Adam2

We're likely to go with side fixings on the inside face of the parapet wall on the terrace. Will strip the ICF down to the roof slab and bring edpm up the face of the concrete and over the top with some magic water tight fixings through this into the concrete.

Protek - though I think I saw they are not taking new business at the mo. Called them this week and super helpful to extend my building insurance.

Sorry to hear this. The company building my ICF Home (in Dorset) ended up being totally unreliable, not paying their staff & suppliers and then disappeared - trouble with small Ltd companies (well also large ones I guess) is they can just close down screwing their customers and suppliers and restart with a new name. The chance of getting cash back out of them I think is quite low and potentially time consuming - if you have legal cover from insurance then that's great as will no doubt help provide good guidance on what is possible. Best of luck

Some suggestions: water supply, hot return, network cables (can add up to a fair few), TV coax, CCTV cables It's always 1 large hole more than you expected ? am just doing the exact same for my build - though we have internal waste so a few more holes to plan for

Ahh - sorry - from your description which seemed to imply (to me at least) that people would be using it inc children that you had other intentions ?

So you're thinking of a roof sloping down? I can't believe without full fall protection building control would pass that let alone planning which will depend on factors we can't tell from the info here. For the cost and hassle, would you really use it? We had a bedroom balcony , loved the idea but hardly ever used it and won't include one in our new build.

Great nice and simple

Building plant room walls - ASHP will sit on the ground just outside the plant room - I expect <1m of pipe outside the plant room. Would appreciate suggestions on planning for this wall penetration - walls will be ICF with 200mm core so don't want to core drill after. Should we install a pipe dia of 60m so could have 2 x 28mm pipes + space for power and control then later foam around the pipes in the wall and insulate them on the outside? or install a short run of the pre-insulated pipes? Ideas appreciated cheers

Building the walls to our plant room which will house 1 of our MVHR units and keen to avoid drilling through 20mm of reinforced concrete so will fit some duct in place. The quote I have for the mvhr unit mentioned 150mm dia ducts but wondered if anyone knows the external diameter of the duct? Was hoping to fit some short sections of this sloping slightly down to the outside and then (at a much later date!) slide the real duct inside and fill the gap between the pipes with low expansion foam.

Recently had 10t of mainly H16 bar fixed for a slab with 60 cube of concrete. Was day rate and ends up at 6k for labour only. Slab was about 200m real fiddly design. This included 2 rows of starters and the joy of getting the steel down 4m of steps. In Dorset BTW

We have stairs made from scaffold boards. Built right they are strong enough so if you do buy and then cut use long boards along the joint on sides with decent fixings. If you need scaffold boards we found cheapest was ringing round scaffold companies 10 each delivered.

I found them to be similar price to Nudura (which we went with). Initially liked the idea or steel webs but decided against it in the end. If you go with them think about the placement of horizontal rebar - if you have a lot and have difficult wall shapes (bends/kinks etc) this could be a bit challenging. With plastic webs you can remove bits fairly easily - not the whole web but bits that get in the way.

You can do this also with rebar, depending on what you're supporting above. I have a few large openings - lowest floor has a 6m span though above this is a roof terrace with a parapet wall over the sliding door opening so this is not the same as a sliding door with 2 more floors of wall resting on it. It has a fair amount of rebar and may have been quicker so maybe similar price using a beam! Not sure how this may compare to a roof loading. Lots of possibilities and may also depend on the void thickness in your ICF to see how much rebar could usefully be utilised there (for info mine are 200mm).

safety measure along front of shelf maybe just a strip of timber securely fixed. My wife is not so tall and I'm very flexible so will maybe stick to low level washing machine but maybe drier above it

So nice to see this nearing completion, we've almost out the ground, on a hill we get to do that three times ? Exciting times ahead with scaffolding coming down, can't wait to get there. Having a partner that gets stuck in is so great - must tell my wife ?

400L tank isn't that bad - can you just build a support for it over the buffer tank? A few steels bolted together would probably do it. Do you have enough height?

On day rate - think about hire costs as you'll not get VAT back if straight hire by you, maybe he can help with this which will save a lot. In fixed price it would be VAT free

My neighbour is using microcement - I think on MDF. It's turning out really well. Thin coating but seems quite robust, not sure if would work for kitchen use but looks great on a table and v cheap.

In our last refurb we installed 5m of frameless glass folding/sliding doors at a huge expense only to see that instead of anthracite the frames were beige! Original colour had been written down, surveyor visited to measure and gave me a form to sign with a RAL code which he took from a printed colour page and he wrote the wrong number I didn't notice. When we discovered it clearly was a huge drama but then it was forgotten about completely. Image - could have been any colour!!! Made us realise that some things that feel like a big drama you get over which helps a lot building a house.

well done - looking fantastic!

Will be EDPM with a pedestal for tiles on top of that - will check on vapour layer -roofing co are speccing that -I trust them

Yes this is the PIR something like 180mm dropping to 100mm. Also 25mm on underside I think not shown in that detail

@Moonshine yes waterproof concrete (BASF - link above). No surface primer needed - well only on the toe of the slab where applying direct to concrete. Also used the underslab concrete membrane. All OTT really as we're on sand and the ground drains well - the old house here had none of this and no leaks.

Thanks, this is from BASF - they have a wide range of products for use with EPS inc concrete admix https://www.master-builders-solutions.com/en-gb/contact/persons/27 if you need a contact

Here's a prelim detail - there's a small number of changes due. Debating at the moment the sliding door support - block + extra external insulation, marmox + HDPE. The slab to the left is the base of the lower ground floor built off the compacted back-fill with a 50mm concrete blinding layer on top. Insulation on terrace is tapered, provided by waterproofing co (Alwitra), there is also 25mm on underside of the terrace not shown in that detail