Carrerahill

I paid 80p a block for a bale of 36 I ordered about 4 weeks ago on top of an order for other bits to top up my block stock for little bits of wall etc. Just tried to buy 2 there and they wanted £1.68 inc the vat for the 2. Maybe we are spoilt as there is a block factory about 3 miles away. I think the issue is supply and demand. Thistle multifinish was £12 a bag at one point but I see it is back down to £5.85 a bag in B&Q which means I could get it from the merchant for probably more like £5.00

Mad - I know this was back in June but just for reference, I get all my stuff from J W Grant, they have a branch in Coatbridge which may deliver to you. I was looking at my invoices recently and we are on £3.10 for a bag of cement, £33 for a ton of sand/aggregate/mot etc. I just picked up 5 bags of Enewall (made in Wishaw) magnolia dry dashing top coat for £5.70 a bag.

Our old kitchen had a recirculation type extractor, waste of time and space, I always envied those who had a proper extraction system as I knew the benefits of the system. Now we have our new kitchen in the new extension I have my extraction hood, brilliant. Comes in handy for more than just cooking. I sometimes use it to drag air through from the open dining room window and ventilate the whole space - close the door a bit and you can feel the blast of fresh air breeze past. I know this also means in the winter that I am loosing warm air but we have a bit of a glut of heat in our home so I can live with that. We cook every meal from scratch so boiling water and cooking food is a daily occurrence, great being able to stand in the kitchen and look out the window on a cold evening with large volumes of steam being dealt with and not a single bead of condensation on the windows and doors. There really are so many benefits, I dare say if you don't cook then the benefits may be lost on you. Why not go for a semi-suspended hood and duct out the wall behind.

This is absolutely awful! It's a diesel and match cure in my eyes! But really, this building just looks BAD, really really bad. I think you need to get the SE back and get him to view it as is, I'd also want my own SE there at the same time.

Sounds like the people who built the conservatory I demolished with my bare hands to build my new extension! I lent the ladder against the block wall at the back which had been used to extend the conservatory past the side of the house, as I climbed I suspected the ladder was slipping, go a little fright, came down and noticed that actually the block wall had shifted! There was me ready with a hammer and bolster to drop the wall block at a time! On the plus side, I was able to reuse all the blocks as they cleaned up good as new simply sitting in the rain for a few months! Fecking cowboys!

I have not installed it yet but the ground work has been done to put in a stove. It will be a solid fuel sort of commercial looking thing. I know it is an uninsulated space but I have a forest worth of firewood and I would only light it for example on weekends, in the winter when I intend on spending a lot of time out there. I have also run conduit back to the house with the intention of feeding hot water from the burner back to the house too. I am actually doing the final ducting and formwork for concrete for this this weekend as I may actually keep the stove in a separate little boiler-shed for safety reasons. I have the option to insulate my garage if I wanted to, I'd put PIR in between the rafters, and batten out the walls and insulate and ply line but I don't think I would if I am honest as I've never felt the need. I do a lot of my projects outside, building things and what not so being in a garage is like a luxury in itself!

That really is shocking - OSB they have used too, under that awful artificial grass, which will just sit wet and damp all the time. Some people should be banned from this sort of work. It's like buying a house someone has done loads of shocking DIY in and you realise you need to start again on everything! The DPC should also have been 150mm min above finished ground level. It is a cavity wall so a bit of moisture against the wall isn't going to cause major issues but I would limit moisture/water by using gravel. That water pipe, is it the mains? Or a feed to a garage or something? It isn't deep enough. Right, what to do, I'd cut it back straight, get some edging into finish the concrete/slabs, then fill from the edging to the house with stone, get in cheap stone, 10 or 20mm gravel or granite chips or something and fill the trench, this means that although stone will be touching the wall it will be free draining and will really only be wet when it's raining or for a period after. Difficult to judge qty's here but for £30-40 quid I'd just get a ton bag of whatever in and barrow it in.

Some pics...

Yes - single skin with 2 piers down the long walls and at the main door - a half height pier on one side of the pedestrian door for extra strength. I have about 20mm of dry dashing on the exterior built up with base coat and top coast etc. so the thing is dry as a bone. Sure it can be cold in the winter but I keep a car and garden tools in it! I'll get some photos... hang on a minute...

Took him 3 short days so £83.33! This was in conjunction with our extension build and I laboured for him. He was happy, I was happy. He works FT for some house builders during the week, he did it over 2 weekends, he isn't fussed - cash in hand.

Fully hand cut roof, basically a 6 x 6x2 purlin roof on 4 no 8x2 main timber trusses - no joists, it is a cathedral style roof. The span was 4.8 as the trusses sit on concrete block piers which are also straighteners for the main walls. So although nominal width is 5m it is less at the columns and used 4.8m timbers with 150mm bearing I did my own calcs with assistance from the SE who used to work with us I can't remember it all off the top of my head but static loadings were about 1.2tons per side spread over 4 trusses etc. etc. plus the gable end support itself which took a portion of the load it worked out pretty good + snow and wind it was close but came in on target. Been up for 2 years, interestingly I was looking at the roof the other day checking for deflection in the main trusses and got the tape out, all good, I think in 2 years the mid point of the truss has maybe dropped a few mm but they were crown up and therefore now sit deadly straight.

