Gus Potter

Now we have got ball rolling. On off often makes a good point and boils things down. Always enjoy on off's responses. WWilts.. don't be put of the PM route. You may find the right one for you just drops in your lap! Gav_P you also hit it on the head.. good PM's (especially younger ones with family commitments etc) also tend to follow a route where they can be rewarded for their skills and this can often only happens on larger projects. It's a pity really as the small projects can be as equally challenging. There are some cracking big high value projects posted on BH but in general BH projects are much smaller. Up near Glasgow there is a huge amount of extensions ~ 20 - 80K going on and the say extra 10% for a PM (maybe with contract administration) cost is not what folk seem to want to bear. R_Sole has made some good posts about this, worth looking up in my view. Sole explains it in more technical depth. The contractor's push, cynically as they don't want to be supervised and so on. TBH the number of times that I see clients that could have saved more than the PM cost is remarkable. Architect's and SE's can often provide the same service at a similar rate. One good skill of a PM.. which takes a lot of experience is to get a client to recognise that if they spend too little the thing they think they are buying will not actually do what they want. But a good PM will get what they want at a fair price. I have copied a quote from Ruskin at the end of this post for all. But the market is such that all clients think they won't be the ones to be ripped off. It's only later when something goes wrong do they realise that it could have been different. What I have stated above is the "ideal" scenario" but the reality of life is that often folk think/ know they don't just have that spare cash to spend on the professional fees. In summary yes as a self builder extender you can cut out a lot of the professional fees but there is no free lunch.. you have to put in the work to realise these savings. If you are on a high salary say then the PM route may be best for you. Ruskin 1819 - 1900 “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.”

Hello WWilts. Good post.. I hope you are encouraged by the response you get here. If your are embarking on a domestic project then as strange as this may seem you have to like the PM as a person and that is a good place to start. If this a domestic project it is really important to get this off on the right foot. PM's are human too and professional PM's will invest in your project..think about it when they are "off duty" Find folk like that then start to look at the cv..often someone that is really invested can deliver great benefits even though on paper they may not have a mile long track record. They may have for example great contacts with builders. I know a few that used to be right hands on builders that are no longer able to make a living on the tools as they physically can't do it any more. But they know their stuff, almost like the poacher turned game keeper who is on your side. One trick is to seek them out as they tend to be in demand.

Hello Grant. Portal frames are handy things and quite versatile. There are quite a few ways of detailing these up to avoid the thermal bridging.. For all that may be less familiar with steel portals.. you also want to try and understand where condensation can occur and this can be a little more difficult to deal with when you interface TF with steelwork, particularly if it is a renovation / conversion. For all..one thing is to remember that steel is water proof so any condensate on the inside will not migrate outwards unlike on the TF where you have a breathable membrane on the sheeting ply for example. Once you get a handle on this you can then start to check and develop how you are going to try and fix things to the steel, the tricky bits often occur at the top and bottoms of the steels. You make progress.. then you go back and review the design.. and with renovations this can be quite an iterative process. If you want, post some more photos (panoramic views are helpful as it lets folk see what the steels are holding up and so on) and maybe a few cross sections from your drawings (if you have them) so folk can see how the TF is designed (or not) to interface with the steels. Just as an aside.. what is the white paint? for decor / corrosion control.. or fire? You'll get lot's of good ideas here as you know and one of these may just be the perfect solution for you; save you time and money etc.

