Russell griffiths

You have missed the planting season this year, could you wait until October ? If not it will cost you considerable more as you will most likely have to go container grown. You will also have to look after them very carefully throughout the summer. Whereabouts in the country are you.

I would think so.

Soakers are normally aluminium, they cost pennies to buy and you can bend the corner over to stop them moving.

You need to consider getting architrave around the frame and a nice gap around that also, I would consider a door that only opens 90 degrees to be inadequate, but it seems to be standard practice I have spent ages altering our architects drawings to allow a larger reveal at the sides. 10mm of frame showing, 75mm architrave 75mm of nice border to frame the opening, so 160 door lining to corner.

Why not use an Alpex type pipe ? This is like a polyplumb type thing with an aluminium core, our gas was done with this no joins at all. comes on a coil in a sort of stiffish configuration would need straightening out to push through the ducting. One conection at the metre and one at the boiler.

If you have an old sheet of ply or plasterboard do some test passes to get the distance correct and fan spread. Do you have different length tubes ? Mine came with a long and short to save having to use a hop up, could reach a 2.4 ceiling from the floor.

The last house I built was in Australia, so materials may be different all bare plasterboard, plaster was sprayed using a board sealer, it's basically an acrylic base coat just like a thin watered down emulsion. Im sure any plasterboard sealer would do the same. The top 2 coats where standard semi flat ceiling paint that was rollered as it was being sprayed. The reason as I was told for the back rolling is to actually make the finish worse. The spray finish is so good that if you ever have to do a repair and a touch up you can never do it without having to re spray the whole ceiling. I do do have hundreds of photos, but they are all stored on an old laptop that has decided it doesn't want to turn on ?

I sprayed our last house inside and out, we backrolled the last two coats. House was 360m and it took no time at all. We are positively stuck in the dark ages in this country. Sprayed all ceilings, walls and interior woodwork. Including doors. Even spayed all the facia as we couldn't get the colour we wanted. Advice for @JSHarris buy lots of masking tape and brown paper, I guarantee the bit you don't mask will get overspray on it. Who said if if you have 8 hours to cut a tree down spend 6 sharpening your axe. This is so true for this spraying lark you will spend 3/4 of the job time in prep and a 1/4 chucking the paint about.

Why is everybody against having a block outer skin with render. The amount of agro and cost to use a batten and board with all the taping and cutting. Our last house was timber frame with a common brick outer that was then rendered with an acrylic render with a texture finish. I personally believe the risk of movement with a sheet substrate as opposed to a block skin is fairly large.

Instead of the one thick batten can you not use a vertical counter batten and then your horizontal. To make up the 75mm should you not have a counter batten any way, what way is the slope on the battens going to go ? If you slope it inwards water could run towards the house, if you slope it out it will run to the back of the cladding. Surely with a counter batten you provide a gap for it to run off and drop out of the vent gap at the bottom.

I really hate to be the bad bloke here. But I really think you need to get some expert help on your side, I understand the want,need to have a go yourself but what you are attempting could lead on to a multitude of fcuk up that will continue to haunt you throughout the rest of the build. How about this find a local brickie who is willing to come to site for two days and help you do the layout, hire a laser level and get all your levels transferred around the build, get the brickie to show you how to work out the bond. Cost brickie two days £350 laser £40 return on your investment fcuking priceless, cock this up now and pay for it in the rest of the build. You have said your blockwork sits sits on a row of brackets, this is not uncommon and I have done plenty of jobs where the outer skin sits on a steel ledge. so why is this steel not level ? If you don't fix this level problem you will be chasing it for ages. Sorry but get some proper advice with someone on site. Russ.

Didn't know where to put this so it's here. Just had an e.mail telling me that ice energy has gone into liquidation. Just in case anybody has an order placed with them.

You will have to buy new very hard to find in the reclamation yards. The thing I have done in the past is to pinch some off the house in another area that is less noticeable and change for the new ones. There is another trick I have done when trying to match bricks and that is to use waterproof pva on the face of the new tile and get two old tiles and rub them together to get the dirty sand finish to fall off and stick to the pva. Voila old looking tile.

How about this little piece of art.

All you chaps just seem to over complicate things, just get a flexible fitting like this one. Jobs a goodun.

So did you go looking for a wife and got a bonus building plot, or go looking for a plot that came with a bonus wife. Win win. Can she cook as well. Well done that man

So final design nearly sorted, what I'm after is there such a thing that I can upload our house design and simulate different materials on it. It would need need to be a very good one. What I am trying to achieve is that our house will have a lot of timber cladding, and I would like to see if I can simulate the difference between hardwood and softwood and also stain colours. I personally know what I want but if there is a cheaper option that looks nearly as good I'm very willing to compromise if it saves my wallet. Cheers russ.

Ok news update. It's a funny old world isn't it. So yesterday I turned up to a job that was a new build, very modern timber frame, timber cladding. I got talking to the owner and at break time told him my troubles and showed him our plans, he loved it. After work i bumped into a good neighbour who asked how things where going, I told him and showed him the plans. He loved it. so it must be I'm just an idiot. Meeting the the first guy did show me that we have designed it a bit to large as every one of our rooms was a good metre bigger than his in both directions, so going to try and squeeze it up a bit as I know the planners are going to have a fit when we send it in. And every metre is going to cost more dosh so it's going on a diet. Cheers russ.

Definitely mortar both sides,

Our wooden reveals where pre fixed to the windows but I didn't mention that as I thought it might confuse the issue.

Just interested in people's opinions has anybody got all there plans ready for planning, and then completely changed their mind on design? we have spent 6 months getting everything ready and I'm now unsure if the house we have designed will fit in with the surroundings. If I ditch it and start again it will cost me aprox £5000 to start again but if I push on and build it I may have a very expensive show piece that I don't like. Anybody else had the jitters this late on?

This is how ours where done in oz. timber inside reveals was a finger jointed pine, with the architrave of your choice. I actually liked it compared to the standard plastered reveal. It had another benefit if fitting blinds it provided easy fixing points.

I wouldn't use an aircrete type block if rendering, they suck the moisture like crazy and can be a pig to work with. Ok inside as plaster takes to them so much better.

Has anybody used an acid etch. It's used in Australia to scratch up the surface of new polished floor slabs before tiling. Works a treat.

This was going to be a question I was going to ask, 1, where is the water coming from? 2, how are you going to keep it in the hole? 3, as far as I see it if you dig below the water table it will fill up on its own, but it will go up and down as the water table does. Your water will disappear two ways. One evaporation, two it will run out the bottom and sides of the hole. So you really need to do a bit of testing. Dig a few test holes and see what the ground is like. We are on gravel with a very high water table, as you can see from my pics we have more trouble trying to keep the water out than keeping it in.