ToughButterCup

As usual @Russell griffiths beats me to it. I'll need to get up earlier to put one over on him. Just waiting for the right ? moment....... And as usual, he's right. Let me explain. You know how if you ask a random historian to explain (say) why Brissol is so linked to the slave trade, you might well get the response ' Not my specialism' or 'Not my period'. Same with SEs. They need the work, they've got expensive professional insurance, they have some experience - go for it sunshine!. Need to pay the mortgage. Your SE might well have some cursory experience with piles - just enough to do some sensible - over cautious / slightly well-informed / it'll do / work to pay for her partner's new toutou / brogues. In brief, get (a)nother opinion(s). Here's why. Just like you, we had the ground profile done. Just like you dismayed. Just like you inexperienced. Just like you worridtohellabouththecost. Standing on our newly cleared, levelled off site stands a man who's just stepped out of a spanker of a Merc. Trophy Dolly Bird in the passenger seat. Lipstick applicator out, mirror adjusted to suit. Blousy smile. (But nice blouse - suitably immodest and straining at the seams) "Yer maaaate, that'll be £22 grand fer piles: ye'll not get away wi' less " Really? Have you seen our soil profile? "Wa? Ya paid fer a soil profile. 'Ow mooch?" About 2 and a half.... "Mert, ah wood a dun it fer tewundred" Thats interesting. Thank you so much for your time and interest. I really appreciate the way you get straight to the point. Rictus smile. 'Nother glance at trophy bird. Tea and medals. Cue posts to BH. And a slow realisation that with effort and careful research, we can get a sensible, well thought through idea about how to do the job both well and at a reasonable price. A raft can be built in a very wide range of situations. Do the background reading. Hillard has written a paper about it somewhere. I'll try and dig it out. In brief: lots of reading, lots of help on BH lead to Hillard Tanner, and Town and Country Vibro. Have a look at my (now mostly disused blog on BH) And a piling cost of £6500ish. Hillard Tanner's enagement with our problem and his depth knowledge saved more than double his fee. (£2 grandish) Nobody can tell when Refusal (the depth at which there is sufficient resistance in the pile to take the point load plus a safety factor added to the dead load - in our 2.5 times the dead load) will occur. Thats why I was very impressed with TC Vibro. In addition to the soil profile, we (together) dug a deep pit to feel (grab some soil and mash it into lumps) the quality of the soil at a series of depths. (I had a digger in those days ... sob.... ) Refusal occured almost exactly where TC Vibro said it would. Between 3 and 4 meters. Ultimately it's all about risk reduction: reducing the risk to your bank balance. All of the above -loads of hard preparation work- saved roughly £17k. Do the legwork, network, accept no experts answer as definitive - yes even Hillard's. And do come back and test your ideas on BH.

Yeah, but..... I'll take some detailed photos tomorrow and show you ....

I can hire one.....

Right. Live and learn.

Yep. All neatly stacked like you told me.....

Covid-19: an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Suddenly there are trades folk all over wanting work. All over Salmander Cottage. I told one that he could have four weeks work, day rate. So three weeks ago he started. Two weeks into the four week period, (and just fully paid on the day his invoice was submitted) he tells us that he now has too many of his normal customers and it will be mid August before he can come again. You could not make it up could you?

brick and stone. ?

but the thing is there's only about 50 mm of space on the edge of the foundation - just visible above the yellow radon barrier. So it'll have to be slips, I think.

Yes, I was wondering how to camouflage the 'join': maybe some plastic (?) ferns or run some ivy up the wall......

< Then Now> I want to have a go at copying the ramshackle style of our old piggery with stone and brick slips. An ask too far?

An interesting idea. Could you develop that idea a bit? How might it be possible to discriminate in favour of one group or the other (taking individuals to be a group) ?

But Gollum is notorious for his poor eyesight.....

Thats very interesting @Temp. Thanks If you have time, could I ask for a link to a pressure regulator please?

I have one of these and need a single, table top (sometimes called deck mounted) mixer tap. The sink height is 144mm. Is there a recommended height for a tap for a sink of that height?

But energy requires effort. More commonly, I see stasis. Its easy to do nothing. So, more often than not, that's what happens.

Exactly right. And that's what hooked my interest. Because doing that isn't easy. Snatched moments reading here and there point to hints that may help answer your questions. My aim is to beat @Ferdinand to a well argued answer for you. You up for that F?

You are correct. As in Here be Dragons. What an interesting question. You have me hooked. To help unravel this type of complex problem I always resort to Martin Goodhalls blog. No guarantee of a definitive answer but always interesting, always evidence based. What more can a boy need? This link is a search to mentions of the term derelict in his blog Just found this .... in farminguk.com

What a fandamntastic place for a build..... I am soooooo jealous. Port Patrick is a really beautiful place. Some photos would be wonderful, but appreciate you may prefer to keep those to yourself. Swum to the other side yet?

There is no hard and fast minimum time between pours. I have personally heard more than a little bragging about complete houses done in one pour. Complete expensive stupidity to even try. The workflow is (often) build to first room height, pour, continue building to second floor, pour and so on. So the gap between pours equals the build time between first and second floors. Concrete maximum strength occurs after a good few years.

Forgive me, I'm tryung to save you time and money. To Bowdlerise Eliot (Gumbie cat?): Cats will do what they do do and there's no doing anything about it, so If the cats have been walking across the material, then their feet aren't so hot that they won't use the roof.

Welcome. East Ayr - that's where the Jock side of my family comes from (half Jock, half Bosch) Precisely our motivation too. Still building after 4 years and I'm 67 ... and its still worth it, provided I dont pop me clogs soon. It took 35 years for the Planning framework to be right for us : a bit of a wait.

Heres a site search for which icf A lot of tripe is talked about in ICF comparisons. Each has strengths and weaknesses. And your situation is unique. So go and look at a range of methods being built. Come back with a shortlist and ask us again. In the meantime use the site search facility for each type. There's a week's reading waiting for you. The question you ask is well rehearsed here. Ours? Durisol. Yes. Because it suited us.

I'm really tempted, sorely tempted but my better nature prevailed. Just. ?

I went to the factory to see ours being made. Talking to the lads, the key thing they pointed to was the quality of the timber : before use, they dropped each piece into a former - a sort of guage - and if it didn't fit, then it was rejected. Without the jig for both the timber and the assembly, I would hesitate even if I were as Just-Bloody-Do-It as you are John.

The dogs sort everything - everything - out. Bar their own. And that's my fault.