Adam2

It's been a wile since the last blog entry and I didn't expect to have gone through yet another contractor by this stage but that's the way life goes! We had some good progress with the basement floor walls going up and getting poured without a hitch. We moved on to the basement roof which is a terrace for the lower ground floor so was propped with acros (decided to buy 50 as can re-sell later). That also went well - aside from some issues identified by the structural engineer. Due to a delay in the concrete pour (don't ask), managed to get a local firm in to make up the shuttering for the exterior stairway so poured them at the same time as the basement roof - not really saving money just getting it done a bit earlier. With that done we could get no with some backfilling on the sides of the building, brining up the drainage pipes from the soakaway and building some planters between the side the basement and the boundary - reusing some of the sleepers from the retaining structure we built along the boundary. Also meant we could get some blocks in to the other boundary wall and close in our neighbour - she's been great and very understanding! After applying the waterproofing and a few weeks we were able to properly backfill behind the basement. The engineer required more granular fill than the beautiful sand we had removed so that hurt a bit but never mind we cracked on with that and backfilled against the eps sheets we laid against the double drain which was against the waterproof membrane. This took a lot of time compacting in 150mm layers but we had a big excavator on site to help and a few bodies. With the backfill done we could start on the ground works for the lower ground floor. Unfortunately a ground worker though a boundary wall should come down (I wasn't on site) so that made a lot more work - was the remaining part (about 8m) of a 20m long wall so more to get rid of and more to rebuild (he didn't last a lot longer). As this floor is below street sewer level we installed a1.5m x1m pump station for foul water/sewage - the upper floors go direct to the sewer so we can last a while if this get blocked up - though it does have 2 pumps, an alarm etc. Issue really was that it had to be pretty deep due to the distance from the furthest bathroom - though the groundworks guys did a great job with that. We found that a large tree we had felled (with permission) had it's stump in the way so a day was spent getting rid of that -managed to find a neighbour to take it + some off-cuts of timber! You can see in the pics some decent size I beams we installed to make a king post wall retaining our neighbour's new fancy house - the beams were 9m long so 6m in the ground and 3 out to retain the excavations. Luckily I could call upon the firm I used for the earlier retaining king post wall who happened to have hired in a great new machine which they used for 2 days to make the holes and we then used the 13T excavator to drop the steels in place - this was completely heart in your mouth stuff. The steels were too long to be lifted so the guys cut a wedge in them 1m down from the top to wrap the lifting chain around to get more height - worked great. A bit of concrete later and we had 4 solid steels which we could install the sleepers in to. Rest of the ground works just took its time, we're 3.5m below ground level so all materials had to be sent down a home made chute but more problematic was the removal of 160T of additional excavations from the trenches and final levelling. how do you get that up 3.5m? We hired a long reach HiAb with a clam shell bucket and paid extra for a tipper to be loaded at the rate of 1 per hour. Took it's time but we got there eventually. We still had some final trenches and drainage right at the front of the site which of course resulted in 30T more excavations which we put in dumpy bags and got the HiAb back to lift out and put in a tipper - though kept 10 on site as a safety barrier and to reuse for backfill later. And the long boundary wall - well we re-built that much stronger than it was and also a little higher to fit with a future stairway - not looking forward to the rendering cost for that ! So we're now ready for the concrete blinding layer and then we get the steel fixers in for 10T of rebar for the next slab. I hope it gets easier after that! and hope we keep the current team for the duration....

Hi Julian, I'm planning on using marmox as the bottom course of blocks for my internals walls that are built off my concrete slab - other products out there. In your option with the block on the slab this would reduce your cold bridge. Your SE could confirm if that is OK and if you could then have a course of blocks on top ready for your studwork or if you needed a connection through to the B&B - not sure why you would if just timber stud walls though. As you have B&B beneath there may be concerns re movement transferring to the walls if built directly on this unless the wall is over a supporting structure beneath that - just speculating really - would check with SE Having your UFH pass between rooms means you lose some ability to control individual room temps - may not be an issue but just noting that in case of relevance. You can't of course do this with the 2 options you have.

