Mulberry View

Where can I obtain the LABC Detail Binder? I'm specifically after drawing EU7C at the moment? It's the detail for Beam & Block floor into Nudura walling... Thanks in advance...

My discharge application has been submitted and paid for today, I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, this just came up... https://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/housing/norfolk-homes-nutrient-neutrality-breakthrough-hopes-9159928 Progress....

I know there are a few Norfolk bods frequenting Buildhub. Any recommendations for good Groundworks companies to do our foundations? Despite seriously considering it, I just think this is a bit ambitious for me... Thanks in advance...

I took the basic opinion in the end that pushing the top of concrete lower in the ground means we're less likely to encounter it later. 150mm below just feels like it's barely below ground in places. Adding a course of Nudura at that end of the building, according to my calcs, reduces foundation concrete by 4.5 cube, increases wall concrete by only just over 1 cube and we have enough blocks, but is it that simple? Here is the pit we dug to do the percolation test. Not sure if you can see from this what's in there? It's the second pit that was dug to about 800mm depth from memory after the deeper pit was too slow.

I'm in Norfolk. There's been no mention of Clay and I've not seen it. Apparently the site investigation work was straight-forward and the outcome of the physical examination removed the need for plasticity testing etc. The specification is to found onto the hard chalk bedrock and with a minimum concrete depth of 300mm. I'm struggling to understand who sets the top of concrete height. It's not been specified by Architect or SE. If it's me, as the Principal Contractor, that's fine, I just need to somehow ensure I'm correctly understanding the process. That is, I know the floor levels, and the floor make-up, but is that enough? Our building has a ground floor level with steps into the kitchen (up 600mm) and steps into the living room (up 400mm). The design shows 2 steps in the foundation, but our Architect doesn't have a good understanding of ICF and so perhaps doesn't realise that we don't really have to consider coursability. At the Southern end of the building, for example, the current design appears to put the top of concrete height at 13.050, with a surrounding average topography of 13.200. To me that's not deep enough to give frost protection, so I made the decision to remove the 2nd step from the foundations, adding another course of blocks underground, this dropping the foundation down by a further 457mm at that end, it felt like a simple decision, but now I'm doubting myself and wonder if I should be doing something else to justify this decision.

Here is the output from our Structural Engineer... I'm not aware of Clay on the site. Our site investigation was attended by the Structural Engineer, with myself operating a 3T digger. 3-4 trial pits were dug, observed by the SE, who also took a soil sample away. He seemed fairly happy with ground conditions, once we got down to around 750mm-1000mm below, we were well into the hard stuff, which I assume to be chalk? By the time our 1.2m percolation test pit was dug, the bottom 400-500mm was hard, solid and did not percolate well at all. The plot has had trees removed (mostly over 12 months ago), some are remaining and have been designed into the scheme. Our foundation is pure concrete it would appear, no steel required. 12mm Starter Bars will be chem-fixed in for the ICF. I'm curious as to the purpose of the Claymaster in the design on the inside edge of the trench? Also, if we wish to implement a deeper void, is it a case of setting the 'top of concrete' height in accordance with the sum of the parts above and with the concrete lowered, we will need to use more blocks to construct the walls? My plan is to construct a dwarf-wall inside the ICF structure on which to bear the beam & block floor, leaving the ICF fully intact and butting the blockwork right up to it, does this sound OK?

With planning approval in place and just one condition to agree a surface water plan before we can proceed beyond foundation, we have just entered a plan that harvests around 135 sqm of our roof-space into a system that will supply reused water for toilet flushing and machine washing. The rest goes to a soakaway that has been justified in calcs. It'll be interesting to see how the council respond to an application to discharge the condition. Maybe they'll do nothing? Maybe they have enough of a mechanism to let this go through. We have our fingers crossed as that's all that's stopping us. I'm hopeful that at least once it's on their desk, they have to do something, even if it's to keep us informed.

This is how I feel. I'd say in terms of design risk, I'm very low in the stakes. It's a unique design that we've paid a lot of money for, the last thing I want to do is compromise it. I'm not hell-bent on getting the CAD, I just want to be able to accurately scale everything in the easiest and most reliable way. There is software out there, I'm told, that will allow me to do this from CAD without the need to edit or get more deeply involved.

I need an opinion, please. Our Architect has taken a firm position not to provide us with the CAD for our Architectural plans, citing this is the reason... "We don’t issue DWGs of our plans generally, other than to 3rd party designers for their use in designing specific elements for the house. As I’m sure you appreciate, the DWGs contain work which is our intellectual property, so we need to control to whom, what and when that is issued. If you have people asking for DWG’s, please do pass on their requests and we’ll provide what they need where appropriate." We are hands-on self builders, I am the Principal Contractor and am sure I'm going to need the CAD to measure accurately from. Even if it is possible to scale from drawings (as was the case in times past), I'm sure the CAD would be very helpful. Given what we have paid for the service (a lot). Am I entitled to it?

Thanks for your help everyone. I had another go at getting my 21mm adhesive heatshrink over the plug and was successful this time. It didn't shrink enough, but it is more than adequate. Just hope the internals of the remote didn't get cooked during the shrinking process!

Trouble is, it just doesn't last long.

