eros_poli

Hi, Struggling to find any sage advice out there on the thickness of the mortar bed to use when laying limestone slabs. This is internal, and we're thinking of using 15mm Travertine slabs. These will be laid on a Mike Wye-supplied Geocell/Limecrete floor, which will be finished with nhl5 lime slab. I assume it would be best to also use NHL5 as the bed for the slabs, and am guesstimating that 20mm would be a good thickness to aim for. Should it be thinner...? Need to know for the excavations working backwards from finished floor level. Cheers! Joe

We're at planning/building regs stage for an extension, and I'm hunting for a good installer for our heat pump. I won't go into too much detail on system design etc, but wanted to know if anyone had had a good or bad British Gas ASHP install? I've been reading up on Heat Geek certified installers, and seen some bad reviews for BG installs - however SOME say there are some great BG engineers out there who know what they're talking about. I'm not an expert, but the variety of information and recommendations I get when speaking to a handful of installers is concerning. Any advice welcome! I'm in Wiltshire, if that helps. So far I've narrowed down the install to a Cardiff based company, and a heat pump engineer based in Bristol. Thanks Joe

Hi all, Just become a member, as I've been reading up a lot on this forum over the past months. I'm a 1850’s cottage-owner in Warminster, dealing with a lot of old-property things and putting right some wrongs (be-gone gyspum!) We're also embarking on a self build extension in the future, using a timber frame method. We helped build a house on the West cost of Scotland a few years ago and got bit by the self build bug. That was a Flemming Homes kit, and a family/friend build project. Great fun. So far I'm built a 3d model of our extension on Sketchup, have a pretty solid plan and costings schedule, and and nailing down a few details. I'll probably be asking about alternative insulation options to get decent U-values (PIR is gross) without spending a fortune (wood fibre £££....), and also have some general queries about marrying a timber frame to a stone cottage. Thanks for being here! Joe