Russell griffiths

It’s been mentioned here twice I think. £30-40 grand divided by 7 houses.

Your council will not want samples sending in, my council specifically states do not bring samples in. can you imagine every builder turning up in reception with 4 bricks and a couple of roof tiles. it normally states that they want to see a sample section of wall. you normally build a 1m square of wall and send them pictures. pictures from the brick manufacture brochure might be adequate as well.

If you have a loft it won’t be a problem with noise. I have vaulted ceilings in all the rooms, and it’s noisy.

Moving on with the rest of the build it would benefit you to ask some questions here first so you can preempt how things will be done and you will have a grasp of if it’s going off piste slightly before something has gone too far.

Just ensure the last one in the run has something down it to catch the crud, give them a good flush with a hose and then collect the crud. you need to be all over your builder like a bad smell.

Do you have an option of something different. I have standing seam and it looks spot on, nothing else would do the job on my place due to the low pitch, but I would rather have slate/ tiles for longevity and maintenance. but saying that I have no idea what mine will be like in 25years I could be worrying over nothing.

Go and talk to some of the neighbours, find out what agro they ever have. as far as I’m aware the only way it would not comply is if it flows to a waterway, if it exits to a drainage field then it still complies, don’t know the regs on sizes. if it ever needed replacement then allow £30,000 divided by 7.

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You do not need a water trap if the pipes run to a soakaway. You will not have any odour from a soakaway. you only get odour from a foul sewer.

I’m presuming that brickwork around the fire place is cavity construction with a fairly substantial cavity with insulation installed. the drawing isn’t clear. I would not expect your bricky to have ever seen this, sips construction is far from a regular thing to come across, and fitting a fire place like that adds to the complexity, I would sort the details thoroughly yourself, as you know your average bricky will not appreciate what cold bridging is or air tightness. you need to continue the insulation layer that the sips provides around the fire place so you need a continuous insulation layer from right to left.

90% of whatever you do will be timber, if your considering putting a second storey on in brick, then 100% you would be better off taking it down.

Self levelling concrete is not easy to find, lots of plants don’t do it, then if you do find it you will have minimal orders and increased costs, so you will probably end up with normal concrete. you will not get a good enough finish for any sort of LVT and nobody will lay LVT without doing there own preparation work. so allow for needing a smoothing / leveling compound on top of your concrete, this could be anything from 3-5-10mm thick, depending on how well the concrete was laid. or easier in my opinion to lay concrete first then insulation then ufh then liquid screed to cover the pipes. everyone has an opinion of how to do it.

You don’t need an architect get an architectural technician, you said it has planning, foundations poured, so you just need building regs drawings i paid £25 an hour to get my sketches turned into cad, retired architect I would expect £30-35 an hour now. I think you could get it all done for £2000-3000, it’s a very simple design.

It’s ok your engineer saying upgrade the foundations,have you looked into the cost of this. as far as I know the standard price is about £1000 per linear m for underpinning.

You won’t be air leaking through a flat painted surface, if you didn’t get a good result it will be down to gaps. try doing a diy test and find the leaks.

The window can sit wherever you want to put it. as long as you demonstrate a robust method of damp proofing the floor the walls and whatever else is nearby. You need to tell them how your doing it, not the other way around.

All your cables for power have to be run in what is called a safe zone, your electrician will sort this out, it’s probably ideal to keep data cables in the same safe zone as it tries to prevent any numpty drilling or screwing through them. you can run your cables from the consumer unit across the first floor ceiling / floor then they can drop down to the room below or go up to the rooms above. all you need to worry about at foundation level is making sure you have provided a route into and out of the property for all services in and out.

Parge coat onto wet blocks is not a problem, as you would want to wet the blocks down anyway weak sand n cement mix with a shovel of lime. bucket and a soft broom head or just a hawk n trowel.

Have you looked for the cheapest roughest version of what you have so you could knock it down.

Get all critical measurements added to your drawings. so get a foundation drawing, not a drawing of the house with the foundations on it, but a dedicated layout drawing just for foundations. then a set out drawing for brickwork on top of that foundation, you don’t want the location of the kitchen sink on it, that’s not relevant, you want all the different aspects that are on a set of plans pulled off into individual elements. all these drawings go to the surveyor and they will plot all the points into their total station. when they come to site for the first time to do an initial site set out get them to put finished floor height, damp cours height and anything else relevant on a timber post that you have fixed somewhere, preferably out of the way of the digger, probably screwed to a fence or something. after the site scrape you can measure down from those marks very roughly to get the bottom of your trenches or whatever foundation you are doing. remember this stage heights are very rough, accuracy is not needed in just preparing trenches. from the ffl mark you can work out how many courses of brick or block you have below this and this will give you top of concrete height. it’s all fairly simple measurements depending on what you are building. I had the surveyor out 4 times I believe 1. Rough house layout then I scraped it down to depth. 2 piling locations then the piling company came in then I installed the ringbeam. 3 wall position on top of ringbeam. from here up it’s all set in stone, your corners are marked, that’s where it’s going, it’s just a case of adding the layers you have on your drawing untill your up to ffl. 4 drainage points. Where added as we brought the blockwork up to work out position of cut outs in the block walls. a slab is slightly different, but the same information is needed.

That’s sorted then. you need a full tin hat scaffolding put up remove the entire roof remove all roof timbers replace with loft trusses replace hip ends with gables re roof fit out inside. a year of agro and lots of money, but you get what you want. have you got any pics.

Do you need to take the front down, partition it off inside and strip it back to a shell, re insulate it, re plumb, new electrics and then tie it all back in to the new extension on the back. no different to buying an old scudder and doing a refurb on it, except don’t damage anything in the new bit. bring it all up to spec, with a bit of a modern touch to the front, new entrance new windows. how far do you want to go.

If you go with your original idea of all the insulation on the inside I’m unsure of where you would position doors and windows, you will end up with very deep external reveals as the windows will need to sit within the insulated area. have you not thought of a fairly standard insulated cavity but up the internal insulation for a better u value. so 125 cavity or something like with 90 mm cavity boards and 50mm internal, then a service void and then plasterboard.

It will not be a new dwelling, you won’t get the vat back, it’s just another extension. same as the loft conversion.

Nobody can answer this, only you, you’re stood there looking at it, you know your financial situation, you know what it’s worth. sorry we can only answer technical questions. personally I would knock the lot down and build the biggest most expensive house in the street, then sell it and do it again. but my circumstances probably don’t fit in with yours, so you need to do what is right for you.