Gus Potter

Hello there ash. Happy to have a quick chat with you on the phone if only to reassure. You can pm me or give me a Pm for my number, you'll find me on the internet also. I'm based near Glasgow. I hope so! Agree. It's ok to have a quick chat to understand the background but not ok to judge others / criticise their design without letting them know you have been asked to formally review under instruction from the Client. It's not professional and also basically unfair. It's not a big thing.. my designs get reviewed / checked all the time usually by an in house Council Engineer (or they contract out for checking SE services) on domestic projects, on say bigger industrial stuff ( I often work for the Contractor) by the Clients own Consulting SE. It could well be that the Architect, maybe you, did not fullly communicate to the SE what structural envelope was available to them to fit "their stuff into" and they did their best to fix it at a reasonable build cost vs intrusion into the Architectural space? It may be that the Architect did their best to achieve compliance with the building regs and maybe just did not know about these "structural bits" as they are not SE's?

Yes it can at times, explanation follows. No point in having a fabricated stair if the connections are not considered. Hello all. A quick bit about glass ballustrades, off the shelf steel ones and stair cases. These types of barriers / stairs are designed to resist the prescribed loads in BS 6399 part one and BS 6180 for example. These codes allow for a horizontal load to the top of the hand rail and the infill bit below, could be glass or spindals. There is also a limit on the amount the handrail at the top can deflect horizontally.. serviceability.. so it doesn't "feel insecure". Now in particular the glass balustrade manufacture's need to be competetive so they test (and make public their results) their product on a very stiff and strong test rig that doesn't bend much (twist) at all. This way they get the best performance out of their product, fair enough to them, it's a commercial world. When they use a stiff test rig the distance between the bolt centre and the centre of the effective bearing ( the bit at the track edge) is at it's maximum thus the bolt tension is at it's minimum. If you're fixing your balustrade track to say a well prepared thick concrete slab then this could come close to the stiffness of the test rig. But if fixing to something else, say timber or there is roofing membrane between the track and underlying material then this changes (increases) the forces in the bolt and at the track edge, quite a lot at times as it shortens the effective distance between the bearing surface at the edge of the track and the bolt. What the calculations I posted do is to basically take the horizontal loadings on the balustrade and multiply them by the height at which they act. This gives the bending moment, a rotational force in this case, just like a wheel nut spanner. This rotational force is then worked back the other way to give the tensile force in the bolt. But the tensile force will be different, and the difference can be quite a lot, depending on what you are fixing to. The tensile force in the bolt has to be counteracted by the edge forces on the track. Because the distance between the edge of the track and bolt is small the horizontal forces on the balustrade fixings are very much amplified. If you are fixing into timber or something that is softer than the test bed the timber / something can easily crush near the edge of the track, so you need more timber say which shortens the effective distance between the bolt and counteracting force at the edge of the track. The forces in the bolt are now much more so you need to check the bolt and what you are fixing into to avoid crushing of what you are fixing to at the edge of the track. The calculations are repeated (iterative) until you find the balancing point where the tension force in the bolt is equal to the material pushing back the other way at the track edge. @Alan Ambrose Good spot the shear loading. As this is a side fixed track the vertical shear load comes from the self weight of the balustrade thus I check the bolt for combined tension and shear. This is particularly important if using resin anchors. Now the above may sound like a maths excercise but actually it can avoid disappointment. One example. You fix a typical slender aluminium balustrade track to the timber edge beam of say a stair or balcony. You have a party and a few folk lean against it. In the morning you go out to clean up and find the balustrade feels a bit loose. All it takes is for the timber to crush a little at the very edge of the track and now it feels slack. If you can't access the bolts to give them a tighten up then you often just have to live with it. Best to design it right in the first place. In fairness to the manufacture's they don't know what you are fixing to, the designer of the main structure often does not know what kind of track / balustrade you'll go for at the end of the day so there is this design gap, no man's land where one key part is often not explicitly checked and often overlooked. In Scotland we insist that all parts are checked to ensure everything is safe and serviceable, hence the calculations posted. This also includes fabricate strairs to ensure the loads on the stair are transferred safely to the main structure.

