Crofter

Is there no international recognition of building standards and certifications at all?

And is that why your sheathing went on the inside of the frame?

The cladding does indeed go on after the windows are in, and yes that will cover the gap around the perimeter. I just wanted something else as a seal though. It's a pretty exposed site here. I'll look up compriband, thanks Jamie.

My windows are now all installed and low expansion foam used around the perimeters. Following instructions that I was given by the supplier, I have not filled the whole of the depth of the window frame but have left a small gap as viewed from the outside. I now need to create a weather seal but at the same time not create a 'vapour sandwich'. If I just use conventional sealant from a gun, this will almost certainly fill the whole remaining gap and there will be no drain space left. On a very narrow gap I might get a bead of sealant to adhere to the window and ajoining wall, but on the wider gaps this isn't going to happen, So I am wondering whether I could use some form of tape instead? I see tape being sold as a self adhesive flashing and this appears to be appropriate, according to the blurb. The front of the window frames is in line with the front edge of the house frame, so the tape would simply bridge the gap between them, leaving a drain cavity behind (and a suitable drain point located somewhere along the bottom edge of the window). The tape would then be hidden behind the cladding and window reveals, which would provide an additional layer of weather protection. Attached is a cross section as viewed from above, attempting to show what I'm talking about...

Hi and welcome to the new forum! I realise this is not the sort of feedback you were asking for, but I have to say I would be very reluctant to build a big house in the knowledge that I would be trying to sell it again in five years time. By the time it is built, all the little details finished off, and all the snags worked out, how long are you going to have left to enjoy it? Also, in order to sell, I would have thought that smaller would be better. It's not especially easy to sell large/expensive houses in the current climate.Maybe being set up as a B&B would work well, especially in the Ft Bill area. Anyway I'll have a wee look at your plans and try to offer some more useful feedback

Having had time to ruminate over this some more, I think I'm down to two options: 1- just have a conventional 2.4m ceiling. It looks absolutely fine, it's the easiest to do, and it could enhance the 'wow factor' of the room that does have a vaulted ceiling. 2- follow @ProDave's suggestion and have a false ceiling to create a symmetrical vaulted ceiling, probably in conjunction with roof beams at 2.4m height. This entails a bit more work and some more penetrations through the airtightness barrier (where the false ceiling meets the rafters).

Another vote for Sketchup. It's time well spent to look up a few basic tutorials as well. I keep finding new ways of doing things easier and faster than before. The one starter tip I would give is to never free draw. Always work on one of the three colour coded axes and always type in the line length that you want. The problems in Sketchup happen when two points (e.g. end of a line, corner of a shape etc) are in virtually, but not quite, the same place. I found it quite addictive once I got going. We had a wee chat about sketchup here

There's not much wiggle room on the 'standard' ceiling height- the (already built) roof structure means that anything over 2.4m would start needing coombs.

Thanks for all the thoughts on this. I've got my insulation boards on site already so I think I will use them plus some battens to help mock up some different options. Leaning towards standard height ceilings in the hallway and shower room, although unless I also go standard height in the bedroom, these lower ceilings will need to false as there will be no structural beams at that height. Shouldn't be too big a job though.

That's certainly a permutation that I hadn't considered! I think a high ceiling in the bathroom is a bit of a waste and means extra tiles or wetwall, funny angles to complicate finishing, etc. Glad it's not just me who thinks a lopsided vaulted ceiling would look weird.

I'm not too bothered about having a usable space- nobody is going to be living in this house permanently, no water tank to hide away anywhere, and if needs must there is storage underneath the house, which sits on piers. A sleeping platform is perhaps one exception, but that can be fitted into the space above the built in wardrobe that is going in the partition between lounge and bedroom (not marked on plan, but basically it will run behind where the sofa sits). Not wedded to the idea of a platform and it would almost certainly break the 10ft ceiling height rule. My main aesthetic concern is that any ceiling higher than 2.4m will involve some degree of coomb along one edge. And I think this could look a bit weird.

No ventilation gap required if you have breather felt on top of the sarking. There is confusion in this area because I believe if you don't have sarking, you need to leave room for the felt to sag.

