PeterW

Nice tilt head bull float is only about £20-30 to hire. Wouldn’t buy one. @epsilonGreedy that is a Belle float with a very nice tilt mechanism built into the head - you twist the pole to make it go either way, depending on push or pull stroke.

There is no vibration and the wago will be held pretty secure by the T&E core anyway so doubt you would hear it

Cheapest place for Wago's is CPC

That is a good price then. I would find out who the local inspection partner is and give them a call

Is that for 10 years Warranty and Building Control inspections and sign off ..??

I would always go the shortest way possible but I would just up the size on those joists by one to 170x45 to make it stiffer

I’m a big convert to tilt and turn - think they are brilliant and really don’t see why they aren’t used more. In uPVC they have 3 seals anyway on the frames so wind and weather isn’t a problem. I think they also seem to seal better than a standard sash.

The day we changed the regs from having fire officers doing inspections to a “fire risk assessment” being ok for public buildings was the biggest mistake ever ...

My old joiner used to use a staple gun from Home Bargains .... it was worse than useless ..! He’d spend more time repairing it and I think had 3 broken ones in bits to make one good one. I have an Arrow hand stapler and a BEA air staple gun - heavy but will put a 35mm staple through fermacell into timber which is impressive ..!

This will need to be a very lightly loaded floor as it’s borderline for 150 joists.

Welcome Ytong are available in the UK but they are harder to source. MKM do them, and they are also available in a 600mm module size which may be beneficial to you in your situation.

Unless you’re at less than 400mm centres then that is absolute borderline to meeting regs. Who’s designed / signed off ..?

What is the span ..? Less than 3m..?

Nope. It says a self builder shouldn’t reduce the strength based on cost. House builders are using 8:1, 6:1 is the correct standard and this was the quote : You’re misquoting and wildly off the mark here. NHBC will have picked up the tab and if you read the table in the linked document you would see the different classes for different purposes. The issue is that the stated M4 mixes are not meeting the strength classifications and that is causing problems, but given NHBC is entirely funded by the industry it’s not really going to bite that hand is it..??

That’s irrelevant ..!! The reason your neighbouring house hasn’t cracked is there will be a lime mortar not a cement mortar in the brickwork. The benefit of lime mortar is that it remains “flexible” and can also “heal” over time. No... just read the actual reports and then comment ..! Some of the lab samples are showing 8:1 and worse - these are being site mixed using silo products which are pre-blended prior to even getting on site, so there is nothing the site can do. Add into this that there is a move to reduce OPC and replace with GGBS at up to 50% and you are now in the realms of big issues. If you build a house at 3:1 then it will crack as it’s far too strong, and more than likely will also cause block failure especially with lightweight blocks. The key is to use an OPC of known provenance and one that isn’t half full of GGBS or other pozzolanic material and then mix on site with a gauged mixer if you’re wanting to be sure of the mix. I suggest starting with this as light reading - a useful guide to mortar https://www.brick.org.uk/admin/resources/mortar-for-brickwork.pdf

This doesn’t sound safe - you’re saying you want to wall plate a 4m length and it’s effectively the top (potentially of 2) course of blocks ..?? The top course will move and try and rotate as there is nothing on the the top of them to stop them moving. How deep are your floor joists..?? I would just knock a block out, build up if you need with a timber wallplate and then sit the joists on top - make sure there is a decent DPM along the ends and into the cavity.

That depends ... if they are exposed and have a pot and concrete liner then you should really use a sulphite resistant cement too. Using old reclaims we use 5:1:1/2 OPC:Sand:Lime to get something a bit softer but still strong enough to hold.

I think you can straighten up the roof to form a gable under PD which would make more sense.

Is it new ..?? 5” is odd as the MIs say 4” Selkirk insulted flue from the unit. You can use 5” for the chimney flue but it needs to be suitable for gas and should be installed by the GSR engineer as it’s part of the regulated install.

I agree - the issue we have is a London-centric governance structure that hasn’t actually cottoned on to spending £50Bn on HS2 would be better spent on 50 new garden towns or cities with good rail links, a commerce structure and a set of schools. If you built 25% as social housing, 25% was self build and the remaining 50% was developer sheds, then you could not only revitalize a community, you could build one from scratch ...

This is where the French agricultural system falls down ... they understand the “land of the people” socialism type farm ownership rules, yet cannot understand that small scale farming cannot be sustainable without excessive subsidies. There are also punitive tax regimes for making the land use more significant, hence the use of co-operatives. The average farm size in France is something like 57 hectares, the UK is 98 and Spain is just 26. The interesting bit is when you break it down into the numbers of farm units by size, and the French pretty much is within the 2-3 times mean, but the UK has some massive units of 50 and 60 times mean, and this is offset by a significant number of small scale units operating in the 2-5 hectare group, usually classed as hobby farms. Land ownership will always be an emotive subject however they are not making any more of it ..... and it will continue to rise in value. The way to increase overall ownership is to decentralize and spread the economy over the wider country, but as (all parties other than SNP) Westminster believes that the UK ends at the M25, that is going to take some epic U-Turns in policy.

@Oz07 that isn’t even a legal man cage unless the bloke in it is 6’9” as that rail is too low all round. Probably find the cage is just ratchet strapped to the back rail too ....

Looks fine to me - that edge lift is done to stop water rushing off the roof and overtopping the gutters. There are plenty of gaps for air to get through with slates - having a continuous air space top and bottom is belt and braces.

You mean a death box ...??? These are now coming under scrutiny and it looks like the MEWP rules will apply soon which means the cage will have to be able to have some sort of interlink with the lifting gear. And the downside with 99.9% of tele-handlers is they have no fork pivot lock off so you catch the lever and dump your mate to the floor ....

I inadvertently found a dimmer touch controller for an LED strip when I was looking for a touch switch on eBay..! I paid less than £3 from China, it came in a week and it’s basically a 4 wire controller with a touch ring to make it on/off/dim. I’ve wired that to a copper stud in the front of the shelf - looks like it is just decorative but allows the light to be controlled easily ..!! Its only 12w which is fine for this as it’s a 1.2m LED strip but I have to say I’m pleasantly surprised .....