Bitpipe

Typical modest US footprint My sister lives in Austin, not a cheap place (they've been there 25 years). A downtown lakeside house would be mega $$.

Not exactly the same but we built our basement slab on EPS 200 grade - the number after the EPS is the point load bearing capacity of the insulation in N/m2 (I think). EPS is also more water resistant than open cell insulation (like XPS). You would be able to get away with a lower grade - we have an entire basement, foot thick RC walls, plus house sitting on our EPS just figure the loading per m2 Not sure in your case whether the membrane needs to be under or over the EPS but if it's butted tightly together then the concrete will not run down into it - we had the membrane on the top of ours and the EPS sat on a sand blinding layer on a base of compacted type 1.

You have the ultimate bargaining power - payment. Up to you if you want to use it. You have two options: 1) Let him call the tune, and you pay up regardless of whether you're happy or not. In which case you can't keep complaining here - you've decided a path of no confrontation vs getting what you want. Now that's not necessarily the wrong path if you value avoiding confrontation above getting what you think you've paid for. For your follow on work, make sure it's nailed tight on detail and avoid any repeat occurrence. 2) If you believe that you have a strong case that he's not doing what he agreed to, then state that and give him the choice of making good or with-hold part / all payment until resolved. Let him take you to court if he wants. Yes he may walk off job but you will have the funds for another builder to complete the outstanding tasks. You can't let him hold that over you, otherwise you're back to 1) above. When I had my basement built on an agreed price to an agreed schedule, there were still some discrepancies - they wanted a bit more money for 'extras', I wanted a discount for a few things they skipped. While it was all matey during the build, that conversation was decidedly awkward and I didn't relish it - I don't naturally enjoy confrontation, however I stood my ground and we agreed a resolution. Attitude was able to go back to matey and get some follow on tasks completed. Builders are usually fairly thick skinned individuals (whether they want to be or not), and while a small minority are outright crooked, most will turn a 'grey' situation to their advantage as I'd imagine they get screwed the other way as often. In your case, mistakes have been made by his team but you chose not to go down the full plans route so there is grey in the middle and he's taking advantage. You're back to options 1 or 2 above. Good luck.

Just hold your nose and go English

Very simply, I went through this process: 1) measure existing per room and total supply / extract 2) check that min room extracts per regs met (I way exceeded them all) 3) tweak rooms to balance supply / extract 4) adjust fan to get min ventilation reqs - note measurements and revert fan speed to comfort settings. Probably took 3 iterations of measuring each room.

You are a highly paid IT consultant and I claim my £5. Either that or you've watched too much IT Crowd

Per my experience, a DIY cert to say all is well

We visited a build that had a polished concrete floor - really susceptible to oily stains - i guess regular sealing helps prevent this.

Seems very convoluted. We have a dedicated mvhr extract (double ducted) about 1m in front of the cooker hood (which is a recirculating unit). It’s also midway between the wall mounted oven to catch extract from those too. Kitchen has separate general purpose extract (probably overkill). Your risk is introducing strong cooking smells into bathroom which could be quite unpleasant. The core issue here seems to be the performance of your extractor - sounds like that needs an upgrade.

Well this is the root of the issue, it may be at fine structure’ but it’s not what you asked for. You’re worried about upsetting him but you’re the one who has the incorrectly built structure and new ground problem to make good the access. Bit like me ordering steak and chips at the restaurant, getting egg and chips and being told that adding steak will be extra. You have control here - either get him to fix the groundworks at his cost or deduct the cost of making good from his bill and get someone else in to do it when the job is done.

I'm a big fan of Ken Munroe, he highlights cyber security vulnerabilities in commercial products and encourages the makers to address - this one should be interesting to our community! https://www.pentestpartners.com/security-blog/pwning-a-smart-car-charger-building-a-botnet/

We bought a new Miele cylinder vacuum for the house when we moved in and tried to avoid using it for any building work (like dust from drilling) but ... you know. Somehow the bag got detached internally and whatever got consumed got right into the motor and it was totally dead. As it was under warranty, we returned it and got a bagless Miele in return.

You need to give that Bulgarian artist Christo a call, he's the man to wrap buildings in stuff...

@Onoff 's 'creative' suggestion aside, that does make sense! Is your electric ducted in from the main supply and will meter termination be in your house or are you taking SWG from a kisok where the meter is terminated? Reason is that some DNOs want to see the trench open with the duct in it before they pull through, which may complicate things for you. If its SWG from your own kiosk then that's not an issue for them. Also, fouls need a fall, (services don't obv.) so that may further complicate things depending what the inverts are between you and the sewer. Rainwater should be going to a soak-away (or harvesting tank) which would not necessarily be in the same direction as the fouls?

I suppose in case there is a leak so the gas can dissipate. We had a mish mash of services all over our plot - gas duct from street to house (more or less straight line, perpendicular to house), water and BT came in from other side of plot so ran diagonal over plot, electric from site kiosk to house and gate controls chucked in as an afterthought. Fouls ran on other side of plot (same as water and BT) as that's where the sewer connection is and there is a 45 degree run from front of house to that also. Unless you're doing a road crossing, I'm not sure why you want everything in the same place. I have zero intention of touching any of it ever again! Ground worker had no issue putting what needed to go where and doubt there would have been any material saving anyway.

