Mr Punter

If you want to change the flats significantly it will mean fresh planning and building regs. I seem to recall 20m2 being the cut-off for mortgages. You may find that you will do better to leave it as is.

With just 50mm end bearing I think the stone lintel will look wrong. Go with 150mm minimum.

Can you do the slab removal as part of the rest of your groundworks? Get the foundations done at the same time? If so, get a BFO digger with driver. Once the slab is ripped out it will be fairly muddy. Nice to get to oversite ASAP. +1 to getting an expert to do the RAMS.

That being the case you did well to withhold payment. Can you get BCO to meet the groundworker on site to agree a workable solution? Maybe the groundworker will need to expose part of the pad to prove the depth / thickness or whatever?

I think it is down to who was responsible for getting signoff from BCO? If nothing was agreed they should know better than just pour the concrete. Was BCO ever discussed?

Sometimes they have the opposite effect as miscreants on electric motorbikes can evade police cars by zigzagging through the barriers.

I think the Optim-R is ferociously expensive. What is limiting the available height?

I use one for "adjusting" scaffold.

Without consent from the Council you risk prosecution for criminal damage. The top photo looks like a wheelchair could get through. With the bottom one it may be better to just remove the timber rail from the left side.

I assume you meant 50mm batts + 20mm woodfibre board. Do you know the old and proposed u values? Are the walls nice and dry? Have you done any external work on them?

Give it a good jetwash to remove the dusty crap.

You get those louvred vents at the top of lift shafts. I am not sure why you would have one on a garage.

Hello and welcome Philly. It sounds like you are making decent progress. Hopefully you will not have to live in a building site for too long.

A cold water accumulator with a pump may work for you.

My brother has 20m piles for his house. He should have used them for his orangery too. Instead the orangery was on a raft and had to be demolished after a few years. He is high up on clay soil 50m from a river with mature willows around. We have 18m piles but we are very near a river. With piling if the soil is weak you need to go down until you hit something to give a decent bearing.

Use a roddable bottle gulley at the bottom.

Freehold management companies need to recover all costs and this will normally be from freehold shareholders or leaseholders. The surveyor is not working for free and will bill their time which in turn will need to be recovered.

Speak to the builder and if you get no joy, contact Environmental Health and the Party Wall surveyor. Quite how they have ended up with 20m piles when (I assume) the ground investigation suggested 5m is a concern. 30 piles for a small property sounds a lot.

I think this will need a hefty amount of steel above the ground floor windows to support both leaves of wall and posts to support the corners. They will bridge the 2 leaves. It may be that the upper part is in timber frame with cladding, which would help. Either way it needs properly designing.

I think this will be a big thermal bridge and could cost several thousand. Better to put work in at the design stage to see the best solution.

It may work with bay poles. I think you should ask your SE what they suggest as sometimes the bays are structural.

I am sorry this has escalated. Do allow their structural engineer to carry out an inspection. Try to avoid this becoming a dispute, as it may affect any future sale of your property if it is not resolved. Roots from bushes should not cause a retaining wall to move so perhaps it has not been properly designed or it needs replacing.

I would not have an issue with giving access to inspect a wall. Get an assurance from the engineer that the inspection will be limited to assessing the condition of their wall and fence.

I have had 3 new fibre connections to new flats from Openreach at no cost. I guess they must subsidise them by ripping off the likes of @Bancroft.

There are brick dimensions charts that you can download.