Thorfun

oh! cool. didn't realise you could do that. 🤦‍♂️ I really should speak to my electrician about this stuff. that's the problem with a million things going around your head there's just not enough time to deal with them all!

sorry. meant to mention that! in this situation they will be either all on or all off or all dimmed. obviously, for lights that need to be individually controllable they will have their own power cable.

I am planning to control our lights with Loxone and the current plan is to use DMX. we have situations where we'll have multiple LED spots in a row and I'm wondering if every spot needs a power cable brought back to the cabinet? e.g. along our vertical posts next to the stairs we're planning uplighter illuminating the posts as shown in the mockup below. that's 12 LED spots. so will I need 12 x power cables running back to the Loxone cabinet or is there a more efficient way of doing this?

the roof may well overheat in the summer but as it's just storage space I'm not that worried. there's not too much you can do about stopping the sun shining on the roof to block out solar gain! you can use different forms of insulation to increase decrement delay. i have used mineral wool between the rafters and PIR underneath. the mineral wool has better decrement delay than PIR so it might help a bit but if I had my time again I would get pumped cellulose in the roof for two reasons.....1. installing mineral wool and PIR is a ******* and 2. cellulose has a very good decrement delay so will help with keeping the loft cool in the summer sun.

cheers. will take a look.

thanks for this. I think I can take care and have a logical mind so maybe I can do it! I'll look at Lindab and see how it compares to the Metal Gutta parts that I've been looking at.

scaffolding is still up as the timber cladding is being installed from next week. so once that's done I will keep the scaffolding up to allow safe installation of the guttering. so, the consensus so far seems to be that maybe for zinc and stainless steel it might be worth getting a professional to do it as it's easily damageable?

yes, expensive but a lot nicer than plastic and if I can save on costs by fitting myself then I have more money to spend on materials! 😉

As title says really. it 'seems' simple enough but I'm having a little wobble about getting it right. anyone installed their own guttering and have any issues/concerns or was it just plain sailing? Also, how about knowing what to buy? I have a civil engineering drawing showing where downpipes etc should go but I'm a little concerned that I'll over spend on too much material or not buy enough and have to wait weeks to get extras ordered and delivered! we're going for either Zinc or Stainless steel so would suppliers help design what items are required?

115m2 @ 50mm average Cemfloor £2200.

welcome. we had the same dream and, after two failed attempts, we finally found and bought a bungalow to demolish. it was a long journey but we're now at a watertight stage and can see the finish line in the not too distant future we hope! so stick with the dream and ride the ups and downs of the journey and you can make it happen. 🙂 I personally don't think the state of the house is a considering factor but others who know more will be along shortly I'm sure.

Bloody expensive though!

I ended up painting the walls with a roller and used Dulux Trade Blockfiller. probably would've got a better finish spraying as it was really hard to try and fill the gaps in the blocks but I think it came out alright and it is, after all, just a plant room! we decided to leave the external concrete wall as is (à la @Bitpipe) which we also like and it'll be the only room that retains that concrete look. Bought some grey floor paint but haven't done that yet even though it might look like it but the screed was grey!

Thanks Dave. Glad I kept all those off-cuts. 😊 think I’ll do it as well.

how is it possible to insulate pipes when they're running in a service cavity? even with 47mm x 47mm battens as a service cavity will be tight to insulate water pipes. so do you only insulate between the posi-joists and don't bother in the walls? seems pointless that way though.

greetings. should a Tony tray in a timber frame house be insulated? the architects said not to bother as I'll be putting acoustic insulation between the joists anyway but just wondered what others have done as it's pretty much just a piece of ply between the outside world and the house. I could easily cut 140mm deep glass mineral squares to fit in those gaps. worth it or not? it would get a bit trickier in other rooms where the joists are closer together

thanks. we're getting there! our flat roof makeup from inside to out is: posi-joists 18mm OSB VCL 190mm PIR 11mm OSB Alwitra VSK single-ply membrane then the green roof is simply laid on top of the single-ply. not sure on the exact make-up for the green roof though sorry. I wasn't really paying too much attention at that point and they laid it so quickly that I missed most of it! we have 2 drains on each green roof which are part of the waterproofing layer, so built in when the single-ply got laid. then the green roof drains down to that layer and the out of the outlet. you can see them on the far side of this photo.

we have a sedum roof and a wild flower roof but I paid someone to do it for me as I got a good warranty for all the work and it wasn't something I wanted leaking! but ours is over habitable spaces and not a garage so I might've had a go if it was over a garage. I'm not really sure I can offer much advise but I put bits about it in our latest blog post: which might offer a few bits of insight. I would probably suggest to get the roof designed (or at least signed off) by some form of structural engineer as the weight of the sedum, growing medium and water can be quite substantial. I found this on the web when I was researching green roofs: “To support lightweight sedum green roof construction, your roof needs a loading capacity of at least 120 Kg per square metre. For a wildflower roof with a 150mm depth of the substrate, work on loading capacity of 250Kg per square metre.” Source: https://www.turfonline.co.uk/blog/green-roof-construction/

my builders merchant has said that they also stock OB1 which is cheaper. does it do the same job as CT1? anyone know the difference?

****! better get some more ordered then.

@WWilts buy in bulk as it will get used! 🙂

it's a pretty simple spreadsheet and I won't share but here's an image of the categories I got from the various TF companies. hope this helps and there were a few unknowns in there as well so it is very hard to compare like-for-like as most people find which is why build quality was so much more important than cost for us. once we'd narrowed down to these 4 companies we did site visits for each to get an idea of how they work.

38mm x 140mm CLS is cheaper than that. first site I found not far from me shows headline figure of £5/lm. I'm sure that could be reduced with quantities. https://www.mstc.co.uk/ex-50x150-cls-38-x-140-fin-sizes-4-8-only-70-pefc-certified-bmt-pefc-0277-cls26

our TF sole plates sit on coursing blocks and, as @Mr Punter said, it was at this stage that I was standing over the brickie ensuring everything was as level and square as possible to give the TF the best chance of fitting! I think the TF company needed to use packers in only 1 small bit where the brickie went awry as he didn't have the self-levelling laser level! 🤦‍♂️ in the end the TF company said the coursing blocks were spot on and it made the sole plate fitting a breeze for them which they (and I) were very happy about.

I did it the other way and just sent our BR drawings to various TF companies and then put the resulting quotes in to a spreadsheet and could then see which companies included stuff and which didn't etc. I could then go back to the ones that didn't include things and asked them to add that item. I figured that TF companies should know what's required to build a house better than I did and so basically left it up to them to tell me what I needed as a base line. but at the end of the day my decision on who to use came down to quality of work and gut feeling as to whether I could work with them more than price.