TerryE

Not sure about that one, though I do admit to having the top of an index finger having a slightly flattened profile and somewhat deadened touch senses as a result of a mindfart using a power plane a few years back. They plane off finger tips very effectively if you are silly enough to let them get near the cutter. Anyway, welcome!

Some of my racking had sprung so I used screws because they had better grab to pull the OSB in tight. But if you are fixing virgin OSB to your studwork then you shouldnt have this issue. But why every 50mm? The main ranking stiffness is a combination intrinsic stiffness of the OSB and the grab between the OSB and the studwork due the static resistance between them. Going from 150mm centres to 50mm centres would make bugger all difference in a properly cross racked frame.

@MikeSharp01, I didn't bother buying any nailers -- though I do have a budget Screwfix tacker. Couldn't see the point. Though since banging in ~1,500 nails when putting up ~50m of shiplap fencing, I've had nothing but grief with my lateral triceps which triggers RSI-style pain in my upper arms most evenings / nights -- so lots of broken sleep. So my conclusion is that it doesn't just take a decent hammer and a modicum of fitness to do a lot of nailing: you either need to build up your muscles slowly or to use automation to avoid the issue. In retrospect, I just wish that I'd hired or bought a decent nailer!! Any nailer would have been better than the penalties for not using one

Ian, isn't your Wintergarden unheated and entirely outside your temperature controlled living environment? Looking at the drawings it looks like you've got steel verticals carrying the horizontal steel members, and these are effectively external structural members. So why do they need insulated? Even if these are close coupled to the blockwork, then this is on a corner and the extra Psi factor here will be small. Even you are worried about this, then a small airgap (say 5-10mm with spacers between the fasteners to the steel and the blockwork) would drop this 10× to negligible.

I think that its basically the same argument as with the electrics. I did all of ours (as well as the plumbing, gas included) in our current house and have slept comfortably for 30 years or thereabouts. We've got more than enough to do will all of the other second fix, without getting into pissing competitions with the BInsp, so if my main building contractor's recommended gas installer gives me a reasonable price, then I will go with this.

Just remember that if a thief uses a hidden key to get in, then you can forget your insurance. There are only so many places to hide a key; thieves know most of them and none are approved by insurers! Decent key safes are approved by most insurers, but a jam jar or your £30 eBay version probably isn't.

+1 to that. Just use a decent safe and decent anchors. We fitted one for my parents when they became dependent on the daily carers visiting, and like it so much that we bought one for our own front door. If you think about it, most are positioned so that they are only visible to house callers. In our case it has a discrete cover and when I've mentioned it to friends who visit regularly, they usually say what key safe? It only has to be more secure than the alternative ways of breaking in (like using a typical barrel lock on your doors).

Quoting is one thing. Understanding is another @Sensus, Martin, I wasn't talking about other's generalisations, just yours w.r.t. to me and Jeremy. But will you ever speak to me again if I admit that (to my knowledge) I've never read a book or learned paper written by an architect -- other than an interesting short paper by Caliwag on eBuild? I accept the value of an architect where you need one, but I don't think that a professional architect is always appropriate or cost effective in some self-build designs, much in the same way that a hammer is an essential tool for the toolbox, but it makes a bloody useless screwdriver.

@Sensus, I want to disagree with you on this one. In my view, an understanding of thermal bridging is more to do with engineering, material sciences and physics. I wonder how many architects have heard of Fourier's Law or the heat equation or know how to go about solving it or to use packages such as HEAT3D or other more general maths libraries? (The sort of thing that I discussed in this blog post). Your statement is a generalisation, but you have no knowledge of individuals' expertise, so it is dangerous to claim it as an induction. For example I think that Jeremy, I and at least a couple others on this forum have the professional and academic backgrounds to hold our own in front of a whiteboard with any architect that you could suggest on this particular topic.

Woooo-you I would suspect that quite a few of the self-builders here could give 90% of architects a run for their money when it comes to understanding cold bridging issues

I am not sure how much further up that scale to put most architects!

Or more realistically if looks fine until the first winter and them it slowly falls apart over the next 5-10, resulting in sporadic but heavy attacks of ear ache from Faye.

Just to pick up a precautionary from your title: "How hard can it be?" The risk is that your homebew brick might look OK, only for you to discover later that the brick doesn't weather well. A typical firing for small scale production might be a day plus and then a natural cooling period of days. This doesn't scale well down to a batch size of one or a few bricks.

Alternatively as for the DWG file and use an Atutocad viewer or something like VariCAD (free) Viewer and print off the PDFs from that. This also has the advantage that you can take measurements direct off the drawing.

@Alphonsox, you should see Ian's previous YouTube link on this. I spent about 15mins looking at all of the techniques to pile with stone, injected concrete, the works. I know that I am sad but I found it fascinating.

We went around the review loop 3 times with our TA and then had to do a MMA which required another. I then got to Design Review F with my frame and slab manufacturer and we still missed a couple of things. With a passive house and achieving target performance, the devil is in the detail.

@AliG, but when was it built? BRegs do change over time, but are applied retrospectively.

