Mulberry View

Haha! If only you knew about my problems! A £60k court case is causing very much procrastination and too much time to think about stuff like this. The steps as you see them will have 150mm of PIR insulation on the horizontal treads and an effective 100mm of PIR on the vertical risers. With 50-60mm of screed over, followed by a 4mm microcement finish. It's more wanting to avoid any irreversible regret. I have this vision of walking through the house in a state of blissful house completion euphoria and the sensation of a stone-cold step bringing me back down to earth with a chilling bump! Call me an over-thinker, it's the truth, but I hold dear the attention to detail that quality has allowed me! Thanks for your help all, as usual.

My main worry is that the steps would feel colder than the adjacent floors. You don't think they will?

These are the steps I'm building. This is the arrangement from the Entrance Hall to the Kitchen/Dining Room. It will be fully insulated and hopefully shuttered and screeded all in one with the main floor areas. I would like to pass the pipe through each step. This is the finished look... From the Kitchen/Dining Room to the Living Room I have this arrangement... That's going to be a 150mm high plinth step. There will be a second uninsulated (hardwood) step, then the living room floor. The Nudura face can be battened and boarded over to give a void for the UFH pipes, some pipe slack can be accommodated there. This is the approximate look desired there... Any feedback on running the pipes through these transitions is greatly appreciated. The steps are pretty hefty and solid.

I can also run the bend in an offset position, as in not perpendicular to the direction it's heading, that way most of the bend radius can be lost in the upstand. Hard to explain, I know what I mean LOL! I'm just downloading that vid down my copper telecoms line, be right back!

What I bought were Spacetherm A1 pads (I'd call them sheets, but they are pads on the invoice). I had a lot of trouble getting consistent advice on what is what. Proctor are fairly helpful, but they still take for granted that products they work with everyday will make sense to DIY'ers like us! It came in an "8x4" sheet, rolled up. It's reasonably flexible, but they encourage the use of separate pieces on my steel column rather than wrapping it round the corner and I think that was good advice. It would follow a curve for sure, but you wouldn't want to wrap it around 2 sides of an object. FYI, I paid £515 plus VAT for 2 full sheets. The carriage was £40+VAT (included in that £515). I'd post you a small offcut if you want to see it before you fork out?

I'll sketch it or take some photos. But the upstands can be battened and boarded to allow some pipe slack within.

Thanks for that @Russell griffiths In terms of the UFH, the screed company has quoted for a competitively priced system, using Pert-Al-Pert pipe. What sort of bend radius can the pipes tolerate? I need to run the pipes through level changes, so the pipes will essentially need to run vertically up a surface, then turn 90° into the floorspace again. I thought about bevelling the edge of the PIR to keep the pipes deep enough in the screed in this transition.

@Russell griffiths Did you seal the DPM to the Nudura at the upstand? Did you run a 25mm strip of PIR around the edges? How about the normal foam perimeter insulation that usually goes with UFH kits?

I have a Beam & Block floor and am hoping to screed soon. I have 230mm of insulation going in, it's all here on site. The Beam & Block is grouted and fully dry. The grout has "cracked" in places, but just superficially. There are gaps in places at the perimeter to the subfloor. Should these be sealed? I have 4 soil pipes and a blue 110mm water pipe duct coming up through the floor blocks. Do these need to be specially sealed in any way at Beam & Block level? The soil pipes are plain ended and currently plenty long enough, should I solvent weld socket couplers in the insulation level to remove the joint that faces the wrong way or just live with the plain pipe ends and worry about connections later above the floor level? Do I need to consider air-tightness in the way to DPM is installed and terminated onto the Nudura walls? PIR upstand yes or no? The screed is likely to be Cemfloor at a thickness of 50-55mm, containing UFH (yet to be installed of course). Any tips or words of advice to limit my inevitable procrastination would be massively appreciated.

It's dreadful stuff to work with. Do you have it yet? It emits a really weird powdery dust that feels horrible on your hands and that powderyness will stop anything reliably sticking to it. I used it to insulate the outer 2 faces of a pair of steel corner posts. The posts were onwardly flashed with an aluminium trim which would hold the insulation in place. I simply taped a breather membrane over the top of the Spacetherm, all the way round the post with foil tape to hold the insulation until the trim went on. You'll struggle to adhere it in any meaningful way unless you buy their cold-bridging strips, which are enclosed in some sort of polythene and can then be glued/adhered to stuff. As an aside, Proctor will deal directly with you and they were, for me at least, the cheapest source.

To be absolutely honest, a part of this is to have a contingency for cooking during a power outage. But that's a neat little portable alternative. Thanks.

