Russell griffiths

Any brits out there, the Scottish contingent beat you.

I was also thinking it maybe for detecting the duct any others before I fill it back in.

We are just finishing off some details i was under the impression that the garage floor had to be 100 mm lower than the house floor due to any spills from vehicles. My architect seams to think this has been relaxed. Anybody done a recent building control submision about this.

Oh god I have a funny one about sacking a painter, it probably won’t sound as funny in print, but I still chuckle as I think about it. So the painter had well and truly annoyed me, so he was going to be leaving from a top floor window if he ever showed up, i spent an hour going around the house and collected all his tools and stacked them in the drive for if he ever showed up, an hour later he appeared so I made a sarcastic remark about being 2 hours late, he made the mistake of saying something stupid back, so I picked up his tools, buckets rollers steps and proceeded to throw them at him across the road, tools flying everywhere the road littered with rollers and brushes, I launched a couple of milk crates at him but he was managing to bob and weave as the barrage of things rained down. As I was in full flow a van pulled up with the carpet layers on board, one of them lent out the window and said to my mate who was leaning on a shovel watching “should we come back later “. Cool as a cucumber I turned round and said, hang on lads I will be finished in a minute. Well You had to be there to appreciate it. One of my most outstanding moments in life.

And I’ve got a twitchy bum because I want to lift ours 100mm.

So starting to run new services to our plot and I have had to uncover the duct that the BT cable runs in. See pic. Running down the side of the duct is a thin wire just like bell wire, any thoughts on what it is I have my ideas, but what’s yours. Thanks. Russ.

Could you carry out more work inside your property, so you can come out in a better location you have probably thought of this already, I just thought it worth a mention.

Could you say that you can’t guarantee the quality of the insulation install with so many cuts, lots of chances to have gaps and poorly fitted insulation, any gaps will effect the insulation value so really even if kingsman is better, eps beads will be better than gappy kingspan as an ex bricky I would have thought the time saved cutting all the kingspan would pay for the eps...?.?

What springs to mind immediately is this, if they have built the new wall on top of an old existing wall, how have they qualified the quality of the foundations under the old wall. Having built many of these low garden walls on sites many years ago, I would be Not like to say how good they will be without further examination. I have seen huge footings ripped in with a huge excavator and filled with concrete, well over the top, and I’ve also seen footings completely missed as they where in the wrong place, so it was just built of the dirt, i would want some sort of guarantee before the buck passed to me.

Can you not have a fence for construction purposes, set at 1500mm and after construction move it in to where the vendor wants it. It is possible to build to build anything you want in the tiniest of space, (think building in London) but why would you for ease you want at least 1500, is he willing to be flexible, are you being to acomadating because you have found a plot you want.

If it is a tiny plot, does it have to be a bungalow, how about 1:5 storey bungalows take up a lot of room.

If this is a permanent fence how are you proposing to maintain that side, In future, if it’s two story you will need more space for the angle of ladders. I would want at least 1200mm minimum is it not possible to move the house further from the boundary.

Me please @RichS i will pm you my phone number so we can sort the details.

I thought someone made a special blade for that, I think it has like a wavey edge and no teeth so not as much dust.

Basically as you said blind it with sharp sand to make it rough and gritty. It will have better adhesion than some of the nasty pvc damp courses.

After people’s opinions, the father in law is a retired electrician and chucked a curve ball into the electrical fog, how do you work out how many lights you can have on one circuit. So the main thinking is add up all the lights , calculate the power consumption, bingo what if you add it all up using a low consumption LED bulb in say a GU10 fitting and everything is good, you then sell the house and as the LED wear out the new owner puts in standard high consumption halogen, thus overloading the circuit does anybody know the the correct way to calculate this. Cheers russ.

The reason for the concrete topping is I like a solid feel to things, whole house will be tiled so not really interested in timber, ive just spent a couple of hours with a laser level and tape and I think by decreasing the gap under the floor to 150mm, using a 150mm beams and going for a better insulation so I can decrease the thickness, I think I can keep from having to dig down anymore so this weeks panic over thanks for all the input. ?

Pull all the nails out (sorry). Forget ladders though, get a couple of hop ups and a scaffold board so you are at a comfortable height to walk from one end of a joist to the other so you get a good rhythm going. I used a leaf blower on suction mode to suck up piles of loose loft insulation, just walk out to the skip open the zip and blow it into the skip.

I wonder if I can get my own insulated floor beam system signed of by our engineer why can I not use 100mm xps inbetween the beams where the blocks would go and cover with 50mm xps all over and then 75mm concrete topping with mesh and ufh. ?

Ok, here are they problems I’ve got to over come. If you look at the pic you will see the big wet thing, that’s our lake just to the back of our plot. The closest part of the house is 2.4m from the wet bit we had a flood risk assessment which said the floor level needed to be set up in the air, which is fine, but it is a fair bit above the original ground level, so lifting it any higher I would like to avoid but will if necessary. Floor build up from top down. 20mm tiles and adhesive 75mm structural concrete topping ufh fixed to eps 200mm eps insulation 175mm floor beams 175mm void top of ring beam piles. So with this makeup it puts the top of the ringbeam 650mm below finish floor level, which puts it just above the wet bit i have excavated down to this level and I’m still dry but I’m really not wanting to dig down any further, as no amount of pumping will keep the gazillions of litres of water at bay. What i need to achieve is get the floor makeup thinner so I can keep from excavating down.

http://www.beamshield.co.uk/ could anybody look at the block n beam product in the link and pick out any faults or problems they can spot. We have some height issues and need to find a solution that doesn’t involve adding height on top of the beam and block, so including the insulation in the block height will help me tremendously. Anybody used a system similar to this and what’s your thoughts on the amount of insulation around the beam. Cheers russ.

If you chuck a scaffold board on the floor and screw your props to it, they won’t twist as you tighten them. Winner winner chicken dinner.

Couple of things, can you not just improve on the insulation in the cavity ? EPS beads, you need to be very careful with cavity insulation and bricklayers it rarely gets fitted well if you enlarge the cavity you will need a cavity closer at the window reveal so your window can sit anywhere you want, how about just cover 10mm of brick with the frame and the rest over the closer regarding the air tightness just look for a topic recovering academic put up and you will see the replies about parge coats and hopper guns that you can spray render with. Or just use a broom head simple, would take 1 bloke a couple of days to do a whole house regarding insulation costs, just think how quick the brickwork will go up without faffing with all that sodding insulation, been there done that, won’t do it again.

If you where to build a single skin block garage (As an example) stand outside with a hose spraying on the wall and see how quick the water penetrates to the inside, couple of minutes if your lucky, I presume this would demonstrate how porous a concrete block actually is.

You can remove this mods please as I seem to have asked this question already told you my my head was spinning. ?