I'm pretty creative, but cannot fathom a way to sort this. It's the remote for my Grandmothers reclining chair, they are over £100 to replace. She needs it to support her legs that are in a very bad way. I have various sizes of heatshrink, including one with adhesive in it. Nothing will go over the plug, but shrink enough. Despite trying, I cannot separate the casing to try to disconnect/shorten the wires. I've tried to cut my adhesive heatshrink lengthways and rejoin it before shrinking it. Nothing has worked so far. It needs to be fairly resilient, I cannot expect my (almost) 90 year old Grandmother to by sympathetic to my repair! Any pearls of wisdom? I'd love to be able to fix this for her.

I was a small business owner, my niche business couldn't survive the pandemic and finally folded late last year. I planned for this build to be my full time occupation for the time being, I just didn't anticipate how long it would take to get out of the starting blocks.

I'm really nervous about build costs. We are now fully committed, living in a caravan onsite. We have a (roughly) 0.6 acre plot, slight slope, tricky access. All services are in the plot and in the vicinity of the build (I did most of that work), a run of over 150m. I've already hand-built 101m of Jacksons Timber Palisade fencing to split the plot and laid 60m of Geocell with Type1x infill as a 'driveway'. The house is 225m2, including a Car Port (193m2 habitable), 3/4 bedroom. We're pretty savvy shoppers. I plan to be VERY hands on and will be on the project full time. I do have my limits though, I'd class myself as an intermediate DIY'er. I'll be - Principal Contractor Erecting the ICF Managing the Pours Drainage Doing most of the structural timber-work Fitting the metal roof Doing as much of the Plumbing/Electrics/UFH and HVAC as I'm allowed. Kitchen fitting Bathroom fitting Tiling Most of the Landscaping I've taught myself to drive a digger (at a novice'ish level). I won't be bricklaying (where needed), plastering, rendering and probably won't fit the windows. We currently have a bare plot and are ready to go, with about £330k in the bank, having already paid for the work to date. Our organic savings will grow over time. That's my current thought process, but it's difficult to understand budget when you don't know for sure how much you'll be able to do yourself. My worry is that I'll hold back on spec level in case we can't afford to finish, then find we come in under budget! Good luck!

Which rotating level is that? What sort of money?

We have a generous plot (around 0.55 acre), on a slight slope. I'm not yet sure how much of the groundworks I'll be doing, but I plan to be hands-on throughout the whole project, including with the landscape garden. Do I ought to consider buying a Laser Level or similar? If so, what sort of thing would be right for this project? Any advice is appreciated.

,No, but at least it's being considered. We were of the understanding that they aren't considering anything at present. Our current requirement is the discharge of our Surface Water Plan condition and our plan for that involves a fair bit of rainwater harvesting, so perhaps we're as neutral in that respect.

Well, looookey here. https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/housing/newton-flotman-31-homes-approved-9009646 The precedent has been set, in our area at least. That has be to be progress....

Our planning application is passed with a packaged treatment plant, we had wanted to go onto the mains and have begun works to do that, with the plan of putting the change in as an amendment. The council were in favour of that approach, but this will of course now be a u-turn. We can proceed with the treatment plant route if we have to. Our surface water condition requires us to agree a plan before we can proceed beyond foundation level and it's that we're stuck on. Our plan is and has always been to harvest the rainwater, presumably with a soakaway overflow. I can't really see how you can do any better than that? Our house does not alter the amount of rain that will fall onto our plot, so hoping some common sense emerges. We have a round of amendments to do that will also be caught up in this, we are told that material amendments will not be considered at this time, so hopefully we can get most of them through as non-material amendments and skirt around this. They are only things like window size alterations (not positions) etc. For the time being, we are going to get started on the foundations and hope for the best as our Nudura blocks are en-route so we have to take that delivery in the next few weeks regardless.

Yes, that's very true. Without wanting to turn this post political, the silly 50 quid fines are being used to distract from the real crime that's going in within the government.

I just spoke with our local council, he tells me that any planning or discharge of conditions relating to drainage or surface water will be caught in this. We can probably squeak our non-material amendments through, but anything more than that is likely to also be affected. Happy days.

Well, our current planning permission is for connection to a packaged treatment plant and the conditions relate to that. We want to put in an amendment to allow connection to mains drain, which we now realise is feasible but I think can wait. Even though we desire the mains route eventually, maybe we need to accept the treatment plant route for now and make the mains connection amendment much later on when all this shenanigans is over? We have a condition that we must submit a surface water drainage plan before we progress beyond foundation level, which we haven't discharged. Surely as long as we can show that our surface water will be handled via Rainwater Harvesting and Soakaways, we'll be OK on that? We have a condition that imposes the implementation of a packaged treatment plant prior to first occupation, which again we haven't discharged. We do not need to discharge it yet, so we can carry on as we are by the looks of it and submit the mains connection scenario as a later amendment much further down the line? Presumably none of our other amendments (window sizes etc) will be refused?

I read over the weekend that the Long Stratton bypass and the 1800-odd new homes planned within the same project now hangs in the balance. Maybe that'll be a good leverage to sorting this mess out.

Yes. We have a current condition to discharge sewage to a packaged treatment plant, but one of our amendments is to connect the property to mains drainage as a solution to do so presented itself. Our LPA verbally agreed with our approach, but I presume they will amend the existing treatment plant condition to be one relating to discharge of drainage. Also, we have a condition to submit a surface water plan before we progress beyond foundation level. Clearly these conditions won't be discharged, so does that mean we are actually unable to progress beyond foundation level or that we can proceed but at some sort of risk?

We're also in Norwich. Our full planning application was approved last July, but we have a round of minor amendments to go in. Will this be affected? We do have a couple of conditions to discharge also.