Russell griffiths

Can anybody explain more about this benchmark thing please.

Just off topic do you think you should cover that mixer tap before you scratch it.

I have a good rotating one like the one mike sharpe mentioned, the thing to do is buy the best you can, look after it and sell it when you are finished, i think you will find a good quality one will sell better than a cheap one. Leica have always been a very good brand for anything like this. If you want to save a couple of quid, don’t buy the tripod or the staff you need the laser and receiver tripod can be replaced by setting up on a pile of blocks staff can be replaced with a nice piece of 2x1 painted white so you can write your own marks on it.

I can’t see what for to be honest, the two skins of insulation in the ICF block provide the insulation. If you want a higher level of thermal performance you can just increase the thickness of insulation the block is made from. Or add additional insulation to the face of the blocks once built.

Have you anywhere you can put a wood burner we currently live in a horrible house while we build the new one when we moved in I built a 3m x3m boot room on the end and fitted a wood burner. good god it’s like a different house, we spend a lot of time with the back door open with the dog going in and out, the wood burner keeps everything cosy, drys the washing, keeps the dog happy, drys my work cloths and boots best money I have spent. If you have a draughty cold place fixing it room by room could be a long process my friend has an old oak frame cottage that you can actually see through gaps in the walls outside, he doesn’t care and just chucks another log on the fire.

For me it would be second fix and services timberframe on my last place was very easy to work with, easy to run services, easy to fix to, easy to insulate another is timber frame can be altered fairly easily, it can be very easy to stand in a room and think I wish I had made the ensuite a bit bigger, in timber I found it easier to adapt than blockwork. For reference 1st build. brick n block 2nd build. timber frame 3rd currently in progress. ICF with timber internal walls.

Hi, we are just about to start our icf next week, we are near Cirencester. Did i I bump into you in R AND R TOOLS. would love some details on the roof timbers. We have taken some of our plans into local structural timber companies, and been met with a few puzzled faces. What sort of finish will you have on the curved underside, we want a timber ceiling, but very interested in what others are doing.

All good advice from everybody, so I will chuck a different angle on it safety first, get your site fence up with appropriate warning signs. Guessing you want to do this as cheaply as poss, your main massive cost will be disposal of all the debris, so make a list of everything and work out a couple of ways in which you will get rid of it all the first item you mentioned was the roof tiles, so ol mate down the road will take them for free, if you stack them neatly in his crates, so that will cost you loads, the time to remove them and stack, plus any hire cost. So the opposite thing to do is not save any, can you use any of the hardcore on site, access road, hard standing for your site hut,etc etc if you can use it on site then I would say the way to do it is soft strip the house, as has been said, all non structural parts out. Skips for plasterboard, loft insulation, roof felt, timber on free cycle dig out areas you need the hard standing smash it down with an excavator and move to the dug out areas. Things that could bite you in the arse. THE FOOTINGS. have you had a little it down the sides of the footing to see what sort of thickness they are ? this has recently happened to me, see my blog on cockups, i was fortunate in that once I realised I had substantially underestimated the amount of concrete to remove i knew how to deal with it, and I also had a big hole to put it, so all in a larger excavator for a week and I was finished. If you need to shift them off site have an add up of the amount of trucks to shift it and also the size of the excavator to physically pull them out of the ground.

For that money I don’t know why anybody would think of not having a set.

Previously I believed I had helped in preventing you removing part of your foot with the angle grinder by showing the correct way in using that, just like posting on how not to burn out the belt on your mixer I believed it was of help to you. If for one minute you think I post a reply for my own gain by belittling you then you must be a bit confused. any knowledge i share in an answer has been gained by doing that job many times, earning my living from doing that job, not googling the answer, guessing or asking down the pub, I only deal in cold hard facts of what I know. You came on with a question about mixers and generators of course you can stop your mixer with a load in it, and start it with a bit of help by pushing it around, why not. Because its WRONG WHY DO IT, there is no need it’s about as wrong as laying bricks FROG DOWN, putting muck on a dry spot board winging your perp joints they’re all wrong, but still get done daily by people with a lesser grasp of common sense.

