ToughButterCup

Then give Tanners a ring; competent, straight sensibly priced.

An SE for which aspect of ICF? As I understand it the ICF suppliers have their own SEs, so that would be a good starting place. Ours, Tanners, was excellent. We built with Durisol.

Probably. Does the work done cope with the water delivered to that area of your house ? If so, bingo! Tea, medals. Peaceful sleep. If not, (... should be...) then come back here and describe the problem in some detail. Relax we'll all pitch in to help. We love a challenge.

Bought a Stihl blower. Use it every day, almost, to ; sweep out the house (open the down wind doors and blow) Sweep the workshop Clean off the crosscut saw at the end of each session Ditto the table saw Chase the sodding chickens out of the winter garden Sweep out the piggery Sweep the bin store. Blow (...) out of the dog pens Clear the lane up after the hedges are trimmed / slashed by the farmer If it broke down I would be down the repair shop that day. Saves me hours of work. Never used for leaf blowing - ever.

The term Professional is often either mis-applied or misunderstood or both. It can mean; The oldest profession in the world: the job gets done for money. Take pot luck in terms of standards. The job gets done to a set of recognised standards: whose standards? She's a joiners joiner: she's highly respected among joiners. He's a perfectionist: he works to his own standards. Money need not be a consideration. I have a feeling that @ReX may be talking about the last two.

Then you are privileged indeed.

The stuff I do for our build is almost always less than perfect. Made a window cill this morning. But the reveals and header need to be made too, before (....) can be done. And we need to be 'in' by January 1st. It's the same with everything. It can always be done better. Any home is a million compromises assembled, jointed and glued in one place Tempus fugit.

@Ralph, reading this thread a bit more carefully, I note that the quote from the SE appears to assume you could be a client under CDM2015. I mention this out of caution. You might be a Domestic Client, in which case the rules are different.

Consistently good reports about them on this network, and background reading. Hillard published a paper on Passive Raft Design (I'll dig it out if you want). I like that commitment to professional development. And one short sentence in an email he sent. .... (paraphrasing) we did not have to use steel sleeved concrete piles as recommended by the soil investigation , and since they were so expensive, we should consider other piling types. So I did, long story short, saved about 17k. It was the fact that he bothered to engage with the wider problem (unnecessary expense) that tipped the balance.

Small point, if you order the blocks and are on site with the builder every day, there might well be less wastage. With more traditional builds, wastage isn't too big a problem, but you can't just pop down the BM to get a few more ICF blocks.

I'm sure Hillard Tanner has a sporran tucked away in a drawer somewhere.

Best advice

Your caution appears well advised. Any reason why the SE should be local? Ours is in Cork, never seen the team. Email, phone, Zoom, MS Teams, snail mail, fax, WhatsUp.....

Thanks. I need to bring the wood into the house for at least a week to let it rest - preferrably a fortnight. This from Norwood I need a UV ray protection, it seems : back to Osmo Oil and maybe a base coat. I'm thinking this might (because it has no biocides) do the trick.... Very interesting point indeed. You say happy .. happy as in keep its colour. I've just looked it up : seems that it's principal use might be in health and wellbeing. Might you have supplier (other than Holland and Barrett.)

We have a little Siberian Larch left over from our cladding. And I'm contemplating using it as a highlight for a very small (10 sqm) inside the house. But over time it'll oxidise unless I coat it with something. The wood is already resinous, so I'm wondering if it simply won't take any coating at all. Has anyone coated Siberian larch, or used it inside their house? If so, can you tell me what you used to coat it, please?

Both. External gets a coat or three of Zinser RAL7016 , internal gets fabbed up and then run through the thicknesser . That Zinser paint is fabulous; fab price too mind...

Yep. Made 5 meters worth so far today. Interesting variation in the slots created: some dry and clean as a whistle, others apparently 'wet' and jammed with sawdust. So I just have to bloward.....

But it ain't malpractice. So I'm safe.

I've used Hansgrohe iBox. It has a 'settable ' default temperature (40).

Never been in : just a quick look at their prices online ?

Yes. Here goes Start with Peter Millard : excellent guy - down in the weeds detail. Lots there - I've been watching his stuff for a few years now. He's a Festool Domino bloke, but not evangelist about it: Festool is not the answer to everything. Then there's Rag and Bone Brown. Bit wordy for my liking but sensible ideas This Kiwi has a passion for plywood. This link is to his list on handling the stuff. Hidden jointing ideas are tops ..... Heres a couple of videos about Lamello jointing That should give you a bit of fire-side reading and watching for a while.

Right Mr Griffiths, that does it. If, like me (us) you can't afford to waste any of the wood you order, and need to make your own fitted storage 'furniture' (because we're poor as church mice), and by chance you bump into this guy on YooChube (Peter Millard) , and you have a Just-Bloody-Do-It attitude, and you have enforced delays because your sodding ecologist delays the start of your build by 9 months, and you manage to turn that delay into planning time , and.... You buy a Festool Domino jointer, a Festool tracksaw and an MFT so you can DIY Max (sorry for the plagiarism @epsilonGreedy ) . Poor me. Hook, line and sinker innit : 1 to you Russ. Fair dos......

Watchit pal or I'll change my name again....?

Tried extra virgin, and butter. Warra friggin mess. like that stuff for push fit foul drains . Tomorrow is going to be like Turkish wrestling methinks.

Using a Domino cutter in siberian larch produces this.... After cutting just 6 slots.... Not good. Dust extraction on full thrutch . Is there anything I can coat the drill with to reduce the amount of cleaning I will need to do?