vivienz

Can anyone point me in the direction of an idiot's guide to the kit needed for all the foul water kit that I need to have in between the pipes coming out of my slab and into the sewage treatment plant? I'm thinking of things like inspection chambers, risers, joints, pipes, etc. The reason behind this is that my external foul water drainage was due to be done imminently but the figure that my groundworker came back to me today is astronomical. I suspect that he has loaded the quote on materials and need to price these up to see whether I'm being tucked up or, in fact, I've greatly mis-judged the cost of this part of the works.

I posed a question. Onoff was enthusiastically in the affirmative. Filthy beast!

Roger the Cabin Boy?

Surely the massage setting will just drill a hole in the top of your head?

I have a floor standing full spectrum lamp that I use as task lighting, particularly for sewing. It's actually a medical lamp made by Androv. I've never noticed myself suffering from SAD but I do know that if I work beyond 10pm with the use of this lamp, I struggle to get to sleep at my normal time of 11pm. Usually, I fall asleep very quickly and this is one of the few things that affects me like this. I can't say that I've ever noticed getting a tan from it, mind you.

Giving this a little bump as my acquaintance has come back with a very detailed summary of his query regarding the properties of different products for his replacement windows. Hello Vivien Thanks for your, and others (the "hive mind"), interest and assistance. I hope that I can summarise the context and our objectives sufficiently succinctly. Our house started off as a low-efficiency 1950s concrete block cavity wall ('reconstructed' Bath stone) horror, with Crittall windows, but over the past 30 years we have increased the energy efficiency considerably. So each small improvement does make a noticeable difference. Back in the late 1980s we installed thermal-break aluminium double-glazing from Smart Systems, using a Bristol installer. The windows were fairly cutting edge at the time, with 28mm glazing, and the fairly narrow aluminium section kept the look of the original Crittall windows fairly well. Smart Systems have grown over the years and we used their current windows when we altered our kitchen 5 years ago. Now, as the 30 year old windows are in generally poor condition, we plan to replace all the other windows with Smart Systems current Alitherm 300 system, with 28mm argon-filled DG units. The question then arises as to whether we should go a step beyond standard DG units, at least in some of the windows? Our primary and possibly sole objective is to improve insulation, as we are replacing relatively large windows in both our dining room and lounge. A secondary objective, if achievable, would be to reduce solar gain in our front-facing bedrooms, which catch the full afternoon and evening sun during the summer and can reach around 27 degrees C during the evening. However we do not want glass which is, or appears to be, tinted or reflective compared with standard glass. Our proposed window installer is currently suggesting that we use "Planitherm" glass (from Saint-Gobain, www.planitherm.com) for additional insulation in the dining room and lounge windows, and we have not yet discussed the bedrooms. Attached is a photo of the west-facing corner of the house taken at 3.50pm today (equivalent to 2.50pm in the summer), and the sun can clearly be seen shining onto both the south-west and north-west side and front elevations. It is perhaps surprising how much sun in fact falls on the front north-west facing elevation even at this time of the year, and during the summer it has sun from around 2pm until sunset. The large window in the photo is the main dining room window, 2.45m wide by 1.8m tall, the sliding doors on the right of the dining room will be replaced by fixed windows as we never use the doors, and the front-facing end of the lounge can be seen to the left of the photo. The main bedroom window is above the main window of the dining room. I'd be very interested to hear if anyone has any experience of or comments about Planitherm 'Energy Standard' or similar products, which I assume are coated on the inward facing face of the inner pane to reflect heat back into the rooms. Do they noticeably decrease heat loss? Is, for example, the benefit of using a glass which is coated to retain heat within the rooms negated or outweighed by the solar gain within sun-facing rooms on sunny summer days? We could perhaps use Planitherm in just the lounge windows, as one end is rear-facing anyway and the front-facing end (in the photo) is the least affected by summer sun. And do any of these products look tinted or reflective, not least because we regularly have birds fly into our windows and any additional reflection of the surroundings would presumably make this worse. We would be very grateful for any feedback.

Well done!

