G and J

Two storey, two beds upstairs, one down. Each with an egress window planned so we are covered anyway. It's wild (and feels random) how varying opinions are about such things. I kinda feel the need for a fire escape window should be pretty cut and dried. I’ve posted our plans on our blog. I’ll paste a link in a mo.

‘My friend’s posijoists are 253mm high. The diagrams of them show that I, erm, he can easily get a 110 mm pipe through but exact routing and fall etc are a source of concern to the persistent worryguts. Thus knowing that there’s a slightly smaller bore option is comforting.

Which means that none of our bedrooms require emergency escape windows as they are all directly connected with the front door via a landing, stairs and a hall. I've been worrying over nothing!

What a fabulous bit of info sharing. Well done and thank you (as one who has had the gas removed and has been wrestling with the details of my ASHP setup - corroborating evidence is very much appreciated ).

What does “inner room” actually mean? One without a door opening directly to the outside?

Even downstairs bedrooms need an egress window. I think.

As a young child (though in truth I’ve never really changed) I would ask me mum what I had to wash. The answer was always the same, “the parts that show and the parts that smell”. Apart from paint very little that I do will be seen. Much safer that way. So the “parts that show” will be done properly by dudes that can. I translate “the parts that smell” into the bits that are vital to the structural integrity of our new pad. I won’t be doing those either. Grown ups will (though I’m on hand to ask dumb questions and do really important stuff like making tea). But the rest I’ll happily toddle away doing. So mum knew best all along.

So if a friend of mine (not me, obviously, I never worry about anything) was laying awake at night thinking about how he’d get his poo pipes through his metal web joists to serve an upstairs potty, the connection from said potty could, if need be, be done in 82mm pipe till it hits the 110mm soil stack. That run would only carry waste from my, I mean his potty. I’m asking for a friend you see.

I know from my own agonising how tempting it is to shave every mm to achieve a perceived vital statistic. But standing back from my design is something I find hard sometimes, so I feel for you. You've a brilliantly insulated wall design, so the potential heat loss through the floor to the ventilated void is unfortunate. If you are consciously trading UFH running cost for height then that’s your right. (But best done consciously though). By a rough calculation adding the extra 50mm PIR in the floor will achieve a similar u value to your walls. I’d be tempted.

Small weights (part barrow loads) X Many reps (lots of trips) = Enhanced strength (or for us in our later years a reduced loss of power over time). Ear buds and tunes you love can help. Not convinced that a battery wheelbarrow will though.

Methinks that one benefits from taking multiple inputs and comparing and contrasting. Perhaps trying in some cases to look behind the statements. As a society we aren’t always as kind to peeps who say “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure” as we could be so perhaps we discourage honesty. I think our SE is brilliant. When meeting him prior to engaging him he set out his stall and was fully open about the fact that he had very limited experience in achieving airtightness. I’m a nerd that reads and overthinks way too much so I didn’t need him to bring that to the party. But his openness has helped us work together very well. I can easily imagine architects reading in their periodicals about disgruntled clients where newish stuff hadn’t worked so well which then encourages them to steer peeps towards the tried and tested and low moan options. I was initially put off by very poorly designed heat pumps in social housing in our area. Hopefully your architect has got lots of other things dead right.

The genie lift, which was on its limit lifting over 200kg on the tip of its arms, was brought by the steel guys as we’ve contracted them on a supply and fit basis which saves cash flow as they can zero the vat on a new build and it saves me a hernia. The steels were spec’d by ETE of Watton as part of their timber frame supply only package. No one would quote for a supply and fit due to site restrictions and overhead wires. In a perverse way as a result the wires look like they’ve saved us thousands - assuming that we get the kit up ok. I’ll tell you in a couple of months! So far they’ve been brilliant to work with, highly recommended.

I like this plan better than just stuffing a waste pipe down a vertical pipe. Thank you. I wouldn’t have thought of doing that even though I’ve used these things to connect wastes before.

I’ll go as far as to say that from now on the cock ups are all my own work. :-/

Lordy, where will I find one of those? 😉 @Alan Ambrose I think were in trouble bro!

Thank you. I’ll be fully out of the ground when the oversite is done.

That's very thoughtful Nick. Thank you.

Are you sure you need one? I think if you do one and document it that will be enough. To back it up you could always take pics or maybe even a vid.

