Gus Potter

Absolutely none. In simplistic terms I design it as the SE, take that liability on, check with my insurer in case they want to add a bit of an uplift to be compatible with the warranty providers reasonable terms. The warranty provider runs my design by their Engineers. They analyse the risk, add in a bit of a hassle factor for them and make their premium offer. You can pretty much insure anything. It often called gambling, it's just on houses rather than the horses.

From memory the regs for an ensuite are less strict, the door is the obvious weak point. My normal minimum spec for an ensuite wall is plasterboard each side with a minimum density of 10kg/ sq m (see Gyproc Wall 10) on a minimum of a 70mm deep wall stud. Then 50mm of Rockwool RW45 acoustic insulation. If you can stretch to a deeper stud then all the better. Depends on you ceiling height as there is a bit of structural design creeping in here as you don't want the wall too slender so the whole wall vibrates as a unit. . You need an air gap between the Rockwool and the plaster board as the air gap filters some bands of the sound frequency. If you pack the wall tight with insulation it has a detrimental effect. If you want to keep your guests happy then fit a good solid door, a good lock that gives them confidence, a good fan and a nice handle on the door! The regs between rooms are often different.

Try a broker that is Scottish based, we have lots and lots of timber clad houses. It's worth a call just to get a bit of advice.

Very much agree here. Most self builds are unique, start with a basic design that has a fighting chance of working and then adapt for specific design.. that is the fun part. They are indeed. I've done some adjacent to mine shafts with highly contaminated land, one on really soft sand on an airfield up near Nairn in Scotland, one daft one next to a canal in the Norfolk Broads, they really are bespoke animals. Down Norfolk way I did one where we basically "floated" a single storey building on the peat. This leans towards folk doing straw bale or oak frames with wattle and daub as it really maintains the design and environmental ethos. This takes a leap of faith and careful design of the drainage and service connections to a building that can rise and fall quite a bit. The building itself needs to be pretty flexible. The movement can be huge! But these are worth a shot when the piling option may be expensive. Piles in deep peat also need to be designed for bending as the wind pushing on the side of the house needs to be transferred to the competent soil deep down. I don't think it's conservative per say, we know the mechanical properties of their insulation. Things can start to go wrong it there is a late design change, poor design coordination between the different work packages or unexpected ground conditions, or most common a setting out error. That is why I want to understand the Client's capability, how much hands on control they have. Using PIR insulation sheets and fitting them together on site allows for flexibility as you go, maybe you need to pay for a bit more labour but at times the risk / economics stack up. Some Clients want fast and quick and are happy to take the risk that something minor can throw a spanner in the works. They rely on the Contractor to sort it out.. but then a dispute can arise.

Thanks for your comment, much appreciated. Yes, we need to be cautious here. One thing I don't want to do is level false accusation, or identify any specific claim. As I've got a bit of experience with this stuff it's not always the case that the Client has covered themselves in glory. Sometimes they have inadvertently cut corners (just made a genuine mistake), not followed the design drawings, or just don't disclose to me the full facts. While I decidedly don't like the approach some of the warranty providers adopt (deny, delay defend) you need to get to the bottom of how the Claim comes about and the prior communication between the parties. Only then can you see what you have to work with, worts and all. This is a summary I generally agree with. Now faced with this often the home owner does not often know where to turn to. More potential expense. Some warranty providers sub contract out the site inspections and the inspector has to hold a certain amount PI insurance cover. The warranty providers shed as much liability as possible onto the inspectors and their (the inspector's) insurer's know this. This may be prompting the request for additional reporting.. driven by the inspector. You need to ask if the inspector is covered / employed directly by the warranty provider or if the are sub contracted for example. As a word of encouragement I have come upon this kind of thing before. It often takes few frank phone calls to sort it out and the actual reason given for asking for additional reporting.

