ToughButterCup

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 .....

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 ?