Gus Potter

Top response from @George Agree. Will do no harm to ask. To provide a bit of background. I started out as a building contractor, got interested in structural design so went to uni at forty to study structural engineering. Served my time training and now work as a sole pratitioner as a Structural Engineer and architectural designer. To be a good designer you need to have experience and a flavour of holistic desgn. I make a living doing what I do. Designing extensions, attic conversions, barn conversion, some steel buildings, some industrial, the odd new build, bit of ground works, garden buildings.. long list... it's a fun job but with responsibility... no free lunch. Now I think I do a good job.. but I do get some jobs that require the flair that only an Architect can bring. When this occurs I call up my Architect pals and say.. this job needs YOU do you want to collaborate? It is the sensible thing to do for me. I'm not a bad arctitectural designer but I know my limits. I know from years of experience when to call for help.. swallow your pride and this delivers a good project.. you learn from it and this makes you a better designer. That said I make my living wearing the two hats.. it is a competetive business this building malarky! In terms of insurance. From talking to my Architect pals I carry a lot more PI insurance cover under my SE policy than they do... in fact significantly more and as @George says I'm quite happy to provide the documents if asked. But.. I don't make a point of it when touting for business.. after all you are saying to your Client.. hey if I cock it up I'm well insured.. the point is you DON'T cock it up! My SE cover also covers me to do the architectural design and spout my thoughts on BH. In summary though for all on BH. The best thing you can do is research. Some folk on BH have loads of experience, know what they want and just want someone to produce the paperwork to get BC approval and check it won't fall down. Others are just starting out and maybe need someone who can guide them.. hold their hand while they cut their teeth on their first project. Yes it is ok to use an architectural designer @TryCbut make sure you do your due dilligance.. take references from past Clients and so on. Try and find someone local to you that can nip round once the project is underway and check on the builder. The main thing it to find the person that suits you and you gell with. Then explore what they know and what they can do for you. If you have put in a bit of ground work you'll soon know if they are up to the job or not. All the best with the project.

Hang on! I may be over thinking but my first reaction is.. the 203 UC columns and beam are probably working to provide part of the horizontal stability stystem to the house. Easily over looked but critical for safety. Can you post more of your plans. Also post if you can the connection design between the column and beam as this will give a clue as to what the columns and beams are intended to do. Please don't swap these out until you check with your SE.

Unfortunately it often partly ends up that way, a non load bearing racking wall can catch you out. Advise you stick with your SE's specification. In written form you have a timber frame panel that carries no vertical load but it needs to stop things moving sideways. Say the top of the panel is loaded horizontally. This horizontal force gets transferred to say the floor below that resists the horizontal force. Now you have two forces acting in equal an opposite directions but they are separated vertically. This introduces an overturning effect into the panel. We call this a complimentary shear force. The static laws of physics say that for a body to remain still every force has to have an equal an opposite force. Thus even though your panel is not carrying a vertical load.. only a wind load the vertical fixings at on side will be subject to uplift and at the other side a downwards force. That is why you may wonder why your SE has come up with what may seem an onerous spec.

Look at this another way maybe. If you can afford or even contemplate building a 500 sq m house then you can afford to talk to an SE that knows a bit about design and costs. I'm at the other end of the country but wear two hats, SE but also a designer hat and have Clients coming to me that want to build big stuff. We maybe spend half a day chewing the fat and then I say hey I think this will fly but if you want high end then I know Architects that will make it work. The big thing is that you get a different viewpoint and a down to earth one! Post more and you'll get loads og help and advise on BH.

