ToughButterCup

The one area with more charlatans than any other on our build: piling. Looks like we're exactly the same as you. In brief, £6500 for 64 piles + detailed ground survey £2.5kish. Forgotten the exact ring beam price but roughly £6 (10 by 10 plus a few bits here and there) Have a read : Preparing for quotes Comparing prices fairly Talking to contractors about piling And here's a list of the other stuf wot I writ bout piles. ? The search section of the site is very powerful. Play with it.......

Oooooo, ya shouldn 'ave asked me that.... Depends on who's doing it: experienced team , team of recently trained goons or on yer loansome. how many's doing it what the quality control is like how many blow outs there are With the bitterly hard-won experience I now have - give me just one labouring on gorilla, a smiling sweet young thing to bring me tea and cakes, and I'd do it on my own. Nobody will care more than you do. And I recon that works out at about 50sqm per day laid. Entirely on my own - say 30. Accuracy accuracy accuracy is key. Whassa point of a fast build with bursts because they couldn't give a stuff (I'm not payin'for it am I? ) and walls that look more like a propellor than a wall ?

And to be doing it now: you have my respect and sympathy. Keep going !

Could not agree more. Its a real pain, but speeds up workflow no end, and reduces trip hazards. Here's a broom and shovel story which might lighten up a horrible Friday. Enjoy.

Back again : their German phone number is 0049926153468. The number is not being answered at the moment: and thats because they knock off at 3 on a Friday The website is so badly designed and coded that I think the best you can do is ring them (from Monday 06:30 our time - that far south in Germany, English is likely to be spoken with a strong accent ) . If langauage is an issue, I'll give them a ring for you. BTW, the company's not far our Queens family stomping ground : Coburg

OK, I will poke around on the German site and see if there's any Tech support. Back in 10 minutes.

This page identifies the seller in the UK. Give them a ring. I have had a look on the German site (waermehaus.de) and - putting it mildly - the site is stuck in 2010.

Good plan. From the images, I'd suggest that there's plenty of ventilation as it is.

Waste time on BH. Retirement and getting professionally out of date - oh how I agree. But retirement has its own challenegs too. Mustn't grumble.

Welcome. My name for you will be SirBreathOfFreshAir . I hope you don't mind. Here's why..... I started build five years ago and I've had five years of people - from professionals to Odd Jobbers - who when politely asked in an unthreatening way, cannot explain the simplest things to me. Some have offered barely concealed contempt " Good luck with that mate ", outright denial (a la Donald Trump level ) " Passivhaus stuff is crap" [local TF manufacturer, financed by a famous local footballer], a long meaningful stare. Others simply avoid answering. One or two smile, and with a bit of pride show me. They'll always be welcome on site. I can - to an extent - understand. Their job is not to teach, it's just to do. In other words, encultered learning. They've done it for so long like this or that, that they have forgotten why - and therefore cannot explain. We all do it in our own sectors. The trick is to get them to explain what they know of their own free will. Thats the moment when many realise how much they do know. The underlying processes which contributed to that knowledge is even more deeply hidden. And if you are being paid by the job, the job is - get-it-done-pronto. Explanations? - Couldn't give a stuff mate; now pay me and bye bye. Unless there is a culture in which Continuous Professional Development (CPD) is a requirement to continuing practice (i.e. licence to practice), then very few, vanishingly few workers in any sector will care to explain anything to anyone. Which is exactly why Build Hub is so popular. Its the generosity of the Mods, the Foundation Group, the members, to share what they know, and to care about what you so accurately ask. Why? In the research literature in online learning this place is a Community of practice. A safe place where we are expected to share and explain. And that's not easy. We'll be glad of your help.

Bloody Hell Joe: you're a genius.

Yes. For years, many years. Until I met you Dave, I didn't know any better. Army: if it doesn't move clean it. If it moves, salute it. Same with you @joe90, wise old bird that ' chare Yes, exactly wot I fought. Until I tried it ... the last lengths of that I bought were 41 or 42mm o/d

I'm trying to make my own spinner to fit onto a drill. The idea is to make something that push-fits into the internal diameter of the paint roller . It would have piece of threaded bar in the middle (M6 ish) which fits into a small drill The internal diameter of the paint roller is 38mm. I've hunted around for something with a 38mm external diameter - loads of things are nearly right - like this bit of conduit for electrical wire. The idea would be to fill that bit of tube with foam and have a bit of M6 embedded in it to act as the drive. The roller sleeve would simply slip over that while it was being cleaned. Trouble is, this conduit is just a bit too big. Is there any common building 'tube' which is 38mm or 37ish outside diameter (so it fits inside a roller sleeve)?

I used to hate decorating. After 4 years of self build, I'm thinking of painting and decorating as therapy. But I hate cleaning paint roller. Has anyone used one of these - are they worth it?

You might. And if there's a 'might' in the works, then that'll affect the price. Until there is full Planning Permission, then despite whats on the ground, there is no extension.

Yes, it does. The job was done by a contractor part of the time, and me the rest of the time. The lads came from Nor' Iron - and reading between the lines, they probably did my job between large industrial jobs . Because of our proximity to the M6, they'd drop in, do a day or two with me labouring on. I got a bit cross when one day I found they'd used my Gaulhoffer window cills as flashing round the solar panels. Come to think of it I was reeeeeely cross. Thats the kind of thing that happens to me though. One screw at the end @BobAJob? Dunno. And yes, the ridge is quite airy I suspect. Its on the snagging list

That's the plan Stan. I'll design one and post here for comment later.