Yes need the nice bling look (with functionality of course) + resilience but without the kind of price I might see for a "traditional" HA solution

It was there a few mins ago but also the same error for me now. I think there's a big market for a decent highly configurable control panel that also has direct relay control to ensure continuous operation in the event of a component failure in a hub. The Heltun one is not too bad and seems to be widely available. Let me know if you find anything else to consider - am hopeful that something will come along before 6 months ? hoping to need it then but oculd be longer!

For many rooms we'll use retractive switches with a zwave wireless module behind it but for some areas where we have more things to control I'm looking for a decent looking panel. Ideally a panel that will still control the directly connected circuits even if the zwave system was down. I cam across this http://www.touchwand.com/products/wallwand-z-wave-touch-panel-6-relays/ which looks the dogs danglies and has 6 relays so could be ideal. Tried contacting the manufacturer but no response yet on some basic questions. Anyone else using this device? An alternative could be these: https://www.heltun.com/z-wave-touch-panel-switch but they lack the flexibility I think of the first one and users have to know what each button does which is not nearly as usable I'll be using these/other components with a zwave hub. I trialeld this and am pretty happy with stability and flexibility. Any comparable things I should look at?

I'm using a Huawei 4g router which costs £15 a month unlimited data on a cheapo provider but works well. Camera is a Imou life model which is powered and connects via the wifi enabled router. The camera model is "LOOC". I paid for their cloud storage so have 30 days motion triggered recordings always available. I didn't do much setup and don't seem to get false alarms on recordings. Can connect on my phone and see what is going on at any time - pic quality is great.

You may need >1 duct run (depending on duct size) so you will need some calcs. As above would have thought a supply into dining. In bathrooms right over an enclosed shower may not be ideal - will get a lot of moisture and may not be so effective for toilet smell extract? What are your plans re kitchen extract? If relying on MVHR you may want two extracts with one nearer the hob. I had a design from bcp and then tweaked various bits then passed on to engineer and architect to make sure all fits with wall penetrations, steels etc. Was worth £100 as they will also work out number of ducts to get the flow needed + can provide sizes of manifolds which I needed to allow for in ceiling heights so found quite helpful

As above get a few quotes in. My prices were purely on weight of steel. When you have a couple of quotes, currently 570/t was 525 6 months back, you'll be in a good spot to call another co and just see what their/t cost is. Bending is free pretty much. I think big firms like High Ten have a lot of automation

great thanks chaps will look at Weber LAC

The side of my house (ICF) forms a boundary wall which is covered in 10mm cement board - this is on the neighbour's side so I wanted to have some physical and fire protection in the unlikely event that anything bad happened. The wall is at the back of their garden behind bushes etc so worst case is a future garden fire out of control I think. The adjoining garden walls - blockwork - will be sand/cement rendered. To render using sand/cement on the cement boards - should we: prime the boards with something tape joints with jointing tape Sand cement 4:1 base coat / top coat Or is this doomed to fail? I'm not doing this myself but builder is soon to start on the sand cement render on the regular block sections so I want to make sure the spec is right for this area. Luckily he can do the hidden parts on neighbour side of wall before he does my side so I can see how it looks. Or, maybe this section we could just fill & paint to match the walls if rendering is going to be a problem.

There is a small pantry - top left in kitchen area. Originally planned as WC accessed from other side of wall - but re moved that ?

Thanks @CivilEng2020, I had a few suggestions to the engineer and added an extra one similar to your suggestions. I tried to crudely change the latest design to show the idea for improving F04 - I think this may be able to be replaced by a rodding access as you suggest, also tweaked a few other bits. New in orange, tried to cover the old black lines - think you can get the idea. I moved F01 and F02 further right as that greatly reduces the chamber depths as the ground will rise steeply from right to left. I think we're almost there - need to be as digging this week

Thanks @Dan F I'll take a look. Will also have a chat with my neighbour as he has just finished building a similar house!

