Gus Potter

Maybe you can unclip the controller on the pump. This might let you access the shaft of the pump without draining the system, sometimes there is a screw cap covering the shaft, when you take this off some water drips out, but not a flood. Some of the pumps I have seen have a slot on the shaft, give it a couple of turns with a screwdriver to see if it is rotating freely.

Good points @MortarThePoint One way of looking at Mortar's question particularly, to sensitive doors (say some bifolds, sliding doors) in wide openings is to start with the finished article and work back. Steel beams - First split the loading on the lintel up into two types; you have the dead weight (dead load) bricks, blocks, floors and roofs etc. You can calculate how much the beam will bend (deflection) under this load. Now the bottom of the beam will not be flat but bowed down in the middle. But the dead load tends to be fairly constant, give or take moisture content changes in the materials and so on.. You can allow for this initial defection when taking the ball park first door sizes. Next you calculate what the extra deflection will be when you get say snow on the roof, have a party, fill the house with book cases etc, that is called the live (imposed load) deflection. Now you can add the two deflections together and this gives the overall deflection. Just remember that when say the snow melts the beam will move back up a bit. Let's say you have an opening 4000 mm wide. You can start by saying let's keep the deflection limit under imposed loading to say span / 360 = 4000 / 360 ~= 11.1mm, maybe a bit too much for sensitive doors. Plug this 11.1mm (or a lower value) deflection back into the formula that Mortar gives and this will give you the beam second moment of area, now go to the tables and find a beam with a greater value than this. Next go back and calculate the overall beam deflection under dead + live load, and just as a check do the imposed load only again. Have a look at the figures you get and cross check with the door manufacture's tolerances in terms of deflection, they generally won't be too forgiving. Now you have got a handle on the beam size that you need to control the deflection. The next thing to do it to check that the beam will be safely carry all the loads, these are the "strength checks". Now you are nearly there. It's tempting to stop there as you think.. well I know what I need to allow for beam deflection, I'll just give it a few millimetres for the mastic seal. But mastic is not as compressible as you think when it is thin, you can accidentally transfer load to the tops of the doors, they bend and start to stick. The last part of this jigsaw is to detail the seals / insulation so you avoid transferring load to top of the doors. Cold formed steel "Catnic" type lintels These are a bit of a different animal. Generally they are designed with similar deflection criteria to the above. However, you need to look closely at what is called the "load ratio" A cavity lintel supports the inner and outer leaves. The two leaves have different loadings and this can cause the lintel to twist a bit as well as bowing downwards. if you follow the manufactures guidance (particularly the installation instructions) to the letter then the lintel should be safe. I think the key here is to get the detailing right in terms where and how you allow the beam / cold rolled lintel movement to take place. This is not that easy when you are trying at the same time to prevent cold bridging and so on. With big expensive doors that are not that tolerant to vertical deflection, loading on the top side I would look to start with a lower deflection limit, design the beam for that, detail the vertical movement joint over the doors and see if it looks pleasing to the eye and fits with the insulation detail. All easier said than done as a lot of the aluminium sections are pretty slender these days. If you have steel Universal beams and an expensive glazing system you can put a bit of precamber on the beams. In other words you work out the deflection, pre bend the beam up so that when the load is applied the bottom of the beam is flatter rather than bowed down. It's not that expensive to do on modest sections funnily enough. look at how flat the underside of the beam needs to be.

Hi @Onoff Schematic as requested, its' not a work of art I'll admit.

What type of piles are you using, size, type, predicted length etc. How big a rig / type do you need? If you can take a step back then you can maybe make progress re temporary work matt design and how you can maybe incorporate this into the final design. Also, have a look to see if / how you may be able to recycle stuff as this can offset the matt cost. As a word of encouragement it may not cost as much as you think, although a bit of a stinger up front.

