Gus Potter

No, it needs to come out and be redone properly. Some reasons. I won't list them all. 1/ The lead is not pinned in. 2/ The chase in the masonry is not deep enough. 3/ The silicon is not appropriate. 4/ I doubt they have used panitation oil an all sides of the lead. One big thing is that the lower slope (pitch of the roof) looks too shallow for these roof tiles in the photo.. depends if you had the camera off level. This could cause you a very big problem further down the road. BC should not have passed this.. if they did. Hope you get it resolved.

Hi Nick. Me being old school and all have this idea that UF pipes where buried in screed and inaccessible should be installed without joints. Make all your joints, ideally above the floor where you can get to them. If you are making joints during concreting it's sods law these will be the ones that fail as everyone is under pressure. I then think.. say twenty years down the road, various plumbers come and go but one lets some gunk get into the UF and that slowly makes its way along the loop until it catches on the spliced bit with the joint. Then you could end up chasing you tail diagnosing the problem. You might be able to blow it back with compressed air.. but that may over stress the splice joint. Just a thought!

And folks it's that little dent that can compromise the whole loop!

Agree. From an SE view the roof will be restraining the old walls. Once you start to muck about you could break these established bonds and risk things starting to move. When working on old buildings we need to be careful that when we stengthen things we don't inadvertently cause harm.

@JamesSmith79 This is the great thing about BH when folk like you come up with ideas. It's not "crackpot".. it's just you asking a perfectly reasonable question. Ah.. but the building has probably settled a bit and the roof timbers are used to the loads.. you need to look at all the load paths and how they might change when you drop the timbers As a heads up.. it's an old roof, maybe the nails and fixings are corroded. You are going to change the load paths and change the stress pattern. While in principle your idea is good you need to look at the knock on effects. Your idea is elegant.. provide you can justify it is not overloading other parts.. call that unintended consequences. You mention "strong boys" For all on BH these tend to have a maximum working load rating of 350 kg or less.. which is not a lot! I can tell you as an SE that a lot of builders have no idea how llittle load these can carry! Always ask a builder if they know what they are doing when they mention strongboys!

As I'm on a roll here is a question for @Nickfromwales as I want to tap into his boots on the ground experience. Nick. Ok say say we are setting out UF pipes. The manufacture gives us a minimum bend radius as we put in the loops. My own experience tells me that even with flexible pipes the centres are tight when we get to less than 175mm. The pipes start to oval if disturbed. I know that when we want to bend the pipe we smooth out the radius on site.. like driving a racing car.. we anticipate the bend. But for all.. you get a UF design, play about with loop cad and then the concrete workers turn up (100kg a man+ with big wellie boots).. they just might crimp a pipe? and then it all goes wrong. UFH pipes need to be designed for buildability and unless you do this then you are on a hiding to nothing.

Hiya. It's the unreconstructed philistine here in terms of UFH! So this may not help.. but a few comments. Maybe one way of looking at this is how the floor is going to be laid. Often I get asked to make houses open plan and maybe marry that in with an extension with a big glazed opening looking out into the garden. Imagine you have built a rear extension, you walk in from say the hall and look into this big space with glazing that lights it all up. Now if you lay the say laminate flooring perpendicular to the direction of view into the garden say it will do two things. 1/ Any bumps and undulations often show up due the dominant light direction, it cast shaddows. People are sensitive to changes in level when walking over longer distances and any shaddows alert them to these slight changes in level. If the flooring is laid perpendicular to your direction of travel it shaddows more. 2/ It makes the the room look smaller in perspective when looking outwards into say the garden. Summary: If you lay the flooring parallel to the main view direction it not only makes the room look bigger it also mitigates any bumps in your floor slab as folk walk into the room. Once they change direction say to sit on a sofa the mind is interested in getting seated / what food is on the table say and you are much less aware of any change in floor level as you may be having to navigate around a coffee table and thinking about where you are going to sit.. try it and see for your self. Now I've experimented with UFH over the years..I like to design my own systems from a practical and maintainable view point. My approach is.. let's see if I can make the UFH pipes last for say 50 years and make it cost effective to say maintain, even if folk want to connect fancy controls to the loops at least it give the next owner of the home a fighting chance to change the set up. On my current house I have a ground bearing concrete slab in the extension part of it with a good clay soil dumpling under the insulation which transitions to a suspended timber floor, it's one open plan space so lots of things are moving about. I also looked a tog values of underlay vs glueing the floor directly to the concrete. The dumpling size does influence the performance of UFH.. which is a story for another day.. but often ignored in standard calculations as it sits under the layer of insulation. At the end of the day I floated my parquet style oak flooring over a 2.0 mm thick poly underlay. I took the view that as the flooring is expensive I wanted to be able to fix it locally if it got damaged. Case in point.. a plant pot leaked and has stained the floor. If I get round to fixing it then the job should be easier as it floats rather than being glued down. Probably the main thing is that we have rugs on the floor and some big furniture that traps the heat. That said the furniture is always warm when you sit down. In the round I reckon that all this reduces the rate of heat emission by at least 20%. so this well outlays the tog value of the flooring and makes any detailed technical heat calculations and excercise in futility. But I know this as have done it before and it's partly a dark art coupled with basic engineering principle. @MortarThePoint that's my first go at responding to your post, do you fancy posting a floor plan so we can see the room size and so on? Can you tells us what your floor slab is sitting on.. clay or gravel and where the water table is and if you have a mobile water table? Or if not got the will to live on this.. just cart on and sleep well! @MortarThePoint "I'm nervous of something too thin as then it won't take out any small lumps and bumps in my screed which is pretty flat but does have the odd lump (max about 2mm high). Feels like 5mm would be a good option (thoughts?)." Maybe think about some of your friends houses that are old and look at their floors, take a bottle of wine, visit and walk about, get a feel for what 25mm of change in level feels like. Also remember that your SE might have designed your house to cope with 25mm of settlement over a 50 year period which is standard. It could be that you are over thinking this? As always all the best!

