. Shore power would be a massive game changer, but a marina berth would involve moving the boat either hundreds of miles or a ferry ride away, and would put up my annual costs by about five-fold

And you can just tile straight onto that liquid membrane? (once it's dried... I'm not a complete idiot you know...)

So some more thoughts on this- the daft boat-mounted MVHR idea, that is. How much free space might the outside part of a unit require? I'm struggling to think of somewhere to mount it that is well enough protected, and wondering about putting it in a cockpit locker. This would place the inside component right at the galley which is good. I obviously can't have it venting in and out of a cockpit locker- but I could build an enclosure around it, and have a grille. Not sure if these units need to see a nice free flow of air though, and that this might be too restrictive?

You could extend the LV section of cable and mount the transformer remotely if that helps?

Or what about the systems used to fix wet-wall panels? Metal ones obviously, not the icky plastic stuff.

When my Dad (a civil engineer) was building a house, the BCO told him to stop phoning up asking for inspections because everything he had done was perfect. Which is a great story until you learn that all this perfection slowed the build down so much that it was never actually completed On my last house, I was really surprised that the joiner working with me insisted that we box away everything structural without any inspections first- we were doing a loft conversion and making some alterations to the joists. But sure enough on my one and only inspection, the BCO just wandered about with a tape measure and checked things like the handrail height and the MOE window. His biggest concern was whether we'd deviated from the plans, and when I told him that we hadn't, he was happy as Larry.

My heart bleeds I've just had to pay £50 P&P for a £200 shower tray, and that only got it as far as Inverness; add another £65 van hire on top to get it to me. I swear I spend more time sorting out postage/haulage than actually building stuff!

My sparky was pretty good at borrowing my multitool, except for one lightswitch where he just grabbed a padsaw. And this was in a wall that was already plastered. Not massive chunks coming off, but certainly enough that I'll need to make to good with filler. Totally avoidable. This is why I'm doing 99% of the build myself...

I did all my PB without a collated driver. I had the loan of a 110v Makita one but it was unreliable, kept marking the PB or just jamming, and the cord was too short so I was forever lugging around a huge transformer. Really wasn't too slow to do it all the hard way, using the drill rather than impact driver, so that I could set the torque. For cutting box-outs, the oscillating multi-tool was weapon of choice- although I've used plastic boxes fitted after the PB.

Sounds like a neighbour worth having!

My duct is 63mm rigicoil or whatever it's called- in black. The spec did say 32mm but I figured that I would hopefully get away with it, since it's what I had on site. I'll find out tomorrow...

Thanks all. In case you're wondering why I'm being so pedantic about this, I'm now rather wary after my experiences with Scottish Water, who had me jumping through hoops trying to meet their unpublished spec and threatening to charge me for aborted site visits if everything wasn't quite right. This included buying a check valve that one manager insisted I had to have, which the guys never actually installed (anybody want it?) and telling me that my boundary box was not the correct type, despite them failing to issue me any specs beyond the words 'boundary box'. Just because you're paranoid, don't mean they're not after you...

15mm? It really depends on the stud spacing behind. As to fixings, I suppose something like a countersunk allen head in stainless could look rather snazzy- in the right house. You might need to use cup washers as well.

Having sorted through my pile of offcuts, I don't actually have a big enough piece of chipboard after all... I could put two smaller bits side by side? Or use 11mm osb? Or 9mm ply?? (Sometimes it sucks leaving things till the last minute when you are on site on your own and have no car- can't just nip into the BM for silly little things like this!)

I considered this but in the end did the easy/boring thing of getting everything plastered. One of my concerns was that the slightly textured surface could trap dirt and be impossible to clean properly. Maybe that depends on how smooth the finish is on the ply, and what it's sealed with. My other concern was how to fix it- I guessed that glue would be the answer but you'd better not want back in behind it in a hurry.

Ah that makes sense, yes. Well it's going on a PB wall which is itself spaced off the frame since there is a service void.

Thanks I can't see why 22mm would be a problem in any way? And I've come across references to having the board spaced off the wall, not sure what that's about and I didn't see anything the bumph that SSE sent me.

Bumpety bump... I did find the email from SSE and it just says I have to supply the meter board, they gave dimensions, but not what it should be made of. Any suggestions ( @ProDave ?) , before I screw a piece of 22mm chipboard to the wall? They're coming tomorrow so need to do something...