I'm now planning for Insulation, UFH and screed. We have no mains gas on site, but I'd like to run an LPG Wok Burner on our Kitchen island. Ideally, I'll have an bottle/tank positioned in an outdoor location that I can pipe to a built-in BBQ and to the LPG Wok Burner. But how to run the pipe? I know I'll need a Gas Safe guy to commission this work, but what would be a usual way to run a gas pipe across my Kitchen to an island? Should it be sleeved copper, with no connections, in the screed? It's a Beam & Block subfloor by the way. It's about 5.5m from the planned entry point to the Island. Has anyone done something similar?

This is an important response for us because, if true, then it changes everything. So, it might be the case that we won't fit UFH upstairs at all. We are planning fan coils for the 2 first floor bedrooms, perhaps we just use fan coils for the bathrooms too? We have plenty of opportunity to conceal them and just have grille outlets. We'd probably add an in-wall electric heat pad of some sort to act as a towel warmer. I think you might have really helped here @JohnMo. The reduction in agro and the improvement in the reliability of the floor point to this.

This is the way in my opinion. I've been using the stuff a bit recently and did just that. Once it's partly gone off, it'll drop out of the bucket nicely. You're right though, it goes off VERY fast in this weather.

I'm guided by a low datum too. My bathroom window is floor-to-ceiling and with a 50mm frame height, so my total is 40-45mm in reality to include a structural layer. Damn I wish I hadn't got rid of the frame packer under it, but in all fairness, 45mm does work well with adjoining rooms anyway as I'm going from Microcement in the bathroom to thick carpet in the bedroom.

I recommend Soudal Fix All, I've used it on EPS with no issues. Sticks EPS to other surfaces really well. An easily available one if you don't want to think too much about it. https://www.screwfix.com/p/soudal-fix-all-high-tack-hybrid-polymer-adhesive-white-290ml/64585?gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=895557794&gbraid=0AAAAAD8IdPxQZcwfDg7XuWT6M7XU5qJW_&gclid=CjwKCAjw8uTQBhAdEiwAVvtJytd5T8metMhSfttfGiRHNorqe-zWY_O6Zos9P_4E07LqWha0FGRpwRoCSywQAvD_BwE Other options are Illbruck SP350.. https://www.dortechdirect.co.uk/catalog/product/view/id/742.html?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=17178602520&gbraid=0AAAAADt-Kn0ph4eAt3inbtCk9Tjt8IA77&gclid=CjwKCAjw8uTQBhAdEiwAVvtJyrHurwMiX1eVezExj4zWyNFuYLzJ_LObPlYyH2qK77MUmOXTMa0tLBoCF0gQAvD_BwE But it was quite thick when I used it earlier in the year, so I'd suggest warming the tubes first.... Or this stuff if you can weigh it down whilst it cures as it is low expansion, but has been good at stick EPS to concrete etc. https://ewistore.co.uk/shop/external-wall-insulation/eps-adhesive-ewi-240-750ml/

Here's an in-progress Posi design for my Car Port roof. What I'm trying to achieve is a minimal edge detail, with masonry running up to the roofline, just with an Aluminium trim as a termination. What is the normal way to run the timber construction to the edge at the ridge and verge? So far the joists have been designed to land on a wall-plate on the inner leaf and the Posi tails have been left long enough to be trimmed inside the outer leaf, but I guess there will need to be some sort of rim-edge timber detail to support the deck and allow the edge trim to be fixed. At the verge, I am minded to have the last Posi swapped out for a 253mm Glulam, where a ladder frame can be built, but again I'm unsure how to detail this at the edge to achieve the minimal look I'm after. This is how the house is detailed, I'm after a similar effect with the Car Port, but here it's masonry not ICF! Obviously this is an uninsulated roof. Does anyone have any pics/details they can share to help me to move forwards with this? I greatly appreciate any/all help.

