Triassic

I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find anything better than the instructions you already have, sorry.

Just to add, Chris the pecker guy got through four peckers due to various mechanical problems, things falling off or shearing or coming loose inside. Luckily he’d started the job with a brand new pecker and the supplier is only three miles away, so replacement and repair was easy.

Which model as they produce a large range?

You right, their first option is to get the originals renovated and their second option is like for like replacement. luckily, although we were in a conservation area, the building wasn’t listed.

I have about 40m of new dry stone wall to build, so a lot will be used there, the rest will be ‘lost’ around the plot levelling up sloping areas to form patios and level lawned areas.

@Tiny Sorry about the delay in replying, I’ve only just noticed your question, if you put an @ in front of my name it alerts me to a question. I’m currently sat in a house in Newby Bridge with Chapelhow windows and they look very nice. I’m in the final throws of choosing a window supplier for my own build, for me it’s all down to a quality versus price decision.

@KernowGran welcome to the forum. Ive lived in a conservation area previously and we needed to replace all the windows in a house we renovated. I borrowed a shop sample of a uPVC sliding sash window to show the conservation officer. Thankfully he was impressed with them as reproductions and allowed their use in our home.

Our site slopes, so we had the idea of digging into the slope and creating a walk in basement. Having done two trial pits into nice soil and clay during the initial design phase, we were confident that it was a simple soil dig out sort of thing! Once the bungalow was demolished it became clear we’d quite by chance dig into the only two areas of soil and clay and the house had been constructed on a large lump of limestone rock called Cumbria. After a hit of head scratching and a coffee with my neighbour Brian, he’s the ‘go to guy’ if you have a problem, as he’s usually got a solution and the solution was a local guy called Chris, a man with a machine and a pecker. Chris arrived on 1st November and twelve weeks and an estimated 1,200 tonnes of rock later we had a basement. Here he is starting clearing the site. The basement hole starts to take shape. This is about half of the stone removed from the basement hole.

I tried to give it away and I only had one guy turn up and he only wanted new wood! I even tried advertising it as firewood as we live in a rural area and a lot of people have woood burning stoves, again I only had one person come and look and he only wanted logs! I did manage to sell a lot of the internal fixtures and fittings. I reused some of the timber to make a site loo, it’s a lot nicer than a plastic Tardis Loo and it doesn’t blow over in high wind!!

@Russell griffiths I used Protec SAGM, it’s a multi layer waterproof and gas proof membrane, the gas proof ness was a building control requirement as we are in a Radon Area. We applied it during the summer and it slicks!! As the weather gets cooler it’s more manageable. https://www.proctorgroup.com/images/products/groundworks/Downloads/Protech-GM-SAGM-datasheet.pdf

Having promised my wife Debbie that I’d get people in to do most of the Work associated with the new house, i contacted two local demolition companies and got prices to demolish the old timber bungalow. The prices were £6,000 and £12,200. Being tight I demolished it myself, it cost the price of three skips, £540, The bonus for me was over £1,000 in payment for the scrap from the house, things like a hot water copper cylinder and piping, lead off the roof, the old cast iron AGA and two baths, the oil fired boiler, taps, light and socket fittings etc. The problem in demolishing a timber frame house is the amount of timber! So I saved as much of the timber as possible and cut up the rest into firewood sized pieces, I used leftover builders bags to store it and we’re burning it very slowly in the cabin, the problem is the cabin is so well insulated we only managed to burn half a builders bags worth last year!. An even biggest problem was the cedar shingle roof, it had been re-covered during its life so the shingles were two layers thick. I ended up cutting the roof up using a reciprocating saw, a lot less dangerous than a chain saw! The roof as then burnt on site, The roof being stripped. It’s going slowly! Progress. Finally clearing up the plot. All told it took me six months to dismantle the old bungalow and clear the site. luckly my time is free and I did save £6k and taking the scrap value into account I’m £7,000 in pocket to spend elsewhere.

I worked for a very large chemical company and we has a guy who specialised in manufacturing lead lined pipework, vessels and troughs, his lead work and welding was an art form in itself.

The basement and the raft foundation are complete and the TF has been ordered.

I suppose the other thing I was wondering about, do you use lead for everything or are there modern alternatives?

My 87 yea4 old fathers just called to seek advice on options for replacing an 2.5Kw electric night storage heater that’s stopped working. My initial thoughts was another night storage heater, What other options can you suggest?

This was the sort of detail I had in mind, but specifically for flashing.... http://www.silvatecdesign.com/Technical Downloads/Silvatec Design Standard Details - September 09.pdf

I’m her eyes you and very young Ferdinand are probably about the same age!

I’m building a new house and all the cold water taps will be fed directly off the mains. I’ve seen too many dead things in water tanks! ps. Come to think of it, all my hot water will be at mains pressure via a hot water heating system, no tank in the loft.

I’m thinking about flashing for use around my timber frame. I have a number of junctions between materials, things like a junction between some stone facing and a rendered section above, a junction between a rendered gable end and a slate roof and a junction between render and timber cladding. Is there any web sites that give details of how such flashings work and what materials are needed, as I need to get such things ordered.

So if a modern vapour control membrane was to be used, which one would you recommend

I used clear polythene as the internal vapour control layer when I recently built our cabin. Easy to use and tape. Cheap as chips! I now intend to use it on my main house build.

I have, but I’ve toyed with the idea of a blog for a while. So it’s pulling previous postings into one place.

I was originally quoted £5 / week / prop after some haggling this came down to £4.30.

Why you even paying for this work, I have cables oversailing my site and the DNO installed taller poles free of charge to me.

Simple the better!