Good looking stuff. Gravels in particular are washed, crushed rock sometimes, sometimes not. What you have here are often described as single sized aggregates. Yes you have a bit of "dust" (in terms of sieve size when grading aggregates) but I would have no problem accepting the stuff you have in the photos for drainage. I think you are fine, march on and enjoy your project.

Hi all. Thanks for the positive response, much appreciated. The top manifold with the gate valves is on the flow side. I stuck a 22mm compression stop end on it in case I wanted to flip it round later (made a pigs ear of it), or got a huge bit of gunk in it. There are a couple of stubs pointing down from the hot manifold on top / cold side on the bottom with compression stop ends. These are so I can add another loop later. The five loops you see all serve one room / open plan area. Pipes are 15mm as they are compatible with standard off the shelf kit. I kept the loops to about 50 - 75m in length so that if one fails it's not a massive disaster. Also, I can let the pump tick over so not thrashing it with the noise that comes later when it gets a bit worn. I'm pretty deaf so don't mind but wife still has good hearing! I've got a temporary drain cock down at solum level for now. The next step is to add in more circuits for other rooms, bathroom, hall way etc. I want to use room thermostats so can control the temp of the different areas. I think I might make up a another manifold and start adding two port valves to these , controlled by the room stats. I'm going to get a new combi boiler that will do the hot water, feed the old rads and do the new UF part. Nick - yes I think you are warning that a lot of heat will come off my DIY pipework.. yes but it's going to be in the utility room, we want a pully for drying clothes an so on. Once I box it all in if it gets too hot I'll block up some of the vent holes in the box. Got a gut feeling it will last a while with the odd bit of TLC. Yes looked at a low loss header but was put off by the price.. my house is not that big compared to some of the projects on here... Now to serious matters. Do I put another bank (manifold) above or somewhere else, the new boiler is to go above the filter. I think it would be a good sub commander look if you can have both arms spread, adjusting the knobs while looking at the gas flame through the small combustion port on the boiler (the periscope). One's posture may invite the vulgar here to make adverse comment though. Can you make your project your own? Have a quick glance at Yuri Gargarin in the Vostok, first man in space and so on. That craft has gate valves too. They look like the ones Screwfix used to do before B & Q bought them over. if it was good enough for Yuri then.. potential new look. Watching the US election results so diving onto build hub to make a night of it! Thanks Pro Dave et al for the input. It's not my area of expertise so in a lighthearted note you may want to class me as one of those folk who know just enough to be dangerous / daft

Hi Dave, Thanks for piling in. I just rigged it up to get a bit of heat. Still need to finish the job. But I just thought I would wing it to get a bit of heat into the place as it's my own house. Would I spec it at work.. not that brave. I'm more on the structures side. Surprisingly to get things kicked off, I just tapped off the radiator flow side with a couple of 15mm pipes using the close coupled tee principle ( I read this on the internet and thought, I|'ll see if it works) and it works fine for a temp supply. Yes, no flow meters, or fancy stuff, it's my own house so I can go "old school" and just face the fact that the UF system is a massive heat sink. Wife said I looked like a submarine commander just adjusting the gate valves, never mind flow meters. Pratically, in a few years time all these gadgets get gummed up, and few folk know how to fix this stuff, hence my Flintstone approach! If part of the floor is a bit too hot I'll just put my hand on the floor, too hot, then turn it down a bit.. Ignorance is bliss.. I may come back on here later asking how do I fix my oak flooring as the UF was too hot!

Hello Gav_P Ta. Yes the solder fittings are on the manifold part as I know that they leak less if you can do a half decent job of the soldiering. To be honest once I pressurised it there were a couple of leaks in the soldering (I'm an Engineer not a pro Plumber) so it was easy to strip it down and fix the bad joints as I had put in the compression fittings. Can't rememeber the film but there is a quote something like " know you limitations" The compression fittings are so that I can take it apart easily later on when the gate valves fail, get the pump out and so on. I was aiming for stuff I can get from screwfix etc to fix stuff when it goes wrong. I have some boss white...if need be, hopefully I won't need to strip down that often. Saying that I spent a bit extra on an oversize mixer valve as it's onto an old system. Just wish I had spent a bit more on maybe the lay flat UF type pipe. I''ll take another photo later but on the flow side after the filter which is on the flow side I have a 15mm bottle vent valve, then on the return I have a 15mm manual air vent. It's not a work of art I admit and as always on reflection you think, hey, I could have improved on that.