I should really have made a decision on this ages ago, but have been kicking the can down the road, so to speak. Also, it's a bit of a subjective question of aesthetics, without a right or wrong answer. My wee house has a warm roof built using a hefty ridge beam, so not much extra support is required, making a totally open and vaulted roof an option from a structural POV. There will be a central partition wall which will tie the walls together and help support the ridge beam as well. Even as it currently stands, it has been up for months now and stood through some gales without so much as a creak, so I'm happy that it doesn't need any extra beams in place. One half of the house is a sinlge open plan room and that will have a vaulted ceiling (there are actually a couple of beams at 10ft above FFL as well, primarily to give me somewhere to put the lights). Oh and one minor complication is that technically I ought to have the ceiling at no more than 10ft height, so these beams also double as a support at that height in case anybody at a later date enforces that particular point. The other half of the house is trickier to make a decision on. It will be split between three spaces- an entrance hallway, the bedroom, and the shower room. My feeling is that, especially for the two smaller spaces, a standard height ceiling would look best and anything else would just look wrong. A room that is taller than it is wide seems like a strange concept. Really not sure about the bedroom, though, which is just about big enough to work with a raised or vaulted ceiling, but this would be assymetrical as the room only spans a little over half the width of the building. Hope I've described this adequately- floor plan and section attached for clarity. Just curious about what ceiling height you guys think would look/feel 'right'...

Those coveralls look the business, thanks. I've been using an old waterproof with elasticated cuffs but it gets pretty sweaty inside. I couldn't find any suitable gloves on Screwfix/Toolstation- long sleeves to allow enough overlap, but not too heavy. Have resorted to PVC gauntlets just so I can get started but they'll be unpleasant on a hot day. I've been using spray on contact adhesive to fix the glasswool into place, which I thought was working really well (apart from the fumes) but I went away for a few days and it all fell out!! So I think I'll need to have the boards ready to go straight after the wool. Waiting on the insulation washers and long screws arriving for that.

I got an old but towable caravan for £90 off a Facebook local small ads group. Was in pretty sound condition, in fact the seller had been using it as extra accomodation on AirBnB at £40 a night! It seemed a real shame to do a Clarkson to it but as I actually wanted a long, light trailer for carrying lengths of timber, I chopped off the top and converted it into a flatbed. I've now done two return trips to inverness with it, plus local trips, and it is going just fine. Disposing of the top half was a bit awkward- I bashed out the front and back walls, and then the whole thing flopped over sideways. The four main panels all stacked up on the chassis, and the roof kind of fell to bits. I kept the aluminium from the roof 'just in case'. Took the rest to the local tip and manhandled it into a skip. Would have been fairly easy with a helper.

Thanks Dave, I don't know why I hadn't thought of having a normal trap then a 90deg bend to take it through the floor. This would actually give me much more flexibility in positioning everything. Temp- that's useful to know, thanks. I can't test installation as I have to finish the floor ASAP and the shower fittings etc are a long way off just now.

I'm trying to finish off my flooring and need to work out what the waste runs are doing. The floor is suspended, on 300mm deep JJI joists. There is limited space underneath these- maybe 200mm at the most, in the part of the house where the watse runs are. My plan is to have the main runs underneath the house, rather than within the joists- so I am looking at having a drop of about 350mm from the shower tray to the start of the horizontal run. In which case, where should I put the trap? Just wondering what might be the easiest or neatest way of doing this. It must be the same setup as @ProDave ?

You can get away with all sorts with some luck- doesn't make it a good idea! Our house has, for the past 40 years, been getting on just fine with a drain run that has multiple bends with absolutely no access for rodding. But one day it will get blocked and we will be breaking the drains open. Maybe a 'good enough' solution would be to use a tighter bend at the base of the stack, and install a rodding eye in the horizontal run

You really need it to be a rest bend as the entire weight of the SVP is sitting on it- an ordinary bend has no 'foot' to take the load. Also, the wider sweep of the rest bend makes rodding possible. If you need to steal some height somewhere, investigate different manufacturers and perhaps solvent weld rather than push-fit fitting.

Thanks for the update. Some of the preliminary steps you have already gone through can seem very daunting. I found Scottish Water to be far less user friendly than SSE, so I hope you have a better experience with them than I had!

How are the midges down there at the moment? Can't leave the house today on Skye!!

Yes the Earthwool is nice stuff, that's what went on under the floor. But I needed to keep the cost down for the bigger area of the walls and roof and went with the 'wallclad' that secondsandco had on offer. It's not nice stuff to work with. Between that and the midges my poor epidermis doesn't stand a chance.

I find you get much further by phoning than you do with online prices. Lump everything together to make it as big an order as possible, and phone around asking for the lowest price. If you phone for a price check you might get quoted a lower price than if you say you are actually buying. Of course delivery can be a big issue with bulky things like insulation. No connection other than being a customer, but I got most of my insulation from secondsandco, who deal with surplus, rejected, or otherwise discounted insulation. I haven't seen much in the way of EPS on there though.

I assumed they would be contracting it out to a local company at that price, but no it was their own lorry. Took a load to Ullapool, stopped in with me on the way back, and drove all the way back to Wales empty. Crazy, really! They get the boards for free though as it saves Kingspan the landfill cost. The driver told me that the first couple of miles of board in each run are generally discarded as they have a high proportion of faults.

Ah that's the ticket, thanks! Any tips on keeping the itching at bay??