Jeremy did a great spreadsheet, but it it a preliminary assessment tool. Basements are a different animal. Take a basement that is cut and filled into sandy soil, drained all round the outside, a type C drained protection, the mobile ground water is kept clear of the insulated walls. You can maybe with a bit of caution / pragmatism treat the walls as part of the floor slab.. there is "but" later. But if you have ground water swilling around the outside of your walls it will tend to cool them much more. The form factor is only applicable to ground bearing floor slabs, could be your basement slab.. but not the walls. I may have an old version of Jeremy's sheet? On ground bearing floor slabs an input value is the exposed perimeter (P) vs the area of the slab (A)... P/A ratio. Basically the larger the slab the less exposed edge area, the P/A ratio drops which means it performs better... that is why on big industrial buildings sometimes in the past we only put insulation round the edges and down sides. If you are doing preliminary pricing / conceptual calcs I would add 25 -30% to the insulation in the basement walls until you know much more about the ground (type of soil) and ground water flow. Here is a good link that give some U - values of typical soils. When doing detailed calcs these need to be converted back into thermal resistance, an R value. But these values don't account for mobile ground water. https://polyfoamxps.co.uk/what-u-value-is-required-from-a-ground-floor-construction/ Once you get a handle on these bits an bobs you can then decide how much heating you want to install in a basement. How big is the lobby, if just a few m sq then probably none but if larger who wants to come out a room and be hit with icy air. In some ways if it's an entrance to your house I would want some flexibility here to heat it plenty at times.. when your visitors come in from the cold they want a bit of .. hey it's nice and warm here while they take off their coats and hats. First impressions matter.

Hi Paul. Post a photo of typical wall if you can. Appreciate you are not concerned about damp problems. Pity that as it is probably a cement based render, can easily trap water. Ok going back to basics. For bricks to suffer frost damage they need to take in water which then freezes. My first real job after leaving college some 40 years ago was in a materials testing lab and one of my jobs was to take the bricks out the freezer in the morning and put them back in at night. Now for frost damage to occur you need sufficient mobile water for the ice crystals to grow big enough to spall the bricks. Your comment about Poland / Scandinavia is interesting, add say parts of the USA and Canada to that list. I think there are a few reasons why their render stays on fine. One is that although it gets much colder the climate is different, they typically don't have the gulf steam blowing warm moist air for a few days and soaking everything followed by a rapid change in wind direction, for us in the UK that biting and chilling north east wind rapidly cools and freezes things quickly with rapid expansion. If the weather progressivly get colder then the external humidity tends to drop (Poland?) which drys the walls (even though it is cold) so less growth potential of the ice crystals. Also as they know it gets very cold their tradesfolk understand the problem more. You'll have read about saying using SBR bond for render, but there are few trades folk that actually read and follow the instructions which are really important.. you need to let it get tacky so it bonds to the render which it does really well if done right. Let it (SBR) dry and you may have better luck getting render to stick to glass... but funnily a lot of folk on BH will have found hard spashed render hard to get off their new windows.. some adhesion.. wrong place, but nowhere the levels of adhesion and mechanical key you need to keep render in place for a long time. You're right in that if you insulate on the inside you tend to shift the dew point inwards. Also I can follow your thinking about causing a problem higher up the wall. It's rare that you see brick spalling high up in a wall due to frost damage as I think there is enough hot air / heat at the higher level to mitigate. If it was my own house I would say. I'll first test by approximate calculation what happens if I turn this into a timber frame with 230mm old external masonry rendered leaf analysis. Ok you have thicker masonry on the outside but the principle is the same. Here we want the dew point to more often than not to (it shifts depending on season and internal / external conditions and can at times reverse) sit in the cavity, we then let any condensation drain down the cavity or evaporate later when conditions change. Ideally we want to avoid hitting the dew point. But that often means creating more drafts / ventilation in the right place. You may need to sacrafice any meaningful insulation effect you get from the masonry, which won't be a lot anyway. What would happen if I strapped and lined the walls, insulated all that with plenty air tape to stop the water gas getting to the problem area in the first place. Can I detail that at the bottom so water can drain into a solum space without rotting the ground floor joist ends (which you have recognised) and maybe get some cavity venting at the top of the ground floor walls. We are not talking a massive draft here, just enough to capture any water gas that gets past the air tape and stop the cavity from becoming musty. Ideally you want to remove the water gas (reduce air relative humidity) before it condenses. In principle this works until you come to detail it so it actually works, the tricky bit will be at the bottom. EWI shifts the dew point outwards, but it can look awful if not done correctly, not always work properly, particular when you come to sort out all the details and spoil the character of the house. I would explore all other options before going for EWI. This all sounds a bit dramatic and technical. The most important thing is to stop the walls from getting wetted from the outside as much as possible; by checking gutters, pointing and ground levels and splash zones from say slabbing etc. Then making sure you get plenty draft round the house and (sun on the walls in the winter) if you can to dry them back out. The damage in the UK is often done by a North East wind, I would focus on any elevations facing that way first. If you have big overhanging trees and / or shrubs against the walls then you are starting a fight with one hand tied behind your back. Keep us posted.., a photo or two would help generate more targeted comments. There are a lot of folk on BH that know a lot about this, more than I so a bit more visual info could encourage them to chip in with their ideas. Some are experts at insulation / thermal modelling so could maybe put more flesh on the bones of what I'm suggesting.