@Great_scot_selfbuild Ok to add a bit. Let's look at this in terms of how the trees grow. I'll be simplistic but hopefuly this gives you insight. Trees need structural roots... stops then falling over. They also need water and nutrients... the Tertiary roots. Now imagine you are knocking in 70 screw piles and in doing so you will compact the ground! The structural roots of a tree go deep, the roots that capture the water and nutrients are close to the surface as they have to compete with the other vegitation. Your design is complex (as you have made it that way yourself!)and at the moment and I don't think your SE and you have understood all the implications.. you clearly don't understand how trees grow.. if you did then you and ergo your SE would not be posting on Build HUb!. My feeeling is that you are going to spend a pile of money and not actually achieve your design intent. Loom at concrete piers (these will often take care of the sideways wind load) say as a first go, not compact the ground, let the rain water moist the soil, under the building foot print|. On the face of it it's complex but once you get you head around the principles the solution is ofen remarkably simple.. I suspect that you have fallen into the trap of one foundation solution! Time to go back and review! I force myself as a designer to do this as it's part of my day job.. sometimes I find that I have followed the wrong path.. but this gives me time to correct and learn before I isued a design..

Good and interesting info. I'm not trying to poke holes in your design to be an arse.. but from what you have posted so far just it looks a bit bollocks and here is why..but let's start with the upside! I do like how your building sits in the trees, almost Canadian design.. love it! Often when I design I discuss with Clients some of my "whacky" options.. in design it's good to know what the rubbish ones are and the ones that could cost a lot... so you can rule them out. Good design is often about ruling out what you don't really want and then you focus on the things you do want.. and then this lets you focus in on the viable options... prevents you later thinking "we should have done that! after the fact. Your screw piles are a classic case in point.. I think you have not done enough work and plumped for screw piles! I think you might be making an expensive mistake! You don't need to take my advice but to be safe consider it and rule it out.. then you know you are making good decisions. You will kick yourself if you get it wrong and I turn out ot be right! It's not my money after all.. From time top time I act as a lead Engineer on a project.. it my job to make sure everything is safe (in the round but not checking everything roughly). but also that we control cost where I can, call that a soft skill! Now some Cients just want to "do their own thing" Is this you? @Great_scot_selfbuildand are you happy to pay for the privilege. I'll run with that as an SE provided it is a safe design. But this often commands a higher design fee... and the construction cost will go up exponentially! I suspect you have gone down one route and are blinkered! Take a step back and review! My gut feeling is that the design you describe is going to cost you a fortune once you get down to the detail. and getting folk to execute on site. Ok you might be in Scotland? and feel reassured the you have an SER Engineer.. not always my experience when checking their designs! Check the fine print is my advice! Look to see how they shed design and cost liability! OK to be be blunt.. being smart does not always increase the value of you property. In fact it can reduce the value! I think you are trying to be too smart! My gut feeling is that this will trip you up futher down the road and you will get totally pelted when the Contractors submit their prices! You will be lucky to find any good contractor who wants to take on your job! Look ahead and smell the coffee! Ok so you have posted a table of SPT results. When we are at the concept stage we say if in sand take the SPT"N" number and divide by 10! take the top left of the table and divide the number by ten.. look at the rest of the table.. it follows the same pattern! makes you wonder what you have paid for! What is not included is any mention of how the ground may perform when laterally loaded for wind bracing! Ok if that floats your boat and you have the money to indulge then fine. Feel free to spend! But I suspect your SE is playing along and giving you qualified advice. It may be because they percieve you to be an obstinate Client and not taking advice and not willing to pay for it! But further down the road you will need to put your hand and in your pocket for the pile wind bracing.. who signs that off.. who welds it.. @Great_scot_selfbuild you are heading for a hiding here! Give your SE a call and discuss some of my points. Ok but have they shown any connection, welding /bolting details.. Also Screw piles perform less well under lateral wind load as thy have a thin shank.. This is something I would check. It smells like lots of cost and frankly bollocks at my end! @Great_scot_selfbuildIn summary I think you need to go back and review your design and start asking your SE some questions! It all look decidedly expensive to me and loaded with risk (your risk) once you get into the detailed design! If you asked me to review this design I would want to look at the ground, the ground water, see where the tree roots are to provide the structural tree stability and where the finer roots go to get the nutirients. I can see the idea where you want a house in the woods.. that is your starting point. I think you need to understand this in more detail. your 70 piles with the bracing is going to be massively expensive and you'll struggle to find a builder who will do what you want... I would seek to understand the trees, the soil even if we need a heavier steel ring beam on piers the we need to look at piers / vs root damage etc. In summary my suggestion is pay someone 3.0 to 4.0k that can design this foundation for you properly so it performs structurally and protects the trees. If you pay that amount then the design will probably reduce the overall cost and in the round.