Hello Jilly. Hope this helps. I have put my thoughts in line with your text and in italic. Update: I'm a bit stressed. ..I didn't get these replies until after the job was done and it was too late... Don't be, there is often more than one way of looking at things, and, you have all the resources of BH at your disposal. I chipped the cement off as best I could, cleaned the steel and painted with red oxide. Good approach but can see how you may still have a concern. However, the windows have been installed and there is a small leak at the bottom near this place, the fitters came back to seal again but its still leaking. They will come back (but Christmas is causing delays), and they are making an aluminium shroud for the outside. Maybe don't conflate the two things.. leaky windows with steel corrosion. Separate the two issues. I didn't realise about the bituminous paint thing (which the structural engineer specifies when you look through the detail). Yes they do as this is a common approach when you design / convert a farm building or an industrial building.. we know that this interface between the column, ground level, foundations and walls is a tricky area to detail. OMG, I can see this is my fault. Because there had been so many little problems with the builder I had decided to ask him to stop at the superstructure and I would go on to subbies, but this has left me wide open to making mistakes...like this. No Jilly it's not your fault. What you are doing in my view is exhibiting a good understanding of the build process, identifying previously unforseen problems before they really become an issue, which almost always occurs on renovations / conversions seeking advice, then a solution. As a further word of encouragement lots of companies would love (give their back teath) to have their graduate trainees exhibiting / questioning matters as you are doing. Is there some kind of desiccant that will dry this out? How can the steel be treated retrospectively?? Will BC make me take the windows out?? I hope the comments I have made above will give you some encouragement but now time for some substance! BC will accept a reasoned argument so no need to "take windows out" that is last resort stuff. But for all.. if you wind BC up then.. If any other members can chip in then thanks. Jilly as I said above. Don't conflate the two issues. Your windows and doors should be drained with small drainage channels and outlets. The amount of water that comes out these will be small but if these are not located / working correctly this is more likely to cause a problem with the glass rather than the steel. I'll leave this to the other members to comment on. I'll give up on the italic now. Turning now to the steel corrosion and the fact that this is a conversion. Often when you are renovating you have to take a pragmatic view. That post you have looks quite chunky. It also looks like an older type section. I suspect that the wall thickness of the post may be relatively quite substancial. The reason this matters is that the section can suffer quite a bit of corrosion before it becomes unable to carry the loads. Also, the corrosion that is happening is near the end of the section, this is where the bending forces caused by the wind and so on are less. Think of it as a ruler getting bent, the wind sucks the adjacent doors/ windows out, they are attached to the column and most of the movement / bending in this takes place in the middle.. the bending forces are greater here in the middle of the post. At the top and the bottom the column carries more vertical load (also shear load for the keen) but a locally thinner section here can often cope with this and in Jilly's case this thinning is cause by the rust. Yes that is a bit of theory.. but it's relevant. Simplistically when we design and consider older structures that have got a bit of rust on them we look at where the forces are. We look at the depth of the corrosion and reduce the effective section thickness in these places, then analyse that. Also, the rust provides a protective layer (sacraficial layer) that helps stop the oxygen getting to the metal that is still intact. We then look at the rate of corrosion and try and ascertain if this rate of corrosion will reduce the design life of the structure which currently for domestic housing is about 50 -60 years.. and that discussion is for another time. Jilly. In summary you may best just to leave this alone as the more rust you scrape off and mess about with it the more harm you may do than good. I think you should make sure that the glazing folk have set up the drainage channels outlets the correct way. Make sure you channel any water from a patio etc away from the house. If you wish and if you want to be sure you can drill a hole in the post to get the thickness (about 1/4 to 1/3 up the height of the column) , take some really good close up photos of the rust and so on. BH members will give you some pointers as to how you can check this out structurally / get an opinion on this. Also, take some photos and post a floor plan so that folk can see what this post is holding up. All the best.