Well, sort of. Working physically hard is sooo emotionally easy compared to the frenetic whirlwind of strip foundation digging and filling. If that means that to you, I sound an emotional fruitbat then I commend your perceptivenes. I find it impossible to predict in advance the bits that will be most stressful. In the last two weeks I’ve had all but two days on my own on site, as Steve has been on his hols. So it’s background organisation tasks and planning for the most part. That means tip runs; getting blocks and bricks and sand and cement delivered for below damp; yet more manual moving of soil; generally tidying up; bumping out stupidly heavy 140mm concrete blocks; breaking up soft reds from the demolition for hardcore; and lots and lots of measuring and thinking. The two days Steve was there were spent setting out and getting some blocks laid. Setting out would have taken Steve on his own just a couple of hours. However, he had me to help him, so it took over half a day. I did learn a lot and because of concerns about preserving the precise sizes of the alleyways either side, and making sure the front face of the house is nicely co-planer with next door, and by the way still sitting properly on the foundations, and working out where to set block levels to, and my constant re measuring and questioning, I managed to burn a lot time more than just the morning. The levels thing was, in hindsight, quite comical. Not at the time however. We ran round the foundations with the laser level trying to spot the highest point, allowing for the 225mm steps. With the best will in the world foundations don’t end up perfectly level, so one finds the high spot, and all blockwork works to that level which saves stupid amounts of block cutting - adding more pug (perhaps a Suffolk word for mortar) is a lot easier than taking some off of a block. But with a laser level a higher number means a lower level, and one of the two of us just kept getting confused by that. I’ll let you guess which one. Confusion is, however, contagious it seems, as eventually I asked enough silly questions to get Steve confused too. It’s nice that I do have something to contribute to the process. Steve’s relief when he finally could get on with some blockwork was palpable. To his credit he must have been sorely tempted to insert the laser level staff somewhere painful, but he kept his patience, bless him. So we didn’t get that many blocks laid but we did enough to be ready for the windframe for the back of the house. Getting that fitted was fun. 200kg is not much by steel standards but my goodness it took some grunt. Because of the slope of the site instead of the legs (columns) being just over 2.5m long they were 3.5m long. The crew were a man short but I knew that when I asked them to come fit it so I gleefully volunteered to help. They were a brilliant pair - it was a constant stream of jokes and leg pulls and laughter. The only exception was getting each leg upright - that was pure grunt work - done nearly silently apart from grunts and barked orders. But the three of us got the first leg vertical. They then told me to ‘keep ‘old of that’ which turned out to be hard work, as keeping a near 12’ length of 1’ wide steel still on a blustery day wasn’t trivial. I also found it hard to believe that some goo squirted from a mastic gun would hold it up. I’ve read about but never seen a chemical anchor. Amazing. The other leg done we attached both legs to the previously lifted beam (with a genie lift - bloody handy that is) - and 16 bolts later we had a windframe. After weeks of a flat site it looks way too big, but after measuring many times I can now confidently confirm that I hope it’s right. Fingers crossed. The other thing this week is that the costs for the strip foundations are now all in, and we are quietly pleased. We were offered a fixed price of £16.5k, and lord knows what the extras would have really totalled as we did go deeper and use more concrete in many places due to soft ground. Instead, overall on day rate they cost us: Digger hire and diesel: £800 Labour (Steve and Kev the Dig) £4,400 Ply (some second hand) and cutting discs £700 47m3 of concrete £5,200. Waiting time for concrete lorry £74 Rebar (for steps and joins in foundations) £100 Spoil away £1,600 Total just under £13k. Happy days. It’s amazing what one doesn’t know and can’t imagine. When ordering concrete from the company we used (they only do 8m3 wagons) ordering 1+ means they send a full lorry then wait for us to tell them how much to send in the second lorry which turns up half an hour or so later. Ordering 2+ means two full wagons turn up at once - yikes! Ours site is just too small for that - hence the charge for waiting time. Anyway, next week Steve is back Wednesday so it’s blockwork to damp and over site over the next few weeks. And after a year of not doing anything towards my man cave at the bottom of the garden suddenly now I need to progress that too. It’s a nice problem to have.

Our experience is that to stop paying council tax it requires the valuation office to accept that the dwelling in question is not suitable to live in. The examples they gave are more fundamental, things like no ceilings or doors or services. So as Nod says, get demolishing!

I’ve seen stuff that looks like that that is purely condensation where tenants have failed to ventilate.

Presumably the ledger board is the bit you are wrapping the hangers over - is that correct? Have you set them at the same height as the top of the joists? A pic would help.

Is it an above ground basement then? 😉 I’m going to be doing them myself. I think the kit is quite cheap.

Oh my word. That was exactly our plan, except I’m not keen on needing ear defenders if it rains!