Gus Potter

Ok I can see you are wanting to explore this. It's a good thread you have started as it delves into what can be possibly achieved on paper and what can actually be built at a sensible cost. Don't apologise, you are not sitting an exam here! Neither am I as I've clocked off the day job. Mortar is less forgiving in terms of movement so consider lead, even if to rule out. Yes they are. But so is PIR insulation. Below is the data sheet from Steico for thier high compressive strength insulation. And below for thier internal insulation. I won't go into detail about how SE's do the sums for compressive strength.. other than to say we do not use for example this value when designing as it squashes to much. For you the main thing is to look at the thermal conductivity of the two offerings. The higher compressive strength has a value of 0.048 W/(m.K) the lower (weaker insulation) 0.038 W/(m.K) which is about a 20% difference. If you remove the repeating bridges but even use the higher strength stuff you may get a better result. It's likely marginal.. but as I said before.. you need to look at the perimeter details, noggings etc and buildability. I understand what you are trying to achieve technically. I'm familiar with how this sort of stuff can work, the references you cite. But I can tell you it is almost unkown to be able to build this. It might be a good idea to start to produce some detailed drawings of the junctions / interfaces between the different elements. Even if you do this as a day job it's going to be demanding. All the time you have to think.. how do I explain this to a builder and what are they going to charge you for this.

Stick with lead for the skews. If you put forward an evidence based design then most accept. Like in all walks of life there is a bit of "personality" involved at times, younger BCO's and designers are, by default, less experienced in communicating which can lead to crossed swords. Client's sometimes are the same, maybe they don't allocate enough funds to the design fee element. In summary if your design is sound then BC will accept.. you often need patience. Ok I can see what you are trying to do, a few comments in line with your text which I've turned into italic. Plasterboard 50x50mm horizontal battens with 50mm wood fibre insulation batts between You horizontal timber battens on the inside introduce a repeating bridge. You can test this repeating bridge effect by using say Kingspan online calculator. I often use a continuous layer. But you need to check that the plasterboard can be fixed through the wood fibre on the inside.. it works for PIR. Intello VCL membrane Not sure about this. I would be inclined to use something impermeable like plastic. existing 150x50mm rafters, fully filled with more wood fibre batts This sounds ok in the main body of the roof and on paper. But around the roof edges, these are weak spots. leave the full fill insulation 10 -20mm shy of the underside of your ply just to let the water gas / moisture disperse. . I'm not going to to explain in great detail here but the principle of the sarking is to have gaps between the boards. You full fill is not compatible with your marine ply.. which is pretty impermeable. wood runners fixed to the inside of each rafter along its whole length Ok see that you are doing. But you have structural problems in terms of the edge distances of you fixings. 25mm marine ply fixed to runners and joists sitting flush with outer surface of existing rafters Now marine ply sounds great.. but trying to drive a long copper nail into this is not that easy.. ask an experience slater. Again it may be ok in the main body of the roof.. but you are going to have massive problems at the edges and any roof lights / service penetration. 35mm Steico tongue & groove woodfibre sarking Ok.. if you follow the manufacture's fixing detail. vapour and air open waterproof membrane Ok.. for now. ~8mm "heavy" slates with 75mm+ stainless or copper annular ring nails, two per slate centre & off-centre to prevent rotation I would not slate this way on you job, rather I would adopt the traditional route. In Scotland as we do a lot of traditional sarking we do one nail in the head, every third course cheek nailed in the main body of the roof. This lets us maintain the roof easily. Commonly in England the slates are fixed to battens. I think I can see your design intent.. but I very much doubt you can get anyone to build it dilligently. TYou design has technical flaws. In summary.. my advice is to say "I had a good go" but let pragmatism and budget cost prevail.

I kind of think back to when I first joined BH. I took me a while to get my head around how it works. BH is not like some woke Blue Sky place, but I can't really think of anyone who is deliberately horrible. @WisteriaMews post more info with lots of details as I said before and loads of folk will rally round.

