Mulberry View

We're in the process of building an open Car Port with a cavity wall construction (no insulation), facing bricks inside and out, nothing will be plastered. Is there a way to secure the wall-plates down but either not have the restraint straps visible or that they are slightly more aesthetically pleasing?

I should probably add here that our 38x12 Willerby weighs over 6 tonne. Ours is sited on unmade up land, just soil. It has about 12 or so axle stands, each one on a slab that was just plonked on the ground in all honesty. I occasionally tweak them, but it's never been perfect. There are 4 hefty stands around the axle and lighter ones at the rest of the support points. It's been this way for 3 years. It's not strapped down in any other way. It is pretty rock solid, though 50mph+ gusts can cause it to jolt a little. I've never felt like it's going to go as far as a wobble, let alone fully tip over. We are fairly sheltered though, particularly on the SW side and that's the important one. Our main worry is the surrounding trees! We are surrounded on all sides by 60-70ft trees, something we just did not anticipate.

Flash git!! I don't have that amount of space to play with unfortunately, but I'd love to see your progress pics? I'm hoping to make the Sauna cabin at least 2x2m as I want 2 flat benches at the optimum height (for me and SWMBO). Like you, I have plenty of spare Celotex and so will insulate the floor with 150mm or even 200mm depending on what room I have. From my own knowledge, be careful if using normal PIR inside the Sauna, I understand it can emit Cyanide gas under high temperatures. There are some specialist versions on the market which I'll be looking at. I've done a fair bit of research on the Sauna itself, there's a lot to learn to be honest!

Yes, perhaps. I think I've talked myself out of a changing room and shower. I just need to get my head around being able to get back into the house and to the shower without, you know, sweating everywhere. Would still be good to hear from anyone that has built a home Sauna, I'd love to see some pics.

We're planning on an Electric Heater, but a "proper" one. I'd really rather not have to incorporate a shower etc as we have 3 of them in the house, but it's the practicality of getting from the Sauna to the Shower in the house that I'm worried about.

We have a Car Port in our design that's linked to the house via a covered walkway. The Car Port itself it open. We are really fond of having a Sauna within our scheme, but not enough room in the house and so I decided to increase the length of the Car Port in the hope of incorporating a Sauna within a partitioned structure at the rear of the Car Port. On further thought, I would really like to include a small shower and changing area but space is pretty tight as I don't really want to compromise on the 2m x 2m internal size for the Sauna. Does anyone here have a Sauna? Do you have anything to add in terms of sizing? This is my "fag packet" sketch (not at all to scale, yet!) The external walls of the Car Port are double skin with an uninsulated Cavity. The partition walls are likely to be 100mm facing bricks with a proper sealed door into the Changing Area. The Sauna itself is a separate discussion, but that will be built and insulated according to Sauna best practice. I'm interested in the Changing and Shower Area at the moment, which I want to make comfortable to use (not necessarily luxuriously warm, but usable in Winter) and so I am thinking of applying some insulation to the walls. What thickness of insulation (PIR?) should I consider for this? 50mm? The structure is somewhat shielded from the prevailing wind by the house itself and I can insulate the floor and ceiling.

I would love to have the intelligence to be able to turn that into something practical, but I don't know where to start. LOL.

Thanks for the reply @Nick Laslett. Our ceilings are a minimum of 2.5m throughout, but the whole Kitchen/Dining/Living room is under a 5° sloped ceiling that rises from 2.5m to about 3.3m, they are already quite generous. My current levels are to provide a completely flush threshold to our Dining Room door. But overall, you appear to be saying that the PIR route is minimally more expensive and so, in your opinion the better route?

That's my thought. The money saving would be lovely, but I'd like to try to offset the poor performance of the Beam & Block floor as much as possible.

We have a Nudura build with Beam & Block floor. The B&B is now installed and grouted, we did all the work and the resulting floor is pretty level/flat. I think the finish is good enough that we can examine/rectify any imperfections. Sand blind or not? I intend to see what the floor is like once we've had a day or tidying it up, but I'm certain its better than usual building site standard. Our internal walls are built from medium-dense concrete blocks on 100mm thick Marmox blocks Our design showed 150mm of PIR, but we can now better this due to some changes in build. We have approx. 290mm from the top of the floor finish down to the top of the B&B. We plan on Microcement throughout, which totals 4mm, so 286mm for Insulation and screed. We intend on having UFH (yet to be designed). What's the best split of Insulation and Screed for optimal performance? Drying time isn't a huge priority, although my head is fried all our other nonsense, I'd like to make some blummin' decisions and get this all underway before the weather cools down. I expect our Glazing to be going in late October or early November, all being well. Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

Because we're founded on hard chalk. Made for great foundations, but less so for water infiltration. The bottom of this hole is like a bathtub, the soakaway was designed to potentially be half-full most of the time.

Anecdotally, if anyone is feeling frustrated by the amount of work needed for a Soakaway, know that this is what we had to have for our modest (200m2) 4-Bedroom house. 96 standard sized crates in 2 layers (though these are larger crates so there are *only* 60). Just under 20,000 litres. LOL.

The installer is adamant that everything is compliant because the material manufacturer (who has ZERO interest in the installed roof) has issued their material warranty. I have raised several queries that are strongly likely to be detrimental to the longevity of the roof but of course failure of the roof due to any installed detail will fall back to the installer, so why would the manufacturer care? It's like the perfect storm of non-acceptance.