Peter. To you and all the mods. Big thanks from me and thank you for all the time you put into BH to make it work. I'm not a legal eagle, I know bit but probably enough to be dangerous! I think you have our back on Build Hub but even if you don't then.. to make a forum like this work you need all sorts. I chip in as it's a friendly site, have got to meet some folk in person and made new friends. Not bad eh? I learn loads of stuff here not just from the pro's but also from the new members that are coming on the site with innovative ideas, asking questions.. challenging the norm. Without new members and you old sorts (not me as I'm only 58) doing your tenth self build the site would not have the richness that it has. If you doubt then have a look at the Farming Forum.. yes it is commercial.. not my cup of tea but they have the depth and breadth of contributers that makes it work. BH is the same without the commercial and that "edge" you get on commercial sites. In terms of liability. When I was training and cutting my teath one of my mentors said (runs a top notch SE Consultancy) .. Gus you are worried about getting sued too much.. Clients don't want your caveats.. they want answers and good commercial ones too. Study hard (we are giving you the tools to educate yourself @SteamyTea) and you will be able to give the right answers / solutions.. ! If you do then you won't be sued.. well you might by some dafty but folk are folk, that is the price you pay for having an exiting job. Enjoy your job, do what you are good at and have fun. So in that context lets look at Ok lets go back to my earlier post. Say the rafters are spaced at 600mm centres. Thus the shear load at the top end of each rafter is 1.64 * 0.6 (spacing) = 0.98 kN. Below is an extract from the Simpson brochure for the 7090 brackets. I have not copied it all but the bracket capacity changes depending the grade of timber and nails you use so please check this yourself. The main thing to take away from this is how you read the table. This table is based on Eurocode design and the value we are interested in is the characteristic value. In the previous post I showed how we worked out the DESIGN loads.. we worked out the loads and then applied safety factors. BUT we also need to apply safety factors to the Characteristic loads for resistance as we are using limit state codes.. which in this case is the brackets. Generally for simple timber design we apply a material factor of safety of 1.3. Thus you can see for the 7090 bracket the characteristic shear load with 35mm nails is 7.6 kN. We divide 7.6 / 1.3 = 5.84 kN which is well above the 0.98 kN. Caution.. read the fine print as the values are based on two brackets.. one each side! Now that seems overkill in terms of holding the roof up.. but What you do here is pile up logs and inevitably they will end up pushing the vertical columns (timber posts) outwards. The 7090 bracket also work in tension that have a declared value. The brackets can take tension where as joist hangers commonly can't. Earlier we looked at the resin fixings.. these to can take a bit of tension.. For all if you are trying to get you head round this sort of thing try and work out what forces you have and follow where they go. Will have a go at this but not tonight as screws into the end grain of timber are not.. "that good".. I would try and avoid any end grain screw that is subject to a tensile force.

Too right! Great options from George. Spot on, must have been some spare capacity in the design. All the best with the project.

Give me a bit of time and I'll post something.. need to finish something on the day job first. Yes they are not pleasing to the eye right enough.

Can't see that well from your drawing but here is how you can do a qualitative / initial comparison to see what other size of beam might work. I'll use the values out of the Blue book as it's easy, just watch out as I'm using the Eurocode version as the beam axis notation is different between the Eurocodes and the British Standard. https://www.steelforlifebluebook.co.uk/ub/ First thing we look at in this case is how "bendy" the beam is.. how much it will deflect. The amount of delfection is proportional to the beam stiffness about the axis it is being bent. We go to the section properties part and look up the second moment of area about the y-y axis for a 254x102x25 UB which gives us a value of 3410cm4 Could we use a 203 x 133 x 30kg UB.. it does not have a larger second moment of area (only 2900cm4) .. we could check it but we are wanting to know quickly what could work. Lets look at a Universal column section and pick one that we can probably get off the shelf. https://www.steelforlifebluebook.co.uk/uc/ec3-ukna/section-properties-dimensions-properties/ A 203 x 203 x 46 kg UC has a second moment of area of 4570cm4 .. yes that will be plenty stiff enough. But it is nearly twice the weight but it could well get rid of the downstand. ------------------------- Next we check for strength. We don't want the beam to fail by the steel yielding. Moment capacity of a 254x102x25 UB = 109 kNm Moment capacity of a 203 x 203 x 46 UC = 176 kNm yes the UC certainly looks strong enough. Now if we can live with the extra weight of steel we can go to the SE who will check loads of other things; the buckling strength not least, which could less depending on how the joists are to be supported, and make sure it can be properly supported and so on. You also have a larger distance from the edge of the flange to the web so you need to check again how the floor joists and so on are connected. We could explore further. Would a 203 x 133 x 30 UB beam work if we welded some flange plates to it.. maybe but the cost of the plates and welding could well outweigh the extra weight of the UC section. Could we use a couple of back to back channel sections.. maybe but channel sections are more expensive and you need to bolt them together. Hope this helps but ask your SE and check what fire protection you need to the steel and how this is to be achieved. Sometimes a downstand in the ceiling can work well in big open plan areas as it provides demarcation between different "zones" you may want to create while still having the open plan effect.

