Timedout

I had the same, not as extreme as the middle of the room. We built and installed the step, one in each of two identical rooms. Signed off. Steps removed. No one ever came back to check. Once you are signed, they lose all interest.

The usual folk, Glidevale, Manthorpe et al do these.

Fair enough. I would edit that but I can’t see how. There are no edit tools available to me. If a moderator is available I would prefer to simply delete the post.

My advice would be refuse to allow them to work on your side. They may go to court to gain an order under the access to neighbouring land act but I doubt it. You must insist on a party wall agreement. The preliminary costs will be so much they will almost certainly back off. The brickwork in your photos is rubbish anyway, sorry if it is yours. The wind would blow through that never mind water. The neighbours will have to engineer a solution themselves. I had a similar situation a few years ago on a bungalow we bought. In our case we were the downhill property and the uphill neighbour had raised his garden (in clear breach of a covenant to the contrary) that had promoted water ingress through the garage wall. Predecessors to us had tried to collect the water and guide it away by cracking out a channel in the garage floor. I applied a tanking slurry well up the wall and filled in the channel. It held while we lived there and will for a while yet but not indefinitely. Our masonry was much better though.

Look at the range at Travis Perkins. The cheaper ones are excellent, they are solid core and the finish is so good that you have nothing to do but varnish or oil. Currently showing £74 + VAT on the website. I used a full set on my last project and will definitely be buying for this one too. Also sold in Wickes ( same company) but cost a bit more.

The walls are not good enough. I doubt that would satisfy your technical standards in Scotland. If you really are using a 100mm timber frame you will need to internally insulate. Typical solution would be a contiguous layer of foil faced PU/PIR board like Kingspan over the inner face of the studs, all joins and junctions sealed and taped, counter battens, plasterboard. With only 100mm frame you are going to need a thick pu board, at a guess in excess of 75mm. The knock-on is making provision you set noggins and extra support for confers in the right places to pick up the plasterboard edges. I am not making this up. I have done it already but I had a 140mm frame. My largest u values were a lot better and I achieved SAP A rate in practice. Redesign now and aim for 0.1 u value for every element.

After self building for years we do virtually everything on a day rate but we tend to buy as much of the materials we can. It usually works out cheaper and if, and this happened, the quality or behaviour is not acceptable we can pay them up to date and invite them not to come back. A drunk roofer at ten in the morning is not acceptable. Exceptions are that we tend to get electricians to work on time and materials. With plumbers we buy all of the meaningful stuff and get them to do provide materials for the things like pipe fittings etc. If you ask someone to give a fixed price that person has to price for the risk of variation in the work content. Inevitably the price will be higher. Working professionally (I don’t do domestic work), the client always wants a fixed price. There are many times, with repair works for example, that it would often be far cheaper to issue a post measured order. Private clients may be persuaded but I worked for a good while in the public sector and there is no way you can get them to engage with the concept.

As was said earlier, the price can be almost anything. If the electric company want some help upgrading the local network they will try to get you to contribute. Here is an example from 2003. I ask for the service pole that serves just my barn and my neighbour’s bungalow to be moved 3.6m back down the run of cable. It is on my land and will remain in my land in the new position. All I really want is the end stay to be in the new position. The power company spent six months dreaming up schemes that would help them. What they finally wanted was me to pay £12,500 for them to put up a larger capacity pole mounted substation on a local farmers land. They also wanted me to arrange and pay for wayleaves from that farmer and another neighbour. Naturally, we just dropped the whole idea. As long ago as 1980 we had to abandon a house purchase, it had no mains electricity. The asking price for the house was £8k but the quote for the electric supply came in at £10k and we had to do all the digging and put in the duct. £10k was a lot in 1980. more recent example, last new build was 2012. Electric £3800, water £2900, gas £380. Like you, adjacent to a highway, max dig was 10m for the electric because that was in the far verge. Gas was a false figure, their plans were wrong and it cost them way more than that but they did honour the quote. That was in North Yorkshire.

Stick with oil but ditch the combi type. Oil combi boilers drink fuel like it was free. Install a cylinder and a system boiler. We have had two oil combi boilers and both we very uneconomic. Regular oil boilers seem ok, just noisy and a bit smelly.

What I can see in the ping pong room looks a bit high but the roof windows look the wrong shape. Consider though that estate agents use distorting cameras to make every room look huge. Appearances may deceive. On the outside photos those three roof windows grouped together can’t be MOE because they are centre pivot. Perhaps the rooms have other windows?

Fair enough, opening is correct, ill chosen word on my behalf. I wasn’t aware of the eaves distance change so thanks.

Top hung Velux size M08 give sufficient to meet the regs. Note that it must be within a set distance from the eaves and have a sill no higher that a set distance from the floor. The latter is mitigated by forming steps up to it if necessary as the response above. These steps have to be fixed in position. We made ours as an independent unit that were screwed in place to wall and floor. Even the BCO joked about us being able to remove them once we were signed off, everyone does. The next time was a new build room in roof house. That had the same M08 Velux but brought to the outer wall with Velux VFE vertical elements beneath. The window board of that formed an acceptable step for the BCO. We have had similar situations but could fulfil the regs with side hung casements with the right hinge types set in the gable ends. Most window catalogues have MOE or egress beside the model description. Velux technical has always been helpful when I have asked.

If there is a viable way with a friendly neighbour then go with it.

You definitely need their agreement and a deed of grant of an easement. I have done this before. Expect to pay but they do not have to agree. If they do not, you are stuffed, sorry. I know they do not have to because I have prevented neighbours running services through my drive even though they had a right of access on foot or by vehicle. The rights did not extend to services on, under or over it. BT does count, the telecoms act lets them do anything they want.