That's all very true and we had all the best intentions out the outset of the project. It was never our intention to end up in this much pain. We instructed Architect #1 in December of 2021, by the February we had already become concerned about a difficult working relationship. Something there was really no way we could have spotted earlier. She was a handful, very opinionated but oddly never wanted to come to site. It's a tricky site, with level changes and lots of trees, which was all documented in the Topo, but what we didn't think to consider and neither did she (because she never came here) was the magnitude of trees in the neighbouring gardens that would be impactful on the design. When it dawned on me, I called it out and she played it down. I ended up having to fudge a "topo addendum" of sorts, plotting estimated tree positions and approximate heights from our garden. It was clear at this point that we weren't getting the service befitting of the fee we had agreed (£16,000 for Riba Stage 4a). We plodded on through the difficult relationship, with all concerns and queries getting played down and brushed aside. After a massive mistake in ground levels on the plans (the building was drawn 700mm too high out of the ground), we really were getting annoyed. Long story short, we had to call it. The attitude was unbearable, it was pushed myself and SWMBO into tension and that's something we will not tolerate. So, with planning permission in hand, we broke lose and initially felt liberated. However, it soon because obvious that we needed further details/drawings and I think we can all understand just how reluctant any professional is to take on someone else's work, and so began the turbulent journey of trying to get our remaining detailing done. We "interviewed" 5 Architects in choosing the one we went with, she had us thoroughly convinced, she truly seemed to get it, us and the site. How wrong we were. That was just the start of our problems, but I think most of it stems back to that. Having an Architect who is not truly on your team is, I think, the most fundamental "clunk" in a self-build journey. The guy this post is about was technically Architect #3. Architect #2 turned out to be almost as bad as Architect #1, but now we are back with the firm of Architect #2, but with Architect #4, a really good guy and he's been worth his weight in gold.

There are lots of pitfalls in such a technical roof system, it really is a mine-field. I have plenty to say on it, perhaps that's for a separate topic! But suffice to say, the guarantees, on Zinc at least, are far from what they're claimed to be.

My lasting opinion of Zinc as a roof topping is, regardless of the problems I have had, you WILL get oil-canning. So if you (or anyone reading this) are looking at Zinc and are someone who might be bothered by this, then I suggest you have you expectations ready for it. My roofs are not seen from the ground from any position other than from one window inside the building and from that window you get the best (worst?) view of how bad this can be. Aside from all the other problems, I would not be content with the view I'll get every time I go upstairs and look left out of the window. I absolutely would not even contemplate it for a vertical facade, but I'd drawn this line in the sand long before our problematic roof installation. I have landed on the opinion that I would much prefer a nicely installed single-ply roof than a flawed Zinc roof and by their nature, Zinc is not flawless ever in my view.

Thank you, but we'll definitely not be going for Zinc again. I've totally lost the love for it and just wish we'd looked at other options from the outset.

A very expensive but poorly detailed Zinc roof. I posted about it here and there is another post linked in that post too.

I'm sure my proper UFH design will uncover that 40w/m2 is far too much. See my reply to @SimonD below. Thanks for your input, BH has been great to me, the support is helping me keep my head above the water (just about!).

In fairness, this is an outline quote, we're not at design stage yet so a set of heat loss calculations has not yet been done. I guess they'll charge for that in the end? I'm trying to do that myself through Heatpunk, but it's tricky with my very irregular shaped house. I'm considering paying for the Pro level for a month or two so I can upload my plans! But that doesn't help with ceiling levels (I have sloped ceilings). I haven't added all the windows yet, but it looks like 21w/m2 on there at the minute.

Thanks for this @Gus Potter. I'm a very very patient guy. I am possibly too far into the details, but I gave this guy so many chances, we communicated loads. I provided additional photos and dimensions as were needed to articulate the as-built structure. I spent FAR too long trying to mock layouts up in ChatGPT to try to further illustrate points I felt the Architect had missed. The fundamentals were missing though, without adherence to the standard details of the roofing system, we needed to go all the way back to square one and the passage of time thus far made it feel too risky to do with how weakly applied this guy was. With the idea that the ZInc roof needs to be stripped, part of my brief was to try to retain the Plywood deck if possible, as "taking the lid off" and seeing daylight from inside again felt like too much regression and another layer of waste that might have been able to be avoided. I already have 170sqm of 200mm Celotex that I cannot reuse. This might be why he couldn't have oversailed the edge to provide a similar detail as the one you kindly posted. I also now realise he's not as experienced as I initially believed. Keep in mind the total quote was £4000+VAT. FOUR THOUSAND POUNDS to provide a set of 6-8 details. Many people do not pay this for their whole Architectural package. I was desperately in need of help and believed this guy could take some of the stress off my shoulders. Turned out he just added to the ever-growing pile of nonsense that we're battling. We've lost tens of thousands of pounds in this project on "leakage". Poor Architects and this whole roofing debacle being at the forefront. Those elements have BY FAR been harder than physically standing this place up, even at my experience level. Some of the things I have achieved in this build make me proud, dimensional accuracy, level and having 3 ground floor levels that are +/- 10mm from the planned levels being some of them. Why can't professional services take the pride in their work as standard and just do the right thing if the customer isn't happy (and brings justification)?