Call it a clarification, any discussion, different view point is always helpful and healthy. I agree with you that you could end up using excess resin. But to keep say BC and the SE's happy best to follow the manufacture's installation instructions to the letter where possible, unless you know a lot about fixings and their design. Hilti and Fischer both make mention of nominal drill hole size for their threaded rod applications in solid brick. For an M10 rod nominal drill hole size is 12mm and for an M12 nominal drill hole size is 14mm and so on up to and M16 which needs a nominal drill hole size of 18mm. You can also (with careful checking) install rods into bricks that have voids. Here you get a sieve sleeve that goes in the hole first. You need quite a lot more resin for this as you need to flood the sleeve andsome of that disappears into the voids.

Don't think we talked about birds mouths? They are great but you need to tie back the posts and roof so they don't move horizontally. You can either use the rafters or the ceiling ties to do this. You can tie the posts back to the wall using the ceiling ties. But rather than using hangers for the ceiling tie you would use say Simpson ABR 9020 brackets. But this give a very much an "exposed look" often not pleasing to the eye. Have not got time tonight but will try and post a detail on how you make it all work while pleasing to the eye over the weekend. Still.. well done you. The nominal fixing diameter is M12 so you need practically a 14mm diamter drill hole and blow / brush it out clean for the resin. You could do hit and miss but much depends on how you want it to look.

You make a good point here and the advice you give is sound. To expand a bit on my own personal approach. When I joined BH one of the thoughts I had was.. do I use my own name or not. I concluded that if you mean what you say then why not use your own name? I run a business with a website (it's not slick as I wrote it myself and it needs updating but have plenty work) and sell my wares using my own name. Why not just use my own name BH? I can see where you are coming from. If you are writing on any public forum or even giving free advice to members of the public then potentially you can be liable for it. I'm an SE so carry insurance. Part of my policy covers me to give advice even if not paid for. That allows me to go into detail that others may not be able to do in public. That said if you look at my posts you'll see that I often introduce a caveat. Above I used the words "outline advice" .. you would have to be pretty determined to raise an action against me. In the round though I would hope that in the first instance if someone on BH felt that I was wrong they would invite me to explain or just say.. Gus.. your numbers etc don't add up and give me an opportunity to correct the record. We all make mistakes from time to time.

Think you might be pushing at an open door here. Get a grouting quote but when you do make sure you ask that the grouting company include for at least a 25 year warranty, full site remediation and with any luck you may have a couple of trees with protection orders on them. Basically get the highest quote you can with the full bells and whistles.. your SE will help you craft the brief. Then say to insurance company.. hey lets work together and we can both save some money.. if you go along with it you'll get no grief from us.. just we may need an interim payment or two. Can your Dad move into a nice rented pad or go on a cruise off the money. Knock it down and rebuild with the support of your SE. The ash is an interesting one.. if it has a high sulphate content then it moves about and attacks the concrete.. sulphate damage.. grouting won't help.. you often need to get rid of it if under the founds and that is not easy especially if the building is bearing on it. Also you need ask if what is the neighbours founded on etc.. do they have or will they have in the future a similar problem. Ask insurers, will they cover for next door compromising our works or if we do work will we do something that will lead to problems next door? Who is going to pick up the tab if we cause a problem next door while doing the work? In the round it seems like your Dad could end up with a new cracking house (and quicker too) and the insurer could save money? The hard part will be getting this point over to them.