Is it old steel say in an old barn or new steel? In your last photo I think I can see some roughness on the outside edges of the bottom flange suggesting it is old steel. If so you'll need to take that back to the bare metal. Do it now as later it will be messy job and spoil your curtains for example. Rust dust is a bugger as it stains many things it lands on. If new steel then the SA2.5 blasting should have removed the mill scale.

Thanks ETC for the advice. I'll see where I can apply that method more often, has given me food for thought so thanks again.

Hello Paul. This is a good source of information and discussion. https://www.heritage-house.org/damp-and-condensation/managing-damp-in-old-buildings.html Pete Ward has upset a lot of folk in the damp proofing industry so you can have a bit of fun reading around seeing what they are all saying. Main thing is if you spend a bit of time now you can inform yourself much more.. each house is different. When faced with this type of issue I always look at what is happening outside. For example, the roof details (eaves overhang and guttering) which way the building faces, the pevailing wind (the east, north and north north west walls get the coldest freezing winds that cool walls a lot and quickly which is important as they freeze before they can dry out a bit), overshaddowing trees, ground levels, any potential DPC.. be that slate or a less permeabile brick, say a good quality clay brick or an engineering brick and so on. I next look at the condition of the building; the gutters, the pointing, mastic around windows, weathering details and so on. I also look for signs of movement, normal cracking associated with an old building and for more significant structural cracking and lateral movement of the walls. All the time I'm thinking.. what can I see but try and avoid drawing any conclusion at this stage. Lateral movement bulging of the walls is really important as you need to be careful later not to make the problem worse by say lowering or draining ground (to solve damp issues) and causing shrinkage of particularly clay soil under the found. I try and identify where moisture can be penetrating from the outside. Next is to go inside and look at the construction, if suspended floor what kind of solum, non or just earth or ash / blaze say with a bitumen layer. If stone flags what are they sitting on. Stone flags can be quite impermeable but can sometimes feel damp on top due to condensation. I then move onto the condition of the structure. Are the structural members sound, are the signs of infestation or dry / wet rot. If so how is this happening? what conditions prevail that are promoting this behavoir?.. damp / warm and lack of ventilation.. a combination of the three particularly invite unwelcome guests (mice etc)and organic growths rot and moulds for example. In summary I would do a bit more research before adopting any particular strategy. I can't make any more constructive comment at the moment until I know more. Photos would be helpful if you feel able to post. Once you gain a deeper understanding of how the house behaves then you can plan a cost effective insulation strategy and get to the bottom of your concerns about freeze thaw of the bricks. Remember that most common construction materials contain mosture to some degree. Often if not totally saturated and if a continuous flow of water is not present then ice crystal growth is limited.. I have this discussion from time to time about the NHBC / BC min found depth of 450mm.. if there is no water supply to grow big ice crystals how is the found going to heave significantly? Look forward to hearing more about what you are doing.

Best thing to do would be to post some drawings and a few photos of the inside and external elevations. I do a few loft conversions in the day job but your info is so limited I can't make any resonable / helpful comment unfortunately.

