Carrerahill

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If he loves your daughter he will find time. Show him this post! 😄

Tsk. No imagination.

Exactly, simples. I think the OP needs some 6inch fence posts or telegraph pole offcuts.

Sacrifice a couple of bags of Type 1? It is doable - just needs thinking. Is there no vehicular access down to where they are needed even for a car? Pallets drag not too bad with the right strapping.

What is the makeup of the path? Paved? could you borrow a pallet truck? Could you use rollers to roller the pallets? I have seen myself move some pretty immovable objects with some rollers and a helping pair of hands. I once used a sheet of plywood with rope attached to it to skid a 265Kg safe into place just by skidding it along. Scaffolding works OK on fairly firm ground, then round fencing stobs for rougher terrain and telegraph poles was for very rough terrain. Ideally have some help on hand and the rollers ready and have the pallets lowered onto the rollers, roll them away, rinse and repeat. If not have enough rollers ready so that each pallet can be dropped onto a set of 2 or 3 rollers ready to move them with multiple rollers when you get time/help. Think like a Roman.

Best advice I have read all week!

If it was me, I would buy a solar kit of panels, inverter, isolators, safety stickers etc. Buy what you can physically install space wise and what you can afford/want to spend. Install it, in your case through a roofer and then an electrician or just a roofer then you doing the rest yourself (some inverters are wired to a 13A plug - yes you just plug it in!). It will work, it will be fine. The MCS registration is all about FIT payments, I don't want payments, I want to use all my energy because I am not generating energy for them to pay me 3p kWh. I would rather heat my garage than give it to them. The government need to get the DNO's told to cut all the nonsense and let people get on with it, which will encourage a massive shift towards small scale PV install. The DNO doesn't want you to install solar is the blatant truth. There are no structural implications in 99% of the case, the roof has been designed with snow and maintenance load. Maintenance load is 60Kg per metre squared, once the panels are installed you will no longer be able to load that roof with the maintenance load, the lightweight solar panel is about 12Kg and more than a metre. No wonder no one is installing PV when homeowners need to jump through hoops like all of this. A desktop survey? Honestly, in other words they know fine well their service is total nonsense. How any self respecting SE could provide desktop surveys for something like this and claim it to be worth the paper it is written on I do not know. You didn't hear it from me!

That beam has been compromised then. Look at your SE drawings and check every detail, if any of it do not match, at all, tell the builder you want him to have a meeting with the SE and that any expenses shall be agreed beforehand between the builder and the SE or you make your own arrangement to withhold some monies at the end of the build to cover the SE visit and any report.

I think it looks rough!

Mess. Not even sure what was supposed to be going on here, that will certainly cause you some water ingress issues!

What happens if you stand on one? From experience they just flatten. I am sure with 100mm of concrete on top of them they would soon lie flat. They do shrink within the first sort of 3 months. I remember reading somewhere that you are meant to use boards that are a minimum of 3 months old so that they have gone through initial shrink. I have seen fresh boards installed all shrink and end up about 3-4mm short whereas they went in tight which was a bit worrying. I would not scrap them, I would just look at options to pull them down flat, maybe a saw kerf along the mid-section might help. They are not going to be lifting 100mm of C20 concrete!

We all like photos, I took this photo yesterday doing a site survey. These are 2 11kV 400A breakers which protect two transformers. Note the 11kV cable coming in on the right, dropping out the back at low level and going into the trench are the 2 outgoing 11kV cables going to 2 transformers. This is actually client owned as the point of connection from SPEN is 11kV - behind this wall is a 11kV ring main tap using a MEM ringmaster unit - basically a 11kV cable in from the grid, and back out, then a single cable into these two boys. You will note on the right hand breaker the load is shown as about 4.5 (x10 multiplier) - that is 45A at 11kV! Pretty serious! This is what protects a 5 industrial units and 15 little modular offices.