Now you need the will to live these days. I don't do this regularly (primarily as an SE) but for one reason or another I end up representing Clients that are making a claim on their warranty. I've done this for the last 15 years or so. I spent some 20 years as a building Contractor before that, cutting my teeth and learning how devious folk can be at times. In some ways I'm a poacher come game keeper. It's not part of my core business, I do it as it's good for my soul and I don't like to see domestic Clients getting taken advantage of. That said, over the last 15 years I've recovered on behalf of Clients a few million quid. The amount of money is less important, for me it's about justice and holding folk to account. What I've noticed in the last few years is that some of the warranty providers are more and more sub contracting out to Claims handling services. 25 years ago lots of the warranty providers withdrew from the market. At one point there was the NHBC and Zurich pretty much. Now we have lots of new entrants.. and it seems to me that there is a bit of a race to the bottom. The terms and conditions are a bit of a minefield for the unwary. There is a common case where they initially come over all friendly but then tell the Client they need to employ an SE like me at their own expense to provide a report. This happens even if the Client has provided photographs that clearly show there is a problem. It has come to my attention that they (Claims handling services) are ramping up the; deny, defend and delay tactics.. always been the case but recently I've noticed that they are cherry picking part of my SE reports and trying to fob the Client off. Even to the extent that they will quote part of a paragraph of my report.. which totally changes the context. Often young folk just can't afford this so they throw in the towel. It's a disgrace. Now this may be a genuine lack of understanding .. or a deliberate intent to defraud the Client. I'm happy for them to dig themselves a hole as often when doing a warranty Claim I'll turn it into an HSE (safety) issue. This makes folk personally liable and risks the HSE getting involved.. a big black mark if you are a warranty provider. My question is. Are folk finding Claims handling services helpful or not when you think you have a case for making a Claim.

Now is the time to really look after the materials you are using to build. In this weather if you press ahead you may be making a rod for your own back later.

All good points. Burying any gas pipe in an inaccessible position is fraught with danger. You need to consult a Gas Engineer. Now with much more air tight houses and the potential for negative air pressure we need to be extra careful.

As you say it kind of looks like the house has been previously altered. Would need more info to comment further as an SE / try and put a ball park cost on this.

To add a bit to this. it's not just your confidence it's mine also. I need to be confident we have a good, buildable and well thought out design. If not things will go wrong on site, or later latent defects will materialise in the design and that reflects badly on my business.

There are so many different options with this stuff. Much depends on how you want to set up the design from the ground up. For self building I would advocate; identifying your skills and the time you have to learn, cost curve/ cash flow and programme. Also the time you have to do things yourself and if you don't mind "just giving some stuff a go". For me as a designer I love seeing the ideas folk have on BH and many bring specialist knowledge (or just whacky ideas) that they have gained elsewhere to the table. This makes my job great fun as a designer.. working out how you realise folks ideas, turn them into something buildable that won't fall down. But at least you have identified what you may prefer not to do! Nothing lost then as good design is just as much about ruling options out than in. Here we can split hairs.. for a bit of fun, it's really a subjective argument. You can't have a thin slab and less rebar, the two just don't go together. At the extreme you have either one or the other structurally. Putting the UFH in the structural slab can avoid the need for a screed. Later installing the screed requires more wagon journeys and so on. At the end of the day you may want a 65mm average depth screed, which is non structural. But if I make the structural slab 30 - 50mm thicker it goes a long way towards the carbon neutral equation. That said, I often say good design is holistic. If you are proposing large format ceramic tiles on the structural slab then I think the screed option is better as it gives you a better chance of sorting door thresholds for example and avoids the use of self levelling compounds and the frustration that comes with that. In my latest own house I have the UFH in the structural slab. But I have engineered timber floors which are much more forgiving if the levels are a bit off. There is a rough rule of thumb that the "basic structure" comprises 10 - 15% of the over all cost of the project. But what is essential is that the basic structure is set up in such a way so as to avoid later and costly build problems. For example fit up, material tolerances and so on. This is why it so important to design holistically. To do this is not as hard as later trying to sort out problems later in the build. The real up side is that you get to do stuff on paper before spending any real money. Your confidence builds before you start work on site.