Ouch! Here is a suggestion, from someone with a Contracting backgound. Get a load of ballast and a few bags of cenment delivered to site. I take it you have a machine with a bucket on site and a bag mixer knocking about, not a mini Belle.. a proper mixer. Batch up the lean mix for the cavity and take that to where you need it with your idle machine and pour it into the cavity, all you need to do is tamp it in carefully so you don't burst the walls. No need for a barrow. Any left over ballast you'll use it elsewhere for bottoming, slabbing etc. Lean mixing cavities is a great way of teaching apprentices as it is low risk. Say you need a small batch as you always do on site. Are you going to get a spot mix in for half a cube, the delay and time it will take you to organise that? If you take a bit of time to teach your employees (especialy apprentices) and get them to recognise that they need to be working all day for a fair days pay, but that you are not thrashing them to death then this make good buisiness sense. There is a time for heavy machinery and a time for thought and finesse. You future looks bleak as a Contractor. I'm sure you are making hay at the moment but the good times will come to an end.. they always do.

Agree. Your right Joe.. not a good idea squeezing stuff together like that. Good spot both.

I'm a Scot..but British if you catch my drift. I say sod them.. what about some York stone or Honister Slate from the Wales for example? What about Bath limestone if you want something a bit more special?

Self building means you need to build a relasionship with the folk you are working with on site. I know you are trying to get a price for everything but that is not the best way. Six cube of concrete equates to a 15 tonne load of concrete ballast and a few bags of cement. Talk to your guys on site as this is the kind of job that can be done when the labourers have not much else to do. Bung a bit of cash their way and it will work out fine. If you know what you are doing then hand mixing six cube of leanmix over a couple of day is not that hard.. I have done it many times over the years. I think a lot of folk have gone far too soft.. it is less onerous than picking Asparagus in Linconshire and you don't smell so bad in the toilet after.

I would like to see much more of that elevation and what is on top before making further comment. Also I'm wondering if anything we are supposed to be looking at is part of the horizontal bracing system.. @regrets if you want best input input then I think you need to post a lot more photos.. if not you need to call an SE.. for this a basic rate is £85.00 per hour can be expected. You may need to take a gamble.. if the supplier is wrong you may be able to get some / all of that fee back..

I don't know as I can't see enough of the structural frame, what it is holding up and the load path from the roof down to the supporting structure. What is the span of roof you are supporting? Where in the country do you live.. London or Aberdeen.. snow loading is important. You see some behaviour that exhibits some twisting.. which is indeed torsion in broad terms... it's ok to say what you see! I think.. what is going on round about as you have timber, metal and connction bolts etc. To give a more detailed answer I would need to see more panoramic photos so I can take a view on the loads. Next I would need to see the section profiles (thickness, shape, material and grade) so I can assess what loads are going where. I would like to see if the metal profiles themselves are out of shape under load. Once I know a bit more of about that then you can start to put together the basics. It may be that the timbers you see are just there to make it easy to fix plasterboard to! In other words it may all be absolutely fine but the timber is not inherantly structural has twisted and shrunk. It may just be good design.. let's chuck in some wood as it's easier to screw / nail into! I do this all the time. I bolt timber to steel (steel comes with the holes in it, I try and make it idiot proof to some extent) so the folk fixing the plaster board etc have something easy to fix to. Or if the metal profiles are out of shape it becomes a different animal. You see some twisting. As an SE I would want to know.. is this due to lateral torsional buckling, local buckling or distortional bucking and couple that with the grade of aluminium or is it/ and a manufacturing defect. Now I have laid that on thick but to learn about this takes a Masters degree as a minimum in Structural Engineering plus further study.. so it's not bedtime reading. To be blunt few suppliers of these sections really understand what they are really doing and how their profiles interact with the rest of the structure. It's a specialist subject in the SE world as not least these are what we call thin walled sections. Post more panoramic photos and you may find you don't have a problem at all

