Brickie

Here it is.

It will need some kind of fixing to tie the two skins together-Ancon used to do a tie which was basically a slot which the tie fed into (a miniature version of an Abbey Channel)-I’ll have a look & if it’s still available I’ll post a link. From memory the slot was around 50mm deep so gives a bit more scope for variation in depth of stone.

You could go the old fashioned route and bed some slivers of timber at the reveals to provide a fixing point. Might be best to go with marine ply if you’ve any off cuts around. From my time in demolition,having come across this scenario countless times,I don’t recall ever seeing them in a rotten state (unlike timber lintols on external walls or joist ends bedded into a solid wall.)

This would be massively overshadowed by the astonishment at a 20 something (without a massive lump in from their parents) actually being able to afford a property.

When you say ‘to lay tiles’,was that a typo? If it’s brickwork then +1 to all of the above,and to add that setting the bond out so the piers work in the best way possible takes far longer than with stretcher bond-you could basically write off a day for a 2&1 just on this for a standard house. Seen an extension a while back where the guy obviously had limited understanding of the bond & the piers were truly shocking.

I prefer a mastic joint there-we’ve all done them in mortar & a hairline crack is usually the result.

Tube & fitting scaffold is normally adapted for a renderer,inside board moved away from the wall to allow work through the lift. Not sure how that would work with Kwikstage-maybe someone on here has done it?

Pull up an irrational rant & make yourself angry.

A bit of dialogue between the Brickies & the renderers would’ve avoided this,but hindsight is a wonderful thing. I tend to ask the renderer how they want them,or leave them loose so they can be rendered around & then pushed flush to the finish. So long as they are free from mortar build up behind them,they should still perform their function as they are.

Yeah,let’s get the kids primed for a lifetime of servitude before they’ve had a chance to start questioning things. Far better for Society as a whole to have an educated population who aren’t as susceptible to the triggers fed their way by the Mail et al. And how many innovations in our history have come about by people having a broad knowledge of things outside their particular discipline? Grammar schools in Sevenoaks are basing their intake exam on questions not yet covered by the pupils’ curriculum,so that tutors are required to stand a chance of gaining entry. So much for social mobility there. The ‘alphabet gender bollox’ is basically telling kids it’s not okay to be a dick to someone cos they’re different to you-how terrible for them. When my kids see the trans person on the till in a shop,it doesn’t confuse them,they just accept it. It’s me & my generation who do a double take because we weren’t brought up with this as a thing. Regarding the PV,doesn’t surprise me in slightest. I occasionally work on New Build sites (I did almost exclusively as an improved,& consequently had to unlearn many things) & the phrases ‘if it looks right,it is right’,’looks ok from my house’ & ‘Stevie Wonder would like to see it’ are commonplace. Hard to find a group of people less inclined to innovation & more resistant to change than the entire mass house building sector.

I’d always lay it on thin skim bed,just in case there are any small extrusions from the masonry below which could potentially puncture it. Bits of glass & other sharps are often to be found in blocks these days;my second income as a hand stunt double is largely restricted to horror movies these days.

If you have a cavity tray,you can take the corner bricks out,leave the odd brick out along each run (say every couple of metres) and rod any mortar droppings with a length of batten from each end. Best to do it before it sets though-if you need to get vigorous you risk damaging the tray. Or (my preferred option) use full fill cavity batts & everyone’s a winner 😀

If you have a cavity tray then I’d put them in the bed joint of that blockwork course (generally 225mm up from FFL.) I know a lot of people who put them out on the first course-pretty pointless if there’s a tray as they won’t be in a bed joint.

Is it timber frame?

Was it explicitly clear in the contract docs that Flemish bond was to be used?

The lintol over the bay is very likely to be timber (known as a bresummer) and has probably deflected substantially,if not failed completely. I would factor in replacement when calculating how much you’re prepared to pay for the property.

You could use insulated plasterboard all the way round the opening,to mitigate the cold bridge.

The OP DM’d me some photos which,at a quick glance,might justify their concern,but they are yet to post them up in the thread as yet,which I suggested.

I’ve used an online free tool called source4me in the past & found it to be pretty good.

How deep have they gone?

100% agree. Never going to get the states U value due to the realities of installation,even if you had the most conscientious bricklayers in the world. The detailing at reveals & lintols would require surgical precision to be anything other than leaky.

As above,worth checking during a downpour,but it could just be that the Dow pipe wasn’t installed immediately during construction,and that zone of brickwork took more than its fair share of rain as a result.

How long did you let the sample mixes cure before assessing? Can be a week or so before mortar tones down to its true colour. Could try adding hydrated lime in & altering the sand ratio slightly.

Less time than a spell check.

You can get PVC lintol covers which slide of them.