Tyke2

I worked on a scheme of townhouses in a terrace. The engineer set out using his laser total station, all computerised and accurate to within 3mm. I called on site and could see that the setting out "pegs" were zig zagging down the line. The pile layout was in a straight line. So using a tape measure , 10 mins later all were reset correctly using the foundation drawing and a tape measure. remember if it looks wrong, it probably is wrong.

Hi Any joist system should be properly designed and installed in line with the manufacturers recommendations. If it is properly specified then 600mm should be fine. I have a James Jones silent floor timber system installed in my barn. in one area I have 2 large wardrobes, back to back, both crammed to bursting and a king sized bed. in 18 years there is still no floor deflection. its a 6m span at 450mm centres. I let the supplier design and specify the layout the risk is with them. If you want to ignore the experts and design your own layout , the risk is with you. moving them closer will give you more mass. But increasing the depth of the beam should give you less deflection. Ask the manufacturer for guidance.

I looked at a pickup, but for insurance these and vans are classed as Light Goods Vehicles and cost a lot more. I second the view, buy a trailer, or an older estate car. Focus, Passat or Skoda are all good and cheap. I had a 10 year old escort diesel, it was a real workhorse. Having an old banger is good for when you go to haggle for materials or services, they think you are poor and take pity!

Most people turn them up to 30 degrees in a cold room as they think it will warm up quicker. In Yorkshire we would say "you cant educate pork"!

I sit in the house in T-shirt , wife n daughter have onesie and hot water bottle.

My wife puts her hand on a radiator and if it doesn't blister her hand it means that the house is cold and the heating isn't working, so she winds the stat up. Also if I go in the shower after her or my daughter and don't check the temp control, its like being blasted by scalding needles.

Corners are really difficult and cost lots. Ask any bricklayer!!

This would be good if you could. I sold a property lately and there were a couple of non issues thrown up be the searches. both covered off by indemnity policy. I suppose its how they could quantify the risk to arrive at a premium.

Hi I have a pretty conventional system in my current house. I have a similar issue. I'm not very heating savvy yet so excuse tha lack of correct terminology. When the DHW is on but heating is off the rads upstairs get warm . Obviously the closer to the head of the run the warmer it is. With mine I assume its the thermal store that heats and bleeds up to the rads, as there is no cut off valve stopping this. In the winter it is great, I leave the DHW on and the upstarirs rads just tick over and are luke warm, so it keeps off the chill. In summer I turn off all the upstairs rads and it seems to solve it. I spoke to a heating engineer and he said its common with my boiler to have a valve fitted on the hot outlet but I didn't bother.

One "con" is that they erect the scaffold and leave you with a schedule of the installed bits. Then when they pick it all up at the end, they tally up and charge you for any losses. Obviously you haven't gone around and counted every pole, clip, putlog etc. A friend got mugged for this, and the contractor was one he also employed for his work and they still ripped him off. They never worked for the company again though.

I bought some second hand scaffold. Asked round the local pub and found a local who worked for a scaffold company. He erected it it stayed in place for about 10 months. I dismantled it and sold it later. All in all i made £280 on the whole deal. But obviously all the risk sat with me.

Is it not on the next map square?

Ill keep a keen eye on the progress, best of luck. I havent heard of "mybuilder" ill check it out. I have had a good response for an electricial through "ratedpeople" though.

Hi All I'm not sure if this is common knowledge or has been posted before. The National Library of Scotland has available for online viewing historic maps covering all of Britain. Just type in your place name or postcode etc and it will zoom into the area and show you the available old OS plans for the area. These are also available for sale in print. If you have a look be prepared to lose a couple of hours looking at every place you have ever lived as it is quite compelling. https://maps.nls.uk/geo/find/#zoom=5&lat=56.0000&lon=-4.0000&layers=102&b=1&point=0,0

Hi Im afraid you are correct. The site took 11 years to get planning as it is in the grounds of a stately home and in a conservation area. There has been an extensive desk top study, which does include all the historic maps , hence the gas works, There has been a mining report provided by the coal authority which highlights the possibility of mine workings. At a different local manor house locally the coal authority sunk shafts as close as 10m to the front of the building so it is possible. I'm not inexperienced at such matters, so my first approach is to get my engineer to revisit the desk study to do a risk assessment and provide evidence that using a suitable gas barrier would be a more sensible solution. However the contamination testing is a necessity as Im sure there could be elevated hyrocarbons that I will need to sort, and at present I can negotiate this off of the land price.