Great thread this, all different points of view, appoaches and innovation going on. One could conclude there is no perfect solution... but that is the joy of design, you do the best you can.. so long as you can live with fact that there is no perfect answer. An element that flags up for me is that many posts are a personal view, some just do this as a hobby which is fair enough. Few, if any recognise, (rarely mentioned on BH) that they are just a custodian of their house which one would hope will last for more then 60 years. My mindset is... lets build stuff that is pragmatic and look at the maintenence costs over the life cycle of the building while retaining its market value. My own view is that a sealed house that relies on mechanical ventilation alone is not a long term solution as ownership and use will change over time, the systems become degraded and costs rise.. it gets worse if no one understands what you did in the first place. At last.. well done you! An OH cowl is the best in my view. No moving parts and requires no wind to function in terms of passive stack ventilation. If you want more passive ventilation you just increase the diameter.

If you want more targeted feedback then suggest you post your drawings. The key here is to recognise that folk on BH have never seen you project so rather than making them guess just provide as much info as you can. Take title boxes off drawings and identifiable marks if you wish.

It is indeed a puzzle and interesting. It does indeed. Now @saveasteading knows his way around buildings as do many on BH. I took a step back and looked up at the roof. Up there is a historic roof truss. I can't see enough detail to try and date that without risking embarressment. Now I'm totally guessing here.. but the roof is sitting on old walls that will have moved about, probably spread. I wonder if the railway line is acting as a tie beam (in tension) rather than a vertical load bearing element. Don't forget folk would put in anything to hand in the past to solve a problem. If you look closely the railway beam seems to frame into a beam at the edge of the first floor stiff diaphragm floor. I'm just speculating of course.. but if the railway beam is working as a tie then you could maybe swap that out for a steel rod or stainless steel wire. You need to check you can clear the line of the stair by 2.0m. If you struggle then you could spend a bit more on some fancy catilevered steel connection to raise the height a bit. Don't chuck in the towel just yet if you really want the place.

Indeed! Breaking this down a bit. If you are going to get a choke in the pipe then most common is someone putting the wrong thing down the bog. Your soil vent pipe (SVP) that runs up above roof eaves level needs a hand hole, say 300 mm above ground level. This lets you rod it from top down (while standing at ground level) in the direction of the flow. The rodding eye I marked at the end of the line let's you rod any blockage to the chamber at the top right corner of your drawing, you catch nasty stuff before it make its way down the gable wall. In terms of sinks / wash basins. If you take the main drain pop up just above the floor (110 dia pipe) and then connect the smaller diameter pipes into these then any blockage is usually as a result of a blockage in the sink traps for example. You can take the smaller diameter pipe up, into a tee piece with say a 40 mm rodding eye at the top of the tee. But that needs to be inside kitchen units. What about revising your drawing and asking BC? In some ways it looks like you are over complicating things, making the design harder and over spending.

I design stuff like this. There are many options. Best advice I can give you is to get an SE on board now, even if to provide a watching brief. If you don't then you introduce significant cost risk and uncertainty. You know there is a potential issue so the sooner you get that under control the better.

I can see where you are coming from. The main drain run needs a rodding point at the top end. Where it changes direction, down the side of the house at the corner you may want to select a chamber of 600mm dia. Set this a bit away from the wall so you can rod back along the rear and down the side. There is no requirement to have a chamber at each branch line unless the drain line is long, yours is not. Take your AAV postion, I assume that is your kitchen sink. Now the sink has a grill, then a 40mm trap, then say 50mm ABS pipe that runs into the 110mm dia pop up. Any blockage is going to happen at the trap. Have you had a look at the regs and the diagrams yet?