Gus’ Structural Engineering and DIY Part 01 Hello all. I’m giving the blog feature on BH a go.. lots to learn and a special thanks to the FMG / members who run / contribute to this site. This blog is built around the structural alterations and extension that I embarked on.. off.. on.. at the back of my house. I work in the construction industry, mostly in an office these days so this project has given me a break from the computer and allows me to keep my hand in on the tools. I have “experimented” at times. Some experiments have worked out ok, some less so. The blog is not chronological as you’ll soon see. As I go I’ll pick out some common elements that you may find on a self build / DIY project and try and show how I went about their structural design and so on.. Although it’s a relatively small extension many of the design principles can be scaled / adapted up for a new build etc. I hope this will be of interest. If anyone has any questions / advice then just post and I’ll do my best to respond. Please remember that if you are undertaking structural design / work or something that could be a safety risk then always get it checked by a competent person unless of course you are the "that person" before starting work. So here goes! As a quick overview the project involves taking a chunk out of the back of the house and building a rear extension. One aim was to make this as least disruptive as possible so we could keep living in the house with some normality. Other reasons were to save some money and get something bespoke to us. In the next posts I’ll cover some of the different aspects of how I went about the detailed structural design. Photo 01: Sun room sticking out – freezing cold – to be demolished but kept as a secure store room for tools for a while. Fig A 01. Eventually.. What’s going on here? Photo 02 The extension is getting roughed out over the sun room, the sun room was retained for a while to stop dust getting into the house, security and so on. For the eagle eyed.. table saw, yes I know the table saw is missing the guard but it is “under maintenance” The ladder (ex BT which some may recognise) was gifted to me by an old sparkie, who got it from someone, who got it from.. Photo 03: Old sun room down and preparing trench (under radiator and old back door) for temporary strip found to support props. Really soft ground just outside the original wall hence the temporary strip found. The old doors windows are fitted into the new structure to give a bit of daylight. The radiator still works.. as I’m a bit soft. Photo 04: Timber props and needles going in. Photo: 05 The upper side of the steel with the needles cut back. “Sadly” the old sun room is gone. The timbers I could reclaim have been.. the rest has gone on the wood burner. Photo 06: Needles cut back on the inside with restraint straps at ceiling level.. to be explained in following posts. That's it for now until I work out what to do next!

All the best to you both. Thanks for sharing, much appreciated.

Yes! Have a look at how much you can jack screw up the door hinges. I have just got an Origin system and was surprised at how much you can lift the door by using the adjustment on the hinges. Scraping the barrel, but you could reset the door frame just out of plumb so that as it opens it lifts like a rising hinge door. That is really rough! and not a professional approach. The door will then tend to swing shut.. but sometimes needs must. You may void the guarentee on the doors too.. but it's what you can live with... Mr Punter I think could well save the day if need be and a much better idea than putting the door frame out of plumb.. it's how you sell it. All the best.

Hi Larry. Yes, it's a great place to pick up knowledge and get a bit of encouragement in the process. If you want to add in something heavish later then it's worth while having a quick check to avoid any unwanted surprises later. It may be that you don't need to do anything at all. For all too. I have copied a link to the LABC site which gives some general rules on notches in solid joists. There are plenty other places where you can find this info. Much you see here is based on the BS and Eurocode standards but I have not copied direct from the standards in part due to copywrite. The bit that is missing from much of the info you can find as a self builder etc is the definition of a notch! The depths, positions etc are laid out for you but how long can a notch be before it stops being a notch? For the really keen you can find info on this in the USA codes for example. But as a guide the notch length is recommended to be no more than 1/3 of the joist depth. Larry, have a measure and see if you can just leave them as they are if you want. If you later put the cylinder near the ends of the joists it will often be the case that the shear force starts to dictate whether the joists will be ok, so long as the joists are notched not too close to the ends. I chucked this bit in above for all as from time to time you'll get some "cowboy" cutting too long a notch and claiming it follows the rules! Glue! It's great stuff. A lot of glues are "stronger" than the wood, the screws provide the "clamping" effect and for simple analysis you can just ignore them after that and rely on the glue. One key here if is to just be careful on the selection of the glue. To do a technically correct repair you want to consider using a "structural glue". Have a look at D4 rated glues. The "D" refers to the durability and related more to "non structural" applications. An alternative, I have used, is Cascamite (a resin type glue) which comes in a powder.. messy but good stuff and it's a structural glue. You can just mix what you need as you go. Lastly..make sure you clean the surfaces well as if not you may as well use sellotape (exaggerating a bit for drama), or just put the flooring back down.

