Conor

@tongfather I had exactly the same in my rental. I just used silicone of the same colour and put in in the gap where the glass chip was.... The guy never noticed it when doing our moving out inspection. Happy days.

Is there a gap between the underside of the glass edge and the worktop surface? Seems to be the way a lot are installed. Glass is crap under compression so a prime failure point. I put a good thick bead of sealant around. The edge of our hob. So far, so good...

Depends on what you want to do. If it's for just planning and visualisation, then any of the free online apps would do. If you are talking about actual design drawings for building control, engineering or construction.... Then that's a different ball game. Most professionals would use autocad or the architecture version of it. It's great, once you've spent a year or two learning how to use it!

Sounds like marketing BS, as Mr Harris says, all resistance electrical heating is the same in terms of efficiency and running costs. No different than using a 30 year old electric oil radiator. Only differences would be the rates at which heat is transferred from the element to the environment.

Thanks Declan. Yeah, I think we'll go for the raked out look. Will have to check this all with the engineer tho. Thanks Tony, I did Google but never found that site. Bricks will be easy to clean, weak lime mortar. Already taken a couple walls done and the mortar crumbles away. Thinking it would be a good way to use a portion of the 25k bricks we'll have piled up at the back...

Doesn't really work like that. Yes, you have to calculate how much static and live load a part of a structure must support. E.g. for a floor span in a residential setting, it would be in the region of 3kn/m² . But for foundations and a floor slab, the job is to transfer the building loadings safely to the ground below. So it's not just compressive strength of the concrete.

Anybody have any idea what the cost comparison is between block laying and brick laying in terms of labour only if everything else equal? This is for single skin, finished quality internal walls for our basement. Is brickwork double? Triple? Have a choice between dense blocks with pointed mortar then painted, or reclaimed red brick, pointed. We have a limitless supply of redbrick from the demolition, interested to know of this will end being comparable to a dense block wall (not bothering rendering the walls in the basement, cheap n cheerful finish). Thanks.

standard would be C25 or C30 concrete mix. Would be either 100mm or 150mm thick with steel mesh about 50mm below the FFL. Ring beam would be a bit thicker with 12/14mm rebar and eps300 under it. All depends on your wall makeup and ground conditions.. Heavier the building, thicker and wider the ring beam needs to be. I'm looking at 900mm wide and 300mm thick for my ICF build. Rest of slab will be 100mm thick with just mesh and EPS100 under. With a timber building, you may not need anything more than just the 100mm/150mm thick raft. Ensure slab is properly protected from temperature extremes during the curing process to prevent cracking if it's your finished floor.

The meter will have a small pinning dial that represents 1 litre per revolution (normally). Have a gander. But that leaking toilet cistern is barely over a couple litres per hour. There could be a more significant pipe leak somewhere outside or under the property. A quick test is to turn off the stop tap under the kitchen sink and have a look at the outside meter dial. You'll know instantly if there is an issue.

All things being equal, you get a higher flow rate through a 22mm pipe than a 15mm pipe. But in your case, the combi boiler won't be able to produce enough hot water to make use of the extra capacity in the pipe. When I did my bathroom, I ripped out all the old 1" copper and replaced with 15mm plastic. Venturi effect is something completely different. It describes how a sudden change in fluid velocity has a corresponding change in pressure.This is how those wine aerotors / guzzlers work. A small hole at a narrow point in the tube where you effectively have negative pressure, draws in air from the outside. Going back a century or so, this is how a lot of large water meters worked. The ratio of the lengths/diameters of two opposing cones would produce a predicted pressure change depending on the flow rate. So by measuring the upstream and downstream pressures, you could calculate the flow through the meter. Genius. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Fluids/venturi.html

We're in a strange enough scenario... We bought a house to renovate but it just needed too much work. So we currently have a residential mortgage on it. In order to knock and rebuild, we needed a self build mortgage. The only company that would offer us an 80% LTV on the site (luckily the site cleared with FPP is worth same as what we paid for the house) was ecology. They'll then pay out in stages as the build progresses. Only NI bank that would do similar was first trust... But only offers 50% LTV. Where are you building? I can highly recommend FMK architecture in Ahoghill if you don't yet have an architect.

That's actually pretty reasonable and typical for Northern Ireland. Land, labour and quarry materials are far cheaper than in rest of UK (e.g. I got a quote for pump suitable concrete at £60 per cube). I'm budgeting £1k/m² as well but aiming to come in lower.

Sell your current house and rent for a year while you build. Get a self build mortgage with a high LTV (e.g. 80% from ecology) and make sure you've always enough cash for the next stage, so you are never totally dependent on the next draw down. That's exactly what we're doing. Yes, renting for a year will cost us about £9k, but it's giving us access to £80k cash that will mean we have over 50% of the build budget in the bank, will always have a buffer during the build. (I'm in NI as well, and all of the local banks were pretty much useless, so we went with Ecology)

That's why I'm waiting until the weekend... Need some help lowering it down!

5min job on Sunday night. Easy peasy. Just need to clean out the rust and debris and lift it down. Luckily only needed to cut it in half to make it small enough to fit through the hatch. But the Makita saw I bought cut through it no bother, would happily cut it again.