Looks like a faulty casting. Probably not where you see the hole but in the bit where the flush water enters the pan casting. The pan casting is usually hollow and water is probably getting into the void. I suspect that hole in the photo was a breather hole for whilst the pan was being fired. I am not an expert in this stuff but had to learn once. We had one that allowed sewer gas back into the room. Had a bit of agro getting it acknowledged and replaced. Both supplier and manufacturers struck a pose on it all. The consequential costs for us ran into many hundreds. At first convinced it was a plumbing error, all the soil pipe encasement was removed and had to be replaced and skimmed again. When the new pan came the foot was a totally different shape so the whole of the flooring had to be replaced. The bathroom was out of action for months but we did have three anyway. You are in an unfortunate position. I guess your warranty evaporated years ago. New pan I think.

Auger out holes, ram with stone, masonry pads on top of stone, beams over pads. I did not invent the idea, saw it in an article some years back. Confess I have never seen it done. Quick internet search all retuned foreign links for rammed stone piles.

For a single home I have never seen larger than 25mm pipe. I doubt the water company will bring it to the meter in anything bigger. For anyone where the flow rate through a 25mm pipe is not enough I suggest you are using too much water. Turn down the volume, perhaps invest in some flow restrictors. My current refurb project has 3/8 black alkathene coming in with a static pressure of 4bar. That gives way more flow rate than necessary. I am planning to fit a pressure reduction valve. I have done it before and 1 bar is enough if you plumb internally in 15mm. I did one place at 3 bar and plumbed all the hot water in 10mm. Worked just fine and 2 bar would probably have been sufficient. 3/8 alkathene has internal diameter about the same as 15mm copper if you are wondering.

Go with 65m bricks. Why make life difficult?

Thanks, Oz07 is your Dewalt the type 3? with my type 1 it jammed every other nail. The type 2 was inconsistent and I needed my hammer at all times. Some nails went in, some did not irrespective of length. Frequent jams too. The buy new, use and resell is a model I have used for a long time. I only do physical work when I have a project of my own. Professionally I mainly do surveys and desk work. The buy-use-sell model usually makes much more sense than hiring.

Has anyone got experience this later type 3 Dewalt DCN692 first fix nailer? I have need for a nailer again but I am wary. In the past I have had two Dewalt first fix nailers and both were crap. The first generation one was useless straight out of the box and was returned immediately. The vendor was very difficult but fortunately PayPal leaned my way. The next was a second generation type 2. I persevered with this for a few weeks and wasted a lot of money on trying different nails but I gave up. I sold that on eBay and lost quite a bit on the nailer and far too much on the stock of nails. There isn’t a vibrant market for part used boxes of nails. I don’t want to keep on repeating the same mistakes but I do have Dewalt batteries. I have had the Dewalt second fix nailer since 2012 and except for the original batteries being duff, it’s been good. My Dewalt drills and saw bench are good too. I am not buying a gas nailer because I don’t want to spend my days fiddling around with a temperamental contraption. Watched too many guys doing that. I don’t have space for a compressor so pneumatic is out. if anyone has used a type 3 DCN692 I would be interested to hear of your experience. thanks

JCB are great numb things, crap at accurately digging and mess up the site. Even their mini diggers are awful with really jerky hydraulics. Don’t buy a digger. I don’t even hire for self drive any longer. Hire a machine and operator. The operator is the key. A good operator can dig accurately and scrape level. You will get three times the productivity and a better job. Try the sole trader type operators not the bigger companies and not a highways approved contractor. The small guys all seem to work on a salary replacement business model or can’t do the maths to price for amortising the cost and maintenance of the machine. Hence they are cheap.

I would not worry too much about the smell thing. Perhaps try it and see how it goes for a while. To give a bit of confidence I did the following on a bungalow a few years ago. We used a DIY ducted PIV into the living area and passive stack ventilation in the bathroom and shower room. The passive stacks had Aereco ceiling terminals that modulate relative to humidity. Like you, we were anxious about smell but it in practice it was fine.

We had to install ground gas measures in a new build in 2011. In our case the identified gas was methane coming from a deep lying bed of peat about half a mile away. We simply used the same methods as one would for radon. Basically a membrane over a sump with a pipe leading from under the slab and venting to the atmosphere. Unable to recall the standards quoted but Building Control and certifying engineer were both happy enough.

I would not panic. Rake out an point up a large area in a consistent mortar and finish and it will pass without comment. Do do just the crack, it will attract the wrong kind of attention. It looks as if it has been superficially pointed over before. Rake back 25mm min. Don’t use an angle grinder, you’ll chip the bricks. The bricks look hard, like northern town or colliery village terraces. Hard bricks shed water and concentrate it on the mortar so fill well, no recess and tool finish, not brushed. There’ll be a brickie along soon to disagree with me, I’m just a techie and usually give way to a skilled man. That terrace will have no movement joints anywhere and long term shunt through thermal and moisture induced expansion would exhibit at stress pints where the cross section is small such as window and door openings. Get someone to look at the existing mortar to see if it is lime or cement based. Use the same when you repoint. 90 years ago is about 1920 and even that late it could be lime.

People an insurers don’t like flat roofs. Rightly so in my opinion. Always look a bodge. Trussed rafters are cheap, mineral wool, concrete tiles, dry fix kit all cheap but look a lot better. No one will say oh lovely a pitched roof, they won’t even register it. But if they see a flat roof they will say, oh dear, nasty flat roof bodge job. There is a small flat roof projection on the bungalow I have just bought to refurb. I am itching to throw a pitched roof over it.