Wow! You have put a lot of thinking into this.. Bit late here but will try and answer some of your points. I'll put my "BC /checking Engineer's" hat on to be pedantic.. the following is a bit of an outline on how I may do it and some of the things I look for. Well done on picking up on the snow and access load. You also have a snow drift load and "snow dumping coming off the higher roof, but due to the pitch and size of canopy that can be effectively ignored especially as it is what we call and "accidental" snow load case. You do also have wind load but on something this size it I think this can be neglected as you have good heavy tiles mitigating roof uplift. If this was a big commercial building, lightweight roof covering with the roof sitting just below the window cills I would check it to make sure it does not lift the cills.. could be embarrasing! Oh.. please excuse any typos. Have repeated your calcs in a slightly different way but made an allowance for the rafter self weight just to let you see how I may do it. I use kg as it's pretty close to kN that we use as normally units. Your tiles look pretty heavy, normal Marley concrete tiles are about 50 kg/ m ^2.. you must be using some nice clay ones, jealous here.. like a nice tile. I'm going to use Eurocode Design here as later this is compatible with the fixings then jump back to using the permissible stress codes of BS 5268.. as it's easier. I'll explain as I go along. Tile load on slope = 77 kg/ m^2.. for all this is the declared weight by the manufacture of the tiles.. it varies depending on how much head lap and that changes depending on the weather exposure and roof pitch.. who said life was a breeze? On plan load for @MortarThePoint= 77 / cos(46) = 110 kg/m^2 on plan. Add 10% for timber rafters, sarking etc. 1.1 * 110 = 121 kg... this is the "Permenant" load, using the BS codes this is called the Dead load. Now we have a roof access load. In both codes this is ~60 kg / m^2 for domestic applications but this is a load that is applied on plan. A slope load is the load running up the rafter.. like tiles. A plan load is more easily understood if you think about snow falling straight down or a few folk standing on a stair or a roof. You can only fit so many folk standing vertically and only so much snow can lie on a roof. This 60 kg/m^2 is the imposed load. Now we have two figures for the plan load. Permenant load = 110 kg.. lets convert now to kN roughly divide by 10 thus 10 / 10 = 1.1 kN Imposed load = 60 kg/m^2 lets convert now to kN roughly divide by 10 thus 60 / 10 = 0.6 kN Now we apply safety factors to these loads, the different kinds of loads get different safety factors. Using the simplistic Eurocode formula safety factors are 1.35 (Permenant loads) and 1.5 ( Imposed loads) the calculation follows. 1.35 * 1.1 + 1.5 *0.6 = 2.39 kN/m^2 on plan. Now as above take the effective span on plan of the rafter as being 1.375m (conservative) and as the rafter is simply supported at the ends the loads at the supports are calculated as follows: 2.39 * 1.375 / 2 = 1.64 kN/m. In other words the "DESIGN" load on the ledger is 1.64 kN per metre run of the ledger. The design load at the bottom of the rafter is the same neglecting the slight overhang. If you were checking this you would check the rafters, the hangers before checking the ledger. Just like you follow the money you follow the loads and check each bit as you go. That is really pedantic. To make it fly take the rafter span on slope in feet divide by two m and add one inch.. that will probably be fine as it is a canopy. Thus 2.4m = about 8 feet.. 8 / 2 = 4 + 1 = 5 inches. I would adopt a 120 x 45 C16 rafter @ 600 centres max for the rafters. Standard Simpson joist hangers will do fine at the top end of the rafter.. can show they will work but it will take all night to finish this post if I do. ----------------------------------------- Lets now look at the capacity of the fixings and work out how many we need. If you follow the method I have used above to calculate the loading. I start with the loads (characteristic loads) and apply safety factors to get the design load. We now check to make sure that the DESIGN load is less the design RESISTANCE. Not normally a shouty bloke (use of capitals) but for all it is really important so please forgive. Things like masonry fixings are very tempremental not least as we are often fixing into masonry that is variable.. brickies can have off days and so on. In the table that @MortarThePointhas uploaded you can see two columns. One characteristic and one design. Take the M12 fixing.. the number we are looking for is the design resistance of 1.62 kN in shear. Now here it can get really complicated as we are using the Eurocodes. You'll see there is also a figure for the approved resistance. This is the value that you would use if you did not use the safety factors on the loading calculation... permissible stress design codes. Lastly always take note of spacing and edge distances. Lets now work out how many fixings we need per metre based on an M12 bolt and see if we can practically install these. Design load is 1.64 kN/m. Design resistance is 1.62 kN per fixing. Suddenly you can see the loads are pretty small and that you only need one roughly one fixing per metre run of ledger. To be exact we would need: 1.62 / 1.64 = one fixing per 987 mm which is a funny number to deal with on site. Practically I would say one M12 fixing per rafter bay if they are at 600 centres. Now all looks great above but lots of BH folk start using the same idea for 3 - 4 m spanning floors and ledgers for trussed rafters.. you can quickly see how these fixing will stop working! --------------------- The ceiling tie serves to restrain the top of the posts. Just use the same fixings and spacing as the rafter ledger.. line them up so they look good. 70 x 45 C16 may be what you want.. if hanging plant pots / growing a vine of something go for 95 x 45 C16 / maybe C24 as it has generally less knows and looks less cheep. You coaul calculate the wind load in the roof but using the same fixing as for the ledger will be fine. ---------------------- The transfer beam along the top of the posts. Have run out of gas here a bit and it takes a bit of explanation.. you use the design loads to check the strength and the unfactored loads to check the deflection. With timber you need to calculate both the bending and hear deflection.. bit more work. Suffice to say that on that roof you could I think show that a 200 x 45 C24 timber would work or two 170 x 45 C16's. The single timber may look a bit "weedy" and not sturdy to the eye.. it's also about it looking balanced and visually pleasing. ----------- A 100 x 100 post around 2.4 m long will take a lot of vertical load, again can show another day how you check it. ------------- Simpson post bases.. they are good, last a while, just a little more expensive. -------------

