Gus Potter

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!

Just speculation but is that a bit of quarry tile that you would use on your hall floor say?

Hello Jamie. A few random thoughts, based on your budget of say 10k and doing a lot of the work yourself. Have you thought about going for a different look. What about a composite panel roof with steel purlins. Your wind and water tight pretty much right away. Also, you could spend a bit on the flashings to get a contemporary / but less industrial look that could compliment the existing house and the shading of the doors. This would /could then lead to either a couple of hot rolled steel portals at the gables with wind bracing along the back wall. Or you could explore cold formed steel portals as well. You could overclad parts of the composite with larch say or some other material. There is loads of stuff you can play with. You could over clad at you leisure as you look ahead to maybe linking in the house at a later date. I think you may be pushing your luck with flitch beams this size as deflection / bolting etc may trip you up when you come to the detailed analysis. Also, you would need a heavy flitch (thick too!) plate, may be hard to get one that long anyway that is straight and true. You could have a look at glulam. Here you could have a deeper one, still sit the bottom roughly flush with the ceiling but let the top side sit above the roof, thus creating a bit of a parapet. This may look ok as the vertical proportion of the beam over the door may fit well with the vertical height of the doors. You could maybe do something here to incorporate some subtle external lighting. I'm not sure but the likes of Carrara Hill has made some posts on how you can externally light a structure so folk can't see in at night. Also, if you have a bit of a parapet and there is some snow on the roof it may stop more of the water dripping as it thaws? Have a look about for Glulams that have been miss measured, it happens, you may get lucky and pick them up for a song. You could go back to the steel portal idea. Here, to keep the beam depth down you can weld a top / and or bottom plate onto a beam. One effect of this is to reduce the deflection and can provide a thinner accessible flange to drill and fix things too. Also, you can get more insulation in too. But also you could creat a good ledge to rest the sips panels on as you need some end distance for the fixings into the sips panels. If you transfer load to the beam this way it is not central and the beam will start to twist i.e. torsion. Have a word with the sips panel designer and see if they can put a good heavy end on the sips panel. This may allow you to bolt through the web / up through a bottom plate of the beam along with some brackets to transfer the torsion back into the roof. I'm not sure how far you will get with this as there will be a design for the sips manufacturer, and it's complex. It may be too small a job to make it worth while. Have fun!

Good photos Nod. You can see from Nod's photos how the metal straps & noggings (dwangs in Scotland) are installed so that when the wind sucks out the gable wall the load is resisted by the trusses, roof structure acting together. The roof acts like a deep beam and this holds the gable wall in place. There is easy to find guidance on this from say the NHBC details online. The same rules apply at ceiling level unless the wall has been designed on the basis of floor to ridge height. I think Epsilon has spotted this. Good example Nod of a job well done. You can see from Nod's photos how the diagonal wind bracing has been carefully cut where it meets the blockwork. By doing this Nod has ensured that the end distance for the nails has been maintained..in other words if a nail is too close to the end or edge of a timber it is no good. You can also see how Nod has placed the bracing close to the node points of the trusses as per good practice etc.

What are you building? Great part of the country, stunning in fact.

I think epislon is having a look at how the wall is tied in at ceiling level so is asking a good question. Take, if you can a photo of the whole length of the ceiling where it meets the wall from both above and below. Take some close up ones of any steel straps, any fixings and some panoramic ones so the likes of epilon can see the whole roof structure.

Hi Jamie. I would go back to basics before you open the wallet/ purse / gourd or raid the money tree in the garden. You have three walls and a roof with no openings. You do have quite a "stiff box" to work with. Most walls and roofs are pretty stiff. Think about them as deep beams, the roof, if it is detailed well it acts like a deep beam and thus able to transfer load down to the foundations quite adequately via the walls. If you have bottom supported bifolds, then yes they are heavy but when you work out the horizontal loads that appear at the head of the doors (when they are open) you may often find that they are no more onerours than the loads that occur when the doors are shut and the wind is sucking them outwards. It's just my view but bottom supported bifolds are more common now. Logically it's ok to float one part of a structure and connect it to another. You just need to design for the differential movement. Ask this. Say you have an 18 th centuary house, you add an extension, both will move differentially relative to the seasons, temperature and so on. Both the old house and the new extension often still float on the ground (unless maybe on similar rock), just they move up and down differently. All materials are elastic and some can also expand/ contract differently if the are sensetive to moisture. Before you go down the "steel route" and the associated foundations, deal with the cold bridging etc then it may be worth while going back to basics and avoiding all the extra interfaces and assosciated labour cost. This way you may be able to bring it all in budget and still have a competant structure / safe design that will still allow you to connect the house to it later. In summary you may get this within budget if you go for bottom hung doors, do away with all the steel, base plates and thickened founds and approach the design in a different way.

Good question Revelation. Just a thought.. make sure you buy flooring with a BBA and a CE certificate /mark, in other words make sure you buy structural chip board flooring. Once you get this stuff it's very much up to you. If you don't look after the materials on site then no matter how much you spend you are wasting your money. Have a look at the manufacture's data (fine print), they spell it out in terms of material handling and storage etc. If you are going for UFH then you want to get it as dry as you can. The plastic film is favoured by developers as they get a longer window before wind and water tight, also they need to spend less on the commerial clean after the tapers/ plasterers have been in. But generally the developers are not doing UFH. I would buy the unfilmed stuff, look after it and get it as dry as you can. Then once you are ready for the carpets, oak flooring, get down on you hands and knees and give it a good old fashioned scrub with a cloth and a brush!.. twice at least. Then enjoy the fruits, you can walk about in your bare feet..it's great!

