Declan52

Steel planks are lighter but there isn't much in it. Better grip in the winter as timber planks with frost are just not much fun.

You can. https://www.goartificialgrass.co.uk/artificial-lawn-c25/10-00m-to-19-99m-c44/wembley-stripe-30mm-artificial-grass-p867

I used tobermore for my paving. They do good quality stuff. Not much more than the £14 per sqm I paid last year. Acheson and Glover would be another decent brand.

I dug mine out, levelled it and seeded and stood back with great pride and watched as I grew weeds and plenty of them. I used every thing available to kill them and promote nice grass but after 4 years I gave up and dug it all out and put down artificial grass. Best thing I ever done. I hit it with the hose every month to get rid of leaves etc and it looks as good as the day it was put down. Just be careful of you go down the artificial route as all the important work is underneath so it's never seen. Skimp here and it will look poor in a few months when it sinks. Plenty of hardcore and sharp sand for drainage.

As long as the wooden floor is glued to the concrete it will transfer the heat like tiles. You can go for semi solid or bamboo as these are more stable so less likely to twist. For carpet you need to get one with a low tog rating. Same for the underlay, it's different to ordinary underlay. My underlay want much more expensive but my carpet choice was limited. Don't buy either underlay or carpet without seeing the data sheet which will tell you the tog rating. A rating of 2 tog is what you should aim for but obviously even less would be better.

Yeah have used a few of them as well, pretty decent for the price. I put a dab of silicone on the head incase they would rust and stain in a few years.

I used hammer fixings for mine.

It doesn't really matter what floor its on you still have to tackle this from the top and work your way down. Chimneys will have been filled with everything that was at hand, rubble broken bricks etc, when it was getting built so the only safe way is to start at the top and take it down but by bit.

Did you try covering a small section with some polythene and see if it starts to sweat. A dry floor won't.

I bought a cheap Chinese projector from Amazon. It gives me a HD quality screen of 3m X 2.5m at it's max. The smaller I make it the clearer it becomes. As my walls are painted white I didn't have to buy a screen. For sound I just use a soundbar with a sub woofer. I connect my firestick to it via a HDMI port so can use it to stream films, TV series or football or whatever else I need. All in counting the extra long cables as everything is on the other wall, sods law, it was less than £200.

You could use them but they will have a knock on effect when you come to door frames being much wider than normal studding. They will need to be pretty straight though.

@Conor I came in at £490 m² but as has been mentioned I done a lot of the work myself. More or less everything except the plastering, plumbing and electrical work. Took nearly 2 years on my days off work and to be honest I was physical and mental wreck by the end. A lot of materials are much cheaper here esp things like concrete and blocks due to the amount of quarries we have. As yours is going to be ICF the price you can negotiate for your concrete will have a big impact on your final price. You have stoneyford , ready use, ready mix, carryduff concrete and northstone all close by so you should be able to get a good deal. The big cost will be labour so everything you can do yourself will save you some money. But be realistic with what you can actually do.I worked on sites for near 15 years so had plenty of knowledge of all the different trades that need to be done.

Look at the difference in the core bit you have and what @Onoff has. It must have 3 times the amount of cutting edges. That's your problem. What should take 30mins is taking 90mins.

Here it's a council employee who inspects every house for building control. It works great. They are pretty fair but you just know you don't try to do lazy things like in that report. Each house is inspected at the relevant stages and if it's not right he soon let's you know. There have been many a mad Friday where he has came to do his final inspection and things haven't been right. He won't sign it of so the people can't move in so the boss doesn't get his money. What ever is wrong soon gets sorted. I think it's just crazy that your allowed to inspect 1 house and that will do for another 5,6,7,8. If they done that with anything else from TVs to cars and they came across faults there would be uproar. You wouldn't be happy if you bought a brand new car and then soon noticed that it had no heat shield on the exhaust and you could fry bacon on the floor. And then dealer told you he couldn't understand what had happened as there was one in the same car he sold yesterday. Your already paying for inspections so how about they actually check what they are getting paid to do. It would have been pretty obvious when that frame was getting put up that it had no fire check barriers. The brickies maybe asked why there was none and got told to build away.