That crack looks like something that has got a grip of the edge of the floor and stopped it from moving at the cover plate between the tiles and the concrete.. The rest, if isolated, are probably hard to argue about. Before you chuck in the towel is there anything on the outside of the building that corresponds with the crack in the floor? Also have you checked the floor for level? Another thing it could be is that if these are door standards (can't quite tell from the photo) they are often fitted later on top of the concrete.. then they may have swelled and be bearing down on the floor slab at its weak spot. Check to see if they are in contact with the concrete at the bottom. The joiner may have tightly sprung the standards into place.. that coupled with a bit of swelling could be another cause. The shape of the crack (an arc) suggests that something might be loading the concrete at the edges of the opening?

Dave .. was not sure if you had continued the newel post all the way down. But for BH folk and for simplicity had assumed that your good photo showed a clear spanning trimmer. On the upside Dave.. given your neck of the woods I expect, as does a lot of my family that live on the islands, you will be putting on a bit of weight on "for the winter months to keep you warm ", partying over the coming festive period.. I referenced a floor loading of 150 kg per sq metre.. there are some big fishing folk up your neck of the woods? 150 kg... would that would be their weight with no clothes on? Of course we in the central belt of Scotland will be living on lentils in the lead up and during xmas.. have electric blankets (PV supplied of course) and be having a "quite time" at so don't need to worry about over loading stairs and floors. We will be miserable but convince ourselves we are happy. You stair looks good by the way.

