Declan52

I used ballykelly joinery in Banbridge for mine. Got all my internal door frames from them as well.

Photos are better. We are all very very nosey even though most don't admit it!!

That would be nothing short of madness!! What kind of screed where they going to lay today in winter and expect it to be suitable to fit a kitchen on Monday?? No chance that it would be fully hardened and dry enough.

Will never go white unless you use silver sand as mentioned above.

Could you seal up an original section that is likely to get soaked in the coming months with something like Thompson's water seal. If this doesn't let any water in then it shouldn't fail. Then it's further proof that for some reason their supposedly waterproof product is actually letting water through where it settles, expands and will blow the plaster of the wall in the end.

How is it not hard work?? The beams are heavy and need moved into position manually once loaded out with a telehandler. It's not much fun filling them with blocks either. Sounds like an opinion of some one who never got their hands dirty doing one of these jobs. The digger swings the bucket in and tips it out. No humping any concrete. Just needs tampering level. Large housebuilders prefer it cause it takes zero to no skill so employ monkeys to put them in. Saves them money. Just cause they use a particular method doesn't mean it's the best. They are driven by profit not by what's the best method.

But it's not done as your finished screed. It's a sub floor which gives you a very good base to work from. Insulation on top then your chosen screed type. Having done many a concrete pour and had my back broke moving Beams around and filling with blocks and grouting them up concrete wins every single time. No risk of a block breaking and your ending up on your face when you carrying a cill or concrete lintel. Can load out the house with blocks and bricks much easier. With B&B you have to be very careful that any load is set on an internal wall which is a pain.

If you have good ground conditions and can get away with hardcore and a concrete slab then that's your best option. If you have poor ground that will shrink for eg then block and beam or a poured reinforced concrete slab is your next option. Would be madness to use block and beam if you don't have to.

@PeterW @jack Who has the pipe decoiler and their is offer from another member for the use of theirs if the original has went missing in action.

Ok we will start on the outside. There looks to be no vent strip under the tiles which would mean you could close that massive gap of. If you cover it now you won't get enough ventilation into that space and will cause more issues. Your going to have to lift the first row of tiles up and lay the strips and set the tiles and felt over the strip. Once that is done then you can cover that massive gap in with timber and then faced with the black plastic. Not sure what is actually going on with that inside. Is that some sort of drop ceiling and they have made a complete arse of putting it up and have left it way short. What exactly is above that opening if you remove the bits you have put in??? Can you see any wooden joists?? Have you access to that so you can work at it from above??

I watch a lot using IPTV and if you use a paid for VPN it doesn't restrict the speed. I use cyberghost as I can use up to 8 devices with one account. A free version is just a no if you want to watch it without buffering. I suspect using TV aerials will still be needed for another 15 years at least. Broadband speeds in many parts of the country aren't fast enough at the moment. If mine drops below 20meg then it will judder and skip a few frames. Go below 10meg and it's just not watchable at all.

Based beside me and the boss is a smart cookie. I agree they do look kind of weird but sure it would take up less room in your garden.

It's not going to hold the glass together whole but it would give whoever is underneath it an extra second to shift their ass out of the road.

It is until it moves the during drying out phase and then cracks.

Cover it with a clear plastic film. If in the highly unlikely event that it shatters then it won't rain down on what's below.

These blocks where used many years ago and now sadly are starting to crumble. A lot of peoples homes are ruined. It's a massive issue for the government of the rep of Ireland to overcome. It was mainly concrete blocks from one company in Donegal that had mica in them. A quick Google will tell your more than I will.

The burn pot on mine is fairly small. Wouldn't hold more than a hand full of pellets. Due to the holes in the base to allow air flow in to sustain the burn this area is pretty thin so just burns through. Once this happens the pellets fall through and the burn isn't consistent.

I have been using a pellet boiler for 7 years now and it's done what is meant to do. Mine is sited in my sunroom so it's more stylish looking than the other larger units that hold a few hundred kg of pellets. Mine at most will hold 25kg loaded in via a hatch on the top of the stove. When I made the choice to go down this route near 9 years ago wood pellet systems where very popular in NI so had plenty of options to where I could buy one plus very good access to servicing etc. Once our local knobs in government messed up the RHI scheme which resulted in it closing, the whole renewable industry in NI died overnight. For the past 5 years any repairs that where required I done them myself. Luckily enough they are used widespread in the rest of the EU so there is plenty of websites to help. Same goes with servicing. I strip it down once a year and clean it all out. In total I have replaced the burn pot twice and the air intake sensor twice. Approximately £300 costs for 7 years isn't that bad. We are lucky that balcas have a factory here making wood pellets so I have easy access to fuel. The cost per tonne has stayed relatively the same at around £265 for the past 4 years. If I had to make the same choice now between a pellet boiler, an ashp, oil burner or gas I would go for an ashp. They where pretty close at the time 9 years ago it was just the fact I didn't know a single person here who had one I could quiz about them plus there was hardly any companies doing them so if any thing went wrong who could I get out to fix it. They do work but like every single heating system if it's not sized correctly or installed correctly it won't work at it's most efficient.

Paint the cladding white. Get the job passed and signed off and then go back to brown if you really want to.

As long as you're in the seat and not holding on to the metal frame your ok. A young lad was killed here a few years ago because he was standing at the door holding on to the frame when they hit a power cable.

Massive blue flash and then the oh oh moment. Some kind soul had bought a field and stripped it out of hundreds of tonnes of sand and gravel and being the responsible land owner they filled in the 8m hole with medical waste. Next guys along to bring power to a factory dug across the field at barely 500 mm and kicked the cable in covered it over and said nothing. And then I got sent to it. Was near 5pm and had been digging in some lovely material and then bang. Had to dig round the cable to allow the repair team some sound footing to fix the cable. They where very quick that day. No standing at the side of that trench looking at the sky.

I used to find services in roads and footpaths as a job. All the maps and service drawings are pretty much useless. Normally they are drawn to such a scale that the service could be anywhere between the hedge, path and first meter into the road. There is only so much you can do to scan the ground. Cat and gennny are the most useful but they won't pick up gas, water and sewer unless they have tracer tape above them. Hand digging is the only method to find something you don't want to hit but for a long trench it's just not going to work. Use your eyes and look for manholes, telegraph poles, previous scars in the path or road, bt boxes etc. All the street furniture will give you a clue of what's down there. Even when taking all possible precautions you will still hit things. I have got covered in everything from water to number 1s and 2s, hit gas pipes,bt cables and the largest electric cable I've hit was 33kv which was a massive blue flash and a large hole in the digger bucket.

It will vary day by day. He might spend one day going round and just building the corners up which is time consuming and won't look like they have done much. But the next day they will put corner blocks on and build away and it will be a wow they really did do well today. Same thing goes when your at cill height. You spend most of the time cutting blocks and plumbing the revels. They really should be covering their wages so should be building upwards of 300 blocks a day as a pair.

With the way you have insulated between the truss in the pic in reality it's not going to be worth the amount of work needed to fix the issue. Cover it over and live with it.