There was: but it blew away in a gale - it was made of Tupperware and had cracked during installation - forgotten about over the years and this year it seems to have had enough. So its foam down under the ridge tile and then some mortar with soot in it, methinks. I would like to put a gargoyle there (ridge - end) . Suggestions? Because I have developed really 'king annoying levels of arthritis in both my hips. Believe me just two years ago, I would not have thought twice about that. It was the obvious thing to do. As it was I had to do more bending and stretching than normal: last night I needed 4 painkillers to get comfortable in bed. I just have to find that balance between the pain caused by pushing it and finding new ways of doing jobs I used to do quickly and efficiently. Years gone by, I'd shin up and down the corners of the scaffold: now - I have to have a ladder. Safer, but takes another few minutes. Who can blame them? I certainly don't. Its just what you have got used to over time. One of the benefits of age and experience I suppose. Yes @epsilonGreedy, being able to draw on really challenging previous experience is extremely useful in self-building. If it's out of your comfort zone, hard work, and wholesome, it's worth doing. Hence I remember, on my first static line parachute jump, the voice of that hairy-arsed sergeant hissing in my my ear as I stood pooing myself on the edge of the balloon basket " ...Assume the position and push, lad... " Directly relevant to reaching out of that swaying basket to try and replace the tile. Thanks Sergeant Williams. (again)

I haven't flown my microlight for a while now, but the gyrations that the cockpit does under a microlight's flex-wing take some getting used to. I managed that (so do most people I understand) by concentrating hard on the job in hand : I used the same technique on this contraption. Focus on the job, and you forget all the butterflies and the disorientation caused by the unexpected movement. Same in a yacht on confused waves. But it's not pleasant, thats for sure.

In theory yes. But operating from that basket that far in from the edge - with the basket swaying quite as far as it did - '... just lift(ing) off 2 ridge tiles ...' was more than I thought prudent. I have a stop-gap measure in place which might just last a bit until we have a decent weather window to get the job done pukka. Now I just need to make up a workable roof ladder . What could go wrong? Edward ! !

Yer a star Joe + Pete. I was worrying about why just the one..... so when i get a proper roof crawling ladder, I'll tap them all and give each a long hard stare. You've both been a big help. Thanks very much indeed.

No, not at the time, but maybe, yes. I might have tweaked it tight enough to cause an almost invisible fracture, which (after two winters) opens enough to let a bit of water through. Brilliant thought Pete. That hangs together in my mind ..... Thanks a lot.

Ahhhh, hadn't thought of that..... Interesting.

Here's the promised piccies. A general view - you can see the problem area because its (the cracked tile) above part of the house that we have not underboarded with 100mm of insulation yet (already 200 between joists) : all the ice on the roof has melted and the roof has started to dry off - but the rest on the North face is still iced up. The south face (out of sight) is already dry and almost hot to touch. A bit closer in reveals that the broken tile is smack in the middle of the dry patch, right on the ridge over 2 meters in from the edge of the house. The part of the roof on the right - in bright sunlight - was appreciably warm to the touch. You can also see how close the solar panels are. It was so nice up there, I took this photo facing East towards the M6 - which is just out of sight. For a few days during the first Lockdown we had an Osprey fishing in that - now iced - pond: he flew past me (working on the roof) at head height, completely unconcerened. Now for the bad news. Reaching down to the cracked tile was easy: " Assume the position and push, lad " an old instructor used to hiss while we were shivvering with fear and training to parachute from balloons. Flat on my tummy, head shoulders chest out of the basket. Praying that Debbie wasn't watching me hang out of the basket over the roof. She was. ? That tile will be out in a few seconds, I thought. Shove hard upwards. You're probably there before me ... all I did was displace the basket (to the left in this case) by an amount equal and opposite to the effort I put into the shove. Bastard. Newton's Third Law innit. Bummer. Again, harder. Same thing Hang on to the ridge with one hand shove the tile with the other. There are times when I wish I was built with shoulders like an American Oarsman, but my upper body strength isn't what it was - and I never was that strong. It is such an easy job off a scaffold. Two hands, push up on the bottom of the tile, it pops out of its clips, throw the bits away (satisfying smash sounds - tom cat goes haring off into the hedge) and replace with the new one thats in the bag you take up with you. Down. Tea. Biscuit. Think. Pop out to the stillage, get some DPM, lead and lead-replacement , a hammer a knife and some snips . Back up. Will the lead get under the crack? Will it heck. Will the lead replacement get under the crack. Nope. 30 second job to shove the DPM under the crack and cut to size. What have I learned, what's still puzzling and what's next? If you are operating 6 meters up and 3 meters to the side of the CofG of a cherry picker, the basket sways (almost as much as a microlight in a gale). If you are working across yourself (pushing sideways) the basket will duplicate the opposite of that movement. The problem may still have two sources : a rip in the felt ( a split tile shouldn't on its own give rise to a leak) and the cracked tile Hire a cherry picker with proportional controls. In nil wind, I could put the basket almost exatly where I wanted to with ease (and no training). Proportional control means that inputs to the control levers gives proportional output. A gentle smooth nudge means gentle movement. Gross input means larger movements. Why did the tile crack at all? Hmmm ? Temperature contrast? Its not underboarded below crack ( see image above) . Osprey crapping on it? Maybe the felt is touching the insulation between the joists and the water is wicking through the felt to the surface foil on the insulation - and dribbling downhill? Whats next? Design a proper roof ladder for this house, build, test and use along the lines suggested by Ed ( see earlier post in this thread) Buy 4 long scaff poles to use as vertical struts (adapt diagonal braces?) thanks @Construction Channel , so I can brace the scaffolding firmly so it doesn't move away from the side of the house. What have I missed?

Good news first , or the bad?