Russell griffiths

Erect ladder, unclip cable, cut down pole. Wait for the shit to hit the fan. Cost zero.

My Graf plant runs 6 mins on and 4 mins off, or it could be the other way around. I was told this optimised electricity usage and stops the air holes blocking with crud if the blower is off for longer.

Reading all this it looks like a project for icf blocks. Can be self built, no additional help needed. One concrete pour so reasonable pump costs. Render outside, no problem. Clad the inside in 18mm osb and paint.

As above, Staffordshire blues, order them and move on to the next problem, anymore than two minutes thought on this is overthinking. Only one product suitable for down there. Obviously different manufactures might have colour variation.

Depends what you are looking for but I like Flemish bond with a light creamy colour mortar.

I think this fad at the moment of sleek roof lines and hidden gutters is asking for trouble in years to come. I lived in semi tropical Australia for a few years and they are very realistic rather than wanting some arty fatty design. Roofs have large overhangs, a lot for shade, but it also sheds the water away from the house, gutters do not cope with the tropical storms so they don’t have them, water flys of the roof and onto the floor. Water should be encouraged to leave the roof as fast as possible and get to the drain as fast as possible. There are plenty of posts on here about wanting to not have a certain down pipe in a location because it will spoil the lines of the house. Oh FFS get over yourself and get that water off the roof. When i originally designed my place ace it was going to have hidden gutters, I soon worked out it would be a good few grand more and would be a pig to build, so I scrapped the idea and had deep wide aluminium made up. Do I look at the house now and think it looks crap with the gutters, not at all the only person who is going to notice you haven’t got gutters are the ones you point it out to when you are blowing your own trumpet.

If you have ever seen an internal downpipe block and then separate at a junction you would soon realise that it’s a stupid idea.

You cannot plug curling tongs or a hairdryer into a pull cord.

So how come you can put an electrical socket within easy reach of a kitchen sink. I think the regs need updating for bathrooms, with fast acting breakers is there really a risk? and abroad it is always a done thing to have a socket near the sink. This country needs to get a grip of reality, how many people would die per year if you had a light switch in your bathroom, probably zero.

Who said that.

Buy yourself an eps surform sander thing, it’s like a cheeese grater with a handle. Make your openings 30mm bigger than the window or make your windows 30mm smaller 🤪 this will allow for 5-7mm of render on both sides, then adequate room for the nozzle of your illbruck foam gun. Use the sander to put a slight slope on your blocks in the cill area. Then render cill area and reveals and head. Two coats of a waterproof coating, then fit the windows. If you can bend and stretch the peel n stick membrane around the cill area with any sort of good result, I will nominate you for a noble peace prize.

Couple of points, you drawing needs enlarging a bit so the details show a bit more. The extended cill needs an upstand so it tucks up and under the upvc cill. Have you considered a piece of slate as the extended cill, I think it would fit in with your location. Then the upvc cill needs to have a very minimal down turn so it sits almost on top of the slate. Regarding render, pick a manufacturer and stick to there recommendation regarding preparation. All my stuff came from the the EWI store. Sticks like the proverbial shit to a blanket.

If you are retaining the concrete frame have you considered icf, I know there’s a couple of people on here that have done this incorporating the frame into the inner core of the icf.

You will need to find the right diameter.

Build a porch.

Resilient bars and get the little metal hangers so you pull them up or down as needed.

You don’t need 300mm if it’s an unheated space, and you don’t have ufh.

That’s better. Do you actually need the additional eps outer skin, can you not use a block with thicker outer in the first place. Not sure what your external finish is but anything heavy and I would be worried about the load carrying capacity of the extra eps just fixed to the standard block.

Who’s paying for the adhesive, large format and an uneven surface will result in lots of adhesive. Allow for loads extra.

Drop it as steep as you like, the old wives tale of leaving solids behind is more for clay pipe, plastic runs fast. Slope it down straight into chamber , get a bit of speed behind it and it will keep the whole run clean and shiny.

plywood to cover treated timber in cavity. This is how ive just done this one.

KSo floor level 100% correct, not a chance. Your slab will be the height it is but ffl is slab plus flooring so slab plus self levelling compound plus tiles. Or you change your mind and it’s now self levelling compound and LVT so in the blink of an eye you have lost 15mm in height. So your door now sits 15mm too high. As I said stop your concrete on the inside of the walls, stop your concrete core low and build it up two days before you fit the doors. Your doors can sit on the insulation, they don’t need to sit on concrete. Regarding seeing the wood wood in the icf block core, that’s correct, you see this on the inside, you then pack this out with a skinny bit of insulation and then cover with plasterboard, you need to make your opening a bit larger than the door, or you end up with the standard shit look that people have with the plasterboard touching the door hinges. Ive just spent 2 days cutting out a floor slab and grinding down the insulation on a new build where the door was installed too high, another company came back to put the door in and said they wished they were all this accurate.

another one.

I’m afraid there’s nothing I like about that design. Pour your concrete and leave it very low at the threshold, bring it up to level when you have 100% worked out FFL , then bring it up and add more insulation for the door to sit on, I used XPS 500.

But levelling compound is not structural, it sits on top of a concrete or screed slab to make it flatter. You cannot put it over insulation, it has no strength jump up and down on it and it will just break up. Needs 75mm of traditional screed or 50mm of liquid screed over insulation for the strength.