It is possible but there is a catch. There is to my mind a massive and fundamental niavity in the west where we think that the rest of the world thinks like us. They don't. Ball park figure 2/3 of the world are either driven by autocratic regimes or a form of religion that is fundamentaly not compatible with our western way of life. The last thing on my their minds is the environment and the sooner we wake up to that more chance we will have of saving the world climate wise.. and all the organisms that rely on our fragile ecosystem. I grew up in Arfica, spent lots of time exploring that continent, understanding different cultures. I have also travelled in the middle east.. I remember when I was a kid turning up in Beruit round about 1976... someone thought it would be a good idea to shoot up the airport terminal and chuck in some hand grenades.. there was dead folk lying about, blood all over the floor and up the walls.. nothing has changed.. except now the weaponry available has become much more devastating. I had the pleasure of briefly meating Idi Amin, he was just a corporal then but became a president. The western world has become beholdened to regimes and religions that are not compatible with our way of western life. We in the west think that by appeasing they will be nice to us.. they won't. In the West we have allowed these countries that don't share out way of life, values of equality and freedom of expression to become our manufacturing base and dominate the supply our some of our base materials we need to manufacture, there will be a price to pay for this... I think we in the west will be invoiced sooner rather than later. I say this as an Engineer.. it's partly logic and partly probability. Until we address the balance politically there is little chance of us saving the plant. The other 2/3 of the world and in particular their leaders will just do enough to make sure that they and their immediate cotary will come out not too bad.. and sod the rest of humanity... and that means pretty much all of us on BH! Sadly it may need a war that significantly reduces the human polulation and that may ultimately save the planet and all the other organisms and animals that share our land, sea and atmosphere. To finish on a high note..yesterday I was chatting to a fisherman pal of mine. He was showing me some of the fish he had caught and released off the the west coast of Scotland. He had caught a 200lb Scate, photographed it and released. The animal was beautiful, enormous, it's colours were so vibrant.. it made me wonder.. why not just leave it alone? he said it was a common scate and these are protected so catch and release.

Ok no money tree. What about taking this approach? If you have piles and a ring beam then the concrete is probably going to be around a RC35 (the RC indicates that this is a reinforced concrete) and thus if you lay, compact and cure it properly it will be pretty resistant to moisture. Now we do this a lot on industrial buildings.. B & Q for example. Take a leap of faith and recognise that this is not a habitable space.. all you are doing is controlling moisture from the ground in most circumstances. This type of conrete is good enough to be pretty impervious.. but as it is a stronger concrete it will tend to crack. so we put in reinforcement to control the crack width. In other words treat this as an industrial building and there are tens of thousands of these that are built this way. BC are ok with this appoarch. Just remember if you want to convert it later to a home office it may need a lot of extra work, not least as you have an unisulated slab. If I was designing this at concept stage this I would decouple the design into different elements. It will save you money on builder cost. I say concept as there are doors / threshholds etc that need to be considered and you may have varying ground levels externally. I would pile it first. Now you have potential ground heave, hence the clayboard. I would put the clayboard under the ring beam so you don't generate uplift in the piles. I may want to put it up the sides of the ring beam as well to stop swelling soil pushing the piles sideways. Once your ring beam is in place build your brickwork inner skin. Lay the clayboards in the middle and put the DPM on top of them. Then do your reinforcement for the slab and cast the slab. Now that sounds simple but there there are things you need to know about clay boards.. some need watered so they degrade and collapse. To get more guidance tell us about what the size of the garage is (floor span and length is important, as it relates to a good economic slab depth vs the amount of rebar you need to use and if you need joints in the slab) and why you need clay boards in the first place.. a soil report would be helpfull. Some garages are small and don't need much thought.. but some are very big.. the size of a small house so you can lose a lot of cash if you don't grasp the basics of design. I think you need to go back and identify how the soils behaves, what the piles are doing, if you have trees close and thier type and size and your ground levels. Only then can you get the right position of the DPM and DPC's. Best thing would be to post as much info you have as this will invite the best response from BH folk.

Fair enough.. but it's primarily the fittings, bends couplings etc and the glue if you are using it. The main thing in my view is that if you are using above ground fittings and brown pipe that you may sure the seals / glue are compatible. What's the latest code we should be using? .. and what parts of that have been ammended relate to what we are talking about?