Thanks CC45 for the encouragement, stuck my head above the parapet here.

Hello all. Cheepish, chearful and it seems to work! This is my "Covid temporary manifold", looks like it will be the permenant one. Components: Filter, pump, 22mm manifold cut and soldered in a couple of hours, mixer valve - 28 mm reduced down to 22 mm to maintain a good flow, 15mm gate valves. Does it work? - yes better than expected. How did I calibrate it - flow ect - with my hand - too hot turn the valve down etc. Attractions, can get all the parts off the shelf. Connected to a standard heating system, combi boiler. Tapped into the flow side to the heating using close coupled tees. Still got the electrical controls to do etc, but great warm feet. Mistakes..cut one of the pipes too short, pride comes before the fall! Simple stupid.. yes, so pile on folks.

Hi Jamie. I'll have a stab at at some answers! Good points you make, there is always more than one solution! 1/ Different look.. yes my thoughts were that to get this within the budget of 10k it may be worth while conducting an appraisal of the concept design so far. Sometimes this can really help, although it seems at times you are going backwards. But that is part of the design process. 2/ Portalised structure - I spent time working with a few contractors a couple of years ago who were developing the "higher end man cave / garden room concepts. These were coming in at about 20k and the world was you oyster after that, well insulated with adequate founds. We were looking at both hot / cold rolled steel and also diaphragm structures - similar to SIPS. With these the labour cost initially was round about 1/2 to 1/3 of the overall cost, broadly extensions and so on tend to be closer to 1/2 the cost. The aim was to drive down the labour towards the 25% mark. I think the SIPS are another option, matter of preferance really, SIPS have less cold bridges perhaps, portalising things provides more of a "mechno" type frame that folk may more comfortable with? If you want a ball park figure for a cold formed steel shed go online and ask for just the frame only, you this may give you and idea. As a commercial venture the savings lay in deriving an acceptable ground / foundation solution that could be rolled out to the mass market, the cost of the superstructure had less of an influence in comparison. 3/ I would think carefully before you rely on the SIPS panel to straighten a plate, especially once its bolted to the timbers which themselves may not to true, these too will warp and move about. 4/ Yes a glulam would be quite chunky, heavy too as you say, but you can fix stuff to them easily, especially if you are more DIY orientated. 5/ Welding a top and bottom plate on? I think you can detail this so you get most of the insulation on the outer side of the web, thus more of the steel is on the warm side? .. apart from the edge of top and bottom plate.. food for thought? Yes, you are making a goal post but if you want to keep the top of the goal post as shallow as you can this is a way of doing it. The force distibution and connection design can be / is different around the goal post but the explanation is very lengthy so I'll leave it out as folk may loose the will to live. 6/ Origional plan for RSJ. You can site drill a 12mm dia hole fairly easily with a cobalt tipped drill bit on site provided the steel is on the ground before you need to resort to a mag drill. I use a 110v Bosch drill I've had for years. Don't be put off buy having to site drill a few holes, just a few mind, say ten or twenty in an accessible part of the beam or plate. In summary it looks like you are well on your way with the SIPS route and happy with the approximate costs. In this case, if it was me, I would cart on, get it built and start to enjoy it! You seem to have put a good amount of effort into finding something that suits you, that is important too! All the best.