I see nothing condescending in that at all plain simple instructions i have taught many a 16 year old lad to use a mixer if they turned it off loaded they would get yelled at there is no need to turn it off loaded. Follow my. Instructions like a good lad and you will be fine. Now thats condescending.

I have similar a solid floor in the garage a suspended floor in the attached house. Normal air brick in outer wall of garage adapter on the back with 100 mm duct under garage slab poking into void area under house.

Easy don’t turn it off with a loaded drum why mix what you don’t need mix a load and get it on your spotboards mix another and put it in the barrow with a damp sack over it fill mixer with water turn off mixer simples init. Its bricklaying, not nuclear fusion

Rope ladder ?

Surely a fire escape spec window would be good enough for flood escape no door needed if you don’t want it if your single storey most of your bedroom windows will be fire escape types. Im sure I will be exiting the building far quicker in a fire than a flood.

Would you not have vents on the opposite wall with a round pipe connector to run the pipe over to the ventilated area. Sketch needed. Are you saying you have a solid section and a ventilated section if that’s what I’m thinking then it’s the round trunking you need with the round to square adapters

Are you saying you are going to build a house and that’s it, I’m done you won’t ever get another delivery, what a silly way to look at something design it to take the maximum load you will ever encounter, then you won’t have a problem as @JSHarris said a design load of 56 tonnes and you should be covered i have just just had a load of polystyrene delivered direct from Canada total weight about 3 tonnes, but it turned up in a 40 foot container on the back of an artic, total weight probably in excess of 20 tonne design it to the max and then everything under will be ok.

We have over 260m of roof catchment area, but when calculated after a heavy downpour, it is not a significant amount of water to discharge directly.

@Dreadnaught are you actually close enough to the river to discharge your roof rainwater directly? our hydrology guy measured our rainwater runoff and calculated that at such a small amount could be discharged straight to a water course, so no suds needed.

Have you had a flood risk Assessment, due to the river ours stated minimum ffl we just worked off that in the grand scheme of things this is house building not rocket science, 20-50mm up or down will not matter much it is a rough guide to determine if something is feasible on the day of the drain laying, two hungover loats will move it up or down and make it work. Also i found out when the survey guys came back to mine that their total station was only actually accurate to about 50mm, dependant on if they had a good signal to the satellite thingy, so height above see level was a bit hit and miss.

Have you had a topo survey? if you have then it can be designed by anybody anywhere in the country as the information should be on the topo as long as you give finished floor height an invert level for connecting main sewer. My drainage design consists of 4 toilets, 1 kitchen outlet, 1 boot room sink outlet, 9 rainwater outlets, treatment plant location and discharge, Full design ready for building regs submission was £750 plus vat.

Your digger should pick a whole bag up put the digger with the blade facing the way you are going to go put a pallet on the ground with one end cocked up on top of the blade skull drag the bag on a short strop towards the pallet drag bag half up pallet use wide ditching bucket to hook under far side of pallet and lift as you raise blade track to destination i can move a 3/4 bag with my 1-1/2 tonne machine so you should easily move a whole bag. But then again us old codgers do know a few tricks.

Why not hire a dumper. £75 a day around here. Can you get your old Landy near it with a trailer on the back.

we Are in Cirencester if you want to feel a few blocks

Looking at those steels can you not use an ICF block or panel system and run both the inner and outer insulation past the columns and fully in case the steel within the centre of the block. any extra steels would be incorporated into the ICF by leaving out a beam pocket very diy able. I will be starting my ICF walls in a months time if you wanted a look. Where abouts are you. Im also using nudura it was not chosen by price, but by picking it up and getting a feel for how it will work for me. I would certainly get a couple of full blocks sent out to you, not silly offcuts proper full blocks so you can have a good play, cut some chunks off them, screw to them and anything else you fancy.