Do you know what your ground is like? It would be worth finding out for sure just what you are building on before committing to a particular route. For example, my site is clay and the foundations and piles weren't too bad on costs, but the price of all the muckaway has been enormous. Better to know at the outset.

@ultramods I will put a separate post in the kitchens section so that it's easier for others to find for reference - will post tomorrow morning.

I got the dehumidifier because I wanted to follow on with the mist coat as soon as possible after the plastering. The team was completing one room at a time, so i was able to get in quickly but there was plaster and mist coat spraying going on simultaneously, which meant really high humidity levels. It worked a treat. I have a wide variety of extendable poles, none of which seem to fit any of the roller frames! Bending down isn't an issue but reaching ceilings is - I did the final coat on the inner ceiling square by hand with a roller as I wanted it to be as close to perfect as possible and couldn't achieve that level of finish with the sprayer, especially in the recess. I felt like i had whiplash when i finished it! The result was worth the effort, though. As for sanding, I have only had to do the tiniest amount because the plastering is so good; I got off very lightly there. The scaffold tower is mine - about £250 as I recall and incredibly useful. I shall be keeping hold of that. I can assemble and dismantle it by myself and the variable platform height is useful. The PB lifter is on hire from Sydenhams but I would have bought one if I had known how useful it is but it's a bit late now. The vacuum is from Aldi. Rubbish bag with it but replacements easily available from ebay. A reasonable machine for £49.

Oh dear, sorry for the top tip delat, Weebles. The karndean will have a latex feathering screed put down first. Thus and the flooring itself will only come to about 6 or 7mm. Not much depth at all.

Thanks, @newhome probably some time in March, at least that's what I'm hoping for.

Oooerr, get me! 3 bedrooms and a ceiling feature are about all I have in common with that place!

A question asked from a state of ignorance! What distance should there be between the brackets that support guttering?

Thanks, chaps. All hail the hive mind!

The front edge of the frame has a narrow upstand made from ply, which is what gives it the appearance of depth. This was then beaded along the bottom edge and the whole thing was plastered.

I should be getting my perimeter land drains and foul water drains put in soon. My groundworks guy has, to date, supplied labour only with my purchasing any materials. He is putting a price together for the drainage and seems keen to include a particular brand of pipes in his quote (Hepworth, as I recall). Does anyone have any particular view on this? I would prefer to buy the materials myself as he isn't VAT registered and I would be able to reclaim on the materials. Thanks.

Yup. About 12 weeks lead time and 400+ per door.

I was planning a rainwater harvesting system but it was just too expensive. Several thousand pounds plus the cost of the groundworker and plant hire to get it done. I shall be sticking with water butts around the greenhouses for watering the plants.

