Russell griffiths

What part of London. If you get that built for under £400,000 I will be very surprised.

Why should a contractor take ANY risk, it’s your project, all he wants to do is earn a wage and go home. You want to build your dream but let somebody else take the risk. He could do it another work out how many days and put 25% on top for risk, then put 20% on top of all materials. This is what I would do. Price it as as high as I could get away with, he probably is doing you a favour.

How high has your brickwork been taken, the shallower the facia the more bricks on show, have they come up high enough. Your facia needs to project up the correct amount to provide seating for the first row of slates.

Have you sized the unit, when you first said 3-4 circuits I thought that’s doable, but then you spoilt it by saying 500mm cupboard. Get the drawings for the manifold, but make sure you have all the blending valve measurements as well. I personally would look for a better solution. It will certainly be a hot cupboard.

Reading Jeremy’s thoughts on his Tesla confirms it won’t be on my shopping list.

That sounds like a silly way to do it. Why would the speaker wires not run in the wall and come up under the window board, through a rubber gromit and into the speaker, I see no reason to drill the window at all. In my last sat place I had 4 high level speakers mounted in book shelves, all wires hidden behind the shelving and the speakers looked like a wide book.

Keep quite. Just get it done, if asked just act innocent.

But you have 136m 113m is definitely not spacious.

Did you get the hint. ?

113m is small, retirement home, not family home. Depends what you want. We have 180m internally, 3 beds nothing is overly large.

What is the ceiling height? How much height can you afford to lose ?

Look at some posts by @SeanDean he’s been looking at doing the same sort of thing and upgraded his drawings massively from his first design.

Going to double board walls and ceiling with pink. Sod the money I’ve got used to eating beans on toast every night ?

It depends on what you are trying to achieve, that drawing can be improved in many ways. Your architect is a bit out of date.

Who on earth would go to all that trouble and not rip out that shonky kitchen.

Do not consider getting them unpainted at the very least you want them primed and undercoated, the work involved in applying 4-5 coats of paint to a sash window is immense. All your savings in driving to god knows where will be wasted after you have spent 6-7-8 weeks painting them. If you you can save £200 per window fitting them then that’s what y our need to save money. Piss poor preparation and priming will lead to you having to repaint them in a few years time. Fitting them is a a piece of cake, and you will make a better job of sealing them than the monkeys the window company will send around. The 100kg one is a two man lift anything around 50kg you can do on your own. Just get a friend around around for an hour and lift the heavy ones into the holes, secure in place with a batten screwed to the inside overnight and level and fit correctly the next day. You will need a pair of glass suckers and some pump up wedges to level the windows. If you have multiple windows in one room a laser level and tape will get all the windows windows the same height. Read up on the regs regarding the correct glass for the location and fire escape sizes.

100mm floor insulation is just above building regs, it needs to be more.

You may also have point loads from a post carrying a beam that requires different foundations.

What’s misleading @SimonD its clear from where im sitting, you can chuck a sheet of 9mm osb on the frame fixed with a dozen nails, or you fit it correctly with a nailing schedule detailing the amount of nails per sheet. Its like lots of stuff you can work to a minimum standard, or do the job better to a better standard. Sheathing board, racking board totally different things, you can install racking boards at corners and not fully sheath the wall, if a frame is designed to not have sheathing boards on its outer skin you still need to supply racking support.

Compac foam do a system fo fixing windows into EWI it consists of very rigid insulation that carries the window load. Charlie Luxton used a fibreglass angle section that was screwed to his framing that projected out into the EWI, the window then sat on this angle and the insulation butted up to it completely hiding it.

Who is the most disorganised organisation you have had to deal with. For me it’s BT, which I think should stand for bloody terrible. Trying to get my old phone line re connected, and had my job cancelled 3 times due to them not having the correct address.

This method is perfectly adequate, however your relying on your sheathing board transferring the resistance to other parts of the frame. With a tie that is fixed to a stud it uses the stud to hold the frame down, not just the sole plate. Really down to the engineer designing it and what loads are on it and wind loading. The last stick frame I did was in a cyclonic area so I tend to be a bit belt n braces.

This is what I have used in the past, however they can be overkill for the uk market, it depends on your wind leadings and other stuff.

Look up Simpson tie down straps.

Sheathing boards cover the frame. A racking board is sort of the same but has a more important role it provides the racking strength to stop the building folding like a pack of cards. So a sheathing board might just cover up your frame. But a racking board covers the frame but also adds structural stiffness, racking boards should have a fixing schedule it’s normally a nailing schedule so one 50mm ringshank nail will be provided every 150mm apart on all studs and sole plates and top plates. Some walls that need need a lot of added stiffness might have racking both sides. If I was building any frame I would fully board both sides.