Hello patp. It's a pity that you had to post about a concern you have. However as you will know it's "grist to the mill" on Build Hub and I think will attract some good responses. What you describe is almost like some exam problem! Sounds like you may have what is called a " confined" or "artesian aquifer" effect where the water is rising out of the ground without any mechanical assistance... like a spring on a hillside.. Your post contains a lot of information! If this is the case (Artesian effect) then I would take this a step at a time. It may be that the "offending" bore hole is actually saving the day and mitigating the potential flooding effects that could occur as a result of over development? It's worth considering that a borehole can be quite a small aperture compared with natural fissures in the ground.. maybe the developer is defecting the blame here. The EA are not daft contrary to popular belief. They will be reluctant to get involved at this stage unless there is a risk of contamination of the water courses... and unless flooding has occured then the risk that is percieved has not been realised so it won't flag up too much as they have much more ongoing serious issues to deal with. If you wish can you make two sketches. One would be a plan view.. try and show the ground levels ditches etc, if you can, draw a cross section... here what you need to convey is how your house sits with respect to the orther houses and the "problem" bore hole. If you can bear to, then post your location.. down to the street you live in.. Some posters will have a quick look at the geological maps. Better still if you have any SI information post that. All the best.

Just to add a bit. Looking back at the posts everyone makes good points and are "half right" or more in my view. I would list them but suffice to say.. thanks to all. I would like to think that I too am "half right" but probably also more "half wrong"..that is the nature of "fire protection" in some ways. It's also important to look at the buildability / practicality side of things as some generic fire protection details /measures look great on a drawing but can be heavily labour intensive with the associated increase in cost. The devil is in the individual project detail, so for all, the more information you can provide the better as each project is often different. On a positive note.. don't forget that sometimes while you may think that the fire protection costs a lot it can also form part of your acoustic insulation. From memory I think PeterW has posted about this as have many others. Worth trying to look up these posts.

Hello all. Good points from all. Generally if the steel is within a fully protected enclosure then that alone is often ok, no need to protect the individual beams. This is akin to say enclosing a steel beam within a brickwork pier or thinking laterally, a piece of rebar within a concrete slab.. the concrete cover insulates, the rebar stays coolish, thus the floor stays up.. As a general point which I hope will be of help to members. Fire protection of beams etc can be difficult to get your head around, even if you are dealing with it on a fairly regular basis. One starting point is if you can get an understanding of what "Fire Resistance" means. As an aside, the English and Scottish fire regs differ in places but the principles are the same. I'm more familiar with the Scottish regs so to all.. please correct if I misquote the English regs. The overall "fire resistance" of say a plasterboard ceiling / wall or steel beam protection is obtained by combining a number of different properties. One property is called "Insulation" You can see this mentioned in for example the English regs (ER) Approved doc B clause B19. What this property measures is how well the material..be it plaster board or something else insulates what you are trying to protect. Here what you are trying to do is to not just to reduce the "convected heat" but also the "radiated heat" and this is where the "insulation" comes in. We know that say an electric bar fire can set light to your sofa.. by radiating heat.. it's the same principle. You'll also see a property called "integrity" mentioned in clause B19. What you are doing here is making sure that the "insulating" layer is firmly fixed in position such that (in the case of plaster board , fireline board, wall cladding..) the seams don't start opening up. If this happens then sparks, flames and hot gasses bypass the insulating layer and compromise what you are trying to protect. Now knowing this will hopefully help with the next bit. While a single layer of 12.5 plaster board / fire line board etc may give you say 30 minutes (resistance) much depends on what it is fixed to! Say for example you have 50 x 25 mm timbers levelling out the ceiling. In a fire the fixings get pretty hot and the small timbers may not offer the support to maintain the "integrity" On the other hand if you have fixed your plaster board to big solid joists with good "chunky dwangs (noggins) then your ok. Below is a link to the British Gypsom White book. https://www.british-gypsum.com/literature/white-book/floors-and-ceilings There is lot's of good info in the white book for example, often worth just a rough peruse. A good example of the above is to look at page C6 SO6 P04 Here you can see how you can get your 30 min with their product but the info they give only covers you for certain joist sizes and floor thickness etc. I have screen shotted part of the page above. The big solid joists etc contribute to the integrity. the plaster board etc to the "insulation" giving the "fire resistance" Fire protection.. It's a big subject but if you can get your head around some of the underlying principles you can be; safe, get a handle on what you may need for your own particular design and maybe save money too!

And running about in bare feet, saves a fortune on slippers which offsets the time you may be extravagent with the heating.