It's 3 weeks since my last blog entry and, as usual, things have been moving at a pace. The difference with the most recent round of work, though, it that the building is starting to look like a liveable house rather than a construction site. This is largely due to the glory coats of plaster and paint, but far more than that has been keeping everyone busy. The boarding started in earnest before Christmas and so the plasterers were in bright and early in the new year. We've got through an astonishing amount of board of various types - I thought I'd calculated reasonably well and had a mahooosive delivery of the stuff a while back, but it all seemed to disappear and the building was hungry for more. I bought all the board from Sydenhams as I found their price to be competitive. I've used standard 12.5mm plasterboard on all external walls, 15mm acoustic on all ceilings and internal walls, moisture board for bath/wet rooms, and pink fire board for the garage walls and ceiling. The garage is attached and so building regs require a fire door (FD30, sourced from Enfield Doors, though I've since found cheaper suppliers when looking at other stuff) and fire board throughout the garage, but only a single layer as there is no habitable space above it. I've had a board lifter on hire as it really helps the team position the boards up onto the ceilings without dropping anything on themselves or damaging either themselves or the boards. Here is the board going up on the lounge/dining area towards the kitchen area. The orange frame is the plaster board lifter. The black thing outside the window is my sewage treatment plant tank, which will be installed in a couple of weeks(ish). Looking in the opposite direction towards the lounge area: There have been plenty of plasterboard offcuts and so we have followed @JSHarris's tip of stuffing as much of this into the stud walls before boarding over. Double bubble - increasing the heat retaining ability of the house and no paying expensive disposal fees on waste plasterboard. As well as the boarding and plastering, first fix is underway, getting all the wiring, sockets and switch positions in and running vast amounts of cable through the building for all sorts of stuff. It's not just a case of chucking the cable in, he's done a great job of working out the flow of the building and the people in it, and how the building's circuitry should function best to suit them. It's a pity that it isn't more visual, but suffice it to say that at the last count, something like 2.9km of cable has gone into the building. It's in there somewhere! The room that forms the greater part of the ground floor is the kitchen/dining/lounge area and it's a very large space. From the outset, I've wanted to achieve some form of visual separation of the living area but without putting physical barriers in the way. It seems a waste to have gone to such great effort to create a lovely large space like that to then chop it up and close it in. I had inspiration for the solution from a couple of sources, the first of which is a tiny, crappy image on Pinterest when I was browsing cinema rooms. The second came about from chatting to another BH member, @Dreadnaught and a suggestion someone made to him to vary the heights of the ceiling throughout his proposed build. From this, I decided that I wanted a dropped section, like a frame, on the ceiling above the lounge area, with lighting recessed into the inner lip of the dropped section. Everyone pulled together really well to meet the challenge, and worked out what was needed from the carpentry, boarding, plastering and electrics contingents. The full ceiling was boarded out first, then the studwork frame put over it. The electrics were run through, then the frame was boarded and eventually plastered. Here's the completed framework and the first of the plasterboard going up. They're a cheerful bunch in their work! One thing I haven't skimped on is hire equipment to make the job of the plasterers and others easier. I figure it's a false economy to not get equipment like platforms and board lifters in as it will just cost me extra labour as the guys won't be able to work efficiently and possibly, not as well either. We had scaffold towers upstairs in the bedrooms for plastering and downstairs, we had a really big platform. I wouldn't do it any other way as the quality of the boarding and plastering is second to none. Once the studwork was boarded out, the inner ceiling section was plastered. The inner lip of the frame had an upstand added to it to make it appear more substantial and to hide the rows of LED lights behind them. We're going for a range of lighting intensity here, achieved by increasing amounts of lights, rather than dimmers. There will be 3 rows of LED lights hidden up there and we've used a car headlight analogy for want of better descriptions - the selection is dipped lights, main beam and rally lights. These are the only ceiling lights in this area as we plan to have floor lamps for specific task or reading lighting. Once the inner ceiling was plastered, the framework itself was done the following day. This photo is some way on from that, as you can see. By this stage, the whole of the downstairs main room has been done and recesses formed for the spotlights at the other end of the room. Not too long after this, the kitchen arrived from DIY Kitchens. Lovely quality units and everything is going together well. It did mean, though, that I had to get on with the painting up the kitchen end so that a start could be made on installation. A paragraph or two on painting is appropriate here. I put a brief post into the main decorating section here on BH regarding spray painting, but it deserves repetition. I've planned from the outset to do the painting myself. I'm competent and it's nice to get some hands on involvement in the build. But, and it really is a big one, there is a vast surface area to cover in this house, and the vaulted ceilings upstairs are really quite intimidating for a vertically challenged person such as myself. Mind you, I think a vault of 4.7m would make most people ponder their method of attack. I decided that by far the most effective approach for me was to spray the mist coats to seal the plaster and continue with white for the ceilings. I wasn't sure at that stage whether I would also apply the colour coats by spraying, so adopted a 'wait and see' approach. First off, masking takes ages, even with a relatively empty house, as that spray will get everywhere and anywhere. Once the masking is done and you've familiarised yourself with the sprayer itself, though, the speed of coverage is astonishing. I was able to comfortably do one large room per day - both mist coats and a couple of extra ones on the ceiling to get it opaque and full white. It was messy. Really messy! Especially as when I first got going I had the spray pressure a little too high, the mad angles of the vaulted ceilings meant that my nozzle was never going to be held at a constant 90 degrees to the surface, and it's just a messy process regardless. In addition, there is a vast amount of moisture in the air, particularly as we had plaster drying at the same time. I hired a commercial dehumidifier for a couple of weeks to help with this and it was very effective. I bought all my paint from Brewer's Decorator Centre, who are mainly based along the south coast of England. I opened a trade account with them and got 20% off the entirety of my first order, so I put everything I could think of onto that, including my antinox floor protection mats. Very useful they were, too. I used their contract matt white for the mist coat and ceilings. It's white, but not brilliant white and it's lovely. Very chalky, easy to sand and gives a nice highly matt finish. Also cheap as chips. Here's one of the bedrooms, masked up and sprayed. Here's another bedroom with that ceiling. My scaffold tower came into its own for reaching up to those heights. Then, finally, the kitchen area with its mist coat. The sprayer is the little beastie sitting on the plasterboard. I popped over on a weekend to also put the first colour coat on over at the kitchen area, whilst I could still get in easily before the kitchen started going in. I'm having splashbacks between the wall and base units, hence the odd looking finish level with the paint. These were all the kitchen units as they arrived, prior to painting. Everything was really well packaged and came with the doors on and drawers in. The delivery crew were pleasant and efficient, so all in all, a good experience. Moving away from painting and plastering, the ceiling plan for the lights was marked up on the floor, along with speakers and smoke detectors before the boards went on so that there was no guesswork involved in what was running where. Here's the marking plan: This is what the kitchen units look like at the moment. I made a cock up in ordering, purely out of ignorance, and I'm waiting for a few end deco panels to arrive. These didn't even occur to me as they will go between units and appliances to give a better appearance from face on. It made perfect sense when it was pointed out to me, so things have halted temporarily until those and my worktops arrive shortly. In the meantime, it's looking good: We also now have spotlights in place: Finally, for the curious, this is what karndean flooring looks like. It has been laid upstairs and the downstairs will be finished in a couple of weeks. Upstairs, it was all laid on ply that was feathered in at the edges and downstairs will have a latex feathering coat to level the floor and provide an even base. Next up is more of the same. The final session of boarding and plastering, lots more painting, the end of first fix and moving onto second fix. Outside, we need to get cracking on the rainwater goods, perimeter drain and exterior cladding. The cladding is due to arrive next week, so it will be interesting to see that and figure out the system. I hope to be able to report back on over height doors soon, as well, and my endeavours to find these at a reasonable price, but that's all for now. There's painting to be done.