I'm being very general here but to give you a flavour of the way things operate. For the avoidance of doubt I'm including some of the companies that are major developers and medium sized ones that are underwriten by the major warranty providers in the UK. I'm not going to name them.. suffice to say that I have won a number of claims again them similar to what you describe. Small builders that may be building you an extension,.. don't say much here on small builders as this may require a partially differant approach.. assuming there may be a cash element to that type of transaction. If you are a domestic home owner then surprisingly you often do have legitimate recourse against the medium and bigger developers. But you will probably need to spend a bit of time and possibly a bit of money to overcome this hurdle. If a new build.. in the first couple of years the medium sized builder upwards is probably playing the war of attrition.. they know a lot of folk complain but only a few will take it any further..(some folk post bad things on facebook etc) the warranty provider often does not hold the ball until two years have elasped.. hence the lack of initial response. Take a young couple who have saved up to buy a house and they move in. Cracks appear / drains block say and they feel that they have not got what they paid for. Over the years I have become aware that this is a numbers game for builders and their warranty providers. The warranty providers are essentially insurance companies so this is all about paying out less than you get in premiums and the difference between the two is essentially their profit. Just like car insurance they have a "claims avoidance" department / culture..? I'll deal with the jobbing builder (say a small extension) in another post if there is any interest. But the some of the same rules apply.. often you won't have a formal industry standard contract with the very small builder.. you may be doing a deal.. part cash? Take a medium builder up to the majors. They send their "surveyor in a suit" and offer to do a bit or just send the decorators.. that reduces the field quite a lot.. folk feel.. well we got something out of them. As a domestic home owner you are entitled to a certain standard of workmanship. You are also entitled to a structurally safe home.. all covered under the consumer protection act not least. You are as a home owner are entitled to a product that will perform. @Scots Build If you want to pursue this you have options, there are others but here are a couple. Builders/ house developers often give domestic home owners the run around. They are experts at it and they caveat the sale conditions very heavily.. you need to clear a lot of hoops to gain satisfaction. Caveats include cracking / shrinkage and a whole host of other things in the fine print. What I do is this when acting on behalf of a Client is this.. Rather than arguing about crack sizes / workmanship on say sticky doors, opening mitres, floor levels say on facings that are open to interpretation in the desing codes I look under the bonnet. I always ask myself.. what is causing the cracks, blocked drains, in adequate wall ties for example, walls out of plumb. I then look at the what could be structurally wrong. I can tell you that I will 90% of the time I will find a "structural non compliance" when I look under the bonnet. I don't do random opening up stuff as I know from experience where folk cut corners. I would focus on for example and investigate.. the things that are cheep and simple to do SE wise as it keeps your bill down ...is it the render.. but that could be a symptom of underlying malaise.. I would check the wall for alignment.. is it out of plumb, are the wall ties correctly installed, are the cavities the correct size and clean? If the cavities vary too much coupled with the outside leaf leaning out and the inside leaf leaning in then they are often stuffed as the wall ties no longer comply with the design codes they have probably used. This is easily checked with a plumb bob. simple technology. I check the connections of floor joists for example. Fire protection is a cracker.. one failure is a no no in this day and age. I look at a load of other things too.. could be that I notice that electrical cables are too close to heating pipes.. on the face of it you may think that it is not within an SE remit.. but anything that could potentially cause a detrimental effect to the structure.. say cables or heating pipes that could cause fire or comprimise the strength of a stuctural member does fall in my remit. I only need to ask.. hey I see this.. can you confirm it is OK? I don't need to be an Electrician I just need to apply common sense and are entitleled to ask these queations as a professional. Now it may seem harsh. But if I write in my SE report that you instructed me to do a prelimiary survey and I look in two places that are of interest to me and find one out of two items that are non compliant in terms of fire design.. that is a 50% failure rate.. it raises questions.. I guess where I need to look, say open up a small part of the ceiling to expose a joist hanger.. is it fully nailed, it it installed as per the manufacture's instructions. Find one thing wrong and you have them over a barrel. I have found in the past that the developer comes back with.. what are you on about.. we are big boys and you are not.. our SE says its ok. I call their SE and say do you know about this.. they say no.. In then say who is responsible for the fire design? now the the developers own SE has washed their hands.. and the deveoper has lost the support of their own SE. As soon as the SE bails out all the stuff about shrinkage is blown out of the water. I have found that as soon as you say.. Hey I have found evidence that the building does not comply structurally and I need you to come to the table to discuss it changes the game. If you don't come to the table I'm going to report you to the HSE and my Client is going to sue you as you have sold them an unsafe building. The HSE stuff will impact on their insurance premiums.. you aim for their pocket. Have found that this approach gets their attention as you have moved the goal posts big time. From experience your complaint will rapidly get moved up to "director" level. Funnily I have had quite a lot of success with this approach.. maybe I'm just lucky? The above is a bit of an insight into how you may approach your problem. If you want to pursue this you need to pick your battles and hit them where it hurts. Always remember that you bought the house in good faith.. you are not at fault. Hope this helps you either rule in or rule out how you may want to progress.

Yes there are so many ways of doing it. Say that landing you have is max 1200 mm wide .. ~4 feet. 4 feet /2 = 2 + 2 = 4 inches target joist depth at 45 to 50 mm wide in grade C16 or above timber. Your 8 x 2. Say that spans tops 2.4m ( 8 feet) .. 8 /2 = 4 + plus 2 inches and extra inch for the point loads from the stringers = 7 inches ~ 170mm metric deep joist. That will probably work in terms of strength but you are looking to reduce deflection = bouncy stair.. so your 8 x2 is a good call. Looks good to go Dave. For all.. there is no point in having a good beam if the end connections (joist hangers / nails etd) are rubbish.

