ToughButterCup

Man up: build yer own. A few yards of 9 by 2 for the stringers and whatever is lying round the site for the treads - spare sheets of glass will do. ?

Brilliant. I cannot remember when last I saw a hedgehog in Lancashire. Maybe 20 years ago? More?

Come on lad, what's yer secret? Plenty come past our build every day. Not one of them stops. Most are running (away)

Ugh ... you ruined my Sunday morning now, ruined it I tell ya! I was successfully managing an @Onoff on the paperwork.

Just bought our cladding from ProWood in Wigan . We've bought Siberian larch; in the context above, the exchange rate was mentioned as the most important issue.

Yer a star, thanks. Ian

@jack, any chance of a photo? The reason I ask is that I don't have a clue about how big the gap should be. I'd guessed about 10 mm - busy going through cladding images looking for the shadows and trying to estimate how big the gap is ? Why not 20 mm, or 6?

Thanks, helpful. About the fixing - fix the insect mesh to the sides of the battens? I'm a Very-Slow-Bear this morning, with a 15mm shadow gap, how might that work then?

? I think they could both work; but what worries me is having membrane in direct contact with the cladding. There's a high chance of the membrane keeping moisture close to or in contact with the wood. Not good.

This thread is a very helpful discussion on some aspects of cladding. @Russell griffiths made the point that he wanted to avoid building an insect theme park as well as a house. In that context, it was suggested by @the_r_sole that the breathable membrane be placed on top of the supporting battens, and the boards directly on the membrane. That's a very appealing idea because we want to have 10mm shadow gaps. AKA an invitation to all invertebrates and some fauna to live happily ever after installing our cladding. Come to think of it, a tribe of Great Crested Bloody Newts would have no problem in setting up home in there either. So: membrane against the wall, battens on top then cladding OR wall, then battens, then membrane, then cladding Which?

At first sight, your answer solves the problem. But... Your suggestion means that the back of the timber would be in direct contact with the membrane. If that's the case, then would that not promote timber degradation where it is in contact with the membrane?

Yes. One. But is that advantage; low weight, worth it to you? I'm not as fit as I used to be - but even I can handle a four meter POSI entirely on my own: lift it off the wagon, stack it, store it, swing it into position, line it up with it's partners. But of course, my beer gut got in the way didn't it.... ?

Put those shorts back on @SteamyTea - might get lucky(ier) this time ?

Its 2019 for Gods sake! Why do people bother to even try?

SPONS takes some working at. Bear in mind that a legitimate copy also comes with a license to use the online version. That's useful because searching online for (say) MOT1 will find every instance - for our purposes read 'context' - of MOT1. Reading those contexts taught me a great deal. It also helps filter out that commonest of self builder problems crass overcharging. If you are not in the local building network (AKA drink in the right pubs) a copy of SPONS is a sensible precaution.

@Robert Clark, while JSH spreadsheet is useful, it is comprehensive to his build - not yours

I am itemising and checking over what I want to sell at the moment. It'll take me a while (month?) to get that done properly for all my stock. How much do you want? In total I have enough to do three lifts on two sides and two lifts on the other sides of a 10 meter by 10 meter house: but I'll need some of my scaffolding for a while yet. If you just want a small amount (three lifts over just under ten meters) I can release that almost straight away. Its all ready and properly stacked. In terms of price, I'll sell at the price I paid minus a bit for wear and tear. I have the invoice and I'll happily show any interested customer exactly how much I paid for each bit ( roughly (£7000 - for all of it). I do want to keep some. It's just too handy.

No. Start with the design and work 'outwards' from there. Send the design to a QS - estimators online if you like - and they will do that for you.

While never carefree about it, we soon got used to being three lifts up. We splashed out on three safety harnesses: and I was the only person who used one - ever. The difference a properly secured, tight safety harness makes to the 'feel' of the job is significant.

I'm in the process of getting mine ready for sale. I can't bring myself to part with all of it. It's so damn useful.

Anna hat ✔️

Eye protection ...✔️

Pop down to your local pool, ask to see the manager and get a 5 liter tub of it. Cost? Nowt.

That's the key issue: how you feel about it. Which leads me to the next question - where will you get your resilience from? Financial security? A short holiday? Improved blood sugar levels? All three? Even with a healthy bank balance you are going to need resilience. This building lark gets to every man-jack-one of us. It reaches down your throat, grabs your stomach and twists and turns - most often at 3:00a.m. All of us on BH have it, have had and are going to have more of it before the end of each damn month. It's a bastard. Stuff what the planner says. She couldn't give a damn about you, your plan or anything to do with the Local Plan. She just wants your problem off her desk. If she detects a hesitant, thoughtful vibe from you and she'll recognise the signs - easier to say no. Know what you want, why you want it, how you're going to get it and have an evidence base to support your opinion - you'll always get a more considered response. Maybe her answer would still have been no - but she'd have had to work at telling you. Ask a professional Planning Consultant to give you an initial - paid for - consultation. Choose the planner carefully. And when you have that first opinion, ask a different planning consultant - the one you really want working for you (NOT the first planner) for an opinion. That way, there's no conflict of interest. You may still decide not to proceed. This way, you will have evidenced why. And that's important because otherwise there'll always be a bit of you which niggles - well maybeeeeee we might have ............

There is a design requirement for a membrane (Kloeber Permoforte NG) , so yes. Here's the relevant quotation from our BR submission And here is an early draft of our cladding plans Later drafts changed the orientation of some of the cladding to horizontal The darker area of cladding isn't .... (isn't cladding that is) Its a breeze corridor (sorry about the attack of Kevin - McC terminology) . It surrounds that corner of the house - the Winter garden - and is outside the heated envelope. I'd like to create a small shadow gap between the boards - say 10 to 20 mm or perhaps less, and change the orientation of the boarding in the upper half of the house from horizontal to vertical. I'd like to change the orientation for a small area, like this (beneath the roof and above the lower floor) and having a really discrete shadow gap between the boards would give a quietly sophisticated look .