I found plenty of doors with 2040 mm as a height option. Sadly, I'm after 2300 or thereabouts, which is nigh on impossible here, it seems. Check out Todd Doors - lots of choice in that height and at reasonable prices. https://www.todd-doors.co.uk/internal-doors#/specFilters=72m!#-!194&pageSize=30&viewMode=grid&orderBy=0&pageNumber=1

I will confirm once I know whether they ship to the UK. If they don't, I'm sure I'll find one as I have a number of Dutch friends who are happy to do a bit of research for me over the other side of the channel. Do you need over height doors, Dave?

I'm giving this thread a bump as I may have found a solution for over height doors. I've gone through loads of suppliers recently and struggled to find anyone who will supply over height doors at a decent price and lead time. One quote came in at 4k for a set of double doors snd one single with side lights. Outrageous! Especially with a 12 week lead time. Anyhow, I'm putting in an enquiry tomorrow to a Dutch supplier - 2315mm is a standard and widely stocked door height over there - the Dutch are tall! Hopefully, they will ship to the UK and I'll get my doors at a reasonable price in a few weeks.

+1 to what @ProDavesays. Even the most basic of connection or disconnection costs about £250 down our way and it's much quicker to callca sparky in to hook up a new cable than to wait for the DNO to visit if you needed power on site at short notice.

An acquaintance has asked me to put a question to the hive mind on his behalf. He has an old house in Bath in which he is planning to replace the windows thies year. He intends to replace like for like on the aluminium frames but is unsure of the pros and cons of the various glass types and brands available, for example, is Saint Gobain glass better than Pilkington, etc. Ideally, he would like some solar shading but without an obvious tint as this woukd look too different next to the windows that aren't being replaced. I will get some more detailed information tomorrow as to his objectives. Thanks, all.