ToughButterCup

Morning! Ask the SE for a fee proposal to design a way of solving your problem using micro piles. Ask her to recommend three micro-piling companies who in her view are well qualified and competent Make contact and ask for a site meeting with all of those companies and listen hard. Agree / negotiate the fee with the SE. Ask three other SEs for their price to do the same work perhaps? Get a Cost Consultant (Quantity Surveyor) to price the job. Ask three other QSs for their price to do the same work perhaps? Wait for the QS estimate Decide. Which? Haven't or can't? Insert that super-useful word yet and you get out of jail free. Why haven't you explored demolition and the associated permission yet? Dont tell me, you don't want the bad news of how much that will cost. Join the club. It may or may not be mad to get a timber frame house: but don't do so before you know why you haven't chosen other options. Simply put, you need to pay for well qualified professional advice before proceeding . 'That process felt really uncomfortable for us - at the same stage as you are, what did we have to show for all the money we spent - nothing: except clarity. We're four years in to our project: I've lost count of the times I've been very grateful for the advice we solicited. Knowing why you are not doing what you might reasonably be expected to do is worth many worry-free nights sleep.

Well, diagonal maybe not. But I've just discovered this stuff. And that means shadow gaps are possible. Carefully built, they could look brilliant. I've seen a local barn done using it. Mutts Nuts Yes, it expensive, but overall, I'll use less wood and that will offset some of the additional cost of the membrane. http://www.dupont.co.uk/products-and-services/construction-materials/tyvek-building-envelope/brands/tyvek-breather-membrane/products/tyvek-uv-facade-rainscreen-cladding.html

The schema for our cladding is for mixed vertical and horizontal boards on two faces and vertical only on the other two faces. What if I'd I wanted to -say - put up some diagonal cladding? Who can make me take it down and put up cladding as per the architect's design? I know the Planners could Huff and Puff, but what the Hell bro! Stuff 'em!

Keep the tips coming son! I need every damn one of them. ?

Thanks. Its the North face of the house we are building. Nobody will ever look at it. ? Useful comment, though. Thanks

Ours are about the same. But our current house is the closest to the one we are building. Am I going to machine gun our feet off for the sake of £60 of intumescent paint, a BBA certificate, some photos of the process and a days work?

BCO has been. We talked for a bit - and I agreed that, anyway, I'd pop a coat of fire protective coating on the North face: £60 or so. And I can DIY. My memory of conversations about the issue was - immediately post Grenfell Tower - that I'd have to have the cladding professionally done, and pressure treated with Non Com. Well, it's no longer made and I can DIY. Head down, arse up keep going Ian.

BCO says he will visit ... today maybe. Update as and when.

I have been ringing round for prices for our cladding (800 LM). Our BR submission specifies fire retardant ( Non-Com ). An Internet search for Non Com fire retardant takes you to a German site : redirecting to the English site (which has no search facility) you are taken to a product called DRICON. Ring them up, and NonCom is no longer produced. Digging around on the Internet on the issue of fire retardants I get the distinct impression that suppliers are being really careful. Timbmet, for example say they no longer send their produce to the companies they used for fire retardant coatings. The rep I talked to mentioned that the companies previously used by Timbmet were unable to supply certification. Hence my caution, and this post. As I understand it the fire retardant process wood involves either pressure treatment or simple coating. Can I buy an appropriate coating and apply it myself, or does that have to be done professionally? My BR submission specifies a coating: would it be better to get the wood pressure treated? Or conversley, can the BCO make me have the wood pressure treated? Does the Fire Retardance application process have to be evidenced or certified in any way? Russwood told me that fire treating their wood (Siberian Larch) effectively doubles the cost of the raw timber. Presumably that would be for pressure treatment - not coating as specified in my BR submission. The BCO is getting back to me: ... one converstion that I'll be sure to summarise and send to the inspectors' office.

I wonder whether that is true of all of us, all the time? In the same way as we are all watching glass flow (I'm told)

Seen on a tool maker's van: Some day you'll need a Rigid Tool.

This screenshot explains the reason for the difference between @ProDave's report, and @NSS. Dave's slap bang in the middle of the Low Pressure system windy.com

Optimism bias will blot out any negatives that KM or Grand Designs dish up. I've been thinking about @JSHarris point about it here, . I don't think we would - knowing what we now know - have started our build. But then I remembered Robert Frosts poem: The Road Not Taken. Another way, perhaps earthier, would be to say Curiosity Killed the Cat Had we not started - damn the consequences - I for one would never have forgiven myself. So for us it's a bit shitty now, no money, knackered, lots of mistakes to live with. More stress -in spades - to come. I know that now. And how many people do I know would give their eye teeth to be as privileged as we are?

In the 1980s, some German TV stations - when no programs were scheduled - showed a video taken from the dashboard of a car driving through (where I was ) the North German Plain. Open countryside - say Salisbury Plain-ish or bits of Norfolk would be the UK equivalent. Very restful to watch.

Guilty as charged. Knackered, broke, learning hand over fist, stressed and very happy.

For a wonderful selection of non-compliant stairs, all you need to do is look at the average Grand Designs episode. Across the UK, you can hear the chorus of outraged BuildHubbers every episode : "Those bloody stairs aren't compliant" followed a few seconds later by "Thats a good idea - shall we do that dwahling - wodja fink ?" Tripped and almost fell down my temporary stairs the other day. Ours will be over-compliant.

What a stupid thing of me to write. There aren't enough expletives ...........

I really, deeply feel for those many brave souls starting off in the current political atmosphere. But there are things we can all do to mitigate the insolence of fortune. On many budget headings we can save a bit here, a bit there; overall the price of stuff may not make much difference. We can all compromise just a little bit. Put the infrastructure in for a this or a that and afford it a bit later - avoiding the aggro of digging through walls and laying cables or pipes. A bit of strategic planning if you will. Delivery? Well, that's another issue. Maybe the time will come soon when - as a group - we might pool resources to achieve some economy of scale : time, delivery costs, labour, purchasing power. ?

That woke you up didn't it??

@SteamyTea, HTML5, CSS3 and JQuery and a web server (free) will highly likely do the job. There's loads of excellent online help.

@craig will know ... He'll be along in a Scottish minute. ?

Have a look at this

The aircraft has a very strong pro lobby in the USA; have the USAF actually managed to retire them yet? I seem to remember some poor eejit trying to convince a US Senator (Mc Cane?) that the F16 was an appropriate replacement.

Have a read of the GBRs and then PM me.

No, Planners cause the sort that keep you awake. All bloody night. For months.