ToughButterCup

Ahhhhhggghhh. Like @Declan52 said before I bought mine, you can do so much damage in just a moment. But I never gave a thought to damage I might do to myself. I never once wore the seat belt. And I have never seen anyone wearing one in a digger cab. Have you seen a digger driver wearing one ( excepton a course or test)?

... is the first of very many to come. Trick is to enjoy them somehow. When you find out how let me know eh? Welcome

https://www.hellomagazine.com/film/2020100598477/grand-designs-kevin-mccloud-heart-attacks-show/?viewas=amp Poor Kevin. The things he has to put up with for money. Kevin, pal, if you want to know why you piss people off, read the article.

As @Bored Shopper suggests, there's little that's common about common sense. After four years of building when I'm asked " Why didn't you (...)" I now reply " Because I'm not you." Do I sound fed up? ? The sheer volume of choice is the most daunting thing. The most expensive aspect of any build is knowing why you are NOT doing what you might reasonably be expected to do. That's the steepness @Bored Shopper alludes to. You are exactly right @Dima, most of us need a capable, critical, supportive friend. I'm still looking for that hen's tooth. BuildHub is the closest you'll get. But don't rely on her. Due diligence is easy to miss out. It's hard work.

It just occurred to me that you might not know about Martin Goodall's excellent law - blog.. He specialises in permitted changes of use. Much to read there!

Our key cupboard drives me mad. Pick one set of keys out of the lockable key cupboard and another set slips off its hook and drops to the floor. And the floor seems to be getting further away the older I get. We'll be getting a key safe based on this thread . What's needed now is a key cupboard for installation in the house. Recommendations please....

Thanks very much for doing that. Saves us a lot of time . The search engine in this site is very good indeed.

We pitched our application firmly on the sustainability ticket. The trouble is that the meaning of the term is sufficiently amorphous to provide for a wide range of interpretation. I agree with @LSB above. Two things left: persistence and evidence gathering. It took us 35 years of quiet determination - extreme perhaps, but when hope is all that you have, then keeping it alive becomes a useful job.

If I had the chance, that's what I would do. But reality sets in.... a bit of help arrives uninvited and unplanned ... rude to say " Come back next weekend " innit? So I drop everything and get on with xyz. Arrangements to meet next weekend made, .... you guessed it ... fall through. Followed by "Can you bring your digger round and ... " Then, mid lockdown a chippy arrives .... "That cladding needs two of us because...." (I was hand digging the foul drains) Flexibility I call it.

We used it. Setup takes a bit of time, but thereafter, think LEGO. Repairs are super easy. Roof weight is about one third. (Single layer of tiles.) A bit of fireside reading

Yes. We were given permission, the applicant next door (20 meters away), was refused (at Appeal). The difference and reason given? Sustainability. Cutting a long story short, locally at least, the interpretation of the term sustainability seems to have changed recently. Notwithstanding arguments presented elsewhere by @the_r_sole, (search on this site for the term Consistency by @the_r_sole), there was qualitatively next to no difference between our application and that of our neighbours. The only real difference was temporal. I feel for you.

And while theres talk of children, and brooms; here have a read .

It threw a track in sympathy. In all this rain. I look like one of those Turkish oil wrestling chappies. Even got wet, oily .... (self sensored: rare but useful) Hot shower, tea, medals now.

Photos to follow with luck. Smashed my PC yesterday. Editing is SH_eye_Tee on my phone . Oh, by the way, I have boulder envy Dave.

out of the cab like a pocket rocket, IC cover off. There it sits. Grinning. Look at me! Aren't I clever? A perfect fit almost. Reach in, try to lift it. Hernia warns against anything more strenuous. BuggerAndDoubleBugger. Reach down into the hole, three tonne strop and a couple of shackles round the boulder, hook up to the bucket. And lift. (By now the bells are ringing loudly even for me...) POP. ...it actually sounded like that. Out it all comes boulder, IC riser and all. And of course all the surrounding soil rushes in and fills the IC base and pipe. DAMN_BLOODY_NATION. They say nature abhors a vacuum.