I've just spilt my coffee! HOW MUCH?

I built a 6.2 x 5m garage in 2018 - only paid for a brickie. Dug out the area for slab with JCB which was £150 for the weekend (also other garden work) 40 tons of hardcore - some virgin some 6F2 (recycled) which was about £200 Some scrap timber and new timber for the forms £50.00 Drains (bottle gully in middle of slab etc.) £50.00 Rebar mesh £150 DPM £30 Concrete C40 250-200mm £840.00 Block, sand and cement delivery £450. Brickie to build £250 Roof timber £400 Membrane £50 Russel Pennine tiles, 420 of £300 Electric roller shutter 3 x 2.2m with remote control etc. £700 Facias, soffit, gutter etc. £120 Rear end cladding for roof gable £100 Front end timber cladding for roof gable £120 Side door - free from a Merc dealership renovation. Locks, hinges etc to suit above £50.00 Dry dashing materials inc. beads/bellcast about £350 Electrics - I had a new 8 way Wylex metal consumer unit from a skip, so cable, metalclad sockets and 3 LED non-corrosive battens (which I also acquired) £100. So I think it was about £4460. So £143.87 a meter.

It looks like it! A bit of an afterthought in the design department I think! My only comment would be, apart from yes it's a bit poor, given it's proximity to the glazing, are you likely to stand on it in use? Once you have got it all installed and working for a while, I'd be tempted to silicone it down with a couple of blobs. Just enough to lock it in place and that you can pry it back up.

I went through all of this. The decent installers wanted to supply and the installers happy to install only seemed to know less about it than me. Result, I installed it myself. Unless you have gone for borders and things, it is easy if you are handy and can carry out building and joinery tasks well then you will manage this. Even if you have gone for borders and things I would suggest you just practise a bit. It is gluing plastic to a floor at the end of the day. I can talk you through the process I used and the materials I went for.

Top of the cavity, corners, around windows and doors, and every 10m vertically in a wall (or whatever your LABC want to see or drawings etc.) As for ventilation your vent layout should take into account the compartmentalisation of the cavity with the firestops and be laid out in such a way to ensure it is still ventilated. I added lots of weepers to my outer wall, your cladding so a bit different but you will find a way.

Tell them you will have an electric car and charge point! This is madness, look at all the future ghettos that are being built on scraps of poor land miles from anything by the big builders - not even a school that close but hey, build 500 new homes and put a bus stop outside it and it will be grand!

My advise would be to get away from the capsules, we had a Nespresso but the wastage associated did play on my mind and recycling scheme is no good really. This opens up your choices so much more. You might get a little 250g bag of some beans in a coffee shop to try or order in bulk but it just lets you get away from mass produced coffee roasts. I buy 4-5Kg of coffee beans at a time now for about £25.00 and that lasts about 2-4 months depending on use, Covid increased consumption. Bean to cup has so many benefits - I empty the grounds directly into the garden, it adds no particular nourishment to the ground but acts as a filler, I tip it on general beds or at the based of tree's - when raining I literally open the back door and fling it over the lawn and it washes in! We have one of the Delonghi machines from John Lewis - just over 2 years old now - My brother has a similar model and my parents they all love them. I love it to bits and I am mainly a tea drinker! I think I will go for one now actually!

Humidity in my opinion possibly with an override switch. PIR means this blinking thing will spin away every time you go in.

Just a bit of tri-rated cable of the correct gauge will sort it, however, I fix EVERYTHING and I would not think about fixing this - bin it - too far gone on the casing. Although, knowing me I would keep it and make it into a hot water device for the garage or something.

To be honest it probably won't trip - nothing was taken beyond normal operating characteristics. That connection/wire went high impedance, it got hot, very hot has been getting hot for some time, some additional energy will have been dissipated as heat at the joint but it was clearly not going particularly overcurrent, say it was on a 40A MCB - the shower is maybe a 7kW that is only about 30A so there is capacity before the MCB current would be reached, however, a 40A MCB will not automatically trip at 40.1A - it could go as high as 120A for a half second, or 100A for .75s or 60A for 4 seconds etc. (it depends on the tripping characteristics) or it could sit at 45A for hours, the characteristics of an MCB are largely to protect cables from overheating (the most extreme being fire!). You got away with it because the appliance is not used for that long relatively speaking and the casing will be able to withstand this (albeit it was melting). The next level of protection is an RCD - well there is no fault here that would trip an RCD (yet - it may have developed). Arc faulty protection - relatively new to the market, very few installed nationally, however that would have stopped this as it looks like there was some good arcing and sparking before it totally failed.

You will be grand. If they moan just say UFH - then when they come to inspect say it's under the floor, just warming and leave some pipes and a TRV sticking out a floor in a cupboard!

I've just had a quick look through section 6.3 of the Scottish building handbook and there is no stipulation like this. The only stipulation is that the system should be energy efficient and capable of control for optimal efficiency. (Note it says "capable" thus the nonsense boiler installers give you about how you NEED controls is just not true).

Onto our timber frame we had 50mm x 50mm treated timber firestops, we brought the windows out flush with these, we had a block outer skin so the block came up to the front face and then render right up to the uPVC.

3 days is how long you should wait if you are going by a civils/structural guide.