gavztheouch

@Tom How thick is your slab? Do have any concerns by attaching the UFH to the lower mesh. If the concrete slab is nice and conductive to the heat I guess most of it will move up the way. thanks

rebar mesh is horrible stuff to work with. Did you tie your UFH to the lower layers or did you raise them up and attach to the underside of the upper layers after?

Yes I have flying ends Tom, do you have any pics of your rebar mesh going in?

Yeah I’m worried about the mesh creeping up a bit due to bent sections not nesting nice or the isoquick not being exactly 250mm in places. It’s all the compounding errors that made me decide to put the heating pipes under the top two layers of mesh.

Hi I have 4 layers of rebar in my foundation. Two on bottom with 40 mm cover and two on top with 40mm cover. I searched the internet but cannot find any information as to wether the sheets that sit on top pf each other need to be staggered so the longitudinal and lateral bar are not sitting g directly next to or on top of each other. The reason in my mind is the concrete cannot flow right round the bars if they are right next to each other. The downside of offsetting the sheets is it will make it harder to get both sheets up to the edge of the foundation with the same cover of 40mm.

Isoquick laid, feels like a bit of a milestone. Next is dpm and rebar

Why is one corner so low? Are you going to build it up or cut the rest down?

Not very thick, about 50mm

Screeding today

Mistakingly I have lay down about 100mm of type 3 in areas I can not get with vibrating roller. This is areas with drains etc. If I’m doing this by the book my plate compactor does not go deep enough as it only has say roughly 300kg/m2 I need over 1200kg/m2 to get down 100mm. I found this belle product you can rent which has a small foot print attached to the underside of a normal plate compactor which apparently generates over 1600kg/m2. If this is correct then this would work and would be piece of mind for the £50 or so rental fee. Anyone heard about this belle product https://www.altrad-belle.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=5575 some more info on the compactor https://static-content.cromwell.co.uk/pdfs/s/medusa_attachments/bel/bel-262-3610m dual force booklet.pdf

Yes raising the surrounding ground by something like 300mm. It’s going to give some more protection against flooding as well sitting a bit higher. We’ll need to work hard to blend the extra height into the surrounding garden.

stripped the soil off today. We are only going down 200mm to try and stay in the stiff clay near the surface.

Thanks I’ll look into this.

Just had another quote back, this time it’s £9800 which is more inline with everyone else’s. 50% concrete/50% labour. @DreamingTheBuild do you have a link for the YT channel that sounds interesting

I’m doing everything else, shuttering, reinforcement, etc. They just pay for concrete and Labour to pour and float the finish.

I used my theodolite’s optical plumb to sight over my corner markers and help get my strings in position. 3D printed some adjustable string holders to move the strings into position easily. Now I’ve transferred the points to strings it’s time to strip the top soil and add the type 3.

Some prices are definitely down on the peak. Rebar, framing wood, and osb are good examples. Stuff that is still high, concrete, aggregates, labour, windows. I noticed builders are now quoting in the £2000 to £2500 per m2 range last time I checked it was more like £3000 to £3500 per m2. I don't know if this is because prices have fallen for materials or if they have reduced a large buffer they had for jobs because it was impossible to predict material prices and availability. Overall I am happy I have waited the year before starting, but who knows another war or escalation of the current one could cause prices to rise again. I also don't think inflation is completely gone and as soon as interest rates drop I think we might see more inflation. One thing that is definitely better is the availability of product and the willingness of suppliers to compete.

Hi Kelvin, my tank is a One2clean. Is yours the standard version? Mine is not the plus version. Thanks for all the reply’s. Fingers crossed my tank also has a sampling chamber il take a look tomorrow. This could say a lot of headaches.

I am designing my drainage. I have a sewage treatment plant, like this thread states needs an inspection chamber with a small drop to catch a sample of water. Looking at the warrant handbook it needs to be a drop of 150mm. I don't have much height to work with and if the building inspection definitely needs this drop I will possibly have to pump the water higher just for it to fall again over the 150mm drop. This seems a little mental as I'm sure you could find a way of extracting a sample of water easy enough from a straight flowing inspection chamber with no drop. Im going to phone the warrant department on Monday, but I was wondering if anyone has gotten away with not having this 150mm drop after the sewage treatment or septic tank?

Just had my first quote back to pour the concrete about 32m^2 To be pumped in and power floated after for a finished floor. The finishing makes this a harder job. first quote is £16,000 including the concrete. I will be doing all the foundation work apart from the pouring the concrete. Seems to me the material and pump will be £6,000 so £10,000 for labour/management. This is worryingly high! I hope I can find some middle ground with the prices.

How does it work with the warrant system. Can I phone them up and query stuff like this?

My architect tells me I need an inspection chamber after every change of direction. He seems to think it doesn't matter if it is only a 15 degree joint it will still need a chamber. This doesn't sound right as a mild bend should not cause any issue for drainage rod/jetter system to clear any blockages. Anyone know the Scottish rules for this? I would guess a max bend of something like 35 degrees.

Good luck! Im builidng a 210m2 shell for hopefully a similar budget of 300k. It should be doable depeding on how much work you do yourself. Edit, I just reread your post and noticed you have a swimming pool triple garage and annex are these all inlcuded in your 300k budget. Minus the swimming pool I would budget around £600k to build the weather tight shell.

Sorry I ment dodgy as in they have stopped trading. The German website looks more maintained/active.

Yeah the website works calculating delivery and such, I was using the english version which looked dodgy as there is place holder text in some areas and looked a bit abandoned. I changed to the German version and it looks more promising. I guess it must be ok.