@Nickfromwales C'mon he's just another anal member of this forum, just like you and me!! We all just have our own anal peculiarities -- or at least that's what Jan keep telling me.

One that @Sensus might be able to clarify, but I am confused here. Whether we like it or not, most Local Authorities now have to run their planning services under cost recovery targets. If you want to engage constructively with the LPA then PPA is their cost recovery mechanism for doing so. There are normally defined fee schedules and service levels, and as Sensus says, you can use this as a mechanism for putting obligations back on the LPA to provide data within response targets. If you've spent £5K on consultants, then surely you've been through one or two rounds of PPA at a £100 or so each? Or does the consultant have a coherent and credible rationale for not engaging with the LPA? OK, this might draw up battle lines, but isn't it better to know what the opposition's position is and to spend your money and resources on battles that you need to fight and not on ones that the LPA don't even want to have?

Hugh, how substantial is the studwork? Is it 38×89 CLS or better? And at what centres? I realise that this might seem harsh, but I am not really sure that you can really blame this one entirely on the installers. All stairs need a structural stringer of some form either explicit or derived from the wall. Even with a decent CLS studwork, my own preference would be to brace this before adding the PB, either with decent dwangs following the line of the stairs or an extra vertical CLS members at 90° to the main studs screwed in them -- again before PBing -- to give you a wide fixing point. This type of stringerless staircase puts a significant load on a stud wall and more than a non-loadbearing studwork is really designed to take. I suspect that the stairs have hidden fixings pre-drilled into the stairs so that you've got little or no play in positioning these fixings and hence they normally won't be aligned to the vertical studs. I can't think of any easy quick fix here, and I would be personally wary of "quite straightforward" fixes: Who is taking the risk if the fix doesn't work as envisaged? You need to be confident that the fix both works and achieves the final finish that you are seeking without the wall finish starting to break up after a year or two. This type of stair makes its impact by having a very clean wall line and any additional stringers or cutting out the PB on the stair side will be difficult to add the bracers without spoiling that clean line look. Any flex or vibration in the stairs will tend to break up any patching. What is on the other side of the hall? You might be able to add the bracing dwangs from the wrong side of the wall, and fix / bond them to the PB and between studs without compromising the PB on the stair side. This opposite side won't be under the same load as the stair side and so the PB repairs should a lot more solid. If necessary you can always add another skim coat to the entire wall if you aren't satisfied with the repair. Ask them how often the stairs need anchored? Every stair or once per metre or what? Clearly if you only need to add bracing every alternate 40 (or 60 )cm then this would be better.

As Bitpipe says there is no protection, but protection against what? With a Swift Xfer, you initiate the transfer to the chosen recipient so this removes a whole class of risks against fraudulent use of your card. The normal German consumer protection applies in the case of companies like Megabad, which also have impeccable trading credentials. When you cost any money deal, your need to be careful about the rate you buy at. With our account we get 1% above inter-bank rate. You might be able to find bettter but this is still a lot better than losing 2% plus the Fx rates that most CCard supplkiers charge.

BTW we've mentioned this before but its well worth while pegging in some rebar spikes at least 2m out from the footprint of the slab so that you can quickly put in sight-lines / taut lines for the main and side elevations of the slab so you can be sure of the exact position of the slab at all stages of the groundworks. There's no point in pegging out the corners themselves because you'll lose these pegs as soon as anyone does anything!

@ProDave, This is in the Scottish BRegs isn't it? Yet in rest of the UK roofs are rarely sarked. Our timber frame' warm loft roof was sarked during erection, and the frame is just so much more rigid and weatherproof.

All roof felts should be a non-tenting type, so the the snow shouldn't be an issue. IMO, strong winds are going to be more of a risk. Ours was felted when the frame was put up in Nov 2015, but the slates didn't go on until early February. We went around ours and made sure the overlaps were properly stapled down (our roof is sarked) so that there were no lifts or pockets where strong winds could get under the felt. We also put some temporary battens along the verges for the same reason. We had no problems.

@dogman, Ditto 1m. We actually got MBC to include laying the hardcore and doing the compacting in their price. The crew were very particular in doing this in 50mm layers, whacking down each before laying the next. They went to some lengths to get each layer flat to within 5mm or so and the last one to a better tolerance than that. I asked the crew boss why since it was going to be covered by the slab, and his answer was: the risk of differential settlement. Doing it in 5cm layers ensured that the compaction was thorough and uniform. He said the last thing that you wanted when you came to the concrete pour was some part of the slab to drop a cm, say, relative to the rest as this could bugger up the mould and the pour. Incidentally this is the reason why they often specify a land drain and a course (no fines) hardcore -- to ensure uniform drainage for the same reason. @DavidFrancis David, we don't mind them advertising our site, and we'd love other suppliers and related sites to do the same. This is very different from allowing any supplier to openly advertise here. On the other hand we do want members to give open and honest opinions of supplier performance, when based on personal experience -- so long as they declare any financial interest before doing so. (E.g. Jeremy Harris wrote up some excellent stuff on his SunAmp installation, but openly stated that he'd got a discount on his kit if he agreed to write it up. The moderators were entirely happy with this because we were sure that JSH would be honest in what he wrote, whatever.)