Interesting thread this. From time to time an SE for example will insert into their terms and conditions of appointment that their liability will for example extend to 10 times the fee value. This is often done where there is say the risk of contaminated land. For example you could design a small portal framed MOT station on an old garage site. The fee for this may only be a few hundred quid but if the ground is contaminated it could have major impact on the structure and clean up costs. The SE could suddenly find they are facing a claim of tens of thousands. It is important particularly when dealing with less experienced clients that the risks are fully explained. This allows them to make an informed judgement. If the client does not want to take this risk then the fee needs be adjusted to reflect this liability. Before progressing it may be worth while finding out what the SE's T & C's were. Pragmatically maybe the best outcome at the end of the day is to contact the SE, explain the current situation as diplomatically as you can, why you feel the way you do and ask them how they may feel about making a contribution to the Church / local community funds as a good will gesture without predudice... and all agree just to leave it at that. While this may appear not to attractive financially in the short term a bit of good will generated now could be very beneficial at some later date.

Hello Andymb The inline system pv panels tend to weigh less than the slates. But if you want to really future proof the roof you may want to allow for an extra 20 - 25 kg / square metre of dead load applied to the rafters. To put this into a bit of context. Broadly speaking the weight of a modest vaulted concrete tiled roof may weigh about 1.0 kN/ (~ 100 kg)square metre on plan, slates may weigh a bit less depending on type etc. Added to that is an extra 0.6 kN (~ 60 kg) per square metre to account for what is called roof access load. If you live in parts of say Aberdeenshire the snow load can be greater than the access load. These loads get factored up in different ways but you can see that roughly the extra weight of the solar panels is a fairly modest increase in loading. If you really want to future proof the roof then it's worth looking at what ultimate form it may take. For example will you settle for a flat ceiling at wall head height..? do you want a bit of vaulting.. this may take the form of what is called a "raised tie truss" or do you want to go for the full volume right up to the ridge. This will influence the future proofing more than the weight of the solar panels as the whole method of constrution of the roof changes. Maybe the best thing to do is to take the approach that you are going to go for the full internal vaulting, design for that as you can lower ceilings etc later on. The material and creating the strong points for the roof supports will cost more but the labour cost should increase at a lesser rate when you consider the roof as a whole. For example you'll probably need to bed the wall plates, provide gutters, flashings and so on. In other words you get to keep the materials to some extent. Alternatively, it may be that you are able to create a habitable attic space? in which case the floor loadings are an important part of this cost / benefit calculation. As always it's all to do the available funds! Once you get a handle on the structure then this sets / underpins matters for any accreditations etc you may feel you need for the actual pv installation.

Hello Derek. Post more photos and probably as helpful if not more would be the floor plans. A video would be a bonus. That portion of masonry holding up the end of the floor transfer beam is one of the things that stands out as something that needs a closer look. Often you use new timber stud walls to restrain bits of brickwork but is really important to connect it all together correctly. Examine the info the SE gave you. Don't hesitate to phone the SE if you have any doubts or if anything has changed (even small changes) since the SE did the calcs etc as it easy to get caught out by thinking that it's ok to move a door say, then all of a sudden you remove something that the SE has relied upon to provide stability to say a main load bearing element. If you work through things a bit at a time you'll get there.

