Bitpipe

Second fix plumbing has been such an eye opener for me - all looks great now but so many bullets to dodge! I think painting before tiling was the only one I missed

I have a friend who completed an extension about 12 months ago. They have about 3 feet of a horizontal soil pipe in their living room, connecting the existing upstairs loo to the new soil pipe. They keep meaning to box it in but don't notice it anymore - I've suggested that they replace it with a clear plastic section as a conversation piece...

We have made a feature of quite a few boxed in soil pipes - faux fire place, alcoves etc. Personally I'd try and get a bit more space around the pipe if possible in the design.

We did a basement for just this reason. Architect was dead against it (due to ignorance) but we just went to a good structural engineer and stuck to a sensible shape (i.e. the footprint of the house above) so just under 100m2 internal floor area. Ground investigation was key to driving the structural design & waterproofing strategy. We went for an open box design to maximise flexibility and minimise costs so have a timber suspended ground floor instead of a solid slab. We built it to passive standards, adapting the design of the MBC passive slab (i.e. it sits on 300mm of EPS 200 and has 200mm EPS 70 wrapped around it) and it dovetails nicely with the MBC frame above. Used a local groundwork contractor who builds domestic and commercial sub ground structures and used warrantied SIKA waterproof concrete, perimeter land drain to soakaway and clean stone backfill - it went in about a year ago and has always been bone dry. We imported relatively inexpensive GRP lightwells from MEA in Germany and the basement is beautifully bright - just putting down the flooring now (Karndean) and have four large 20m2 rooms with 2.5m ceilings and a hallway - earmarked for home cinema, gym and general kids space. Plant room in there too for MVHR, boiler, UVC and other gubbins. It cost about £120k for all the groundworks and probably about £15k additional finishing costs, so about £1350 /m2. That's to increase the usable footprint of the house by about 50%. Best part was the planners did not bat an eyelid.

Our plumbers have burned through tens of diamond bits this week while drilling the porcelain tiles - even taking it slow and using water. They've switched to cheaper arrow bits and are making much better progress.

Cheers lads, good to know that this is par for the course! On the waste tile cutout, plumber has suggested putting a generous bead of sealant around the perimeter to prevent water splashes from ever getting in there - any other preventative measures (i.e. sealing the base of the bath to the tiles?)

We have UPVC in the basement, alu clad external / painted spruce internal above ground - externally it looks the same and as they are high level, the white interior is not that noticeable.

So far, all of our 2nd fix challenges have been plumbing related - no criticism of our plumber, mostly down to our choices and lack of experience. 1) we chose fancy Geberit flush plates and didn't realise we needed to fix a piece pre - tiling. Caught this half way through so have two with surface mount and two perfectly flush. 2) noggins for sinks - put these too high and missed that cabinets usually have fixings at 700mm from FFL for a 800mm sink level -ours are 850mm and that's just catching the bottom of the noggins 3) floor mounted baths. We got beautiful composite stone baths from Lusso Stone but did not make allowance for floor level traps. while they have 75mm clearance under the bath, at the waste its more like 35mm so a standard 1 1/2 inch waste sits too proud. Nick suggested HepVo traps - which have a very colourful trade name that only makes sense when you see one (plumber says that 'you'll never be alone with one) but that was still not appropriate and there are concerns on now well they work horizontally vs vertically (due to trapped hair etc). So we're using shallow bath traps and will have to cut the newly tiled floor - it will all be hidden by the bath but would rather have pre-empted this and put the traps in when the showers were fitted pre-tiling. Ah well, perfection next time Have to say, Megabad took back the unused flush plates with no issue and we can process the refund through Currency Fair to get a good rate. Given we bought them a few months ago, it;s probably a small profit

Yes, our engineer designed an 'open box' basement so there was a lot going on at the wall / floor interface. As such she was reluctant to have UFH pipes in the structural slab aside from a smaller area in the centre. We decided to forgo UFH in the basement anyway as it's well insulated and will have plant and other equipment generating heat so I'm not worried about it being cold. Also, UFH would have heated up the whole basement box, not sure how that would have worked. Lovely and cool at the moment, definitely the trades favourite place to work! We have decided to forgo tiles for Karndean as we were worried that it would be a bit cold underfoot.

