Spinny

Have heard of counter battening but was never specified or part of our plan. We wanted the ceiling height to match the main house. We don't have any floor above, it is a single storey extension. Seems like quite significant extra work, cost, and time. Is there another way ? bash them up as tight as possible with a hammer ? and/or score out a bit of plasterboard behind them ? some judicious use of a multitool ? See photos

Will need to board the ceiling in the new extension soon. Some ceiling joists sit in joist hangars which therefore protrude down below the general level of the bottom of the ceiling joists. Also one or two joists not perfectly level in places with the rest of the timbers. When it is boarded is this likely to be a problem ? What can I do about it ?

The carpet looks damp ? If so you could pull the corner of the carpet up to look underneath. Difficult to see from your photo - does the rad pipe go into the wall ? Radiator is presumably under the window then. Is the rendered wall just a garden wall / boundary wall outside ?

Wow Dave. Maybe take some clear photographs of what is there now, with a tape measure to show the degree of overhang already, and do you have your instruction not to enter your garden evidenced in any way e.g. A witness, or contemporaneous and dated handwritten notes, or a written letter to the neighbour.

It is a single ply membrane adhered to 150mm PIR with a roof felt under onto a plywood deck. Specified by the architect who seemed surprised when I said it can be like a drum in heavy rain. Sound people told me the plaster board ceiling will not be much help once I puncture it with downlights and speakers.

Depends where you plan to put the acoustic insulation. In this case it is the other way round because I am trying to muffle rain noise from a warm roof, and I wanted to keep the acoustic insulation above the downlights.

If being pumped in then be aware the first stuff out of the pipe can be very very watery and in an ideal world you would dump it outside the area. Don't get it on your hands or skin, do wash it off absolutely immediately, I can testify it burns. One of our young labourers turned up in shorts, had to run around with buckets of water to wash it off his leg. Good luck. Don't worry too much about the pipe, ours got abused but survived.

So did I as the plumber didn't bother and they were long. Missed a couple and can see the tips in the surface of the slab now.

How will they pour the concrete in ? pumped through a pipe ? How will they move across the slab area ? Walk over it ? Using boards ? Pic of my 'power float'

I have no idea. I just know that once the boundary features like a wall and fence above are all removed there will be no way to know where it was. The PWA will create a huge dispute by including undimensioned drawings purporting to show the width of an extension up to a boundary line which has been destroyed. The issue is that I have a side access passage along the outside of my property, purposely designed to be just wide enough to take stuff through (wheel barrows, wheelybins, lawnmowers, bicycles, a small minidigger, a wheelchair etc). So should the neighbour's build be even an inch or two onto my land it will create real access restrictions on my property. The owner has taken the adversarial and antagonistic route throughout, never once choosing to tackle any aspect by just talking to their neighbour. And there is no justifiable reason for them not to just be reasonable. The boundary isn't parallel to their outer wall, yet they plan to build angular rooms just so they can follow the boundary and don't loose a few square inches. Their outer wall seems to be 350mm wide when if they were so desperate for inches it could easily be 300mm wide and parallel. It is as though they are more concerned with intimidating us than the value of their own extension.

I am considering a survey but have been told it will be legally worthless unless carried out by a RICS surveyor ? I get told contradictory things at different times and by different PWS's. Whole process seems completely broken and seems designed to create disputes and not avoid them. Obviously with no definition of where the neighbour is going to build they could build anywhere they like and any disagreement about where they build is completely unresolvable. Once the land is dug up there will be no features or anything to go by. Even the most simple of questions such as what ''capping'' are you using is rejected as' you have no right to know' and 'we are not telling anyone'. Whole thing appears to be a mechanism for bullying your neighbour and stealing any land you fancy and no-one can stop you.

Thanks I am being offered only 6 and photocopied sections out of planning drawings/a cross-section which are therefore unscalable and have no marked dimensions for anything on them. I am being told that is acceptable and the PWS and the PWA do not define where the build occurs ! Whole thing becoming insane.

Maybe you could use some smart lighting and then you could adjust the colour temperature and brightness to suit. Here is one that does some zigbee stuff... https://uk.paulmann.com/smart-home/zigbee/outdoor-luminaires/ I have never used these though, so just an example, no actual experience to recommend this company or not. My outdoor lights are just a multicore armoured cable in the ground at the moment.

It is Eclisse pocket doors. I haven't resolved it yet, but is not really the fault of the pocket door system. It looks as though there must be some issue with the alignment of how it has been installed. Looks as though the pocket side is slightly leaning backward relative to the far door side. This may be because the timber studwork above the pocket side has some alignment issue. On another section of wall I had to get the builders carpenter to plane down some studwork timbers to make the wall plumb. Unfortunately the builder always sent a low paid runner to go fetch and carry stuff from the merchant where he had his trade account. Then expected the carpenter to use whatever timber the runner had delivered to site. A good carpenter would always be checking for good straight and untwisted timber at the merchant and picking through the stock as necessary, but a runner just grabs the first stuff to hand - likely that rejected by others. You want straight timber to build straight plumb walls. I have learned to run a 1.8m level over everything anyone does. I was also advised that the merchant he used stores their timber vertically, and that this is a bad idea and leads to more bends and twists - timber should be stored horizontally. I saw the Eclisse system at 2 or 3 trade shows when we were looking and was impressed by the ability to fit and remove the door, the anti-slam options and so on. If you want no architrave like us it can potentially be achieved. However their system sizes are designed for tape and joint rather than a skim plaster finish and I didn't properly understand this until I phoned them up. Seems to be because they are French I think and tape and joint is all the rage on the continent. So our kit is designed to support two layers of 12.5mm plaster board on each side of the pocket (I am using Habito board). These kits use metal stud and it has been designed with care to fit together properly, but inevitably there is still some twist in it. So definitely needs great care to install plumb in all 3 dimensions. Also if fitting in an existing shell for renovation then existing openings and studs may themselves be out of true.

