Russell griffiths

Why not hire one for a day or two and get all the cuts done.

From a sheet metal company, zinc coated, folded to your design imagine you had a metal roof and needed a flashing bent to a certain size shape you could probably get a fibreglass one also that is made to look like lead, just like they use on the fibreglass roofs. What is your flat roof covering.

If that is timber cladding in your pic then why use lead, you could get a flashing pre folded and dress it into a cut in your durosol wall and batten and clad down to it.

What hulking great gap are you talking about, who’s icf have you used. @Big Neil

Regarding your roof vents have you thought of painting them, I had a job and could not match the old tile look, so a good rough up with sandpaper and some plastic primer and I painted them to match the old tiles, from the ground you couldn’t even pick out the vents.

Can you not get a broken large compressor and use the tank as a storage vessel im not up on the system but I know on an American garage forum I used to use it was common to have a larger storage unit with a smaller compressor topping it up.

Couple of things, that b and q window will be utter crap,go and have a look. As for standard sizeing i completly get where get where you are coming from, backwards Britain strikes again our last house we built in Australia, I went to see a window company and was handed a brochure, many styles to choose from size wise hundreds to choose from as long as you stuck to the set metric sizes. Width. 300 600 900 1200 1500 1800 2100 height. 300 600 900 1200 can you see where this is going, brilliantly simple, the brochure had all the rough openings in it to show your frame builder and when your house is finished you go and buy blinds, well bugger me, they are available to fit the same metric sizes so you go and buy off the peg blinds no dork coming around to measure up for your bespoke £10,000 blinds as i said backwards Britain something so obvious, pay you deposit and 3 weeks later your windows arrive

As you made your concrete on site I think the best thing to do would be to try it. If you are using an expansion type anchor and are unsure of the concrete integrity, why not drill your holes i the wall plate and fit it , but don’t install all the anchors yet just a couple so you can carry on working, then as it cures a bit more get the others in Wednesday, Thursday, you could also use chem set, and just get them all in, no expansion with chemical fixings.

We have just piled so did a fair bit of research on the subject, we found a good few of the mini piling companies are developing methods of spanning from pile to pile, with either concrete beams or steel sections. However these are all suspended systems, not ground bearing so will not help you lower your build height it may be you will need to go back to planning and discuss ridge height, because of the build system necessary to accommodate the tree. I cannot see you getting a thinner slab as they should be insisting on some sort of root protection,shrinkage, heave product under the slab to accommodate any movement check out ROGER BULLIVANT PILING some interesting solutions to ground problems.

I have a very nice expensive makita and it is useless with my 110mm core bit the clutch cuts in far too often, instead I have a £45 mini breaker with sds chuck from somewhere like Aldi that I use all the time, I just go steady and make sure my finger is ready to let go. ??

Well done, bloody good job for an ol timer

They also look like soakers to me as well, so another piece of lead needed cut into the face of the stone and dressed down over the soakers, groove in wall should be 150mm up from roof finish to allow for rain bounce. Should you not have a cavity tray in that location and weep holes??

Thanks all will talk to bco.

This always seems to be a hot topic, but I haven’t seen this bit mentioned if we have a ramp up and a flat area for turning and manoeuvres at the top of the ramp, does the flat area have to have a lip at the edge to prevent a wheel rolling off the side, or do all sides have to have the correct slope to them, also at what height of the ground would the flat area require a hand rail fall prevention type set up. Cheers, confused as normal.

We are in the process of trying to work out external finished ground height, and I’m getting confused by old school methods and common sense verses what we do nowadays, the situation is that due to a flood risk assessment our house will sit quite high above original ground level, so a lot of backfill to bring the ground level up. My old school thoughts are that any external ground level should be at 150mm below damp course level, so that would incur having a 150mm step down, which I feel is too big a step and an uncomfortable height, I would like to decrease this step down to 120mm as this is more comfortable. How will bc view this 125mm height instead of150mm. Is it not viewed in the same light as it was in the past with all these level thresholds how does this work with my disabled access as well, I will end up with a large flat turning area outside the door, level with the interior floor level. Just for referance our our house is Icf walls, so no formal dpc to speak of really I am not concerned about building up the external ground height, I just want to ensure I don’t have grief of the bco. Cheers russ.

Thinking outside the box, have you looked at a towable diesel compressor, like the ones used for a jack hammer, these can be picked up relatively cheaply,

Our last house had osb on all walls under the plasterboard, I intend to do the same on this one. Solid feel, easy to fix to, not a lot more cost in the grand scheme of things.

Thanks @lizzie, all done.

Has anybody been offered any free tickets, I didn’t think I wanted to go so have been ignoring e mails, i now fancy a day out and can’t find any freebies anybody help. Cheers russ.

OMG that looks horrible, what a bloody legend dealing with that.

Not on my bloody site there’s not as the seasons start to change I thought I would add my opinion on mud on site nope don’t want it, your trades will walk it through your new house, their van will drag it down the road, and it makes for an unhappy environment to work in. When I did the site scrape I extended it for 5-6 m in all directions from the hose footprint, I removed all topsoil and replaced it with recycled crushed hardcore and a blinding of local stone, the cost was 3 truckloads of crushed at £145 per load and 1load of stone at £165 the outcome is priceless not a drop of crud anywhere.

@epsilonGreedy not really the beams where 4.7 long the forks are spaced the furthest apart you can get them, let’s guess a metre, so they are sitting there very firmly, forklift bounces over a rut in the ground, er nope, all ruts levelled and filled with hardcore, as the saying goes smooth as a babies bum.

MORE THOUGHT. I don’t borrow equipment ever pay the farmer to come and do it, it’s his if it gets damaged it’s down to him, blowing up a diff or breaking a gearbox will hurt you in the wallet dept big time. Slinging under the forks. Why. It’s a forklift use it as it was designed look at the pic and you can see the beams are not in the final position. Why. Placing them exactly takes time, I paid our farmer for an hour of his time, he was crazy busy as it was harvest time, so he said he could help but only quickly. plonk the beams down to within 100mm of their final destination, send farmer Fred on his way clutching a pile of readies, move beams to final resting place by a gentle lever with a bit of 4x2 TOP TIP. Don’t put your damp course under them until the end, sliding them about will only scuff it and tear it one bloke can easily lift a beam end with a bit of timber as a lever, the other bloke fits dpc all nice and flat.

Just a silly topic if anybody is having to do this sort of thing themselves i had 16 tonnes of concrete floor beams to put in place at a distance of 15m from where we could get the closest lifting equipment, answer don’t build the front wall of the house and drive the forklift inside the house working your way out until all beams in place, once all in place finish off the last bit of wall. Pic one the forklift sitting in the back bedroom, pic 2 halfway, pic 3 just exiting the garage. All done.

Would you have a pic please @Simon Brooke