Ok that sounds like a good move. Here is what I would do if I was you. Find the best and well repute self employed 3CX digger driver with their own machine that works local. Pay the extra. Get them round and ask them how to do it! Ask them how they want the found marked; inside, outside, centreline or all of the preceeding. Assume the weather is going to be pish and some marks get lost by accident. Set some pegs well outwith the dig so if the marks get lost you can run a string line to get you back on track. Work out what you are going to do if you hit soft spots. An experienced digger driver is going to be your best friend here. They may also say they will pitch up during the pour and can use the back actor to get the concrete in place. Make sure you take plenty photographs. Be careful not to over dig. There are some horrible examples on BH where over dig happens and it just makes things ten times worse, they fill with water, hit even softer ground deeper down. Go and have a look again at what your SE is expecting in terms of ground conditions. If in doubt ask. Ask your SE if they can be on the end of the phone or just come to site if you get stuck. Yes, I know you probably don't want to pay for an SE visit but at the end of the day it can save you a pile of worry and cash. You only get one real chance of making a good job of this so don't take daft risks. Take time placing any reinforcement mesh.. many ground workers just fling it in.. and you pay for it.. but it is worse than useless if not properly placed.

Bottle gullies are generally frowned upon these days. Ok you have posted a sketch but it's not enough detail. Think about how folk that have never seen this before can get their head around things. You can see it but we can't quite get our head around it all. I've, based on the sketch you have posted, over marked a suggestion for your soil drainage. Let's try and simplify that first. Here is the theory that lies behind my over marking. When you flush a toilet a "plug of water" goes down the pipe. It causes a vacuum behind it that sucks out water traps, say a sink trap. But that plug in a 110mm dia pipe rapidly flattens out and let's air pass backwards..reducing the suction. The stack balances all that out as the main thing. If you look at BS codes and the Eurocodes if gives minimum distances between the points of inlet between say a wash basin and a wc connection. This is generally between 150 and 300 mm depending on the type of connection (vertical / horizontal etc. @flanagaj. You have a much greater spacing between the connections. So that problem goes away. Next is to look at this from the other direction. Say you want to connect a kitchen sink waste into a 110 mm dia soil pipe. The sink pipe after the sink trap can be 40 mm dia or 50mm dia. Here if you chuck a bucket of water down the sink it causes this "plug effect" in the msaller pipe, that breaks the water seal in the trap. The codes say if a 40mm pipe run is more than 3.0 m it can cause this problem. But it looks like where you show an AAV (air admittance valve) the run of the pipe is nowhere near 3.0m thus a standard trap with a 75mm seal and a 40mm pipe at the sink trap should be fine. You have a pop up above the floor still in 110 mm dia and only then change from below ground drainage pipe to above ground pipe, 40 or 50mm dia. Thus here you can omit the AAV. If you introduce a rodding point at the end of the drain line you can then omit chambers with INV ( Invert level, the height of the bottom of the pipe called the invert) 122.09m and 122.0m. If you can, move chamber INV 121.69 beyond the corner of the building. This lets you rod in both directions. Go back and check your drain falls. See, if for the soil the fall is more than 1% ( about 1:50) and for the rain water no more than 1:80. If your workmanship is good then you should be good to go. Next plot this on a long section. If you set the soil pipes below the rain water pipes by the time you get to the corner the rain water pipe should be above the soil pipe and it can cross over the top of the soil pipe. Just a last couple of caveats. If the base of the gravel bed under the pipes is below the top of the foundation then check with your SE this is ok. If the top of you pipes are less than 600mm below the ground surface then check the regs in terms of how you protect the pipes. This can be by way of concrete paving slabs as it only looks like domestic foor traffic. Once you have done that then with a fair wind your Acco channel should sort itself out. You can take it past the main rain water drainage and then return it back and tie into the RWP drainage where it runs down the gable end.

This is a fair point. There are indeed many who trade below the vat threshhold. But the bonafide ones pay their taxes and keep their insurance up to date. Unless you are a sole trader, just yourself then it's hard to not breech the limit for registration 90k at the moment. There are a few (often older) trades folk that are really competent, above board who do this. But they are few and far between. They do have their own tools though in my experience. Now there is an advantage in keeping below the vat threshold as when doing domestic work it gives you a striaght up 20% advantage over larger firms.

Post a sketch of what you propose.. that is worth a thousand words. Draw it on a bit oif A4.. take a photo and post. We won't test you on your drawing skills! I think you are getting yourself in a bind, the solution is probably simple. This is confusing. Let's see a sketch first.