We bought our Velux integras (and standard Velux windows) from MyRoofWindow.co.uk - they're based in Netherlands and were very good value - would need to see if that's still the case with the lower exchange rate. They price in pounds as standard and Euros as an option (you can save a few quid if you use your own exchange service). Very fast delivery. We went for the electric Inetgra option vs solar, should not be an issue getting power to them for a new build. We also got external electric blinds to minimise solar gain which work off the same controller. Finally we got the insulated fixing kit - even though the roofer disposed of the insulated flashing, but the collar is the most important piece.

Our squeak only materialised after the joiner had laid the 9mm and 12mm ply in preparation for the resin ground floor. It was glued and screwed at 400 centers but there was a distinct squeak near the patio door, so we pulled up a few boards to investigate (and managed to clip a UFH pipe in the process). Looked like a joist was moving 1-2mm against a steel - was too late to do anything there and then as the ceiling below had been plastered. Laying the ply had probably highlighted the issue as it had pulled the whole floor surface tight. Funnily enough, now the resin has been poured, the squeak is gone. We realised just how well laid the 22mm deck was when we lifted a section for the wetroom former in the ensuite - was a real fight to get it off, even after getting all the screws out.

Gets a bit easier when they're older, not much though!

We did the same, MBC nailed and glued it initially and then went back over with screws at 400mm centers - we've only had one squeak and that looked to be a joist moving in its hangar, has now gone away.

I recall reading a John Lewis statement that their ex rates were hedged until early / mid 2017 and after that goods priced in USD (such as consumer electronics etc) would start to rise. We noticed the slow slide in £/€ during the build - We got a good rate (1.45 ish) for the MBC frame (Ireland), Gaulhofer windows (Austria), RK Door (Germany) , MEA basement lightwells (Germany) and Velux (Netherlands). When we came to order the bathrooms from Megabad, it had slid to 1.35. Having said that, we just ordered up a few extras from Megabad and it's still 20-30% cheaper than the UK equivalent pricing, including shipping! We're halfway through paying for a load of furniture from Denmark so the recent slide has hurt a little but again, still cheaper than buying it from UK furniture stores. Many of the non standard materials used for building low energy houses (airtightness tapes & membranes, MVHR, passive windows, etc) seem to originate in the EU so that will drive up the price of being more energy efficient.

We took a week off at the end of June, Me & the Mrs went to St Lucia for a week on BA Miles and her mum looked after the kids. We'd originally (and over optimistically) booked it as a 'end of the build' celebration a year ago and were in two minds on whether to go or not (it was fully refundable) but I'm glad we did as we're in the finishing sprint now and it was good to recharge the batteries. Had a few trusted trades on site when we were away but deliberately deferred many of the more involved items until we were back.

Powder. Tiler says that he'd have a go but no guarantees so we've decided to leave be and get a different flush plate system for those rooms.

I'll let you know tomorrow but I agree, probably not the way we will go for those two rooms. We did skim the PB if that makes it any easier?

Took delivery of the Gebrit Sigma 60 'roughing plate' (their official name for the mounting frame) today and see where we went wrong. For anyone considering a similar Gebrit 'flush' flush plate, you need to have the mounting frame kit before you even board over the concealed Gebrit cistern frame. It comes in two parts, a template box and the frame itself - the corrugated plastic flush plate box that ships with the frame should not be used, instead the template box is attached and plater / tile board trimmed to fit neatly round it. Once the wall is ready for tiling, this box is disposed off and the final frame is mounted. The inner chrome bezel is depth adjustable to come out flush with the finished tile level and then the actual flush plate is attached. Even though we had not tiled one bathroom yet, was still tricky to get the corrugated box off the frame without damaging the workings behind - however all sorted now. To your question Nick, there is no lip - tiles need to be cut neatly and grouted to the edge of the frame. Need to have a chat with the tilers tomorrow to see if it's feasible to remove the existing tiles in the other two rooms or to go with a clip over system. Megabad are happy to accept returns and refund if the original plates are not suitable. Also got the plumber to move the basins to catch the noggins, although in doing this, it's now just on the grout line of one of the tiles we would need to remove so we may have snookered ourselves there!

