ToughButterCup

Our design was provided by Tanners (Eire) . One sentence in an email from him about the foundation design saved his fee many times over. The design 'type' is called an Insulated Raft. - One of the consequences is - for example - that we have had no heating at all in the house so far this year - and the ground floor is tiled throughout. We used ground improvement columns - not piles - because they cost about one third (£6,500 ) that other piling contractors were threatening to charge (10m by 10m house, 64 'piles' ) Heres the build-up from piles upward

Our piling design included Foam Glass blocks at the head of most of our piles to get over the problem you raise. (Those supporting a structure outside the 'lived-in' envelope didn't need the foam glass blocks )

Waffle. The older I get the less I like it. Thats why I -now- think differently about one particular comment made - in a public meeting - by our objecting and objectionable neighbour ... "Eee's in it ter mek munney: 'at's top 'n borrom on it - an 'at's why 'ee shoudn bee allowed " The stupidity and venality of the remark shook the audience a little: enough to distract from a valid, material consideration: being overlooked. The issue was never discussed.

Welcome to self-building. We're nearly at the end of our build. Only one thing is true on every single self-build. Each build is an accumulation of compromises. Many (most?) of which are known only to the builder. Visitors to our house never see them. Unless I point them out. And ten years from now, who's going to notice the compromises on your build? Except your wife who will allow herself a quiet smile...... Yes, Brownie Points cost.

What's SWMBO's solution to the problem?

Welcome. I suggest you read the decision notice really carefully . Look for the reasons given for rejection. Maybe copy and paste them here for us to be able to help more. Ian This document may help. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/830643/190910_Tech_Guide_for_publishing.pdf

That job - switching lights off - has been mine since marriage, especially since the evolution of teenage children. Thank God that stage only lasted ten years. I understand from mates thats a common dad-job . 🙄

.... Behaviour altered to what? On a positive note, every teenager would have left the UK. *king good idea .....

Well, you at least will understand when I say : "How do I know what a Gallic Shrug is....?"

Hello, welcome. The title of your post leads me to caution : are you sure you're going to get Planning Permission? I ask because it would be horrible to put a lot of effort into the details of the build , only to be refused permission.

From bitter experience I offer the following. Context is important. Couple of quick questions. Do any officials or planners or ecologists have dated documentary evidence of the property - especially, are there any photographs? How well do you know the ecologists involved? How arsey or co-operative is the LPA's ecologist (not yours) ? Let me describe what happens locally. A year before any official gets to a site where there is a hint of wild-life, and the owners live out-of-the-way (on a farm or behind screening trees) site owners kill the protected species in that location. (I've described how a few times on this board - but across a wide range of locations, pig manure works a treat it seems). IF there is no documentary evidence of your site after examination by the ecologist AND your site is 'out-of-sight', then locally, owners would just get on and do it. I'm not suggesting that that is what I would do, nor suggesting you should, but on my build, since I did not follow local tradition, I spent about £6000 more than needed, and the project was delayed by 9 months. The micropolitics of this type of issue is extremely important. Tread lightly.

Welcome. Thats the kind of post that's really appreciated here : offering help rather than a long description of a knotty problem. Photo of the silver trowel please..... ☺️

... neatly describing why builders call architects eejits and architects say that builders never follow their drawings anyway Another way of putting the same thing is : two groups of Competent People (CDM 2015) - for whose services we pay - do what the Hell they want and blame the other when things go breasts up Which is why - for us paymasters - a sense of humour is compulsory.

Exactly right.

Clearer display than the Bosch .................

Look for @Jeremy Harris recommendation on this board. I agree with the point above: you're looking for relative temperature difference. In a fit of lust, I bought the Bosch colour thermometer a couple of years ago. Works a treat. It's good enough to act as a thermal imager to identify rats 20 meters away. Yes, @SteamyTea, yes, I know.

I needed 64 - cost £6,500. Town And Country Vibro John Ashton is yer man 01772322044 • Work 07885673213 • Mobile

Unlucky @markocosic : very often rats regard their dead brethren as lunch. Waste not want not.

Their teeth never stop growing. They have to gnaw. They'll gnaw through thin metal mesh.

Mice? Mice? Try our rats. Since we live next to what has recently become a pig-farm, we have some right cocky fewkers. Once they'd eaten through the rodent mesh, they were into our roof space (all 80mm of it) like , well, rats up a drain. Here's the kicker : they continued to gnaw in the roof space immediately above our bed head. Sciffle scuffle scuffle. Sleep impossible. As luck would have it, when the rats struck, I hadn't taken the scaffolding down. So - in my Jim-Jams at 10:30 of a freezing evening - flip-flops frozen to my feet, I'm up the scaff ladder like a homesick angel. Pitch black outside. Nuts somewhere in my throat Grab a spare scaff pole which was lying on the boards. Using that pole, bang really hard on the barge board - hard. Hard enough to warm me up a bit. I wuz furious. SWMBO shouts from inside - "What da Fekkety Fek's that - - - sweetheart? " ( a bit late that endearment - sweetheart) "Lesser-spotted pole-rat darlin" "Well it's still nibblin' " Bollerks; Bang very hard, start to slip on the frozen scaff boarding. From up there, I look down at the lane next to our house: pitch black except for a red-flashing set of lights and a dim haze reflected from a hi-viz jacket . - No street lights - Ooooops: my near neighbour walking her dog. It had stopped to look at the eejit up a scaff this late of an evening. "Hi Ian, howzit goin' ? Cold up there is it? " "Can you tell from down there [.... name redacted ...] . I'm amazed." Only then did I notice that my legs and withers (but not my rippling-muscled torso) were illuminated by the light from our bedroom window. Its amazing what tremendous night-vision women have. I thought it was cold enough for it to be invisible. But no, apparently . Anyway, local Rat Man came and sorted it all out. And I ordered a new night-sight for my gun. Worthy opponents, rats. Worthy opponents.

Whats needed now is to get her back out there grafting while you have a well earned rest Good luck (with that) Ian 😉

' ... the wife was struck down with Cellulitis that turned into necrotising fasciitis, which could have led to sepsis....' And what you don't say is that she could therefore easily have died. I really deeply , from bitter personal experience, hope she is on the mend. Really. deeply .... In my case, a cat bit me. A favourite, much loved playful cat. Cant take a joke? Dont keep a cat

I realised somewhat later than I should have done, that setting up for making routine operations easy is very important . Cutting a 4" pipe is easy - but it's not easy when you're wet and tired in the bottom of a trench have dirty hands on your own not sure you measured the pipe correctly haven't got the right tools easily to hand I found that a super-jaws clamp is almost exactly the same working height as a scaffold end-step : that means you can handle long pieces of pipe on your own, and focus on making the cut accurately. You can comfortably apply washing up liquid, and then clean your hands off before you jump back into the ditch. A simple clean sheet of board lying next to you in the ditch so you can place and retrieve tools without clogging them up with clay is worth 10 times its cost.

Ah, the delights of slip couplers. It was yet another fight with a slip coupling - on my own - in the wet - that I lost my temper. And when I had done the necessary war dance to calm myself down, I realised that an oil-filter grabber was the thing to use to grab the washing-up-slathered-snake of a pipe. Worked like a charm. Next time, I'll use two. Did I say '...next time ... ' Phhhhhhhhhh..... Must be time to go down the pub. Coming?

...and if you can, take the top layer of soil off, put that on one side of the trench, then dig down to the required level placing that spoil on the other side of the trench, like this