The question I ask is are you paying cash in hand? Now we are all adults and know if you do this then there is a risk attached and you know you are winging it and you have to take the extra associated risk. It's not just the tax man, it's the fact that if they cock it up you will have to pay to demolish, buy new materails, the delay, the hurt you'l have to go through when you reralise you have been ripped off. That is the big boys / girls world. You can mitigate by standing over folk all day long and if you do that then you lose time / income so why not pay a little extra? I've said this many times before but quote Ruskin. “It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.” Now in mitigation there is are still a FEW folk that just do work on a labout only basis, they do a good job. But unless you are an experience self builder then it's NOT for you! Maybe the easiest way to explain this is to put yourself in the position of a Dad / Mum that runs a building business and wants to hand that down to your kids. I have on my tender list a builder who's daughter is on the tools at the moment and he is wanting to pass the business onto her. She works her arse off, the reality is that she is not as physically as strong as the men.. but she has a great brain. We often have discussion around how much profit you need to add onto the basic labour cost to make a small buiulding business wash it's face.. it's around 40 - 50% just to keep the show on the road. Now this Contractor is not special.. I do get on well with him. I like him personally as he is honest, will fix his mistakes. but business is business and I'm not here for him.. I'm here to represent my Clinets. It's time for you to have an open and honest convesation with the folk you are dealing with. The labour only market is very much tough love. There are suggestion from other members about expectations.. have none.. you need to grow a big pair of balls! You have two choices.. get down and dirty with the dogs, maybe catch fleas or pay a bit more. To be blunt I suspect you are playing with the dogs and they are going to pull your trousers down. Now on the upside.. there are Contractors that may say to you.. we will pitch up.. get you out the hole for now.. we will charge you bit more . but be fair with you. They know they will get the rest of the build. I work with Contractors like this.. they know it's in their long term interests. The funny thing is. I have a list of Contractors on my tender list. The great thing for them is that as a desinger I get to meet the Client first.. I do some design.. I get to stress test my Clients.. if I smell shite then no way will I put the builders that I trust and who trust me to be fair and impartial at risk from a dodgy Client..

If you have a timber frame structure it's prudent to insulate the cold water pipes.

Can you provide a bit more info for example: 1/ Do you have an "Architect" that is taking the lead on the warrant submission? 2/ What are you building / designing? 3/ What is your time progamme / expectation in terms of getting warrant approval? Borders Council are small, but cover a big area, they don't have a lot of resources compared with South Lanarkshire for example. The key here is to first identify what your issues are.

Agree this is the probable cause. Can of worms here. I've noticed that the adverts say 10 year guarentee.. but in the fine print often now there is a caveat of 7 years on the glass units, both 2g and 3g. For all. I often post about taking a pragmatic and philistine apporach to say underfloor heating, I recollect that I've said similar applies to glazing in the sense that we are looking for the things that "are built into the house" to last the design life of the house. Now it's true glazing units can last a very long time. I've seen some still hanging in there 20 - 25 years or more. But the reality is that a lot of glazing units are going to have to be replaced at some point often before the rest of the building fabric does. This is a hidden cost, you could call it a maintenance cost that comes around every decade or so. In summary, when desinging buildings I make my Clients aware of this "hidden cost"and let them make up their own minds. I have Clients that say.. this is our "forever home". OK, but if it is you have to be aware that if you select really high end / expensive glazing then there is going to be a sting in the tail later on when they fail. One way to reduce the long term cost risk is to use a lower spec glazing system and spend the money on the wall, floor and roof insulation that we know will last the lifetime of the building. I have some Clients that don't have a bean to rub together, others are well funded and happy to take the risk. It's a personal choice, so long as I inform them then it's up to them how they spend their money. You might get lucky as you might be able to slide the new glass in from the casement side? Hang fire taking off the cladding for now!

It is a bit. I see that on the inner leaf just above floor level you are maybe changing the material or masonry unit aspect ratio... be careful here as you may get longitudinal differential shrinkage.. this might result in a very nasty longitudinal crack in your wall just above skirting level with a plaster finish. I can see that you already have much of the substructure in place and it's much like trying to work with what you have. It's going to take a bit more thinking through. Is the insulation EPS boards or beads? My inclination is to have some form of barrier between the zone that could be saturated ( of partly) and the dry bit above.