Good points from the Punter.. but the developer has to win on all structural points as they have to at least to show that they have constructed a safe building, then you get to the serviceability issues. Historically, many buildings were often constructed with a good amount of redundancy and robustness built in. Now Engineers are pressed more than ever to come up with the most economic design. There is less fat left in the bank to cope with when say tolerances stray beyond those recommended in the codes. Once they move outwith the recommendations in say the Eurocodes and outwith the manufacturer's recommendations (the materials they are using that are not exlicitly covered by the Codes or a European Technical Standard say) then they are on their own and often on a "shoogly peg". While they may be able to justify one tolerance being out when you have several it can become very difficult to justify the safety of the structure as a whole.

Yes agree with Water, so long as you can deliver good value. At the top end that may swing more towards creativity (time spent) vs cost (your fee), at the self build end that may be driven by cost primarily with a bit of uplift for the flare / unique personal touch that an interior designer can bring. Really at the top end your work / reputation should speak for it's self and folk will seek you out anyway by way of personal recommendation. Is there any milage in having a look at what sort of uplift the kitchen / bathroom companies are putting on the base cost of the units say as many of them seem to be offering a "free design service" I don't know but maybe some parts of their model can be adapted to suit the interior design? At the self build end, if you are thinking about the business side of things then they (kitchen bathroom companies) have a pretty heavy software developement cost, but when you actually look a how functional the software it's not too flexible which leaves another door open for the interior designer?

Thorfun ..Thanks for posting, also great posts from all, so thank you. There may be space on Build hub for a section that explains the geotechnical side of things. I don't know? It's great to see folk delving into this stuff and trying to get a handle on it. There is a lot of information on build hub about this aspect, but from time to time there seems to be the "elephant" in the room. If you are a lay person how do you interperate the geotechnical info, what the Engineers are saying and how the other "water proofing" companies are digesting this, quoting and caveating. What is required in lay terms is clarity (often missing) regarding what the ground conditions are and so on, and more importantly a layman's guide to the implications of this. But the problem is that for the professional this carries a serious amount of liability, also some are not good at explaining / engaging with the self builder so sometimes it also a people thing. It looks like from the posts that you still have options but can't get the clarity on the actual ground. In other words you have the icing on the cake nearly sorted but have no idea what the base of the cake will be.. and if it's a different base this introduces lots of uncertainty.. and that is not comfortable. Anyway I'll have a stab at Thorfuns last post for members that may not be so familiar with the terms used. "No ground water encountered" Well that was at the time of the investigation. Thorfun... you may have to post more detail. One elephant / caveat is the mention of a "perched water table" One simple way you can look at this is to take the different glacial periods. During this time various layers of materials were laid down. You could have bed rock, a gravel / chalk layer over a large area but just below your house is a layer of clay (cohesive material). What happens here is that the main aquifer / water table is well down but locally you have a more "water proof" layer just below the surface and the water this traps (leaky drains or just rainfall) will run into your house. So when you read that last paragraph of Thorfun's post it's caveated such that it has less value. This will have a major impact on the design and associated cost.

How much is it off the level? Are you fairly sure that the difference in levels is just due to the age of the house rather than some on going "structural issue" Also, how does the daylight come into the room. If you have say a window in a bedroom and you run the flooring parallel to the window cill this can show up more the changes in level, but if you run the new flooring perpendicular to the window cill it can be a bit more forgiving. Lastly, do you think that once you put all the furniture back it will still be a thing that will annoy you?

