Russell griffiths

I think you will find all those lintel you have looked at rely on having a good amount of brickwork above to aid in the structural integrity just like an arch. If you have very little brickwork above, you will need to think along another line.

If it’s all timber and rendered can you not use a glue lam beam and build all the exterior render boards onto that. With the portion between the windows in timber and clad in render board.

We used a retired architect who works on an hourly rate £25 per hour when we approached a couple of local architects practices they where looking for £25/30 grand for a full design and over see type of package. ??

After having a good look on the tracpipe website, it states that for all LPG installations any pipe entering a building must be above floor level can you shed any light on this @Nickfromwales is LPG heavier than natural gas or something so they don’t want it in a floor void. If this is the case it looks like I will have to run it surface mounted across the garage like @Alexphd1 suggested. Bloody hell life shouldn’t be this hard.

Does this make a bit more sense. @Nickfromwales @PeterW

How about that.

If you say rusty steel can’t you use that as a cover over something more structural so stone, brick concrete with rusty mesh in front.

Have you thought of gabion baskets with a brown coloured stone i have seen plenty of those crib walls and life expectancy would worry me any treated timber at the moment seem to have very poor protection

I had seen that earlier, but thanks for finding it. ?

I’m only interested in the bit inside the house no town gas here so gas cylinders for the cooker

I could but why would I ? could I run it in copper over head ? can it be left exposed? I have looked at the straightest route and that is straight under the floor and up behind the cooker.

Not really, unless I want 2 cylinders sitting in the kitchen. Trac pipe? What else can I use supply will be from 47kg propane cylinders mounted outside the garage, pipe needs to run under solid garage floor and then under block n beam house floor will measure distances later out side will join to 2 cylinders via a change over valve inside will feed a 5 ring gas hob only. What are the other options as Trac pipe is dear as poison.

Opinions please trac pipe under a block n beam floor. In a duct or concrete covered to protect it whilst building works continue or trac pipe pipe under solid concrete garage floor ducted or not. Cheers russ.

We are the site of an old gravel extraction quarry after the gravel was extracted the area was back filled with the soil originally stripped off, the thoughts are if any vegetable matter or anything else was buried at the time it may rot down and give off methane. I am wondering if it would be easier to just install a gas membrane instead of a standard dpm rather than have a survey done to tell me that I should probably install a gas proof membrane.

So a letter from BCO has flagged up the need for gas preventative measures so talking to bco I thought we where going to talk about a radon barrier nope it’s methane they are concerned about, has anybody installed one or has anybody had a contamination survey carried out looking for methane cheers from peed of in Cirencester.

Going back to your other topic of how to fit your posi joists if you go for top hung you won’t need any hangers. Add the cost of all of the hangers up, it could dictate a different way of fitting them.

If it’s a reinforced slab stick a row of chairs along the join to pin it down

Once there’s 20 tonne of concrete on top I’m pretty sure it won’t be a problem never used to tape them, just a good lap.

Let me throw a different slant on it you say you are too old for a mortgage you say you would like to retire so why build a two storey house? I would think a nice large bungalow with wet room with wide doors, and then maybe guests bedroom in the loft area. How long are you planning on staying.

Off topic slightly but still relevant if you say your wall is a bit wibbly wobbly, I would do as much as I can to level it out before fitting your rim joist temporarily fit your rim joist, scribe all around it, remove rim joist, grind hack chip wall until rim joist sits nice and flush, a thin skim of render in the low spots, re fit rim joist this will ensure better fitting of posi joists and you should be able to get them all the same length dont forget to air seal behind rim joist.

got Any pics.

Not sure who is doing your slab or how you are going to buy your reo but I have just had 3 tonne of cut and bent steel all prefabricated from a company called total building supplies, I was shocked how cheap it was and had to question if they had missed something out as it was £2000 cheaper than a quote I had already had .

https://goo.gl/images/yG8wE4 in my opinion it should look like this.

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.