Hiya. There is not much for us enthusiasts to go on here.. I'm guessing as you have not told us much about the ground and so on. I've had a read through the thread and here are some of the things I am interested in. Screw piles.. ok but if you have an element of sand coupled with a high water table that could significantly reduce the performance. Now if you have investigated the ground, say carried out some cone penetration tests then with a refusal at say 2.5m you might have some competent ground. Why have you ruled out sitting your ring beam on concrete piers for example? These could often stop at ground level and then continue in steel if need be. Ok but you'll have wind (horizontal load) on the screw piles. How do you deal with that force? Screw piles are not that great when subject to horizontal loading. I wonder how your SE is dealing with this. Lastly always think about buildability, the labour / material cost and how many Contractors may want to put in a price. Unless you are going to do it all yourself then this can often be critical to the budget. It's a hard fact that while you may be an Engineer and want to go down one path you may have to pay more for the privilage.

Hope this helps. If you are using ordinary bolts then here is a bit of info below: But if using resin anchors you'll often find the torque setting in the manufacturer's data, don't exceed these! The main thing is to apply common sense. Don't let the bolts get dirty or lose the manufacturer's oiled coating or store them badly for example, don't add oil either! Now in the table above we can see a typical torque for an ordinary bolt with a spanner 460mm long. For an M16 bolt we are looking at approximately 90 Nm. What does that mean on site? Ok roughly 100 Newtons is about 10 kg. If the spanner was 1.0metre long then we would need to apply 9 kg to the end of the spanner to generate 90 Nm on the head of the 16mm diameter bolt. But say your spanner is 460mm long (0.46 m) or 18 inches roughly. The sum is 10kg / 0.46 = 22 kg applied right to the very end of the spanner. So very roughly imagine you lift a 25 kg bag of cement with one hand... get a feel for that and then try and apply the same force when bolting up. For bolt groups you'll know that we tighten them in sequence, gently going round an tightening them in stages. All the best with the project and post some photos if you feel able.

Take this on board. Ensure your research is sound.

Good but it willl be a bit different as you have learnt a lot of stuff. It will come back to you as you go. I'm a big fan of stick building. The financialrisk is reduced, getting mucked about by TF folk, it is a flexible way to do it as often you can change your mind as you go. And this the great thing about this way of building, the flexibility and the ease of costing, it's just timber and almost a day rate for joiners to knock it up. The game has changed a lot. While you may be able to do the drawings someone will have to keep you right and that will cost more than a professional doing the drawings right first time. The biggy is finding someone who you can; work with, is flexible, do your panel drawings, your foundation design etc and do the SE stuff and works in Scotland. This is how I make my living. I'm nippping off on holiday but PM me if you fancy a blether.

Architecturally..but can you explain how that is going to work structurally when the SE has to then fix the stuff that you should know about! You can go chucking in DPC's, rocker bearings, thermal breaks at will! If you want to profess about changing stuff them maybe go onto explian how it impacts on the structure. Yes, I know life has got harder for Architects and the thermal regs but the same applies to SE's.. strart collaborating and learning.

@ETC I don't always agree but on this point good advice.