G and J

Something about the US that makes sense. Who’d have thought it?

Rather than repair my beloved Makita multi tool again I bought a new one with tool-less blade change. I will repair the other one then sell it, but I’ll never go back from tool-less blade changing, it really does help. Rather than sort of struggle to do a whole job with a single blade I now happily swap blades and it speeds it up. I would never, ever think about a corded one though.

So do US regs vary significantly by region?

None of the supply and erect timber frame companies would quote for us as we have aerial cables across the front of site and therefore they couldn’t use their cranes. So we used a company called ETE who provide panels that we put up ourselves (see our blog if you want details, but I think it saved us oodles and was a lot of work and fun), They didn’t offer pre insulated panels so we never considered it. We (meaning J) stuffed the frame with mineral wool slabs, then we skinned it with VCL, then we put up 63mm x38mm (3”x2” ex.) CLS from Jewsons. Where possible we avoided putting them against a stud to reduce thermalite bridging. J then stuffed the 60mm RWA45 between them. Simple. I have no proof of acoustic performance to offer you, but it seems a lovely, quiet house to live in despite the urban environment. We had a PIR lined room above our garage in our last house, and we believe (but we may be deluded on that as so many things) that that room was somehow hollow and echoey compared to the new pad, like big time.

I wonder how close to European building standards we are compared to US ones. In my mind the EU is a comparable in size to the US. Energy has been cheap for a long time in the US and as the orange man-baby demonstrates a rather retro attitude to climate crisis is not unknown there. So I’d be reticent about being guided by US standards. Having said that I wonder if the return in investment would be better if we mandate airtightness and MVHR rather than any more insulation, but I do wonder if such a reg change would prove ineffective in the face of peeps not maintaining their units. We are a bunch of geeks on here really and regs have to work for the masses.

+1 for talking to prospective installers. I had a very fixed view of our system (I’d been to a self build show so therefore I was an expert!) but that view changed for the better after a couple of discussions with installers. Sometimes I find myself caught up in the enthusiasm of a solution, so much so that I drift away from the actual requirements. I then talk things through with J and that helps me return to what I’m actually trying to do.

OK, I can’t help feeling I should know this, but how does a steel strip stop the ventilation behind the cladding act like a chimney during a fire whilst still allowing the chimney effect to dry the cladding under normal conditions?

I agonised over things like the cold bridges with insulated bnb floors then I did the numbers on a solid floor with lots of underfloor insulation. I know bnb floors bypass a lot of underground issues and are often the only option (as in our last house) but if you’ve the choice why not check the relative costs of a solid floor for your build.

Can’t comment on MBC but I can tell you what we’ve done. 140mm frame filled with 0.032 slab mineral wool. VCL 63mm batten with 60mm RWA45 between. 11mm OSB or 18mm ply where needed for stuff to be wall hung. When I played with Jeremy’s spreadsheet it became clear that accepting a slightly higher wall u-value didn’t matter a damn. I think compared to a full PIR equivalent to the same thickness it cost circa £12 per year in extra heating. That was mitigated by upping the underfloor insulation which for us was very cost effective. We have a narrow site so we felt our room sizes were squeezed, so the ‘rent’ we pay of a bit of extra heating seemed more than worth it. Now we are living in the new pad I find myself thinking that maybe I needn’t have been quite so manic about every last mm…

As I (G) am wrinkly I’ve not a clue what a company like that actually does, in my world lighting meant BHS. What do they provide exactly?

+1 to this

Are you letting it go silver? Have you viewed final "colour" with mortar as well? Image of our attached just as eg. Took us a while to choose whole "package"

It is subjective but firstly is your whole frontage brick, may make a difference.... We only have a plinth, (9 at highest where ground slops at back of house) so we chose high contrast mortar that "matched" the cladding. If it had been the whole house, would have been too stark for us, and maybe the planners. Having said all that my vote would be nit no.1 (too warm), no.3 if your looking for high contrast, no.4 if you want it to "blend"

Whatever happened to a licked finger?

We’ve had an awful lot of success over the years by building relationships by using the same peeps repeatedly and once we feel we can trust said dudes we get a feel from them of the scale of the job but then go with day/hourly rates. We’ve found that if one always insists on fixed priced arrangements unless as mentioned above, it’s bog standard stuff then to be safe the person quoting needs to allow for the possible googlies awaiting them. If you look at it from the other end of the contract they may well think ‘I don’t know you or how much of a pain in the bum/slow payer you are so I’m gonna build in contingency’. Kerr-ching. Might be worth an hourly rate discussion with both. I’d certainly investigate further as the £1.6k sounds a bit too good to be true. Oh, and might be worth ensuring that both quotes include necessary disbursements.