Hi Revelation. As an aside. It would be worth checking if the joists can take a sand/ cement concrete screed. Ask the Engineer if the floor can take a bit extra load, this is a simple option, but it works and it's easy to lay. The heat does not perhaps transmit as fast but at the end of the day heat rises and it will come out eventually. Look up Jeremy Harris on this site as there is some great info and lots of good contributions from the other site members. Take a basic sand cement infill between the first floor joists. You just need to set the timer to come on a bit earlier. Unless you want to try and make UF perform in response time like radiators? You could save a lot by not having the spreader plates. Your first floor will almost "tick" over as you'll get heat transfer from the ground floor. In other words (crudely) the ceiling below will also be heated by the ground floor UF and the heat gets up the stair well too. I'm not being too scientific here. The key here is that if you have not got some heat into the building and reduced the humidity then the last thing you need is chipboard with a plastic layer, it will just seal in the moisture. It's a pain but get the chipboard, stack it up with packers so that there is a gap between each board, let the wind into it and get it as dry as you can. Leave a gap at the edge of the floor for when you go on holiday and the heating is off .. it will swell. Screw it (chipboard) down with plenty glue , you can then go over it later and adjust / add more screws to stop most of the creaks / squeeks! It's hard to stop them all but that is part of underfloor heating life! But when you can walk about in your bare feet in luxury, you just learn to avoid the odd squeeky bit! And, when you get older and a bit deafer you don't hear the noise anyway. Before you lay the oak really be patient and condition it, it will pay dividends!

Hello Balraj. It's worth starting from under the ground up and getting a handle on the foundation cost. This is the bit that introduces uncertainty, and can "burst your football.. burst the baw in Scotland" , it can put the rest on a bit of a back burner. A bit of time spent on the ground conditions here can save you a pile of money which you get to spend on the things that matter, the things you see, the functionality and so on that you want, and sometimes more too! One great thing about self building is that you can experiment, do stuff that no one else has and is unique to you, often at a budget cost. Put in the research work and get a handle on how things work and fit together. Adapt it to suit you, not something that a developer wants to sell you. If you get stuck ( say on ground works, passive slab / insulated slab design and the ins and outs) then just ask folk and you'll be surprised at the positive response you get. Many get to a self build point where they can price the windows, roof, finishes, kitchens, lighting, bathrooms and so on. The uncertainty can lie in the ground, drainage, choice of foundation, soil conditions, and type of superstructure (the bit above the ground) and so on. Can I suggest, although a bit dull that you go back and review from the bottom (foundations) up. Start by looking at the ground and what is best to put on top of that. There may be good savings to be made. If you are not sure post here and you will get a lot of help. It's hard to wade your way thought the merits of different designs and insulation offerings / methods but much of it is not that complex. Yes, it is complex if you are working on high rise high end stuff but you can still get a pretty good outcome by simplifying things while still keeping the innovative concept... without the associated cost and design fees. Have fun and all the best.

Following this. Just a thought. Are you close to the sea? What kind of barn is it, traditional ? If not is the structure moving about and overstressing the fixings of the cladding causing the ovalling , hole enlargement?

Hello Jamie. You may be able to look at this in a different way. A lot of Bifold / Sliding doors now days are bottom supported. That means the floor etc carries the weight. Think about a lift and slide set of sliding doors, you turn a big handle, it lifts the doors and this lets them slide. Most of the weight is carried by the bottom runner and the top runner is there to stop it falling out and moving in. There are other types that don't need a massive handle, but they are a bit more higher end. Let's say you go for bottom supported doors and now you can follow a different design path. What you look to do is to hold up the roof over the opening rather than the roof and the associated weight of the doors and the added deflection the door weight brings. Now you only need to design for the roof load rather than the roof load + the weight of the doors. Your starting point here is to go back to the roof loads. If you want a decent job then mostly roofs are designed for it's own self weight + an access load. They are also checked for wind loads and for snow drift loads. Mosty snow drift loads don't govern the design unless you live at higher altitude or say in Aberdeenshire etc. To get you on the ball park on a small roof like this. If you fix it well at the corners the wind load will not be an issue, also, unless you have the "cave" right next to a larger building off which snow can blow this snow drift problem often "goes away" A standard roof access load is about 60kg / sq metre before safety factors, roof self weight varies a bit but you can work this out depending on what you want to make the roof from. Jamie.. post some more on how you are going to construct the walls & roof . If you have an inclination towards timber construction this drives the design, you could go down the composite insulated metal panel route, then over clad that...,and there are more options. For something like this you often don't need a heavy found, pads and so on. In fact, with something like this you almost want it to "float about on the ground below" Folk may cringe at this but let the thing move about, just control where the movement takes place, design for the movement and save money. It sounds complex but it's not really, much is common sense. Oh, and lastly if you can make some savings on the founds and goal post and opt for a higher end doors with thinner mullions then choose you sizes. You may want to knock it down later and use the doors to fit into that fab extension that is next on the bucket list! If you are able to do some of the work yourself you could get something pretty good for your budget.

Good posts. Don't skimp on the smoke alarms. You'll often see folk complaining (maybe not so much on build hub) about say activity spaces in kitchens, bathooms and smoke alarms. The building regulations are, in part are designed to keep you safe. For me, the fire regulations need to be improved and made more robust. Overall, it's a small extra amount. If you have ever been in a fire it is no fun, you want to make sure you can get out first, then be glad that you did it the right way and that the insurance will pay to clean up what is left.

All the best. It's some journey but can be very rewarding. Try and have as much fun as you can. Take plenty photos too as a record. You can look back later and think to yourself " I did that"