Conor

We have two box beams with 15mm plates welded to the underside to take the floor joists for the mezzanine. It's 6m long and need joists at 400mm centres, and another section about 2m long. Notlooking forward to drilling all those 6mm holes. I only have a cordless drill, I'm thinking I'd need to buy a higher rpm corded drill and a big box of bits? Any other suggestion? (First image is actually of the plate that will take the bifolds, but you get the idea)

The utility companies will need to agree wayleaves with the owner. I'd look at alternatives.

Expanding foam all the way round each sheet, then 140mm zinc plated screws with 36mm countersunk washers. 600mm spacing, so three rows of 5 screws. I'll probably put a few more in to be safe. Then a bead of foam on the edges of the block before placing the adjacent block. So a couple dozen per sheet. Screws are driven in about 30mm or so and filled in with more foam. This is to prevent moisture reaching the screws and causing rust issues. With a waterproof silicon render, moisture shouldn't be an issue anyway. Alternative would be stainless steel screws and washers, but these are significantly more expensive. This is all from advice from an ICF contractor that does it all the time. EPS arriving next week so will post up a blog entry.

Thermohouse

The builder and another ICF guy have both told me not to bother with the extra as they say all their customers with standard block have very low heating bills and are perfectly happy. I'm just doing belt and braces.

Significantly. The EPS and fittings are costing me about £2k. Just my time then to fit them.

Sorry to be blunt but you'd be a fool to take on such a big project on a time + materials basis. 100% of the risk is on you. What happens if the ground works take a week longer? There a few grand on you. Bad weather slows down the block work? That's on you. One of the trades messes up and causes delays. You'll pay for that. Where's the incentive for the builder to source the cheapest materials? What's to stop him from sandbagging and slowing the work pace down? If the fixed price contracts have come in over budget, consider doing what we did. We knew a single contract for everything would be too much, so we have split the build in to smaller contracts. First was the groundworks. My mate with his digger did that. We then got a single fixed price contract put together for the main structural works - foundations, walls, floor slabs and steels. For the rest we're getting in individual trades. I've just got the scaffolding sorted, got a price from a roofer, meeting a plumber today, spark on Friday. Takes time but that's where you save the ~30% on a single main contractor. You take on more risk but it's all in smaller chunks.

1. Keep it simple. Design and construction 2. Pick smaller contractors. E.g a man with a digger will be a fraction the cost of a groundworks contractor. 3. Do what you can yourself. Phoning around and planning trades will save you a fortune compared To a main contractor.

@Mr Punter tbh it was normally a case of poor installation. E.g the connection located where the pipe was pulled to a tight radius.

We've decided to add another 100mm EPS to the standard Amvic block, bringing us to 0.12. @cbk we're about to have our thermohouse roof panels installed. Roof will be on within a week. Cost is coming in less than a cut roof. Not sure now it would compare to a standard truss roof tho.

Water is easy, turn off stopcock and cut the pipe. Telephone lines are easy to disconnect / accidentally break. Gas and electric require arranging well in advance. Your temp site connection will likely be dealt as a separate application and job to the disconnection. Fyi took 6 months to arrange my electric disconnection and temporary supply. Partly because new cable had to be brought in via my neighbour's property.

We're mid way through our 300m² build and latest cost estimate at completion is £315k. That's a 2.5 story house with basement and built to passive standards. Not doing much work myself but subcontracting most of the jobs.

The guidance in normal circumstances would be equivalent to 25mm continuous ventilation. So if you are leaving a gap for half of the continuous length, it would be 50mm wide.

Yeah, but that's wall mounted above the buffer tank / manifold so doesn't need any additional space.

I wouldn't be digging in to that slope at all without putting in sheet piles first, or at least having a survey of the garage founds and soil conditions first. The whole lot could slide in to your garden. You could take about a metre away at the very best... Anything more would be very risky without the above steps.

I was briefly working on a water meter installation project and I'd say 1 in 10 of the connections in developer estates were leaking by the time we came round to screw in the meter. Back to the OP, no harm in 32mm if it's not that more expensive. You won't see an advantage unless lots of water demand at the same time.

I mocked it up and I think you could get away with a space of about 1.2m X 2m.

Yes, a transformer would be needed. Would cost more than bringing the LV across the road.

If you're building within 1metre of a boundary the building must be made from "predominantly non combustible" materials. I.e. not timber.

You can with solarlux doors. We were in a show room where you could open a single leaf at either end and the other leafs could unpin and slide independently. They were however, £15k for 5m opening...

15mm is fine for a bath because your combi wouldn't be able to produce hot water fast enough to need larger pipe. That's exactly what I did when renovating our bathroom, ripped out the old 3/4" copper and replaced it with 15mm plastic pushfit. Took ages to fill a bath but that was because of the boiler, not the pipework.

If it's from the 70"s it's probably got asbestos in it ?

I think to cover the rear wall with tarp when it was being plastered.... they kinda got left up there for a while

You could take the top course of block off and put on a flat roof so the building is under 2.5m high? That's how I did my brewshed.

I've heard nothing but negative things about K rend here in Ireland, seems in a wet climate it's green with algae in a couple years. Even my architect that has it on his house has said not to use it (his western gable wall is green). The issue seems to be the permeability and the open texture of it. The sample cards we saw at shows we're like a rough grit sandpaper that had been painted. We're looking at alternatives for our build.