Russdl
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Everything posted by Russdl
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No one has asked the question yet, just permission to ask the question.
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Of course you can.
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@dpmiller No, its sat where his old mini used to be I think, that's been relegated to the other, less posh, garage. That's a 4 bay garage with a fifth car up on the lift (left of the picture). I think he's got 8 cars altogether, all of them a bit special and worth a bob or two. Git! I guess I should add that he's a nice git, he did lend me his block and tackle after all.
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I popped round my friends house today to borrow a block and tackle to drag my heavy bath up the stairs. This was in his garage, that’s my fantasy!
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The carpenter who did our cladding was very good and very skilled. What surprised me was that he cut every single board slightly too big, 10mm or so, checked it and then did a second cut that was always spot on. It added a few minutes for each board having to cut them twice but there were no mistakes and the results were excellent.
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Sorry it wasn’t a ‘fit’ @Patrick hopefully you’ll find someone soon.
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@Patrick I'll PM you the details of a carpenter who's not too far from you. He's worked on and off on our build, he's hard working and his workmanship is good and I'd thoroughly recommend him, but: ❌ No. He's a one man band but can probably get hold of others. ✅ ❌/✅ I guess it depends how you define that. He earns a living.
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So I dug a big hole (well, my grave digger mate did) and dropped in 14 crates which equated to 2.8m3. The invert level into these crates is about 150mm below the top of the crates, maybe a bit more, so that removes .5 - .75m3 of storage so I've effectively got around 2.2m3 of soakaway. The BCO just wanted to see photos but at the last minute changed his mind and wanted to see the crates in situ. I was mildly concerned that he was going to change his mind and say it needed to be bigger so awaited his visit with a bit of apprehension. He turned up yesterday. He liked the cladding on our house and took some photos. He liked the (maybe) temporary name I'd given to our slightly contentious house and took a photo. He had quick look in the hole, took a photo of the membrane wrapped soakaway crates and drove off. Perfect.
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Our guttering is all black metal, no expansion noises at all. If the budget will stretch to it I'd recommend it.
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Ash wood floor, staircase and balustrade
Russdl replied to Visti's topic in Wood & Laminate Flooring
@Visti Spot on, That ash looks great, especially on the stairs. -
Crikey. At least that won't happen in my new build. Mind you, neither will that, we'll have to put our reliance in smoke/heat detectors. Thanks for the background to the strange regs.
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Understood, sorry I've no clue about those.
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Internal blinds or external?
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That's sort of my understanding as well but as there is no requirement for self closing it all seems a bit pointless. Ho-hum.
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Absolutely no idea and I wouldn't be at all surprised that if they weren't he would have no idea and probably wouldn't question it. But if he did question it, and I hadn't fitted the fire rated doors into the pockets it would be less than straight forward to replace the door blank. With the Portman pocket door system, once they're in that's it, I'd have to open up the wall to change them. Here's section of the house where the stairs go up to the loft. The stairs will be fixed and the loft open to the floors below in the area of the stair well. I believe it's this aspect of the design that has caused building control to insist on fire rated doors, FD20 as it happens but I don't think you can get FD20 doors these days hence the original reference to FD30.
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I’m at a loss. As I said I’ve asked him to confirm twice if we need fire doors, he’s insistent that we do though I haven’t pointed out how pointless they will be. Do you think I should? IIRC the regulations didn’t really fit around what we have designed and built, if I push too much we may end up being forced to enclose the staircase to the loft and/or close the loft off. Probably doesn't make much sense, I’ll dig out a drawing to highlight what we have.
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You’d think so wouldn’t you, but that hasn’t been specified which makes the fact they are fire doors pretty pointless, especially as pocket doors they will spend most of their life open.
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Its because our loft, whilst for storage only will have a fixed staircase and will be open to below on the staircase side. Ive asked BCO the question twice and he insists.
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@Mr Punter it is to be painted and the weight is a concern. IIRC I can go up to70kg (or was it 80, I'll check before I buy)
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@Mr Punter You make me feel like a clown! I did that Googling thing and most of the 2440x1220 blanks I found couldn't be trimmed down to the 2300x1100 that I need. That last link you sent seems like they can be and then be re lipped. Straight back to Googling school for me.
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These drains up being relatively pain free, just me overthinking it as usual. The only real problem I had was going from an 80mm down pipe to the 110mm drain over a short distance with direction changes. I couldn't find any suitable adapters and then a friend of mine (sat over 2m) away grabbed one of these that I had lying around and pushed it inside the 80mm down pipe. It turns out that the diameter of those two rings on that FloPlast bend is pretty much exactly the same as the internal diameter of the 80mm downpipes so I put a bead of sealant around each of those rings, forced it into the down pipe and it is snug as a bug. I know fitting that bend into the down pipe instead fitting the down pipe into the bend is not correct but hopefully the Bodge-it-and-Scarper solution will stand the test of time.
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We have two large pocket doors in our new build, 2300 x 1100. More accurately we have big holes where the pocket doors will go. We're using Portman FD30 pocket door kits and sourcing the FD30 door blanks is proving to be difficult and eye waveringly expensive. Does anyone know a good source for oversize FD30 door blanks?
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To update this. I contacted our BCO and explained that I thought our architect had made an error in calculating our soakaway requirements. He had drawn two, one north of the building for a roof area of 110m2 (4m3 of soakaway crates) and one south of the building for a roof area of 80m2 (2.8m3 of soakaway crates). The initial response from the BCO was mild confusion as to why there were two soakaways to which I had no answer. The second response was "...Can’t see why the design for the 100m2 soak away is not ok..." in other words, he was pretty vague about the whole thing. So I responded by telling him I'll put 3m3 of soakaway south of the building and he's happy with that. What I've learned is that calculating soakaway size is really straightforward if you use the 'rules of thumb' and a real dark art if you try and include percolation results in the calculation. It would also seem to be a dark art for my BCO (either that or he couldn't be arsed to enter all the data he had into his spread sheet?). I've also learnt that watching water drain away for the percolation test is therapeutic but otherwise a complete waste of time.
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Timber Frame PLOT 1
Russdl commented on Red Kite's blog entry in Self Building two in North Wiltshire
Looking good, and some excellent upcycled stairs there. Fingers crossed that it’s plain sailing from here on in after your early problem with trades. Regarding the damage to your glulam, sometimes MBC ought to just slow down a bit it would save them time and money in the long run. We had several return visits where they had just not taken the time to do it right in the first place, but they never quibbled about returning and fixing things. -
@Adam2 thanks for the info. Interestingly it’s starting to appear to be pretty random from project to project.