Give it a go, even if to rule out. Occam's Razor principle and so on. Incidentally I was chatting to one of the go to folk up my neck of the woods and I was looking at some of their new Aluminium products in their show room and having a technical chat. The are accredited installers, Origin, Sunflex and so on, they do some really high end products and installs. Anyway we got chatting about Build Hub and I mentioned your doors were dropping and the masking tape idea given that your doors were dropping 10mm or so. I got the nod that it's worth a try as your are not paying for the time and it's just the cost of a roll of masking tape.

Houses are not an exact science. If we design them for every eventuality then the build cost would be to high. With my SE hat on we design to tolerate occasional short term elevated moisture content as you are experiencing. Any condensation will quickly dry out. If you are worried about dew points.. open some windows and doors, strip down to your underpants, fill the paddling pool and enjoy the warm weather.. it won't last that long.

Hi Rick. You make good points here. A common thing on BH is that folk split design into packages to try and get a handle on the build cost. But this is not the most efficient way to design or execute a design. Design needs to be holistic.. and that is the dilemma that Build Hubbers often face. You'll often see folk on BH discussing insulated raft concrete structural slabs (passive or otherwise) thickness and worrying about the slab say being 50mm thicker. It understandable as no one takes the time to explain the cost benefit of using a thicker concrete slab. As an SE and designer when considering a self build and the constraints about say getting a builder that can follow a drawing I often start by selecting say a 200 - 250mm slab. What I'm often doing here is to avoid local thickening of the slab, different levels of sub base, doing funny stuff with the DPC / possibly gas membranes etc where we may have line loads from internal load bearing walls. I always start with the simplest and stupid design option, even though this may seem counter intuitive. To get best thermal performance we want to see if we can have an even thickness of slab as it gives us the best chance on site of actually delivering what we have designed. Good thermal performance requires good workmanship and attention to detail also.. so let's not make the workmanship element too hard? Now if we opt for a slightly thicker concrete slab it lets the SE add rebar easily in the bottom of the slab to take the line and point loads from say internal load bearing walls. But if we then put the UFH pipes in the same bottom slab zone is impacts on the rebar bond strength and makes it hard to install the UFH pipes. It all gets really congested and that leads to you paying for something that is not likely to get delivered on site. That leads to disputes.. which we want to avoid.. self building should be fun! One reason I start out with the simple stupid option is that it lets the Client see and opt for it, yes there is some compromise.. but then we look at more complex stuff and compare costs as we have the simple option as a benchmark. But to finish your observation is correct.. ish. But I know from experience that having designed and installed UFH heating in my own houses for decades is that if you put the UFH pipes in the top of the slab the response time is less than if the UFH pipes are in the bottom. In some ways it's a moot point when you look at all the other practical plus points that go with buildability. The easier it is to build the less the cost. But being easy to build, if well thought out does not mean we need to compromise on thermal performance or quality for example.

Your second photo shows the top hinge set high. This would encourage me to inspect to see if the vertical part of the door frame (the jamb) is twisting. I can't see how wide a cavity you have but the chances are that the vertical part of the door frame is not properly fixed to the inner leaf of the wall above the hinge. Commonly folk think that the head of the frame stops the jambs from twisting.. the load from the hinge is eccentric to the jamb section. If you see how these are fixed together (the head to the jamb) by few screws this is not the case that the head of the frame prevents twisting via the joint. When you open the door look to see if the door jamb is twisting relative to the head. It's going to be hard to see. First thing to do is to keep the door shut. Get up on a ladder and put your finger over the joint. Get someone else to open the door and see if you can feel / see any movement in the joint between the jamb and the head. Use the previous principle to verify what you feel as you crack open the door.