Top stuff and welcome. I've made a few comments below which will I hope will help. First things first. In the past I have bought and sold properties that are suffering apparent distress. Mostly now I do a bit of design for Clients that are interested in these types of "distressed" properties, some buy them to "sort out" and sell on, some buy as they are cheep and turn them into their "forever home". Both are fascinating for me as a designer as I often get involved right from day one and see the project through to the the end. Now there is no free lunch here. Much depends on your attitude to risk and MOST importantly how much work you are willing to put into researching the problem, understanding it and identifying cost effective solutions, if there are any. Some can be stunningly simple and cheep to implement. Spotting this opportunity where others have missed it can be the key to unlocking it all. Making / saving money that let's you make a good profit or spend it on the things you want.. finishes etc or just make it affordable as a project when you are on a limited budget. What I'm saying is keep your enthusiasm up! A question. You mention the word "sewer" To the lay person this could mean just a drain that carriers water from say the toilet and maybe the roof from your house out into the street from your house alone. But in technical terms a "sewer" could be a big public asset.. a very big infrastructure pipe. You also have what is often called a public drain, that is a pipe that serves a few houses before it goes into the "sewer". Public drains are often more manageable.. but if you want to build over them later you'll need build over permission. This is often doable if you plan ahead for a future extension. Your SE report will likely be an "observational report with some limeted technical comment" not offer up solutions and be heavily caveated. It's the solutions bit that cost the professional fee money as the SE has to step up to the plate and carry the can if it does not work out. You mention various options.. underpinning, structural repair etc and how that is treated in terms of insurance and resale value. If you involve an SE to give you advise on solutions and thereafter design them up this should cover you as the SE carries insurance that should satisfy most folk... lenders etc and selling later. Also you will need to involve the local authority who will provide a completion certificate. That also adds weight when selling. Your project sounds really interesting. If you wish post photos, provide more info and you'll get loads of help and suggestions on BH. Try if you can not to reveal the location as it may be a live bid. If in doubt PM folk here.. but if you end up buying it then you should post about how you won the bid. And if you benefit from it you should make a donation to Build Hub! If you don't get this one then keep your hopes up and look for the next as you'll learn loads on BH. I do every time I log on. All the best. Our questions are around the following: 1) I've read that resin injection with geopolymers can be a cheap & effective alternative to underpinning - just wondering if anyone had used this & what their thoughts were (we're thinking of using Geobear, unless anyone can recommend a better UK company)? Have heard it's around £1200/metre.... 2) When using something like this, are there any implications if we decide to build a house extension over/around that area at a later date? 3) I've read that house structural rework can cause problems with insurance & resale value. Apparently, resin injection avoids this, as it doesn't 'break the ground', hence no need to declare it. Does anyone know more about this claim of avoiding the insurance/resale issue? 4) Does anyone know what is classed as 'structural repair' that may affect the house value/insurance? Eg, if we use helibars to repair the brick mortar cracks will this need to be declared or just part of the normal process of house repair? 5) Any other advice/tips/gotchya's from anyone who's experienced similar when fixing their property

Hello dnb. The half landing needs to be compliant with the regs in terms of width. @ProDave His photo is a good example to explore as to what you need to do SE wise and how you start checking / designing it. First in terms of a domestic stair. The landing is just like a floor so the live loadings on the floor (people etc) are 1.5 kN/m2 which is about 150 kg per m2 If you have 18mm thick V313 say chipboard this will need supported at 400mm centres, if 22mm thick then 600mm centres under normal loading conditions.. no other hidden loads. The next thing to do is to design the joists that support the chip board (landing) . As a rule of thumb if you take the span of the landing joist in feet, divide it by two and add two inches.. convert this to metric if you have to and that will probably work in terms of joist depth based on a 45mm (C16 grade) thick timber, subject to final checking. Final checking includes working out the self weight of the landing, any ceiling under etc and if the load goes onto the trimmer or side walls and what that load is. Pro Dave's joists could span from the wall with window opening back to the trimmer at the top of the lower flight or side wall to side wall. Can't see from the photo but the same principle applies. Next thing to do is to work out the loading on the lower and upper flight of stairs. There are a number of different loads that the codes require you to look at. Evenly distributed loads and point loads. In general it's the distributed loads that govern the design. The loading on the stair flights that tend to govern are the self weight of the stair plus the live load (150kg/m2). The stair flight is like a roof rafter and often we assume that the stringers are simply supported at the bottom and top. Yes the outside stringers could be fixed to the side walls but let's assume they are not as the side walls may be non load bearing walls. Now we can work out what loads the stringers are putting on the trimmer, add to that any load from the landing and this lets us design the trimmer. Say the landing joists span onto the trimmer. The trimmer is checked for the four point loads from the stringers plus the uniform load from the landing. In this case as we have point loads from the stringers close to the side walls we need to check carefully for both bending effects and shear effects at the ends of the trimmer. What we do though is to make the trimmer pretty stiff so that it does not deflect very much at all. Every bit of deflection adds to a "bouncy stair" The next stage is to check all the joist hangers etc and any directly nailed connections. There are a lot of ways you can put a stair like this together but hopefully this gives an insight into how you go about designing it structurally. Now if anyone is intersted in how you design cantilevered type / winding stairs with no trimmers or central supports please post. These are fascinating to design and make work. Master stone masons have been doing this for centuries and the laws of physics have not changed. A lot of modern cantilevered stairs are designed with each tread as a cantilever extending out from the side walls but under the right circumstances there is another very elegant way of doing it that can deliver a great aestetic result. When folk look at them they may be inclined to think.. how does it stay up?..

