ToughButterCup

while blowing your smoke up the chimney ?

Hi, welcome. No. No direct experience, but I remember researching the issue when I was at your stage of a build. There is plenty of well-researched, peer reviewed stuff. There's the key issue. (from remembered reading..... subject area 'passive ventilation') Dead spots are very hard to identify without extensive modelling. Air flows are not instinctively predictable. I'll try and dig out the research papers PS Found it ..... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0360132389900024

Put the correctly specified cable in trunking.

Exactly right. And directly in line with my experience of Durisol. My inexperience caused an increased build cost. A reasonable guess at the additional cost of the blowouts (7 in all) - less than £1000 - one pour roughly (?). By the 3rd blowout, I'd put together a blowout kit, and had shallow pits ready for that pour's spillage + 3 clean wheel-barrows and half a dozen shovels, couple of concrete rakes and a smoothing-thing. Everyone was briefed on what to do when (not if) one occurred. Needed a team of 4 to manage well. 5 better still. Just doable with 2 One guy had nothing else to do but to look for leaks. (Johnners) or me. And as a result of the spillages, I now have 3 nice super- flat concrete work-surfaces around the garden - one for the pizza oven and bbq area, one for SWMBO's shed and greenhouse and one outside the front of the house: that's a mess because I got it wrong - left it too long before smoothing off. There's always a way to turn a WhatDaFukMoment into something positive. Always. You just have to get it as wrong as I have as often as I have.

Hello @Brammers. Please try not to think of us as experts: we're just hard-bitten, nosey folk with a smattering of this that and the other as far as building is concerned. (Apart from @nod) My fingertips are fizzing with caution. Please get an SE to come round and give you an opinion. Please. You might just be right in doing it your way, but ....

Give them a ring..... ?

Well @SteamyTea, I've yet to see a build where Durisol is the outer skin. In terms of what I have written about it, I think its fair to argue that my own incompetence, inexperience and openness should not be taken as a factor in the criticism of a product. I may be wrong, but I think I might be the only person to have written quite as much about Durisol on this board. One person's musing on one discussion board is hardly a good evidence base on which to make fairly large purchase decisions. I had absolutely no prior experience of building. None. I appointed a company that was over-trading to help build the house. I sacked them far too late. So I (we) just got on with it. And now I'm sitting in a warm house that I've built by my (our) selves. I would have made just as many stupid errors with any other build method. Come to think of it, had we chosen brick and block, the errors would have been worse. A combination of opportunity, Durisol, effort, commitment and guts has constructed a house worth about £500k. And nobody knows or cares what the build method was. But what I find of most value is the learning experience I've had along the way. That's priceless.

Hello @BristolBuild2020 : you might like to make sure that you order enough blocks to avoid having to re-order - because of breakage. Some users (those on site handling them, but who haven't paid for them) think of Durisol like they think of bricks: easy to discard go and get some more. And while you are closer to the factory than we are, it's still a right pain to realise that you haven't got enough because people aren't taking care of them while cutting them (for example). In the end I made a simple jig which compensated for the flexibility of the sabre saw we were using to cut blocks. Negativity? Some criticism of Durisol is justified; it's how that negativity is expressed that matters. I'd use the product again - because I know what to look for and how to deal with the product. Its a product new to many. I think the negativity has its roots in the steepness of the learning curve that exists with any new process or product. Some just don't want to make the effort. And thats fine.

The pinned post by @newhome on the VAT board is long. But comprehensive . Its well structured, well written, accurate. I found I had to make notes and summarise it for myself. That process helped my understanding a great deal. It also lead to reading judgments of VAT proceedings: while at this level precedent does not apply , I intend to submit a second application to reclaim VAT. Several people have made successful second claims. As SWMBO says, "Anything to keep you busy dear.... "

Welcome from another. Well, ex - . Osteoarthritis . 68 and still a F-wit. Yer in good company Jimmie.

Morning. There's a mass of advice here: often buried in discussion which isn't related to the question posted. So, please waste a bit of time here: try out the site search facility and you could also try using google or other search engine to search within the site. Some find it more efficient to search that way than to use the forum search tool. If you have a strong stomach, follow @pocster, if you want stories about well-illustrated , detailed fiddly stuff done to a high standard, @Onoff's yer man. @ProDave is a tame spark, there's more a than a few plumbers; and there is any number of bar-room lawyers. @nod has forgotten more about plastering, framing and allied trades than anyone else. The blogs are worth more than a passing look . Anyway, welcome. Ian

Hello. Good Morning. Welcome. The title of your post made me click on it. I wish more people had your approach. I'm eight years in to our new build. I used to teach at local universities, the OH still does. We recon that - if you're new to building - it takes about as much effort to manage and build a new house (project manage and DIY) as it does to get a doctorate. But the building process hits your bank balance much harder than mere study and research.

A similar google search this time with the word 'edging' added

Here is too much detail

Hello @DevonKim Its good to hear the fizz in your 'voice' Hold on to it, because you'll need it later. Nervous you say? Good, you're normal. And as for moral support here - here - really?

As @Thorfun, we put together a mood-board. The interesting thing was that as soon as we went through that process, we found trawling through relevant books and YT videos was so much easier. You can also find plenty of ready made mood-boards online. Grand Designs episodes help - a bit. We also assembled a 'scrap book' of the things we liked about the houses we saw: anything at all - and thats how we came to ask for a timber clad house, and why knew we wanted a large area of glass facing south. The scrap book helped us show other people what we wanted. And there's a good deal of value in that.