Dose of pancreas-damaging sugar (Luke o' Zade) and I'm on fire. Swinging like a goodun. (Shadddup at the back there..... specially you Russ.) Inspection chambers standing up like soldiers, swiftly disappeared in their cloak of MOT 1 and earth. Boulders hidden underground again. Except a few. ( Ding, dong) I bet we'll drive over these I/Cs and smash them to bits.... I know! Protect them pro tem with...... BOULDERS. Yo Sushi.! Great idea. There was one boulder - my favourite- beautiful, round, beautifully round, colour of Trump's coiffure, but with more emotional and actual intelligence : a cracker. (Bells any louder yet ?) Scooped up and gently, elegantly dropped (key word) in place. This next bit is where my life slowed to a crawl. A second became an hour. Impact. Exactly where I wanted it. And started to roll...... F...U...C...K. NOOOOOOO. straight onto the I/C lid. Which promptly swiveled on its axis . Boulder disappeared. It was only the fear of losing whats left of my wedding tackle on the track controls that stopped me flying out of the digger front window to catch the boulder before it disappeared down the I/C. Disbelief. Sheer disbelief. I need a break..... sweating at the memory. Worse, much worse follows.

I blame the geology. That's wot didit. And too powerful a digger. Oh, and my stupidity - a bit. BOBCAT digga on hire. Beautiful proportional controls. Smooooove, fast, slow, millimeter precision, spacious. Hear the warning bells yet? Final foul drains to be dug. Easy peasy lemon squeezee. Dunnit before - by hand as well as machine. Whaddya want? Depth, accuracy correct width. Oh how long it took for me to learn that the hard way. How very steep was that learning curve. Up to now I've only dug through glacial till. And garden soil. This dig was to be different. Mudstone and sandstone. Yuk. The type of boulders where the bucket teeth leave smoking grooves on the rock faces. Time after time. Suitcase size boulders one after the other. Some obviously had received the tender ministrations of a glacier. Nuvver peel of the warning bells? But I'm 'ard: tough as a buttercup. Nuffin stops me. I get everywhere. But even I have to admit defeat occasionally. Solid wall of rock. Hmm? BCO: mind if I put the I/C here because...? Tickety boo. Backfill time. Yo! Easy.

Drawings? ?Drawings? I'll dig out some photos: much more use to you. As it happens the ground heave pipe is partially exposed at the moment so I will take some pics and post them. By the way have you thought about the range of piling systems available? I ask because steel sleeved concrete was too expensive for us. Have a read of this . Much, as in very much, cheaper.

Not even Shhhhh.... You-Know-Who?

For me stress has become normal; the trick is to turn it into something positive. And I dont always manage it. Yet.

Self building reaches a cold , hard hand down into your stomach and wrenches it with sickening power. At the same time it empties your bank account as fast as a trip to Las Vegas. It wakes you up at all hours and keeps you awake as well as any baby. Charlatans hiding in plain sight add spice to the mix: nowt like people not doing what they say they'll do while keeping your money in their account. Keeps the blood pressure up quite well that. @MJNewton, thats what makes this board so successful. We all suffer the same gut wrenching horror. Self building hardens you. It has shown me that moving on is the only way to deal with imperfections. Unless there's a clear cut case of malpractice and unprofessional behaviour, then Head Down Arse Up Go turns the stress you feel into something worthwhile. I've been cutting holes for downlights this week. A few of the holes are a few mm out. One visitor pointed the error out. The remark said more about the person making it than anything else. The errors will be there for all to see as long as I am alive. Let's see who points it out. A useful filter that. Make the error, move on. Turn the stress into useful behaviour.

Yes. Durisol. Here's a search listing of everything I have posted on Durisol . Not all good. But the opposite is also true. A great deal of rubbish is posted about ICFs. Outlandish claims are common. Visceral criticism of one or other is also common. The way through that fog of misinformation is to go and look at - visit ‐ a few builds of each type. There'll be good and bad installations in each type of ICF. One will click for you. I'd use Durisol again - but only because I know - mostly - what to look for.

A very reassuring post Russ. Very.

As luck would have it, we are on made ground over glacial till; clay. And we have ground heave precautions . Thats code for a French drain all the way round the house. Placed about 400mm below the surface, bedded in some stone. In all about 100 meters. Cost? Can't remember . But it took half a day (tops) 15 tonnes of stone , 100 meters of pipe, two blokes, ie one person day. £200. Stone £300, pipe £100, machine £200, mark up £100. Say £1000. Because our site slopes, and the heave protection pipe discharges 10 meters down our garden, I persuaded our BCO to allow us to duct our rainwater from the roof into that piping in order to supply extra water to our attenuation 'bog' (or GCN factory - a shallow marshy bit where theres already a small spring) as part of our ecology and SUDS program. I've been digging that pipe line today (£280 pw for a 3 tonner). Saved spending a cople of thousand on plastic crates and stuff. Overall our heave protection paid for itself.