Like that. Often I'll do the same as just like to do a good job in the round. Look at this another way... last man on the job gets the blame. No point in doing a great SE job on the house if the garden / retaining wall falls down.. even if you had no hand in it!

Yes that new to me too. It looks similar to a small grid geotextile fabric. Now we put polypropylene firbres (usually non structural) in slabs to stop shrinkage. @saveasteading et al have posted lots about this. Plastic fibres in concrete slabs with UFH above. Can see how this could work but would love to know more about this and see some data / calcs / design rational. Every day is a school day on BH!

Yes there may have been a water leak from the old kitchen, that said it doesn't look like it has impacted on the floor joists structurally. With my SE hat on I need to say that screeds are heavy so you should check this out in terms of the main floor joists being able to carry the extra load from the screed. Have put this caveat in as have seen some floors that run off level by 75mm say on old tenement flats.. thus a 75mm thick levelling screed is going to add a fair weight! In terms of moving forward (SE view accepted) I would also put some noggings (dwangs) in under the weak spots in the floor boards with D4 expanding Pu glue to make sure you don't get a squeeky floor later on. What you are aiming to do is to just support the edges of the floor boards where they could rub together later on. Fifteen minutes work and less than a tenner to avoid that annoying squeek.

A few more panoramic photos showing what is above and below would help towards reaching a reasoned diagnosis. Has the room above been used as a bathroom in the past.. what do you know abiout the history of that part of the house? The metal lath is a bit of a puzzler for example.

If you can post a photo or two. On these ones that are completely done.. It's just the shell you intend to work with.. things we do are: On the ground floor make sure any solum vents are clear and free. Make sure the worst of the gutters are made leak proof. Clear the rain water drains.. if they are done then dig a few channels outside to take the water away from the walls. If you have water running down the garden and into the house then look at some French type drain but keep it away from the walls a good bit so it does not cause a problem later on as you develop up the design. Kill off any small self seeded sapling trees and other vegitation that is growing near the walls. Lift some ground floor boards to encourage ventilation. Open all internal doors or take them off. If you have sash and cash windows then open them 50 - 75mm at the top and screw so they can't be opened any further, or if windows are broken then board up leaving a 50 - 75 mm gap at the top. Cut a few holes in the roof soffit.. if you have one. Open up the ceiling under the roof, especially at the corners of the building. Ventilate the roof at the ridge. You can just cut a big slot at the ridge, make an small timber A type frame and put that over the top and fix down. The A frame can be water proofed with a wide DPC. In essence it's like a ventilated dry ridge but a lot bigger. The idea is that you let loads of air circulate at as low cost as you can and even in the winter the place will start to dry surprisingly fast.

Plus one to that. Much will depend on the type of soil you have. You'll often be surprised at how much load a wall like that needs to resist. What you are doing is interesting to us "soily / foundation" types on BH so if you want post more info folk will hopefully be able to help a bit. Things I would like to know as a starting point Where is the boundary. What kind of soil do you have How far is the neighbour's house from the wall Where is your house in relation to the wall What are the ground levels in front of the wall.. do they carry on sloping down or flat? How long is the wall. How are you wanting to do the returns on the wall? Are these close to the boundary? Good drawing by the way.