Hello greido. I'm a bit west (in EK) of you but here are a few observations... and a bit of a story. It's a bit late so a bit of food for thought. I'll work through your post. Circa 1930 bungalow. I used to live in Edinburgh but in the 1930's they were still skint after the first war to say the least . Some bungalow roofs were still built using the pre first war method and rules of thumb to size the rafters and so on. This gave you a roof that was more conducive to modern conversion. But in the 30's they started to introduce lighter weight roofs. The intrinsic difference being that the sizes of the timbers were much reduced as they had worked out to some extent how to make the roofs function more like a modern day prefabicated roof truss. I'm cutting out a lot of detail here. From memory (happy to be corrected) if you take say the Blackhall area they were still building the roofs the traditional way, slightly steeper pitches with larger timber sizes and so on. But in other areas they adopted the lighter weight roofs. Here the floor joists forming the attic floor / rafters were thinner and the position of what we call the soldiers (the upright bits) , collars were relocated in such a manner that they are "in the way" when you want to convert the loft. As soon as you move these the forces in the main members of the roof change significantly, and just as importantly, the forces in the connections change such that they often no longer work when you try and move the soldiers etc. This introduces difficulty / complexity and thus extra cost. Now much depends on what type of roof you have as they are two different animals. I'm just guessing, but the previous loft conversion you have may be long standing and would not pass muster when compared with the modern standards when it come to converting the loft. The first approach mentions "replacing the roof", I assume that means that the whole roof is to come off. Doing this can give you much more scope to change the internal layout of the attic. It's also easier to estimate the price. But, it can often be much harder and more labour intensive to keep the existing main roof structure intact. If you have the lighter 1930's type of roof the rafters are shallower for example.. this makes it harder to design the insulation, deal with the condensation risk, ventilation of the sloping part of the roof and so on.. at attic floor level you often need to do a lot of strengthening and often there are a load of services in the way.. builders know this and charge accordingly. Turning now to the indication that your Architect gave regarding retaining the existing roof. Being pragmatic and speaking from experience. To do this takes much more thought and drawing effort. Often you think you have "cracked it" then you start drawing it / doing the detailed calculations and realise that there is a spanner in the works.. it can take sometimes days to figure it out! I suspect that your Architect may have fallen into this trap! It may be worth while being pragmatic. If you have a good personal relationship with your Architect then discuss it. They may be a bit less experienced at pricing their time ( just starting out on their own maybe) but great designers, maybe they are not the best sales folk and in their desire to please promise more than they can deliver. Discuss it with them if you feel you can. If that does not work out then consider meeting them half way and put it down to experience. You can refuse to pay and play hard ball but it will give you stress.. maybe best to move on. If you choose to move on then consider contacting an experienced SE who knows how to convert lofts and what the options / costs are as you seem to already have a conceptual scheme. Lastly, although you may feel you have had a bit of a setback try and enjoy the process as much as you can.. it is rewarding. All the best.

Good point TonyT.. one avenue worth exploring. For all.. when you are dealing with older brickwork there is some uncertainty as to how much load a resin anchor say can carry never mind any of the expanding type fixings. Also, to get near the capacity of the declared manufacture's values you need to be installing the fixings near to the centre of the bricks. It's sod's law that just when you think you have a winner the coursing of the bricks stymies any hope you have. It's can be even worse when you are trying to do extensions say and trying to fix into brick with holes in them. For Derek the best thing to my mind it to sort out the basic load paths and key structural elements (if required to do so) then focus on how to fix the rest. Work out what is involved, the costs, what you can do youself, what you can practically justify as being structurally ok, even if it does not comply with the original SE design. I am being cautious, but Derek has not provided enough information to enable a view to be taken as to what loads are being applied at first floor level and also how the stability of the external walls is maintained. There could be a lot more load than what we can see from the photos! But.. there may be less too! Thus the the issues may be a lot less of a problem. Also, once you start to delve into this stuff you need to review the founds and underbuilding. If the builder has gone "astray" then you could over stress the founds.. there is quite a bit to look at. That said, although I seem like a gloom and doom merchant many of these things can resolve themselves.. but you need to be able to show that you have at least considered all of the parts that hold the building up and how they interact. For Derek it may well be not as bad as things first seem. The key here is to identify the key issues (load bearing and structural stability) and fix them if necessary, then suppliment this with the finer.. minor points.. which could be just a case of adding a few extra fixings.

Ah but.. yes saddle branches onto older pipes tend to leak for me as I'm not that lucky. Slip couplers seem great but if you are not used to using them day in and day out they don't "slip" quite as much as you think. Again maybe I'm not so lucky or need to learn more. But if you use a .. flexible coupler and follow Peter's suggestion.. At each end where it interfaces with the existing pipe you'll make life a bit easier as it's easier to slip them about, they are a bit more forgiving especially if the existing pipe move a bit when you are exposing it. They will cost a bit more but you'll save the skinned back of the hands and a lot of frustration.

No Sole, it's not just you. I take the same view.