Hello Harman. Firstly, thanks to all for the posts, great informative reading. I make my living in the construction industry but taking that hat off, difficult though. But to go through your questions in an informal way. 1/ Yes, because as you get older you find you don't know it all. 2/ Yes to benefit from professional expertise.. see above. Not all professionals charge Queen's Council rates. 3/ One facet is that you could get more for the same amount. If you want to spend a bit more then there is a lot of fun to be had. For me a lot of the stuff I do is often hidden, no one sees it. What clients do see, and live with is the the finishes and how they suit with their way of living. They will often attach a value to that, you maybe need to find a way of getting the message over and understand what matters to them and how they percieve value. 4/ I'll avoid this question, suffice to say, the fee could be offset by the savings they could bring. See Steamy Tea's post. 5/ Would not get one in at the "planning permission in principle stage" say, but once that is cleared then I would say that it does no harm just to start making tentative contact with an interior designer. 6/ Word of mouth. 7/ Non really, after all you can go to a shop and get a "personal shopper", go online if you want blinds for windows and get advice when they come to measure up and so on. This extra time has to be paid for at some point. The shops/ window blind people are trying to find a way of "adding value" to the basic garment / blind etc. 8a/ Using a different analogy. A lot of the kitchen / bathroom companies these days are providing an in house design service. These costs are built into the price you pay. Let's face it, if you go to many main stream suppliers and sit down with say a kitchen designer then the customer has to pay their wages at some point? This could be a model to use as a template for interior design? 8b/ Much will depend on your motive. Online as I understand is a very competetive market and to get established in the low end mass market often needs some heavy investment. Hope this helps.

On the next project have a look at using skirting blocks. More traditional but as a skirting block is a bit thicker you get a bit of play in the butt joint between the bottom of the door facing and the top of the block, also you get the same where the skirting meets the block. This cuts you the slack to get the mitres right. Glue them to death and let the shrinkage take place at the block where it is more easy to hide. While some of these traditional methods may seem like a lot of extra work they were not daft in these days and knew how to work with the materials they had at hand.

On a positive note to start.. the lead brazing looks acceptable on the left hand side, pity they didn't get the same angle of bevel on the right but... hey ho. As and aside I got pulled up years ago by a Clerk of Works who told me the hinges on a door were not fitted correctly. I had used slotted screws and not left the slots vertical, so this encourages drips when the painter comes along. Looking at the photos I'm curious as to: 1/ What is actually holding this moulding up, is it just relying on 50mm embedment into the block? If so, what is at the back of it to give the masonry above a full rest? If the masonry above is offset from that below then this can introduce another stability issue. 2/ There seems to be lead on top. Thus, how is this lead dressed in to stop water penetrating in rather than shedding outwards. Sometime these have a small boot on the back like a cill. It would be worth trying to see into the cavity just to see how it is build in, then work from there.

Sad to see (but not unexpected) the lack of satisfaction here with warranty providers. Historically the NHBC was set up to improve the housing stock in the UK and more recently other providers have come to the market as it has moved from more research and development to a more fiscal (insurance) set up / model. The system in my view is more than ready for an overhaul. In other European countries a lot of folk don't buy from large developers as they do in the UK, their model is different as many folk "build their own" Hopefully things will change, swing back to favour the self builder, small local builder while improving on the quality of the build.

It's doable on you own.. but! You can build a house just on your own and do say 95% of the work yourself, you can't do gas, and sign off on electrics unless you have the registrations nowadays. I did this a while back and it took me three years to do a 1 and a 1/2 storey house of a similar size. Just on you own with a half bag Belle mixer, a good barrow, under cover, with not too many windows, tricky bits, and loading out the blocks each night for the next day, cleaning the mixer then with this amount of blocks I would go for 150 blocks a day (15m sq) if you are fit and tenatious. Expect this to drop off from time to time, well quite often, go for a hundered a day (10m sq) tops as you aslo need to order materials etc. I'm developing a formula for just for this. Variables so far are: T = time ..how much of a life do you want h = how old are you.. performance tends to drop with each decade (speaking very much from experience although this is not applicable to all) i = how much is it worth to you for the independance of choosing the pace of the works n = new.. will the work still look fresh and new when it's finished and .. will you too? k = Keen? will you go off the idea halfway through, rush it so as you can get onto something more interesting? [{(T * h * i * n * k) * (constant variables)] + (more variables) A constant variable is a value that can be changed if you don't like the answer, unlike gravity say. That said by building a house on my own I created a job for myself for a while and saved / made a good bit, tax free so don't be put off thinking about it, it may well suit some

