ToughButterCup

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.

Really? I mean really?

Phone call time? Or Yellow Pages?

I feel for you. I have come to understand professionals' reluctance to take over someone else's work... It's a bit like being handed blocks of JavaScript written by someone else and being asked to sort the 'issue' out. Q. What's the issue? A. It doesn't work. It takes longer to unpick the error than to rewrite it ab initio. Might something analogous be happening here? PS. Some interesting reading in your OP for me this evening. Thanks. Can't understand it yet, but....

I would consider offering to pay him what he asks for minus the cost of putting it right. Or he puts it right. Ask him to show you one other roof - anywhere - with gaps that size between the ridge tiles. Frankly, the work is shockingly poor. I mean its not even hidden from view is it?

Phhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Lets look at the good bits: I measured carefully I made a plan I got SWMBO to check my plans the plasterer kindly tied string to loops of wire (his suggestion) I stuck to the plan I marked out the ceiling to the mm with string and I bought those Bosch (natch) hole saws - the ones that eject the cut out ; bit like using a pump action shotgun innit I used a DADE (thanks for the tip @Mr Punter) - my armpits are not longer full of plaster dust I said my prayers this morning like mummy told me And still I screw up. 16 holes to cut and I still screw up. Twice. They're going to have to put me in a home. Well, my surname is Simpson.

I really hope you haven't paid.......

Morning..... Welcome. Have you thought of starting a blog on BH? I ask because a blog is a good place to collate all your notes, learning, links, videos. Member comments on that are an excellent source valuable information, not to mention helpful in saving unecessary expense. In relation to young families, we have a couple of very young grandchildren - they are being trained in good on site practice - and very useful for sorting recycled screws: helps with their maths

They (Klokow) are probably the cheapest, @Onoff . I needed 4000+ stainless steel screws for our cladding. Less than half the Screwfix price - including the shipping. 2 full days order lead time. @dnb, you'll need to be really unlucky to have a BCO who goes through your roof construction in quite so much detail. ... or in other words @Russell griffiths is right. As usual. ?

Bloody Bosch stuff, always overpriced. ?

Wanna pain-free day? Ask @PeterStarck. Ta Peter!

Your retaining wall has drains that vent to the outside of the wall, yes? My instinct would be to wait and see how much water is produced by the wall after a large amount of rain. If you are worried by that volume of water, a quick, simple French drain is all you'll need I suspect.... Just link the French drain to your soak away.

Bingo! Time for Tea and Medals . In each case the wire was too far from the hole for my curled-over hands to reach, and so near to the hole that it was easy to overlook using the camera. Anyway, panic over. Lesson learned. Keep what's left of yer hands to yourself DADE ordered. Thanks @Mr Punter

Ah, that's what 3 year olds are for...... I know exactly where the damn thing is because the glassfiber cable on the camera is fairly rigid: so I know direction and distance from the hole. Its just that my hand is permanently bent (post-operative contraction of the scar tissue) and I can feel the wire with the back of my fingers (when the hand's in there) and cant straighten my fingers enough to grab it. Just had a brain-wave: tape a hook shaped welding rod to the inspection camera probe ..... Ha! Thanks lads.

In ceiling LED downlighters.... Followed all the advice. Took care to note the places where my downlighters should be. Marked the ceiling accordingly Drilled the holes. 70mm. Filled my face, ears and armpits with plaster dust. Fetch face mask. Spat a lot. Pull the wire through in most holes. Except in two places. Thought this would happen, got a strategy: a Bosch (natch) inspection camera - you know the sort where, in private, you look to see what's in your ears or your ...... Set LED illumination at 100% Pop it in the hole... There the little bugger sits leering at me. Some of you will know I have had both little fingers amputated (mis-spent youth): easy I thought : get yer hand in fish it out. Four fingered self builders are at an advantage here: wa hay! Got my hand in could NOT reach it and spent 10 full minutes trying to get my hand out. Felt like half an hour . Christ it hurt. Still hurts Got a right cob on now Wire 'fish tool' Nada, nichts, rien, nothing Dropped the fishing wire in ceiling space. Fook. Welding rod, bent to shape - poked in and - you guessed it - dropped. Fookety Fook. Artery forceps - not long enough I know that I cannot be the first guy who has had this problem. Short of taking the floor above up....... Help, please!

I agree with you @DevilDamo. Not sure about the term retrospectively invalidated though. I feel for you @Moonshine. Many of us here have had our fair share of planning delays - indeed delays in general. The only positive thing I can offer is that the stress that delay causes can be harnessed and turned into something useful - like increasingly detailed preparation. Have you heard of the WayBack Machine ? It's an Internet archive. Your data may be available there. Worth a try .....