For all as a cautionary note. Selecting screws / nails can be a bit of a minefield. Screwfix for example say "corrosion resistant".. but how resistant? All fixing have generally some resistance. We often spend lots of time designing fixings and connections so we need to know the right fixings are getting used and we can have some data on their corrision resistance as that gives us confidence. In my specifications I often ask for a screw fixing corrosion resistance of Service Class 2 (SC2). I've copied an explanation from Rothoblass which explains it in lay terms: The reference standard (EN 14592:2022) classifies exposure conditions into service classes and corrosivity classes, helping engineers and builders make informed choices. Service class The service classes (SC1, SC2, SC3, SC4) describe the timber’s moisture content based on the temperature and humidity conditions of the environment: SC1: elements in indoor environments with low and relatively stable humidity levels. Moisture fluctuations are minimal. SC2: elements in partially covered areas or exposed to moderate humidity. This includes porches or semi-protected structures, where timber can occasionally absorb moisture. SC3: elements exposed to the outdoors or high-humidity contexts. Temperature and humidity fluctuations are significant, and the moisture content in the timber reaches high levels. You can find out a bit more here: https://www.rothoblaas.com/blog/timber-screws-corrosion-factors-and-durability

Looks like you are your way to a cost effective solution. Watch these masonry bolts as if the expansive anchor type or say Thunder Bolts you can easily disturb / crack the masonry at the top of a wall. If you use the wrap over type hanger then then the wrap (if of say 70mm) does most of the work. Have fun!

Good first go. A few comments: 1/ Your cavity tray is only one course above finished ground. BC will and I will pull you up on that. 2/ The insulation shown as a triangle just below the cavity tray is unbuildable as detailed . You are concentrating on the technicalities rather than balancing this with what is buildable, the cost and how you are going to make sure that what you are paying for actually happens on site. Don't blame yourself.. as unless you do this as a day job and have a feeling of build cost there is no way of you knowing this. 3/ You have a wide cavity. Why not thicken the perimeter insulation up to 100 or more thickness. Have a look at how MBC do an insulated raft slab and pinch their ideas. Then you can omit the Marmox block unless you want to spend money. You could be pragmatic and use the same money in a better way and in the round still achieve what you are looking to do.

Watch this like a hawk. You TA is probably in a loss position. Double check if you have any fire protection and if any changes alter the design intent. Check if you are changing the exposure rating and make sure this is ok in terms of your detailng and wind driven rain. Go back and just have a look at what you have done so far. You have learnt a lot. Don't bury you head in the sand and hope it will be ok. If it turns out you have dropped a bollock then now is the time to address.

I'm very impressed from what I could see. It took you two hours!.. well you are sharp as a tack. No way could I have churned that out in two hours.. even the small bit I can see. You're probably a bit like me.. as an SE / desinger I spend most of my time thinking and how I'm going to communicate the information so everyone can understand it, lots of folk are reluctant to pay for that. I know I have to produce structural calculations.. which after a while are not that envigorating when doing day to day stuff. I like maths but up to a point and get excited when I have to design whacky stuff. You are more adapt and nimble at high level maths than I. Far all. The idea is that you do the thinking, plan out how you are going to set up the calculation pack do the supporting drawings, bite the bullet and just get on with it. Then you have to check your sums and design philosophy is still valid. Is there any way you can make it idiot proof at my end so I can open it in excel? The reason for me pressing is this. When I joined BH it was as a result of a prompt. At the time Jeremy Harris (JH) was someone that floated my boat, he popped up again a while back but then went back into retirement. His thermal loss spreadsheet must have been used by many thousands of folk. Life has moved on but your spreadsheet has, from what I can see has potential. It's something that I would want to interrogate, see where the limits are, the best way to use it. I design insulated raft slabs for example, done it for years. But I can see there is potential for tweaking the perimeter insulation to extend down towards the foundation. This can make a big difference if the site conditions are ameniable. The actual type of soil under an insulated slab and around the underbuilding can have a huge impact as does the mobility of any ground water. @saveasteading is probably the best exponent of this practical art on BH as he has actually built hundreds if not more. At the end of the day the key to designing for self builders is to keep it as simple as possible, even if everything is not prefect. This allows for example a local builder with limited knwoledge, who does not have access to specialist trades to compete for and have a chance of delivering what you are paying for. @SteamyTeaYour absolutely right to highlight the form factor for example.. that is one bit I could see. I tried to track you formulae but the references are not familiar to me. But in the round my feeling is that you are introducing the next generation spreadsheet. call it Jeremy mark two?

