Russell griffiths

Are you putting a thin membrane over the top to stop screed getting in the gaps. Is it liquid screed or traditional ?

I fitted 700m of the knauf stuff, I will never use rockwool again.

What’s wrong with two storey at the side and a single at the back. Its called a wrap around, it’s a good solution as it replaces over half of your previous external walls with new better constructed walls. Large open plan kitchen diner at the back, couple of rooflights in it, will bring it kicking and screaming into 2021.

How many times can you alter things before they get the hump, I want some done to look at my cladding design, but I want two or three versions.

Who is fitting the rockwool? having just worked on a house with rockwool fitted between the rafters I would safely say it is the nastiest building product you will come across. I would look at alternatives. I brought a few different manufacturers insulation just to test fit and found Knauf omnifit to be the nicest to use.

I doubt you will get a double storey rear extension. Show us a couple of pics, we will soon have 367 different opinions, but you did ask.

Probably going to sound rude, but it’s not meant like that. £425,000 is south of Birmingham prices, for that price up there it must be a cracking plot in a cracking area. So probably demands a super house built on it. 5 beds 3 baths, downstairs cloak and shower, home office, utility room, 3 car garage. So you are probably under developing it. If this is the case then you can forget the standard figures. You need to build it for you not for anybody else. Alternatively you need to build the better house but think of it as long term investment. Finish off all in for £875,000 but you have a million pound house. When the kids sod off sell up and build a smaller one. I have a friend building a huge mansion of a place, just as his kids are off to university, but he’s doing it to sell on in ten years time.

It baffles me how my Howdens bills have an 80% discount from catalogue price.

No it’s a service batten to run pipes and cables through.

Start breaking it down in your head, we used to pay £600 a day for traffic management for lights and signage for a single lane closure.

You still need insulation on the inside to mitigate against the cold bridges through the studs, just fitting 140 between studs does not make a good wall build up.

Plastic eaves support tray is 2-3mm thick not 25mm. As I believe you said no vents on top of facia.

As gus said, do you have an arborists doing a method statement for you on how this should be done, or are the council not aware you are going down this route.

The different types of buildup will have a major effect on other aspects of the build, having 150mm plus of insulation on top of your rafters will make finished heights higher. So needs thinking about quickly.

Can you not go around it, if it’s a pumped system it’s not relying on gravity so making the run longer shouldn’t be a problem.

Bit late now, you can sit your soffit on top of your last course of bricks, this saves you having to cut soffit and creates a nice edge. I would do a bit of mocking up, grab half a dozen metre lengths of batten and batten out the first 4-5 rows of slates. Allowing for any detail courses at the eaves, you will soon see how high the facia needs to be buy the way the slates sit, then get a gutter bracket and some soffit, after two hours of messing you will have a better idea.

If you say period property, are you now changing to plastic. For timber you want a carpenter, either of the above can stick some up can up and smear some silicone around.

if you look at the three windows up high, when I asked the engineer to design the steel for this I told him I hadn’t made my mind up on window sizes, so the columns between the windows might change, so he designed it so that no columns where actually needed. So in-effect all three of those windows could be one, which would put the opening at something like 5.8m.

3m wide window with steel corner post.

I have been very impressed with our icf system and how it allowed me to make cantilevered sections.

I have a few big openings, 5.3m all done in icf with reinforcement in the concrete, I suggested to my engineer about installing a rsj into the core of the icf, he really didn’t like that idea and said you cannot get good consolidation of the concrete around the steel especially in the web. So you would need to make sure the steel is doing the job on its without the concrete assisting it. All mine where 12 and 16mm bars with links every 150mm, very fiddly to tie up as you needed hands like a 5 year old to get in between all the steel.

It depends if they find the body.

If you use this type you can just bolt on.

Can anybody recommend an alarm system. Looking for something that will ring a mobile number as well as make a load of noise, I have very good neighbours that would come over to have a look. Hopefully with a gun over his shoulder.

You generally fit them with an angle grinder instead of drilling out the mortar. Get the hangers that also have flanges on the sides to take bolts. Draw a straight line across the wall and do a series of deep grooves the thickness of the cutter blade, you will find the flange on the hanger is about the same thickness 2-3mm, hammer in the hanger with a club hammer, when all plumb and lovely add a bolt to each side flange.