Eplison. That's interesting about how a sail works in more detail, learn something new all the time. Your spot on about how the velocity of the wind leads to an exponential increase in the wind force. The wind acting on a house is pretty turbulant, it has small vortices that can act over a small area causing significant uplift and also larger areas of lower pressure / suction that can easily lift a whole roof off. In summary the key is to fix your tiles ect as per the manufacture's guidance, follow good practice in terms of fixing the timbers ect of the roof together and again follow good practice re truss clips, holding down straps etc. Sometimes you need to dig a bit deeper. If you build at the top of a cliff, or on a large hillside say the wind can be more severe so deploy common sense as Joe90 says. Ask the local folk. Some farmers may say in passing.. "that is a windy bit of the hill"..or " the stock avoid that bit in the winter", no barns built there as the last one blew down... Also, if you are in built up areas you can get a bit of wind funneling if you have tall buildings round about. There is lots of information about the wind etc available on the internet but there comes a point where once you have done your due dilligence then maybe as others have noted it's time to move on as you do want to finish the job at some point.

Hi Oldkettle. It's a matter of preferance really as to whether an SE is local or not and at what stage you get one on board. For work that is below ground.. basements, retaining walls etc then a local SE will have a reasonable idea of what may work vs the risk the Client wants to take. At one end some don't want to spend any money on say site investigations or exploring the options of cut and fill, drainage etc. This increase the risk that you will encounter the unforseen. At the other you can spend more, too much, well not often, on investigation and this provides greater certainty. They (local SE) will probably be familiar with the area. Also, they may well have a good rapport with local BC and be sharing knowledge about what is encountered under the ground locally and so on. One thing that can be really useful though is just being able to have a chat with an SE, call it a brain picking excercise. There are some SE's who will come out to site in an informal manner with a pad of paper and pencil, walk you through the various principles of design, do the odd sketch to demonstrate the principles and "chew the fat" with you. At the same time they will give you pointers as to what you need to investigate and how you go about it, who to approach and how you ask (technical jargon) for your particular site. This can pay dividends later on. You can find SE's who take this approach. It can work well as you start to build a relationship, which you can if you wish formalise later on. Try asking some SE's if they will come out on this basis to give some informal advice. Some will be delighted to do so as for an SE it is often much more interesting to be involved all through a project, offer to pay for their time, say by the hour and you may well be pleasantly surprised at the outcome. All the best with the project.

What about getting and SE in right at the beginning even before you ask a builder, employ a QS, get an Architect. SE's know a lot more about this process than the common perception that they just just "provide calcs" A few rakes about on build hub say etc will get you on the ball re your budget. Work out if you have the money, can borrow it etc first . Much of the cost lies in the ground. Then spend £300 - 500 quid on getting an SE. Yes..you maybe don't want to put your money where you mouth is at the moment but it's a bit like site investigation.. if you skimp on this you end up paying for it later and often more. This is a known statistical fact in the industry and you are more vulnerable to this as a domestic client. Maybe it's worth getting and SE in early who will take you under their wing and guide you. A good one (SE) who has experience will do a desk stop study on the QT before they meet you and this can really go along way towards identifying real potential issues that need investigated/ designed around. This will also help you get provisional prices from builders by way say of an A4 spec on a page or two and you can access their contact list. They will also help you prepare a brief for the Architect. Also a lot of "SE's" are pretty good Arctitectural designers themselves so you may not need an Architect at all. You get two birds for one stone. You'll need an SE for a lot of basements so I think you could be missing trick and often wasting your money. It will do you no harm to just ask an SE right at the start?