This is minefield! Generally the folk that supply the glass and track test it on a rig that is very stiff. When you look at the fine print of their test data they tell you this... but they don't take any responsibility for the fixings of the glass or glass mounting track to the supporting structure. Your general SE designs the principle structure but when you look at their fine print it often says "glass / track and fixings to be designed by specialists. So no one checks the actual fixing between the track and the main structure. The main reason for this is that the supporting structure can be wood/ concrete / steel etc.. everyone passes the buck... and for good reason as it takes time to do the calcs as every job is different. In Scotland everyone knows that the fixings must be checked and then you should produce a drawing which takes time too.. but in England (apart from Yorkshire folk who are in my experience very shrewed and clever) you are still often in the dark ages I have to say! It's ok I'm not a scot nat.. just yanking your chain... but if you followed the process below (and paid for that part of the design) you would not get into trouble. Below is a part of one of my designs for a glass balustrade that checks a side mounted track and fixings into a structural steel assembly. What I'm doing here is the bit that the general SE doesn't want to do or the glass and track supplier as both take time, effort and an understanding of the behaviour of what it is they are fixing the glass and track to. The funny looking equation is just a mixed up version of O level maths (quadratic equation) that you would have been taught at 15 years old.. if maybe been born before 2000.. it's nothing geeky. Most of the calculation above determines the tension and vertical load on the fixing between the track and what is supporting the glass. The tension in the bolt varies from track type to type and depending on what type of material the track bears against and what material the fixing go into. But make no mistake.. the material you are fixing into can have a dramatic impact on the bolt forces and the possibility that the whole thing comes lose. The above is for a fixing into a steel backing plate (the hatch suggests concrete but it is actually steel) but if fixing to timber the red bearing area would extend upwards and the forces in the bolts would increase a lot. The main thing is that a few mm in terms of bolt postition or a change in material can have a dramatic effect. That is why no one wants to step up to the plate! In summary the fixings are the key bit and what they are going into. Failure to check all the different parts will lead to disappointment not least. For all on BH .. if you are doing this type of balustrade then it is essential to follow the instructions.. don't make it up as you go along! @Mikey hope this helps a bit.

Why is your SE not helping you here? BC are just there to ensure you comply with the building regs..look at their fine print.. they are not there to give this kind of advice.. the fee you pay them is far too small for them to take on this kind of liabitlity. We as SEs often do bespoke foundations designs.. if you pay us the right fee we can spend extra time putting together a design that will likely save you money. Bespoke designs often take the general BC and NHBC foundation rules and adapt them to suit the site. Sometimes we don't even take into account the standard BC / NHBC / LABC etc guidance.. yes we can do that as SE's.. we design for safety and movement.. we also carry insurance to underpin that and keep our Clients financially safe. This concept that BC et al are the be all and end all in terms of design knowledge is a misnomer. We at the sharp end (Architects / SE,s etc ) justify our design. It's not up to BC to dictate what we can and can't do provided we can prove our design is applicable to a particular site.

Do you also have a money tree growing in the garden? Have you asked you SE about just how much movement can be expected from the adjacent trees? What about building the garage on a 150mm thick or 180 - 190mm thick concrete flat structural slab with mesh that floats about and has a movement joint between the house and the garage structure? Yes I know the 150 or 180 - 190mm sounds like an odd number but there is a technical code compliance reason for this. There are few technical details associated with this but it seems to me you might be using a sledgehammer to crack a nut and burning cash going for piles... Is your site on a slope? Which way does it face.. as we look at prevailing winds and where the roots of the tree will grow. Has your SE been paid enough to find the most economic solution? I'm not kidding you here.. with a bit of thought you could have a slightly thicker concrete slab that moves about but still strong enough to stop the walls from cracking.. it's worth asking the question.. imagine if you found out later you had chucked a load on money away on blindly following BC / standard guidance and put in piles.. all for a garage! Now that is an odd question as a Client would expect that the SE fee would deliver the most economic solution.. but.. that is not the way it works.. as an SE will need to spend more time finding the more economic solution.. but that set against the cost of piling! Now I may seem to paint SE's in a bad light.. But there are folk on BH who think paying an SE or an Architect more than a grand is a waste of time as they know better.. well to those all I can say is.. the door swings both ways you smarty pants!

Alan.. what a brilliant post and thanks for the compliment. I posted based on what I know from the design / engineering side. You have just fleshed out the part of it in legal terms and more importantly the procedure you can follow.. big learning curve for me / stuff I didn't know about. You explain well how to execute an effective strategy... off to read your post again. Thanks again for spending time writing.