Hello Derek. As a word of encouragement many things can be fixed. The first thing is to make sure the basic elements of the structure are sound or if not, can be fixed. Then you can look at the other areas that require remedial action, the various options.. what you can do yourself, what you can't and so on. It may be that you can't do something as you maybe don't have the specialist tools or the expertise.. or time. I have had a quick look at the photos. The first thing that I noticed was that (I think the seventh photo) you have a transfer beam resting on a padstone on the end of an inside single brick wall. Just beyond that there is a concrete lintel and what looks like some timber infill framing. A concern I would have would be the stability of almost what is now a potentially slender masonry column which seems to be carrying a fair bit of vertical load. When you are working with older properties you have to make an allowance for the age / materials used etc and most importantly how the work you do will impact on the existing structure. Another key thing it to make sure the building is tied together. For example you can see the joists are roughly notched to sit on the flange of the beam. Normally I would expect to see some steel tie straps or some other method that ensures the ends of the joists framing into the beam are tied together so they can't slip off the flange for example. Also, by tying the joists they work more effectively to hold the external walls in place. Tying different bits of a building together is critical to structural design. I see this from time to time where people leave in a slender piece of masonry. Looks fine on a drawing / maybe you can get it to work calculation wise but once you get the builder in the rules of the game change! If you wish you can post some plans as BH members will be better able to see what you are dealing with and maybe make cost effective suggestions. In the meantime it would be worth while getting the thing checked out by an SE before you go any further. All the best.

That might look quite good finished off with a bit of leadwork to hide the brick. Cut out a bit of the bed above the bricks and put in a lead flashing, the bottom would form the drip to keep the rain off the window. Make sure you use patination oil on both sides of the lead so you don't get staining. You may be able to pick up an offcut of lead to save buying a full roll. Code 4 lead would do the job.. not too thick and not too thin. Don't block off any of the weep holes. There is a limit to the length that each lead strip should be as it moves about. For a flashing in code 4 the max length of each piece is recommended to be 1.5m so you probably need to do it two or more pieces.

Nice part of the world Matt. You'll get lots of good practical advice here (as I can attest to) that will help you make informed decisions... of which there will be plenty to make! The main thing is to try and set yourselves up so that you have fun doing it. Keep posting if you can and take lots of photos for memories sake. All the best with the project.

Hello Vijay. Take your time to start with.. get the coursing worked out both horizontally and vertically. Some days you'll get on great and lay lots. Take care with any corners and openings as if it's rough you'll just make a rod for your own back later. A 7 N/mm^2 dense block is fairly standard provided the wall is not to high between points of lateral restraint.. that could be the floors, return corners of a descent length etc. Check your drawings and SE spec. Remember to look after the blocks, specially as it's winter. Make sure you don't lay when the temperature is below 4 deg C or falling.. even inside! All the best.. once you get the bug and realise the savings it can be a very satisfying job.

Good point @oldkettle yes the kit will drive your insulation options to some extent. You can get prices for the basic kit with different wall thickness' for example. Thicker stud walls may result in less studs. For all, the timber studs have less insulation performance than the insulation so when you calculate the u value of the wall you need to take into account the stud density. There are so many variations to get your head around so hence the basic approach I mentioned to get you started. As old kettle says some TF suppliers may be making their margin in a different way... just on the kit with the offering of installation. They may have their own crane for example and a good experienced assembly squad.

Interesting reading this. Over the years the waters seem to have become more muddied by the TF suppliers making it harder to compare quotes. Scotland in some ways are more ahead with the TF concept.. long storey... in some ways we went though this journey 20 years ago. Just roughly a lot of the projects on BH are of a good size, some with a significant value. Given this it may be worthwhile just asking how much the basic TF costs.. walls + roof. Given many of the project values here on BH there could be saving to be made by looking at this and paying someone else to design the insulation, advise on the windows doors and other high cost elements... perhaps take your time to choose these elements and shop about your self. There is often not that much money in the structural kit compared with the rest of the job.. it is the extras that seems to be where the Tf manufacture's are making their margin. Also, as soon as you want to make any changes as you go then each time you need to go back to the TF to check out insulation values etc..and at what cost. maybe as a self builder you should consider the need for flexibilty. As you go you want to make changes. Maybe there is merit in getting the basic kit up, the roof weather proof and working with your local builder as you go?