The installer stated early on that no expert testimony would be accepted by him as he is an expert installer and therefore his view is the end of the line. I had to remind him that this is not how the law works, but finding an Expert Witness who can top trump this guys self-righteous disposition is the challenge. There are Expert Witnesses who do not specifically specialise in Zinc roofing, I can see we won't get the full picture that we need. Then there are Zinc roofers who have all the expertise and experience, but are not classed as legal 'Expert Witness'. We have found one person who has BOTH credentials, but he and our installer are mates.

The installer that did my roof is so deeply in the pockets of the whole industry, it's hard to find impartiality anywhere. The local rep for the manufacturer with whom I discussed the entire situation as it was unfolding lives 15 minutes from my plot and would not come to see. They literally do not get involved in the installation. They provide standard details and general guidance, but cleverly disconnect themselves from installation issues. I have raised specific queries with them and shown them photos of what I claim are defects, they refuse to get involved.

For us, the output of an Expert Witness report will probably define our route, it's why we want someone with deep experience of Zinc roofing, we want the outcome to be unarguable, either way. If the report deems the roof to be as fundamentally defective as we believe it is, then we hope we can assess the probability of our case and begin talks with the contractor about a settlement without going to court. I'm going to talk to some Zinc installers today in the hope of finding someone who can be expertly impartial in the hope that they can be accepted by all parties as a joint expert witness.

Thanks for your detailed @Gus Potter. The contractor has taken the view that the installed details are all compliant because the manufacturer has issued their 'material-only warranty', though they take NO responsibility for workmanship at all. Read into that what you will. The installer has literally NO interest in hearing my concerns and explaining his reasoning despite the issues I have raised. I'm going to DM you as you might be able to help me.

Our contractor does not know the word 'compromise'. He is deaf and blind to any problems, he just wants his money. I know the implications of court, but I really do not see that we have a choice. I'm hoping that a proper expert report might help him to recognise that there are faults, then we can attempt to discuss some sort of settlement offer. We're £45k in, the contractor does not believe he is even 1% at fault, so the alternative is walking away and taking a £45k hit and he'll still pursue us for the remaining £10k. That would finish us and the project would probably have to be sold.

That's certainly worth pursuing. The hard part is that our contractor is VERY well known in his industry and highly devious.

Some of you know about the legal issue were dealing with at the moment, our defective Zinc Roof is preventing progress on our project and has been for almost a year now. We need an Expert Witness and finding one is proving difficult. Ideally, I want someone with a good understanding of metal roofing (Zinc particularly). Can anyone here suggest how we can solve this?

By doing it the way we did we also avoided the chlorination process they insisted was necessary for long runs.

Our plot is about 170m from the road and I too wanted a single unjointed pipe run. But a single fusion-welded connection is what I eventually settled for. We installed the 32mm MDPE pipe (100m) in blue 100mm ducting, but coiled it up at the end of the shared private driveway but just into our plot (still 100m or so from the house). The end of the pipe was attached to a TBS, which had to be lagged etc. We VERY crudely back-filled it and I mean crude. I arranged blocks and slabs to enable me to throw a few inches of soil over it so that it would appear to be back-filled. They signed it off and connected it without issue. After they were gone, the pipe was dug up, uncoiled and run up to the plot in the correct way. The fusion-welded connection was added about 30m upstream from where the TBS had previously been. The pipe was left long enough that it'll be able to serve the house when the time comes, but for now I buried the coil again and connected the end to the caravan and a TBS. It sounds like a faff, but it wasn't really. The coil is buried about 15m from the house and will easily pass in through a duct already installed. The only challenge will be what we'll do when we want water to the house, but are still in the caravan. So consider that. Believe me, things like this will pale into insignificance once you get into the build. All the seemingly great decisions you make early on will not remove the risk of having to re-do things or do them a little differently. Just do you best and crack on. I have to move the main drainage chamber I lovingly installed and currently services the caravan. Nightmare, but it's life.

That's pretty good. We have about 130m2 of roof area I think. So are the standing seams created with the product itself or in the build-up? Is yours a warm roof?

That looks nice. You pleased with it? I know nothing about it at this stage. I didn't realise standing seams are used with EPDM? One of the main issues is that we have 3 rooflights that have turned out to be tricky to detail in Zinc. Do you mind me asking what it cost you?

As some of you know, we're going through a bit of trouble with our Zinc roof. This rumbles on and no end is currently in sight, but I've had a bit of an awakening this week. Our roof is a 5° monopitch, there are 2 main and distinctly separate roof areas. Obviously you can't see much of it from the ground. You do, however, have a really good eye-level view over the single-storey roof (marked above as Roof Area 1) from the landing and from there, the oil canning is really obvious. I've come to realise that however good the installer is, there are some inherent features of standing seam roofing that cannot really be avoided. At least nobody will guarantee that these issues won't exist. It got me wondering... If an elegantly executed perfect metal roof just isn't possible due, in part, to the design of it then should I bring EPDM in as an option. In other words, is a well executed EPDM roof better for us than an imperfect Zinc one? This isn't a cop-out by the way, I'm just trying to be pragmatic. Our roof has so many defects and problems, at this point, I see no other option than stripping it fully. I have discussed this in this thread so don't really want to go over it here. Obviously we could have the absolute gold standard of EPDM for a much lower cost than Zinc and it makes me wonder if we really should consider it. Any thoughts?