We used our architect to pp stage and then worked with a separate SE for basement design and the TF supplier for detailed design. Architect was happy enough to give us the DWG files but to be fair, at PP stage the detailing was very light and both subsequent teams recreated the drawings from scratch, however they probably saved a bit of time using the original model. Site plan was probably most useful and this was itself based on a topo survey that we paid for and had rights to.

Fair enough - PP is an official letter issued by the LA and that's what all our contractors asked for - it has to say demolish and build as those are the scheme rules. Not sure what the VAT inspector would make of a DIY certificate if they were audited - pretty sure they'd want to see the original PP letter.

Looks to be an allen nut on the handle and a flat screw at the top? What happens when you remove them both?

Mainly it's because I put in quite a low power mat (100w/m2) and only have a few m2 coverage in each bathroom, i.e. where you'd normally walk but not under sinks, loos or baths/showers etc. I also keep it at 22 degrees and only have it come on mornings and evenings when the upstairs bathrooms are in use. Those 3 rooms have MVHR extract so any heat in the warm air would be reintroduced in the supply vents in other rooms (MVHR being about 90% efficient at heat recovery), but as Jeremy says the volume of air being moved is pretty low, even in boost conditions. The wet towel rad which runs at about 60 is a much more significant contributor of heat to those rooms but it is also strictly time limited and off altogether for 8 months of the year to avoid overheating.

We did this as a very, very last minute thing (fist fix was complete and walls were boarded but not yet skimmed. Our extremely patient sparky and myself removed the necessary boards and put in conduit runs & back boxes for power and stat to the floor, the controller and a switched fused spur for each bathroom. I bought cheap (but decent) Warmstar mats off eBay and the tiler put down the 9mm insulated boards, mats and covered with two part laytex ahead of tiling. Tested & logged the mats with a multimeter at each stage (rolled up, unrolled and installed). The little battery operated alarm box (£10) is good for peace of mind while the tiles are being laid as it will buzz if the mats are damaged (short between N/L or N/L and E). It was another month or so before they were powered up - I suppose we could have stuck a plug top on each one just to test them. Does not heat the bathroom but takes chill off floor.

What are your tiles made of? We have a porcelain tile in our bathrooms which was a bugger to drill through - the spade shaped bits were useless but the blunt type worked well, however you need to use a template to get them started otherwise they skidded around the tile. I usually bin the screws and plugs that come as standard and use decent ones - saves faffing with a 6/7/8 mm bits as you're finding out. I just used standard PB plugs - if there was a stud behind the tile I'd cut the plug down just to cover the tile part. Are these fixings are to hold a metal profile that the screen slots into? If so, a bead of clear Sikaflex between the flat side of the profile and tiled wall (apply after you've drilled all the holes but before you finally offer up the profile) will hold it tight and give you a waterproof seal also.

Same happened to me, I have loads also but wasn’t savvy enough to consolidate them and quite a few are in tricky spots, became very obvious when laying the paving at the end of the project. Poor landscaper had to do his best to fit paths etc around them.

Agree with @peterw - also consider that ICs are a reasonable cost, as are extension collars and nice Clarke drain covers (the type you can inlay with whatever you're using in your patio). Plus the labour to place them etc.

Dependant on the conditions obv, but you normally have a 1m working space outside the wall and then batter back to ground level which is usually another metre. So the mouth of the excavation is about 2m from the wall itself. We put a land drain to a soakaway at the foot of the basement and backfilled the 1m gap with clean stone for good drainage. If you use spoil it needs compacted every 150mm. If you don't have that space, you normally need to sheet pile on the restricted sides to give the crew safe working space. Piles get pulled out after build and go as scrap Will need careful thought on how not to compromise the retaining wall that you're next to - all possible but the costs can start to rack up - always best to have it 100% figured out before a spade hits the ground

In our experience (full footprint basement) get your chosen SE to spec what they need from the GI report and then take that brief to a number of GI companies to get quotes. You may want to wait until you have the PP in hand as there could be conditions on contamination, etc.. - we had these and folded in the necessary tests into the brief. Also needed soil WACS classification for the basement contractor so they could price muck away disposal. We had a mix of dynamic probing (10m) and cores (5m) - our build up is chalk / river gravel and clay - typical for the Thames Valley. The big concern here are 'solution features' aka cavities in the chalk layer, so the survey was designed around that. A few of the cores were sleeved and capped to monitor for gas and ground water. GI usually also does a historic survey to identify old workings or sources of contamination. Our GI was a bit of a car crash as the original supervising engineer mislocated some probes and drew the wrong conclusions (made ground = piling & £££). The crew had to come back (at a discounted rate) and do it again with a more positive outcome (no made ground, no piles). I also found out, after the fact, that the GI should zero rate any disruptive or tool based parts of the work (digging, probing etc) whereas the walkover and desk work (reports etc) attract standard VAT. You can access the national borehole database and see if there is anything near you - this is really just for guidance as local conditions can always vary. https://www.bgs.ac.uk/data/boreholescans/home.html