Russell griffiths

I will try to give my view but it’s a bit tricky as all our build ups are different old school method. Two damp courses level with each other. No insulation in the cavity at below floor level. Cavity core filled to two courses below dpc. Moisture droplets form and drop off wall ties as it’s meant to. It falls down the cavity and lands in this two course void and then wicks to either the inside or outside but cannot climb above dpc. Winner winner chicken dinner. New school thinking. Fill the void below floor level in the cavity with a solid insulation to stop a cold bridge at floor level. Moisture drops down cavity and hits top of insulation, bounces onto inner skin of blockwork, KABOOOOM. Damp shows on inner wall at skirting level. So filling the cavity with a ridgid insulation has just created another issue. Remedy. Create a tray damp course. if you have found pictures of a level tray dpc ITS FOOKING WRONG. my personal opinion of course

Can I add a non educated but common sense thought to this. My feelings are that adding thickness to the concrete does hardly anything without the correct reinforcement your drawing shows extra extra thickness of concrete but no additional reinforcement in that area, if you maintain the 250mm thickness all over but add extra reo in the ring beam area I’m convinced that would improve things over just thickening the concrete. I have been installing my ringbeam over piles this week and all the high load areas have 8x16mm bars and the low load ares only have 6 x16mm bars I questioned this and was told it was the beams that were carrying the floor load as well as the wall load that have the additional steel.

https://goo.gl/images/pZ4Fwn a bit like this. You don’t have to have a tray, but if you want to insulate below the inner floor level to stop any cold bridges then you will need to demonstrate a way of preventing moisture passing to the inner structure.

Why does the tray promote mortar damp bridges? my feelings are it’s there to stop them, the inner leaf is normally higher than the outer, so any moisture build up in the cavity is directed to the outer leaf and towards any weep holes

I think they know we are on fill as it’s an old quarry site i have stripped a good metre off it and I’m not dead yet if a radon barrier will keep them quiet I would rather do that as it will only be a couple of hundred quid.

So bco have sent through their thoughts on our building regs submission one item they picked up on was (Provide suitable gas protection measures due to landfill ) so my thoughts would be to replace the standard damp proof membrane with a radon type barrier, would this satisfy them or can they insist we have a survey carried out to determine if there is any gas in the soil. What is the likelihood of any nasty gasses being present in soil that had been put in place in 1947. Cheers russ.

Not in my book it’s not whats the £1.10 labour is that per block, if that’s the case I’m going to dust of my trowel ive got 660 blocks in my footings and will be expecting it to take under a day with 2 of us.

I used to pay 40p in 1995. 87p plus vat now

Im afraid I disagree, I think it depends on the quality of your tapers and their finish you can get a level 3 finish which is fairly standard or a level five finish that will make your skimmed wall look positively rough i have had perfect skimmed walls that still require lots of fine surface filler and sanding.

Have you priced them up ??? i can get 7 kn concretes for 85p plus vat those trench blocks are eye wateringly expensive.

Nooooo you haven’t have you my godly image of you being ultra accurate have all been wiped away in an instant gutted.

I did a lot of brickwork in the early 90s aerated blocks were the big thing I have seen whole houses built with them, but 20 years later we noticed lots of failures hairline cracking everywhere, i just don’t like them, go and buy one and take it home chuck it about for a bit, then decide if you want your house sitting on it for 100 years. I think the thing with beam and block is a higher loading on the footing wall as opposed to a slab on ground type floor. The blocks i have brought are the ones @Declan52 pointed out from Stowell Concrete. They are on site and I like what I see, but the price was a bit sharp.

What are you fixing down that you want this amount of accuracy as an example if it’s a wall plate put them in with a fair degree of accuracy but not to @Onoff standards, if some are a little on the skew slide a piece of pipe over them and give them a gentle tweek, after tweeking if the thread is say 12mm drill a 16mm hole in your top plate and fix down with a 50 mm square washer. Bada bing. Beer time.

My personal opinion of course. I wouldn’t use a thermalite trench block if you gave them to me for free!! i have just had my trench blocks delivered standard weight concrete 7kn i personally have brought a special block designed for footings that is 300mm wide so you don’t have a 440 block wasted by being laid on the flat, dearer than a standard block, but I think they make a nicer job. Can you not lay one flat and one stood upright to make up your width.

Tell us more about this ordering from Italy @nod

Eps insulation cut to look like a continuation of the wall, mesh it up with the fibreglass reinforcement, render whole wall as one.

We went from 60m to 206m so I wouldn’t worry about size, there are far more parameters at play. I wouldnt worry about interviewing surveyors, pick the most local company as you will be able to call them out at short notice and they can pop in for a quick hour. This is what ours does, had them out three times now to plot various points on site that would be very hard to do with a tape. Full topo survey of a 1 acre site, 1100 points logged £800. Each site visit £70 an hour roughly

Yep I have one on the far end of all runs my system was designed by a hydrological company because of all the water by me not had any comments from bco, so hope it’s all good.

Mine has been designed with rodding points at the far end so you can give it a push through you will get a fair bit of sediment from the roof dust of tiles, bird poo, leaves. No ic at bends but definitely a way to get in it I think you can nominate to use bottle gullies with rodding points, but they are a pain to get a rod into but then again you can always use a high pressure hose

If you’ve already got it why not buy the cheapest gloss paint you can find and like @Onoff said coat the edges really well bfo roller should see it not take long.

Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES cut into the beams you can chop the infill block as much as you want. Is there a reason you haven’t run a 4 inch pipe into that end of the room i would smash out a block and get a torch, and look under the b+b if possible run a 4 inch to that room.

Have a look at a product called medite smart ply they do one specifically for site fencing so it will be outside for months.

Ceiling fans, having lived in oz, we will have ceiling fans in the vaulted section of the main living area.

As an alternative method kango up the old concrete into tiny bits, leave in situ add a layer of type 1 and whacker down firm blind with a thin layer of sand damp proof membrane insulation ufh concrete topping with mesh.

Tie the top in to stop it tipping. Leaving a little slack in the rope. Put longer bearers under feet, pull each leg with the digger