For anyone having such cladding, please be aware that cedral boards don't seem to be manufactured to the highest standards. Our batch included boards with marked lines across at the end, and boards where the tongue thickness varied very significantly throwing boards out of alignment. Flaws in the board surface finish can also occur and may not be visible when wet. All of which has worked to slow installation and create bits of rework. I wouldn't like to see what some general builders might produce using it - needs care, diligence and attention to detail.

Yes Cedral do colour matched screws which are not countersunk into the board. End result is they are very readily clear pimples on the smooth cladding and obviously visible. They apparently specify or recommend they are used to secure all the top boards at 600mm centres and close to all joins. The idea being that they remain visible and accessible and are not covered by cappings, fascia etc so that boards can be removed again from the top down for maintenance etc. Definitely not a good aesthetic. Hopefully I can achieve something more acceptable. Why cedral would think that people want to spend 4 and 5 figure sums on cladding to have visible screw heads peppering the top is beyond me. Might be OK on the top of a 4 storey commercial building, but not for high spec domestic work.

@G and J and everybody, If you have ever had a Party Wall Agreement or Award, please could you tell me whether it defined the position of the build line in the agreement, and exactly how it defined this: e.g. 1) By stating measurements from known fixed points which would not be changed by the building work (e.g. distance from an existing building, triangulated measurements, professional surveyors survey measurements) 2) By measurements made by the PWS using a tape measure, and if so measurements taken from what reference points 3) By measuring from planning drawings with a defined scale but no stated measurements 4) By planning drawings annotated and labelled with measurements to a boundary or building 5) By architect construction drawings labelled with the specific measurements 6) Only by describing measurements w.r.t a feature that will be dug up and removed when the work starts 7) In some other way, if so what Many thanks for any and all responses given my situation.

Have Cedral cladding going up right now as I write. Any tips, tricks, or advice for trying to hide the cedral screws they want to put into all the top most boards which kind of spoil the look a bit ?

You would have to get it tested, and then act in accordance with the results. Twenty some years ago we had part of an artexed lath & plaster ceiling come down because of a water leak above. Tested positive for asbestos - a small percentage and well bound in - but still classified as 'an asbestos coating' at the time. And the rules for 'asbestos coatings' which also included industrial spray coatings and stuff with much higher asbestos meant you needed a specialist approved asbestos contractor to remove it. NBC suits, polythene tenting and negative pressure fans, the full works. And in our case because some had already come down the room was declared to be contaminated and almost everything in it had to be removed for destruction - TV, 3 piece suite, carpets, curtains, you name it. The wife asked if they would take me away too as I had been sitting in the room to watch TV and stuff but may have had ulterior motives. If you are looking to buy the property then it should be subject to survey and you should get a full asbestos survey done. Then the seller can reduce the price to pay for the removal work. If you get a survey done, make sure it is as comprehensive as possible and that you specify all the things you want tested around the property. We had to have an asbestos survey prior to our building work (think it may be required under HSE) and there are companies out there servicing that requirement but if you are not careful one person will visit, take 3 random samples and go again - potentially useless. Obviously a lot of people need asbestos surveys prior to building work and some companies aim to do the least possible as quickly as possible to maximise their profit in a competitive market.

Didn't know you could get crazy bendy profile like this one... https://reeltechdirect.com/products/flexible-plaster-in-led-profile Admittedly a lot of these profiles are as deep as the plasterboard. I guess maybe double boarding the ceiling is the answer or you will end up cutting right through the board ? I am putting some in rooflight upstands, but here the plasterboard attaches directly to the continuous insulated plywood upstand.

Don't all plaster-in lights like downlights just get screwed into the plasterboard and then the skim coat also helps to hold them in place. By definition you can't put a downlight underneath a joist. Don't you just need to use a plaster-in LED profile, screw it to the plasterboard and then plaster it in with the skim coat ?

Really ? I hadn't heard or realised that ? I thought a contractor with PL insurance meant they had cover for damage to third party property or life end-of. Clearly if someone starts building and the house next door falls down, or the neighbour breaks a leg when the wall falls on him or whatever - well isn't that what public liability insurance is for ? Party Wall insurance ? What is that ? Where do you get quotes for that ? Are you talking self build only or generally regarding PL insurance not covering stuff ?

Really nice work. Impressed by getting wall lights invisibly cabled onto the fencing at the back too. The slot drain looks like it has a nice metal edge - do you know which make it is ?

Is it a level threshold then ?

Very nice, really like those tiles, is it an Aco drain ?