Hello Epsilon and Peter and all. Here is a bit of an over view, my stab at things, no spell checking, for a bit of fun and so on. Say you have a sail on a yacht. On one side the wind blows against it (pressure) and the wind has to move around this blockage. On the other side of the sail there is a negative pressure before the air flow returns / stabalises to normal further down stream. This causes a suction force on the back of the sail. The two forces combine to create an overall wind force and as the sail is at an angle to the wind it drives the boat as you get a roughly perpendicular component to these forces. .. or you can capsize it... hence the lift jacket. The same happens to a house. I'll leave this for now but the wind forces on a roof (not just the walls) can move the house from side to side horizontally too and that is where we look at building stability. But for the sailors here, you'll notice that at the edge of the sail there are some really high forces, hence why often the sail rips. Here the wind vortices are significant, forces can be two possibly three and a bit times more. The same principles applies to a roof. However, unlike a boat a house is static, it has a roof and as the wind moves about in direction it can cause both a downward force and an uplift force on the windward side ( depending on the roof angle and obstructions like chimneys) and an uplift force on the leeward side. A roof is a bit like a tilted sail on it's side? To turn to the holding down straps. you need to start at the top surface of a roof. At the edges say and round chimneys you have high wind forces. That is why you often see tiles sucked off here, hence the tile fixing specification. Once you go through the depth of the roof you have battens / wind bracing / sarking and so on. These all spread / shead the localised loads. Now you have the roof timbers etc. these too load share / spread the load and this load ends up at the wall head where the roof rests. You also have an effect called " non simultaneous action.. wow! this means (good for you) that the whole of the worst wind does not act on the roof at the same time, and this depends on the size of the roof and orientation. Most roofs are designed to be stiff, like floors. They (roofs) act like deep beams and tie all the walls together. In other words the holding down straps take a more general load rather than a concentrated load that occurs over small areas of the roof. So there is an element of Engineering judgement applied. This needs a leap of faith here. We know roofs lift off so you need to hold them down. We need to connect the roof to something heavy, or to a timber frame that will be connected to something else that is heavy or stiff and we can use holding down straps to do this. Follow the load path. The first connection is between the straps and the roof timbers say. The next between the strap and the masonry, which is the point here. But.. before you get to the strap fixings, it's worth havng a look at some of the generally accepted norms for say 1960's standard housing. There were no holding down straps. The wall plate was just nailed essentially down into the brick. There are some quirky bits in the design codes that allow you to to take into to account a masonry height (for wind uplift) that can contribute to a counter weight to hold things down, although the mortar in in some respects acts in tension which is often not recommended when designing masonry for other purposes. But now we often have lighter roofs, lightweight blocks and timber frames. With timber frame life is fairly simple, you make the truss clips do the work and transfer the wind uplift down the studs and couple this with the sheeting and spread the load further into the structure. Previously for standard housing a brick cavity wall was common. The walls are often too cold nowadays. Here, you can calculate the weight of three courses of masonry / or more ~ 3 vertical feet and design for that. Actually, I don't think anyone bothered! they just knew it would be ok for standard housing. But for lightweight blocks the simplest way (if you have a concern) is to buy a twisted strap. The top of the twist connects to the truss say. You have two choices here and this is about the cost of procurement. You can site bend a 5mm thick the strap at the bottom, drill out a bit of mortar bed and turn the leg back into the light weight block buy 80mm , takes a couple of minutes. Fix this to the block with 5 x 80mm screws and plugs, 2 fixings per block vertically, these are to hold the strap to the wall so you don't need to calculate the shear capacity of these fixings. They also build in reduncancy / robustness. Or you can you do the full calc route.. which will require a lot of effort. Or you can just just nail / use any plugs you want and not turn them back into the lightweight block. Some inspectors just like to see the straps and don't look at the fixing type and compatibility with the masonry etc. For me I would do it the right way and turn the strap back into the masonry if light weight block. It's not that much work, a few quid. Lastly, well nearly, as a caveat.. what you want to look out for is things like canopy roofs and say wrap around bifolds on corners of buildings, anything that looks a bit out of the normal. Oz .. think your job is safe. Holding downstraps are hard to get your head around as the manufacture's only give you part of the data. Often it's easier to skin the cat in a different way and look forward to spending the time and money else where. Peter if you want some pointers on how to calculate wind loads then..

Hi Peter, pondering here on how to answer in the spirit of build hub!