When I light my wbs the heat travels throughout the house by convection. I have a big open-plan kitchen sunroom next to through living room and a large open hallway and staircase so the heat travels round the house this way. Mhrv won't move any decent amount of heat. If it's a flame effect you could look at bio Ethanol type units. They give of the look but no heat or fumes. My house isn't passive but if you close the living room door it can quickly get close to 30 degrees which is unbearable. If I light the wbs in the winter the heat will stay in the house for 3-4 days depending on how cold it is outside. I love mine and haven't bought any wood in 5 years as I also had a lot of trees on my site plus all the scrap wood I gathered up during the build. In use a 350l thermal store for my water needs. It gets heated to 67 degrees and from this I draw all my heating and dhw. I have very gd water pressure so both my showers are really powerful. I do loose heat and the hotpress does get warm but it's never that bad. We did start of with the water temp at 80 degrees , plumbers!!, but after living in it for a few weeks we got to 67 which works for us. I also have pv and a diverter so from around now till October the tank gets heated for free with maybe me needing to fire up the pellet stove 3 to 4 times when we get our usual run of crap weather.

I have an island that is roughly 1m X 2.5m. I have the hob in the bottom right hand corner. It works brilliant in our house as we have an over hang on 2 sides so can sit 5 easily so when your doing a nice Sunday breakfast the family can sit and watch you like little puppies waiting on their food. If you like baking then it also gives a really good space to roll out dough and prepare all your ingredients. Then if you are having a house party you can get near 15 people round drinking and eating from good sitting in the middle. Think about extraction of your going to put the hob in the island plus things like pop up sockets to plug other things into. Then you have lighting to consider so its well lit up. I have 6 downlights over mine.

If it's took that long then you need a better core bit. If it's only block then just stitch it with a masonry bit then use a the heavy hammer to burst it through.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://hymax.no/u/Kubota-V-manual-U20-3-25-3.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjI0N3Cq_XhAhXwxoUKHdeCDUMQFjAKegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw2SggWpZTmD-43fbJGBlCWB Is this not it???

As above he will just swap out the engine oil and hydraulic oil and if needed coolant. He will have a checklist of all the hydraulic connections and will check these for leaks. The 90 degree bends on the boom are usually the first to go. He should check the track and carrier rollers , the big rollers that make it move, for any wear as these aren't cheap to replace. Should check the track tension as well. The carriage bearing underneath as well. Is he an authorized dealer type service guy or some one who knows some one?? When finished he should have a fair collection of used oil and empty grease canisters.

I would say that bit isn't helping. There isn't much of the diamond stuff on it. https://www.redbanduk.co.uk/102-to-152mm-o-d-wet-diamond-core-bit-1-1-4-unc-female You would have been better hiring a complete unit like this pro drill and bit n this page. https://www.hss.com/hire/c/breaking-and-drilling/diamond-drills

Use a thermal camera to locate the damaged pipe. It will be easily found. In my previous house I had a radiator spring a leak and put many litres of dirty water over carpet,bedding and curtains all which needed binned. Had a few leaks on fittings as well with the downstairs living room flooded on boxing Day which ended up an insurance job as the wooden floor was destroyed. I like my ufh as it's a nice heat to live with. You don't have a warm part of the room and a cold part it's all just nice. Walking round in your socks with the floor being warm is just a different sensation. I have rads up stairs and yes they are great as they heat the kids rooms up in under an hour but the heat doesn't last as long as downstairs, within 2 hrs that warm feeling is gone even though the rooms aren't cold. It takes about 60mins to start to feel some heat with the ufhbut that heat in the floor could still be there in 4 -5 hrs later. If I take the run of myself and build another house no question it will have ufh.

You missed your chance Ian. You dangling in between the joists checking your crown jewels where still attached while Kevin stood by commenting on your eco durisol blocks would have made gd TV.

Mine is a block and block chalet bungalow in a L shape. It's a 4 bedroom 3 bathroom unit with 2 large bedrooms upstairs. The out side of the L is a big sunroom approx 5m X 5m. The main advantage I would say with block construction is you aren't having to pay out large sums of money straight away. If you are going to manage the build then it's a week by week cost for labour and then the purchase of what ever materials you need. With timber frame you will need to find a considerable amount more out less straight away. I didn't build any dormer windows as they are tricky to detail correctly so have roof lights in the roof plus large windows at both gables. I also went with attic truss to get the roof on quicker than a cut roof. The only thing I would change would be I would have made it a warm roof construction but at the time money was tight so want an option. As far as good insulation and airtightness both are possible with either method on construction. Each will need specific detailing no matter way you go.

So what is the build method you have chosen that requires this type of policy.

No just not true. If like the vast majority of members here you play nice then your posts don't get subjected to any kind of moderation. It's in the terms and conditions that you signed up to when you joined this forum that if you post something which doesn't adhere to these rules then it gets moderated. It's that simple.