It looks like from my end you have done your very best but are in a bit of a bind. The key thing here is not to blame yourself. Many find themselves in your position where you come to discover that the design packages you have don't cover all of the design and the interfaces don't fit up. Your strategic risk is that you make changes from what has been approved "in outline".. the BC inspector turns up later and says "you have changed stuff" and there is going to be no completion certificate until you justify the changes. Your design team to date are likely to wash their hands and set you adrift. At that point you may not be even able to sell the house. Have you considered trying to find a supportive designer that will take say a half day talking to you on the phone, then another two / three days reviewing your design, doing some fag packet calcs.. trying to to get their head round what you have done and the way forward, then at least another day talking to you on the phone, thrashing out you options. Call that 6 days work @ £400.0 a day = £2.4k You'll need a very experienced designer, one that undestands structures , maybe with a building background and with a bit of Architectural flair. Now that may seem a lot but even if they save you a weeks work and a day or so for a good trades person and a labourer then they have washed their face.

But of practical food for thought and info. 32 inches is about 800 mm. The ceiling ties you have are "economic and serving to hold the head of the wall against moving sideways. It's a basic garage after all. Next is if you have an attic say in a house what loads do the design codes prescribe? Well there are 3 types of load: 1 / The dead (permanent load) which is the self weight of the timber joists and the flooring. 2/ Where the space is habitable the load from people is 1.5 kN/m^2 (~150 kg/ sq metre) in domestic stuff = about 150 kg. This is an onerous load and not really applicable in your case. 3/ Attic storage is 25kg / sq metre.. but that includes the weight of the flooring.. so it works out at about 10 - 11 kg per square metre that you can use to store your xmas trees and empty suitceses etc. If it was a domestic floor (150 kg / m sq) then I would start using an old rule of thumb. It's ok to do this as your garage is probably built in feet / inches so why not use this as a basis. 3.3m ~ 129 inches which is about 11 feet. Divide 11 feet by 2 = 5.5 then add 2 = 7.5 inches depth based on a 2 foot spacing. 7.5" = 7.5 x 25.4 = 190mm! But at 400 mm centres that will drop below 170mm depth. Or lets say we can live with a bit more delfection and a reduced load. The rule of thumb is just to add 1 instead of 2 to the calculation above. This now gives.. divide 11 feet by 2 = 5.5 the add 1 = 6.5 inches depth based on a 2 foot spacing. = 6.5 x 25.4 = 165mm. In summary what I have done above just confirms your first thoughts are in line with normal expectation.. 145 - 170 deep timbers if you put them in at say 400 mm centres look at the moment adequate. I suspect that if you spent more time refining the loads then a 145 mm deep timber in C24 would be ok. After all there is only so much load you can get in there (unless you do something daft) due to the diminishing height as you appraoch the eaves. The main thing here is that the difference in cost between 170 and 145 deep joists is not a lot.. it's the head room and making sure you can open the doors that is key. Can you just essentially leave the roof as it is and introduce an independent floor? This might be possible if you have a timber wall plate on top of the wall. On the inside of the wall you fix a ledger piece, then use wrap over joist hangers with the wrp onto the existing wall plate. The beauty of this is that it's nearly all demountable so you get to recover the joists, flooring if you screw it down and not glue it, live with any squeeks! One last thing though.. you need to have a look at the walls and what they are sitting on, do you have any door openings below the new joists.. think lintel strength. If you add load you have to be sure the walls and founds are not going to misbehave.