Spinny

Jeepers...scream...yes... and shit standing up for evermore... https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/1948864/woman-screams-rat-stares-up

Still looks a bit short 🤣🤣 Good luck sir.

How can a new rule in 2023 apply to Steels that are 5 years old, and potentially on a build that started pre 2023 ? New building regs are not and cannot be retrospective.

1/ Drainage Chamber - does it need changing ? The photo shows a drainage chamber installed by my long departed builder. The kitchen sink & dishwasher waste water will come down from the top right, and then flow out at the bottom of the photo. A drainage guy today told me it has been installed wrong and there should be a swept bend between inflow and outflow. The fall is not high and the input pipe is about 4m long. Should I get it sorted now with some other drainage issues, or leave well alone ? And what should it look like ? 2/ Shared Drain Manhole - If I get it replaced will I get rats ? My drain manhole at front of the house is also fed into by the neighbours drain. Drainage guy says if I can persuade the water company they will replace it with a new one. Apparently the new ones will have a straight through outlet to the main sewer for the road, rather than the existing one which has a U / S bend with water trap (plus a plugged bypass). This makes me very nervous as we have had RATS some years ago when the bypass cap was left off. Guy claims rats can swim through a water trap (though I have yet to see one pop up in the toilet !). With no water trap on the shared manhole output I would fear a rat infestation ?

Am looking at extractor fans for the new utility room and wondering how much interest private BC are likely to take in the detail. For reasons that seem bemusing to me regs say utility needs 30 l/m but bathrooms only 15 l/m for an intermittent fan. I don't know about you but I think a bathroom steams up massively faster than any utility and I have never seen clouds of water vapour coming from a washer or dryer ? Yet for a continuous fan it is only 8l/s, but apparently AI tells me that means a dMEV and BC might expect that to mean some kind of dmev certification/approval rating ? If I had a fan that can run continuously or intermittently as required with a continuous extract rate of 15 l/s, I don't see that as a problem. I imagine BC will just look for a fan on the wall - end of ?

Yep well it wasn't for my neighbours, where they and the 'architect' (aka paid planning poacher) got unprecedented approval to build a 4.5m wall along my boundary for a single storey extension if you please - totally unnecessary. And also deliberately contrived to hide, disguise, and not declare an intention to raise the ground level by 0.3m in front of their house. And building a boundary wall in excess of their planning permission and PWA. Sorry, but IMO a drawing in isolation of it's built surroundings is meaningless. Maybe those people with a gigantic Amazon fulfillment centre looming over their houses would agree. Architects are very well practiced in making their clients build look like a vision of nirvana - once built it can look like a vision of hell. How can you possibly assess whether it is sympathetic to the local street scene, if the street scene is never drawn. And it doesn't have to be detailed, an architects package can paste the outline/ridge height of an adjacent building in less time than it took me to write this.

If you know exactly where you want the sockets then you could potentially put metal boxes in now. Don't forget if you are fitting out for a desk, or for a network cabinet then multisocket extensions and/or surge protected power bars are available.

I have had 2 topo surveys - one was 2D done 5 years ago at the request of the architect. The other was 3D with the express intention of .recording the existing boundary features prior to my neighbour carrying out work adjacent to the boundary. Obviously the first thing that happens when such work is done is that the boundary features/fences/posts/kerbs etc get removed so accurate data is necessary with the ability to gain measurements of the previous features from fixed points on the properties. Without such data disputes can be unresolvable. Neither survey included invert levels and I wish it had - very useful data - but I had no idea what an invert level was and nobody ever asked. You may wish to consider what information/data you might like regarding the boundaries of your plot while you are having the survey done. Depending on circumstances boundary disputes can arise as a result of building work, and equally diggers etc may trample out existing features. Are there old posts sticking up at a jaunty angle, perhaps buried in the centre of a hedge or other vegetation, a retaining wall, a fence you may want to replace, a neighbours garden at a different level etc etc. Some measurements like distance of a build from a boundary can be significant for fire regulations compliance, or for roof overhangs. It is IMO completely inadequate that domestic planning applications have absolutely no requirement to show the height or position of other houses - only the boundary/junction line. Planning officers are often young, ignorant, poorly paid, and put under pressure to approve plans in haste. How you can approve something when ignorant of its size relative to surrounding property is beyond me. You might also want to consider taking lots of photographs of your plot yourself and it's features and setting - possibly some with a tape measure in. (PS When my 3D survey was done they inserted some reference markers in some places into the ground/concrete - small studs. These allow someone returning to do another survey to take new measurments (e.g. of your completed house) and exactly relate them to the original survey measurements. (PPS You might also want to clarify ownership and rights regarding the digital topographic files - will they be retained by the surveyor ? Will you be sent a copy ? And will it be a RICS standard survey/ accepted at court ?)

I have other doors which are not new. On the new doors, it is not a case of leaving a key in the lock on the inside preventing key entry from outside. You cannot gain key entry if the door was locked from the inside and the key removed. Well yes, but far too many other things to finish first. Being dependent on a single door for entry is a risk, should the lock fail or key snap off. Or indeed if the door slams shut and you have to go after a spare key to re-enter when an ephemeral plumber visits.

My new doors were fitted over 2 years ago now. I had never needed to use them for access from the outside with the key. When I finally had a need for that I was surprised to discover that if the key had been used to lock the door from the inside, it was not possible to then use the key to unlock the door from the outside. To unlock the door from the outside with the key, you must first have locked it from the outside also. Looks like they may have a privacy euro cylinder - never knew such things existed. The fear I have these days is of locking myself out. Not sure, maybe this means you could install a privacy euro cylinder such that if you lock the door with a key from the outside, a thumb turn on the inside would then not allow it to be unlocked ?

Presumably you do have a Party Wall Agreement in place ? And you have ensured that the eaves and gutter will not project onto your land (which is illegal) and this is clearly defined in the drawings within your PWA. Presumably there are no windows in that wall and overlooking your property ? Nor vents or external pipes ?

Storage yes massively important for building. Problem is you need the space you are building to be clear so you can build it. And you need to live in your existing space. We still live in chaos but by necessity have evolved a system of boxes/crates for stuff - the PPE box, the mastics and selants box, the small tools box, the large tools box, the rolls of tape box, the useful wood offcuts box, the electricals box, the smart home box, drawers with zipbags of stuff you need to find later, the 2.4m timbers corner, the cable reels cupboard, the box of sample leftovers pieces so you know what you bought 10 months ago should you need more of it etc etc etc.,

Don't worry, your builder will take good care of this issue... (It certainly won't be dumped on your drive and left for 3 months before a labourer breaks it up with a sledgehammer and SDS drill. 🤪

Neighbour one side has a scaffold tower up and is busy replacing his rotten bargeboard. Neighbour t'other side has his builder son in slowly cladding the front and rear of their side extension. I sit in the middle working with my LVT flooring guy to complete a 1000 piece LVT jigsaw without a reference picture. Busy Street - roofer, floorer, builder.

A sketch of your planned floor makeup thicknesses and threshold design would help I think. How big is the extension ? We had a 7.6m extension and had our bifold company measure against FFL twice - once at survey, and then again at first fit visit - their laser measurements were 11mm different between the two visits (measuring over a 9m distance), even though nothing had moved. Laser levels are not guaranteed perfect and should be subject to some periodic calibration check. Over longer distances a water level is your friend - good to a couple of mm over any distance if used carefully.