Sorry missed this. I think it will be quite easy drilling so hopefully be a lot quicker.

I do have a separate quote from a "friend" a drilling rig for a day is £1000, which can do up to six boreholes in the day. So all in I would think £3000 ish with the contam testing lab tests which are £140 each.

The foundation solution is not a problem, its convincing the planners that I don't need to do the survey if I do such a solution to mitigate any possible ground gas from possible shallow mine workings at 40 m that are highlighted by the coal searches. I would still need to do the contam testing though to discount any residual contamination from the old gasworks that was in the next field 100 years ago.

I have to undertake a borehole 40m depth to determine if there are shallow mine workings, plus install water sampling and gas monitoring points. SPT and percolationtest. Contamination sampling. First quote - £14,000 yes fourteen thousand plus vat. A bit too silly.

Hi I too had a well. But in the rear garden. It has beautiful sandstone lining and I would have loved to have done as you are looking to. It was very handy for using to make cement for the house build too. I have kept in in place unde my garage with a manhole cover on it sadly. I'm sure I have seen it before but cant remember where. As you are doing a conversion building control should give you some leeway. But the issue will be not just the incoming pipes, but also the water table I think. I would keep it wet. perhaps have the glass cover removable for maintenance. Install a submersible pump with a float switch to keep the water at a safe level. tap the pump outlet to the external manhole, or use the pump to irrigate the garden?

hi I used an internal skin of thermalite blocks with a 50mm cavity. This was a few years back and was ok from a buildingregs point of view. The house is nice and warm as it has a reasonably high thermal mass and is 100% free of any damp too. This method is not the best from a space point of view though. But it does give you a solid interior shell to seat your floor joists on. if you need space you could look at lining the internal walls with a breathable waterproof membrane, fixing insulation to this and batteing out for fixing insulated plasternoard to. You would need to seat your joists on joist hangars fixed to a structural ring beam fixed to teh internal wall. Or I believe thatthere are structural timber/steel lining products avaialble - of which I have not seen in use. Picture is what I started with.

It may be too late to comment on this? Mine looked similar when I started work. I lowered the internal floor. The building didn't have foundations and was built on a slope, so the excavation exposed the underside of the external walls on about 1/3rd of the building. So I had to underpin this area. Underpinning sounds scary, but in reality its just digging holes and filling with concrete - but carefully! With such a build you will find it is very labour intensive. you end up knocking lots of areas out to rebuild. Costs can escalate easily as until you get the structure sorted and roof/windows complete, it is almost impossible to estimate what is actually needed. you seem to do 3 weeks taking bits down to every 1 week building back up, so it can be demoralising too. It is pretty much impossible to get a fixed price for any of the work to the structure. I project managed mine and was the designer, labourer ,estimator, buyer, Qs. I brought in skilled groundworker, masons, bricklayers, carpenter, plumber, electrician. It would have been easier to demolish and rebuild, but maybe not much cheaper. Good Luck

Its not quite black and white unfortunately. The HSE guidance is:- The practical and proportionate application of health and safety law to landlords of domestic rental properties is that whilst there is a duty to assess the risk from exposure to Legionella to ensure the safety of their tenants, this does not require an in-depth, detailed assessment. The risks from hot and cold water systems in most residential settings are generally considered to be low owing to regular water usage and turnover. A typical ‘low risk’ example may be found in a small building (eg housing unit) with small domestic-type water systems, where daily water usage is inevitable and sufficient to turn over the entire system; where cold water is directly from a wholesome mains supply (no stored water tanks); where hot water is fed from instantaneous heaters or low volume water heaters (supplying outlets at 50 °C); and where the only outlets are toilets and wash hand basins. Interestingly it does refer to a 50 Celsius minimum at outlets. I don't do anything for my rental properties.

You are correct. The difficulty in dealing with healthcare property is that the regulations are very generic to cover worst case scenario. In many cases it is big overkill. As in reality there is actually no real need to store the cold water on a typical high street GP building.

I probably agree. Perhaps it just illustrates that the law in connection to legionella is very belt and braces. In my day job in NHS premises if I had a tap discharging water at 40 to 48 degrees there would be a proper panic on.