@andy thanks sooooo much for this, only just came back and saw it ? Will save me a load of time

UVC - so mains pressure

Currently designing the main plumbing aspects and need to determine if we have enough flow rate & pressure for the 2 concurrent showers + someone putting on a washing machine or flushing a loo. Would assume min of 14L/min showers (so a small drop would still be OK). I'll go measure the flow rate with a timer and a jug from the house supply / standpipe. That I guess can tell me if the shower flow will be looking OK. I was looking at getting a simple pressure guage like this - let me know if this is the right thing! Planning 32mm from meter into house, 22 to manifolds and 15 to showers, 10 to wc/basins as per other threads and this very helpful schematic that I'll try and reproduce for my setup. The flow / pressure measurements will be at our planned ground floor level and the main shower will be at 1st floor BUT the supply will go via the lower ground. Expecting a UVC - not sure if any other aspects are critical to work out if we'll need to plan for an accumulator or not so please let me know if more info is needed. If we do need an accumulator that will need some space planning and will influence water supply route so need to work this out quite early to ensure we've planned for it. cheers

OK cheers - will have a think about what to do then. Where I'm battening out I like the speed and low cost of the dpc idea, others will do like you then I guess Russell

OK cheers - will get that on order ? 1 small item off the list...

OL thanks Any advantage in 25 over 16 as doesn't seem much price difference? Or will it just be more hassle being harder to handle?

My current setup is a couple of small cabinets at the site perimeter, one with meter + small CU and other essential bits and the other with sockets. I may leave these in place long term so am planning to run a conduit for the house supply from here to the plant room - about 15m away. It can get buried quite easily and I wondered though if I should already place the cable in the conduit as it may be hard pulling it through even with a pre-installed line at a later date. For now the cable wouldn't be connected. If it makes sense to pre-install the cable - what spec cable should I go and get? Any particular conduit needed? Thanks

@Russell griffiths is it ok then to have the PVC cables near the EPS (so running within a 25mm void between EPS and plasterboard where they may touch the EPS), providing they are not embedded? Will make my life easier when I get to that stage

I'd imagine a battery powered disc cutter would be a step too far. Maybe I should get a 12" electric one for general jobs and if need anything bigger hire it for the day. These bigger electric ones seem to have similar ergonomics to the petrol so safer than 9" ones mentioned above?

Hmm OK will have a look out for a deal on a petrol one

Anyone have experience of the two? Evolution have their promo vid that looks pretty OK but hey they are trying to sell something. I'm in the market for one to cut blocks + steel so will need some power and I guess decent blades will make a big difference so would appreciate views from the experienced

As mentioned in the nearby thread, we've a pump station to install for the foul drainage. It'll be serving a kitchen, utility, WC and an en-suite on 1 floor of a house, the upper floors can drain direct to the sewer. Lift is about 5m and distance about 12m. Not sure if 2", 2.5" or 3" is needed - price goes up a lot for larger diameter. I've been looking into options online and came across these: Vortech 1m wide x 1.2m deep https://www.tradepumps.com/regular-sewage-pumping-station?gclid=CjwKCAiA57D_BRAZEiwAZcfCxWBe4CvaJ6Uv2H7fe4zX8OXrVfzCINdsAOiMe_NytHsVoAA-sdqu8hoCkfAQAvD_BwE AES 1m x 1m https://www.automatedenvironmentalsystems.co.uk/product/1-metre-diameter-packaged-pumping-station-dual-guide-rail-pumps/ Drainstore 1m x 1m https://www.drainstore.com/pumping-stations-pumps/drainstore-twin-sewage-pumping-station-for-one-property-1m-x-1m-twin-pump-version-785-litre-with-guide-rails/ thinking that 7-800L should be plenty and having twin pumps should mean we're unlikely to have urgent issues but appreciate thoughts from anyone with experience. Also appreciate any info re pumps or control systems that are good/bad/indifferent. Planning on having high level alarm.