Don't worry too much.. it is what it is. There are plenty folk on BH that have spent ages planning heating loops .. but on site when the pressure is on pipes get lapped over and some have little cover. Life is not ideal! Think about this another way..it's not 70 deg C water you are pumping in through the pipes more like 35 - 45 deg tops.. about the same as our body temperature give or take. Ok you have some bamboo flooring. Now imagine you have some patio doors and the sun has been streaming in all day on the floor.. how hot will that get locally? I have a big floor on UF.. but floated it rather than glued it down.. it moves about but is still a happy floor. Don't panic.. just turn it on and enjoy. Bamboo is very forgiving... think about the climate it grows up in.. humidity, big changes in temperature and so on. What you do need to watch out for is this. In the winter when the UF is on.. the moisture content is low so the floor shrinks. BUT the biggy is when the heating is off in the summer the moisture content will rise and the floor will swell a lot that funnily is when you get the visible problems at the end of the summer.. and folk blame the UF. Leave a gap round the edges of the flooring for the movement.

Hi Mike. In Scotland under the planning regs there is a bit that covers the stuff in BRE 209. I agree.. if they are not honest or try and cause delay without evidence it will go against them. If it was me developing this site I would make sure I had a complete evidence based grasp on the situation, present that to an insurer, get insurance and cart on with the build.

"I didn't think for a second that piling / groundscrews would be an issue for an insurance company" Tanners should have provided sufficient information to show that their design was valid for 50 years as they should know this is the basic for lending criteria and insurance. That means that all the parts and contractors guarentees / warranty's need to be good for at least that time or someone has to cover it in one way or another. They know your brief and should be sufficiently experienced to design for best value and anticipate things like insurance premiums, buildability and overall cost of their design. As an SE you have a vicarious responsibilty to highlight to your Client the knock on effects.. it is just not good enough to say well my SE design won't fall down. If you wish post you plans, underbuilding spec, ground report and screw pile specification as interested in your design proposal.

Ok let's assume they do. Now lets delve a bit deeper into how you put something together. I said earlier that "It sounds brutal but if they have made alterations without consent then these don't count.." You may need to force their hand... but if you do then you need to do a bit more homework. Who decides the amount of light you are entitled to, how do they measure it and then judge what is a reasonable loss of light? We all have to live together so as development occurs some light is inevitably lost. Take London and say the Shard.. it casts a big shaddow.. some folk somewhere must be getting a little less light! But how do you decide what is a little less or swinging the lead? I have attached BRE 209 which I think is publically available. Start at page 15 Clause 2.2.7 and then read around. This bit deals with when you are pretty close to a boundary. This could be the key bit of info you need in that there is recognition that a lot of development results in a certain loss of light. In summary if you can tailor your design to comply with the recommendations of BRE 209 then your neighbour would have to put forward a counter arguement.. which could be expensive for them as they would have to come up with why they disagree with the BRE. I use this as in Scotland and it is referenced in the Scottish planning regs.. so you should find reference in the UK regs as the BRE serves all the UK. Also they would need to fesse up as to what they have been doing next door! If the loss of light impacts a bathroom for example .. then the game changes. If you can get a design that say complies with the recommendations in the BRE then you have strengthend your hand. But to cover yourself you could take out an indemnity policy to cover potential action by your neighbours. Ask your solicitor what this would cost for that piece of mind. You would need to jump through some hoops insurance wise, get someone to translate BRE 209 in numbers with a report. If they did decide to kick up a fuss and find out your insurance is going to cover the costs.. up to them if they want to lose their shirt if their case fails. If they win then you should be covered if you set the policy up right.. which will take a good bit of your time to explain to an insurer what the risk is you want them to cover... hence the homework. BE CAREFUL.. for these types of indemnity policies to be effective you must often not alert a potential complainant. A good example here is where you have converted your attic without BC / planning permission. If you let the council know that you have a problem and then take out the policy there is fine print that can make it invalid. @moncchichi be careful not to identify yourself or your site on BH which is a public forum. Hope this helps and keep us updated as to how you are getting on. BRE 209 Site Layout Planning for Daylight and Sunlight BRE 2022.pdf