Tiles on skimmed PB, I'd already had the rooms skimmed (as they're part tile, part paint) before I saw your advice not to. Not sure if this helps or hinders. If I go down that path, it's the top row of tiles, one room has two tiles meeting equally at the flush plate and the other is a single tile centered on the plate. Tiler is away until Monday and has yet to do our ensuite walls so a few days to formulate a plan and get the other one right. Don't have any of the other options in hand yet so can't comment on whether there is a lip - plan is to buy one of each on Amazon just now and see what works best - return the rest. Among todays other successes was being informed that the noggins for the sinks were nowhere to be seen when he put the mounts on for the cabinet that supports them (per the instructions that we never read). Checked my photos and looks like the bottom of the noggin was 30mm above the fitting - entirely our mistake. It feels solid enough with fixings through tile and into the PB but I think we'll have him lift it up a bit to make sure it's being held solidly.

We're just doing bathroom second fix and have made a faux pas with the Gebrit flush plates. We have a Gebrit Sigma 60 cistern with the 12cm flush plate. We ordered these at the same time but now the plumbers are trying to fit them, we've realised that we should have either ordered the bezel version or used the mounting frame which I believe is the correct partner to the plates we bought. We have two of the three bathrooms tiled and the tiles neatly(ish) go round the box that sticks out from the cistern so we'd either have to remove them, install the mounting frame and replace the tiles OR swap for the bezel version (not sure if this needs the mounting frame, don't think so) and make good between the tiles and flush plate with a bit of grout and sealant. Other option is to get the non flush version that sits proud of the tiles and would cover the tile cut entirely. Thoughts?

You can get relatively cheap soil analysis if you collect the samples yourself - one or two should be enough especially given that their concern is related to a relatively small area. My suggested approach should be to push back at this stage, based on what you've already communicated and then concede to have 1-2 localised samples tested - you can agree the locations with the EH guy to give him some feeling of control. Can you persuade him to come to site?

I also used 180mm steel duct - BPC shipped me two large off cuts ahead of time so I could get them in the wall. Gary at BPC can advise on separation but ours are about 1.5m horizontally and 300mm from finished ground level outside.

So the UFH mats are in, latexed and the floors and walls tanked and tiled. In the wetroom they followed the Impey recommendation of membrane first with UFH and latex on top of that. As Nick said, the Impey butyl sealant is quite evil stuff - uber tacky. Quite glad I left all to the tilers as they knocked out the prepping of all 3 floors and two shower areas in one day. I only had to give the walls a second coat of membrane in the evening. I bought a new digital multimeter and a testing black box from UFHSS for a few quid - the box is neat, it has 3 crocodile clips (earth, live and Netural, although these two are interchangeable). Once you've tested with the multimeter that the mats don't have an earth fault and have the correct resistance (one unrolled and again when rolled out) you connect the box to teh cold tail and switch it on, if there's an earth fault or short it buzzes loudly. Only tricky part was pulling the thermostat probe and cold tail back through the conduit - forgot to put a drawstring in there so had to pull one through with the hoover, a ball of cotton wool and some thread If anyone is doing similar, I have a few leftover bits and pieces although aside from the Impey system, it was all fairly inexpensive.

Great blog Alex, interesting to see that the green airtightness board is now pre-fitted to the panels in the factory. I think our build was the first to use them as Joe brought the manufacturer round to see them in situ, ours were fixed after frame erection so it must be saving them a good few days on site. Nice to see Jack the roofer there as well!

Our plasterboard tackers were particularly complimentary on the quality of the battening, especially around Velux windows and other tricky areas, definitely saved them time and helped pull in the schedule.