Have a look on this forum for posts by me recently, I have written pages and pages and screeds of text on this and posted BS88 (your standard UK cut out fuse type) fusing curves showing what a 100A fuse will actually do at 100A (nothing). Search by my recent posts and I am sure you will be enlightened.

Gus is the engineer!

In its simplest terms an EV charger is logic controller switching a contactor, that is is. Yes you get OCPP control stuff with GSM etc. however, as a home owner, paying your own bill you don't need any of this. Within the charge cable is a data pair and the mains. The car tells the logic controller it wants charged and it turns on the contactor, the cable goes live. Simple as that. A friend has a VW ID with a home made charger, he could have got a £350 grant towards it, and the installed cost was about £1100 - he built one for about £250 in a nice stainless steel enclosure. Google EVSE charge controller, they can be had on eBay, Amazon and more reputable EV equipment outlets like Stegen, some have LCD screens incorporated, some remote so you can panel mount it and some have nothing depends what you want. I just want something to switch a relay on and off.

Buy one, have friendly spark install it but use a 32A/65A Ceeform to connect it, when you need rid of it, unplug it and demount it. Or just have it wired in, kill the breaker, and unwire it yourself, have it reinstalled by spark who does your house. Simple. It is just an electrical appliance, nothing fancy. I wouldn't even buy an EV charger to be fair, I would buy the logic module, a big contactor and the charge cable and make it myself!

Cruel!

Ah yes, the old "salmonella strip"!

Welcome to the electric future. Can you offset with PV?

Given the price of steel, and the added complexity of building with steel portals, I would still build in block. Block prices have stayed about the same, as has sand and cement so I think. 6" block with piers within the long walls will make for a solid garage. One piece of advice on the piers, plan their location! I didn't and now have some annoying splits in my racking where I need to end the racks, have wasted space, then a pier, then start the racking again. Also try and plan piers to align with things like roof trusses. I have 4 trusses and purlins to have a more open feeling garage with a big open roof area, it does look good and gives loads of height for moving big bits of wood and things about and the ability for me to suspend bikes etc.

Just to be clear, the silicone I refer to was not to seal the bead, that was the render product type I used from Enewall. It basically repels water but has breathability. So, from soffit to bellcast bead I covered the whole wall making the block water repellent, however, I would argue waterproof in normal circumstances, although I understand it will not truly be “waterproof”. Then a waterproofed sand/cement smooth render below which was worked in hard against the bellcast to form a continuous protective cover. You could build a steel portal frame and infill with block. I nearly did this for speed of getting a roof over so I could work on the build in the rain, but I was impatient and didn't want to wait for my steel kit to come. Usually the block is just dressed into the web of the steel so that it forms a solid locked in panel, although the mortar does not stick, it locks it in firmly. Also, I have seen the steels with a wall tie system bolted or Hiltigun nailed on. Works well. You need to dress up the plinth detail properly at the based of the steels and protect the steel so that it doesn't rot out in 30 odd years. The other design used frequently is for the steels to be kept within the weatherproofing envelope of the building to keep the steel dry.

This is not strictly correct. I have a block garage on a 10" slab and have had no issues with damp. I ensured that the ground levels around the slab are lower with no build up, and I took the render down to a bellcast bead just a smidge above the slab, I caught the DPC and pinned it up, just caught it and no more, I used a 2 coat silicone system which you can spray with a hose all day long and you never see damp coming through the mortar joints of the garage (which is always the first to let water migrate through). From ground level up to below the ballcast I used a smooth cement render with waterproof additive which I then painted with water-proofer a year on and after weeks of dry weather. FGL is about 6" lower than the slab, except at the front door. Garage is so dry that even when using my nailgun to build things the exhaust port air is enough to kick up all the floor dust even after the 2 weeks of solid rain we had up until the weekend. I also laid my slab on a DPC, which you said you have done too, so where is the damp issue?

My question is what are you trying to hide? Keep them on side.

My honest opinion is that you should get an electrician in.