PeterW

At 400 centres you don’t need to land on a joist with a short join - the boards either side will support it. If these are Pozijoists then they should have edge trim all the way round using z clips - usually use 47x47 timber. As @nod says though - should have restraint straps into your blockwork where the joists run parallel to the walls plus they need blocking at that point. Strongbacks should already be installed.

the weapon of last resort .. or a go to for every British Gas engineer ..! 🤣

I would suggest case law says otherwise ..!! And it sounds like your neighbours may play hard ball and with no PWA in place then you can get an injunction to cease works which could cause you a number of issues - up to and including imprisonment if you continue to breach a court order.

So I take it you’re a builder / developer ..?? What is the land currently used for and do you have planning for your new house ..? Reason for asking is that this could be deemed a change of use - storage land is a different land classification so your neighbour could complain and your council could require you to obtain PP for the storage. That then means you may need to reapply for PP for any house … As a couple of people have said - that wall doesn’t look too bad and casting concrete in front of it could pay dividends in the future. Not at all - firstly they could say action you undertook undermined it if you stacked things against it. Secondly, there is no legal obligation to maintain a retaining wall assuming that the property above remains stable - they could reinstate it as a bank as long as it remains safe and on their side of the boundary. Two outstanding questions - how close is their property to the wall, and how close are you building to the retaining wall..?

Yes I’ve read what you put - have you read what I put though..? If you’re building that close to their structure then you wlll need a party wall agreement. Given the state of the retaining wall you would be best advised to get one as any further damage to the wall could be deemed from your construction activity and then you will be liable to rebuild at your cost if you don’t have one.

then the chances are you are going to need a party wall agreement and they will hold all the cards to make your build very problematic. Also getting into neighbour disputes will need to be recorded if you sell .. Is this really worth the hassle ..?

Because most people don’t understand heat loss to be frank. 10% of the heat loss of a system is a lot - and when you look at energy prices and that is £250 a year which should be £50… it soon adds up. I also don’t think it’s 10%, and is substantially more but not knowing the rest of the building make up you can’t guesstimate it

Think there is a typo in the cost of inspections - premium looks fine

you’re not ..??? Why not stagger the wall - given no-one knows what this looks like or land area etc I am guessing here - so it has a raised bed all the way down and then plant that up which also allows you to screen from the neighbours ..?? Unless this is a very narrow site, 2ft of land is not going to be noticed. If it is a material issue then I would expect you need a party wall agreement and with the neighbours how they are then they will make your life hell.

yes.

Likely - does it have AAVs..?

Fixed the issue…

Screed or concrete ..?? Screed gets laid semi-dry and tamped into place and smoothed, concrete is laid wet and then floated. You can walk on concrete the day after, screed needs 3-4 days ideally and then care needs to be taken for another week or so. Depending on depth and how long you’ve got or can wait, then concrete with a thin SLC layer is usually the easiest to DIY. It flows a bit better and you don’t end up in the situation that you need to work on it to finish it unlike a screeded surface. I’d want 80mm min for concrete, little bit more for standard sand cement screed. At 80mm, you’re just less than half a cubic metre or around a tonne of concrete. A volumetric mixer would drop that in 10 mins, it’s about 8 wheel barrow loads and you’ll have it levelled off and tamped within an hour. All you need is a batten on each wall to run a level board down and it’s done.

That can’t be right ..??!! A 70sqm lead roof will weigh over 1.7 tonnes and the max span on a 100mm joist is less than 2m. That’s fine - and standard build up is adding 11mm OSB to the top and screwing through into the ply through the insulation then add the EPDM. At current scrap price of £1.62/kg then your roof is worth about £2700 so will easily cover the cost of a good chunk of the replacement roof !

T5 RectorSeal…

Do you have legal cover in your household insurance ..? A failed retaining wall could cause significant damage - your insurers may be very interested !

No but if you peel back the foil on the stuff you want to cover and the 50mm layer that will face it, you can bond it on with low expansion foam. You can leave the foil on but tbh it sticks so much better if you get PIR to PIR

It’s based on the Fermacell floor panel system - nothing new. Uses 12mm pipe from memory and needs either self levelling or tile over it as a finished surface. Wouldn’t want to be running it at 50°C though ..!!

Use 10mm here Use 15mm here How are you making the basement airtight from the rest of the house ..? And those units are designed to use waste heat from the building so in a basement that may be very inefficient. Also consider condensation due to the cold air it will create. You will also need a G3 blow off to a drain - don’t forget this. There are none - most work on cold feed only now and you’ll just be pulling water out of the tank and it is unlikely to fully fill the DW/WM anyway due to deadlegs.

It could be vibration from the UFH manifold pump back through the pipework. Also put a hand on it and see if you can feel the vibration.

Not NuHeat..!! As the standard heat loss calculation will show ..!!

No worries - if you order from wunda get a 120m coil and a 50m coil, there will be spare on the 50, and the 120m will mean you have plenty to do the full loops. If the stud wall isn’t in place yet, and you can get down and under where the manifold is to come off the back of it then run the shower room first, feed and return across the outside door entrance, and then run the main body of the room. Serpentine would be ideal but tbh in a room that size I would run all round the outside 100mm from the wall and then run up to the shower room and back, using up the coil on the area in front of the shower room door then back to the manifold. here is a Friday afternoon plan ..!!

28mm is fine - you’ll need nothing more than that. 22mm is pretty much ok if you push the flow rates up. And Speedfit….. with no collets…

Structurally that will also be a challenge - has it been framed using RSJs as it’s a significant point load on the centre of a roof. I would look at what is available in the off the shelf in sectional form and work from there because to be honest you’ll stop looking up at it after about a week ..! Also bear in mind that perfectly flat glass pools water and collects bird $hit and other rubbish - you need a 5° or more slope to get it to self clean.

So if the door is 800, that’s approx 5x3 to be heated less the shower room. At 150mm centres that is around a 95m loop (you can do 120m at a push) and then the shower room. All doable on 2 circuits @Jilly and especially if you use self balancing actuators as they will trim the flow down based on the return temp.