Ughhhhh. I hated this job so much, I came to love it. Strange, but true. Two chippies helped me on our build for a short period: one sloppy as hell, 'tother, well, finicky is an understatement. Each had a different approach to the same issue. They only worked for a day or two, the cladding took me a full month (on and off) 2mm should be achievable quite easily: and less than that with a bit of care. For me the key thing is - while working on your own - it takes time. Soooooo much longer than working with someone who can share the job. And by that I don't mean a willing but disinterested / clueless / completely unskilled / person. I'm trying not to say - partner. (She won't read this, I hope) I found that battens need to be held by the head of the screw: not the whole of the (in our case) concrete screw. So the batten needed to be pre-drilled. That means that you can vary the tension by a mil or less quite easily - and fookitrightup if you don't predrill the hole. Because when you come to fit the counter-batten, the process of backing off a screw on an under-batten which has not had a pre-drilled hole, it pulls a large section of the batten one way or the other. Cross-making. One of our walls, in profile, bears more than a passing resemblance to a propeller. Excellent training for battening. I ended up making my own shims (modelled on trouser shims) . Thats when I learned (from the fastidious chippy) you can use multiple layers of DPM to get the battens lined up to within half a mil... He was on day rate. I feel almost nostalgic about it now @Dreadnaught: if you weren't so far away, I'd come and help ya......

Join the club. Bats. Anyone can make any claim they like. And Planners know that. If there's no evidence or likelihood of bats being present, then show them photos of the inside of the building. You could also look up whether any other local planning applications required an ecology survey. If surveys have been required locally, then you're likely to be subjected to the same process. This is what happens locally: I'm not condoning it, but this the reality round here. I know because I've seen it happen. A year or so before some local farmers make applications to the planning department, they deliberately destroy any wild life - pig slurry in the pond where newts are , bat roosts destroyed, badger setts dug out, rookeries shot out, foxes hounded to death. Not all farmers do it, but some do. Talking to them about it, their argument is that the bats'll be back, as will the newts and badger. They're likely right.... Submitting a Planning Application can be a nasty process. I've come to think of it as a useful filter: you find out what people are really like. Those you thought at least friendly and civil can show themselves to be harridans and foul-mouthed, brain-dead eejits . Neighbours once thought neighbourly , aren't. Planners have seen it all. Your biggest defence is - evidence, and calm analysis based on thorough research of similar recent applications. Know both why - and why you shouldn't - be given permission based on detailed knowledge of what has happened locally. That way you are less of a target for random silly, evidence-free comment. It's a toughening up process. Stick with it.

BioPure Why? Minimal moving parts. Reading your post, it occurs to me to ask why are you fighting with a septic tank that doesn't work? Ignore it. How? Install some other system in parallel , and then redirect the flow to the second tank. Remove the original, fill in, dispose of it at leisure.

Remember this :the VAT reclaim car crash in the making ? Well the claim has been accepted. Today. 9 months after the claim was submitted. Accepted maybe, but not accepted without a fight. Lesson learned? Some Inspectors do not follow the guidance given on the application form: that one simply beggars belief Take note of these key dates and record them formally: the Date of Entry Into the Valuation List, the date on which the Local Authority was informed of Entry into The Valuation List, the date [of the document, not the posting date] the LA tells you that your property has been Entered in the Valuation List I should take my own advice (in my signature line) more often than I do. @SteamyTea's right: I'm cross quite often. My defence? I am cross usually only when justified - and I try to use that crossness to get Scheiβe done. For the Hell of it now, I'm going to submit another claim. For all the stuff I could have claimed for in the last 9 months. See @jack's last post on the subject. HMRC Inspektoren sind Scheiβefresendearmleuchter

On our build, we had to knock down an old chicken shed. It had been repurposed to a workshop, where, occasionally an old codger used to clean out his paint brushes by shaking the contents of the brush onto the ground. He'd done that for years - many years. The ground report survey found some lead - from the paint - one part per million over the actionable threshold, at the very spot he used to clean his brushes. Cue gnashing of teeth, wailing and booing at the added expense. I was all for digging out round the spot, and re-test. Until the architect pointed out that the spot in question was going to be covered with 1.5 meters of MoT1. Can you cover up the problem area with a deepish layer of earth?

And sometimes one BI says one thing (about a potentially expensive decision) one day, and the same BCO unsays it another as in "You need to coat that cladding with NonCom fire retardant" and a month later "Naaaaah, it'll be reet wiout it mert " . The NonCom fire retardant is sitting in the site container waiting for me to get round to coating the cladding: TBH, if the scaff had still been up, the job would have been done long ago ..... Cant take a joke? .... etc

No, you aren't worrying about nothing. You are understandably concerned. First, backfill: the pressure of the backfill is designed in to the product: think about it for a moment - if it weren't , the tank - ie. not just yours , but all tanks - would implode. And thats a sh1t situation to be in as a manufacturer. The manufacturer is correct ground conditions do differ: but theirs was a mealy-mouthed response. They could have asked you what your ground conditions are - the one thing to be concerned about - slightly - is the water table. A high water table means a higher likelihood of a buoyant tank. Yes, improperly anchored, they do pop out of the ground. Spectacular when you see it happen. IF thats the case for you ( high water table) , then simply anchor the tank with (say) a cubic meter of concrete , and top off the rest with normal backfill . We did, and for good measure threw in some concrete fence posts at the bottom of the pit, chained them to the periphery of the tank, a bit like an emergency anchor for a boat. Our poo tank is going nowhere in a hurry. Makes for a really secure feeling that when seated on the throne.

You dont sleep do you Gary.....

What a damn good idea. Whoever sorted that one out: thanks very much