Carrerahill

Go 15mm then. There is even the discussion re. 10mm for basin supplies.

People think you are supposed to use 22mm for hot as standard because they didn't understand the logic behind it on old non-pressurised tanked hot supplies. I still see people immediately reach for 22mm pipe when they are doing hot water piping even though they are on mains pressure via combi/sealed tank. So my guess is ignorance?

He would span the opening with some angle - he has just shown me a piece of 50x50x2mm galv angle which has a 50x100mm plate welded to the bottom of it on each side, it has 2 slotted holes either side too. He says he would offer that up at opening height then bolt that on - he usually always uses 8-10mm resin fixings for edge protection reasons if he is doing a whole house, if just one window in a gable wall etc. then he just uses thunderbolts.

Just spoken to the builder, galvanised angle iron bolted to at sill level, window sits on this and then they use angle brackets to tie the window sides and top to the external leaf. There are also brackets you can buy but he found the angle was cheaper and stronger and easier to use - he fits it all so that the windows can be taken back out and new windows screwed into the brackets during replacement from the inside.

Let me go and see if he is on site...

I'll ask my builder, he is an EWI approved installer. I can certainly understand what you are trying to do, I would want to know things like the cavity, right up to roof level, was well sealed and is not damp internally as although you will then close this cavity internally you will be bringing that cavity internally into the house envelope. I think that can be managed suitably but having seen some of the wall cavities in my house when I started the punch through for the extension in places it gave off that horrible damp masonry smell for about a month - I solved the issue causing the damp and it was water running over the inside of the sofit and running down the cavity in heavy rain - fine, it dries out, however if you then have these cavities closed internally and plastered over and that happened then you end up with damp plaster/wood and staining to decoration.

Not hugely convincing points and on par, if slightly increased in some aspects, with the alternative in terms of potential risk. If he wants to run in 2.5mm and use a 20A breaker (which is very limiting) then I guess fine, realistically however, this becomes a 4mm radial - 2 x 4mm conductors into a terminal poses more risk of strained terminals due to the heavier wire and reduced compliance to take a bend when being forced into the back box, this increases the likelihood of a wire sitting permanently under tension or sheer - a little hot/cold cycling and they are more likely to loosen as the stranded make up of 4mm allows the strands settle. So you end up with as many termination risks however arguably worse than using 2 No. lighter conductors that terminate nicely and comply with being formed into shape to recess into the backbox. MEIT did a big report on cable termination around about the time push-fit terminals were becoming more commonly used - the conclusion was that smaller solid core wires caused less risk than larger stranded wires. There was also a shift toward going radial again but this was ousted on various grounds as not being the best solution.

Well it would be both for both types of build - only no planning if under PD.

That's the whole point of design stage - you need to bottom it all out first. Your builder isn't going to choose which way he wants to build it, you will tell him - also, without a construction type how can they tender like for like? One might be a brickie and one might be a joiner, so you know one will be traditional and one will go TF.

Radial: Circuit which runs out and daisy chains around consumers, i.e. sockets or lights the circuits ends at the last unit - common on lighting circuits and small power runs. Ring: Circuit which runs as a ring - so in the case of a typical power ring it would leave the DB on a cable, go to the first socket, which then goes to the next socket and so on, then the last socket in the group has a wire that runs back to the DB to create the "ring". The following depends on your DB - if it's old with cartridge fuses then this would be the time to upgrade. I'd add a new extension lighting radial or two if you have enough ways left in your existing DB, alternatively and arguably a tidier and certainly safer option if not a nightmare to do so would be to tie the ground floor ext. lighting into the existing ground floor lighting and same for first floor. Go for 1.5mm for the sake of an extra few pence per meter. Then add a ground and first 2.5mm ring if you have the ways, but a single "Extension ring" to cover the whole lot would probably be fine depending on the rooms. If you are lucky another option is to tie into the existing rings, depends where the existing rings run and how easy it would be to extend the rings to the new sockets then continue back the DB.

It wouldn't be that difficult to make something work. Most PIR circuits would work on 18V with a very minor mod in most cases. I'd probably use the 12-24V one and encapsulate it.

Yes indeed! I have just edited it, someone said salt and I had salt on my mind, I have just checked what I have - Sodium CHLORATE! 99.9% I have a feeling it is old stock as the buckets have some fairly dated looked labels on them. It's bloody good stuff - I use it very carefully and only in certain situations.

For all of these options, wear a mask with the correct filters fitted, gloves and long trousers and sleeves. Afterwards I would wash the clothes on there own on a long cold wash, and have a shower. My brother was spraying weeds on the farm about 10 years ago, he had the jetpack sprayer on and was using the wand - he was ill for a week afterwards - it was too windy I think to have been spraying but there were jobs needing done and we did them.

I have a 25Kg bucket of it - local farm suppliers has it. Sodium Chlorate 99.9%.

Glyphosate.

I ran in all the feeds for all my appliances in my extension last month - home runs to each appliance, via a 1G cable outlet or un-switched socket, all fed from a single location(s) on the wall above the worktop - I will use MK grid system and hopefully be able to get the marked ones for each type of appliance. The MK grid will just be part of the ring main. Separate feeds for higher power appliances such as ovens. So on my grid system I will have, washer, DW, hob igniter - on opposite side another with fridges and freezers built in micro etc. In my old kitchen you first need to empty the pots and pans cupboard then lean in to kill the DW, oven and hob a little easier but it would still mean a fight with a tower of pots and pyrex.

Joe, I like your thinking and solution, I am going to invest a Saturday and a pack of copper to effectively re-plumb our hot water system - with the kitchen moving further away and not wanting to relocate the boiler my option was the most direct route (I am also contemplating having a DHW feed to the kitchen sink but possibly just using a local water heater which can be fed with hot water). The 10mm pipe option intrigues me I have about 50m of 10mm copper, great benefit being I can run it more or less the full route with no joints and I get to avoid plastic. So do tell, how is flow etc. with your 10mm pipe? Would it work for a kitchen tap?

We charge a minimum of £300 + VAT - that would usually get you a local site visit if needed and a letter to support findings or a very basic written spec - which for things like founds is usually suitable. i.e. "Foundations based on site findings should be 450mm wide by 200mm deep placed on sound, undisturbed material at a depth of 800mm concrete to be a minimum of C25 Max Slump: 70". At that, everyone know what is required and BC will accept that, the builder can build it etc. If this was me, I would just do a little homework into my ground conditions, then spec a found on my building control drawing and that is it - it either gets accepted or knocked back. People are always desperate to add more info than asked for, it's like dealing with anyone in authority, only offer the bare minimum of information unless asked for something else. My whole build I have submitted not a single calc or detail (apart from the usual wall make up and what not). The only thing I needed to do was get one of our SE's in the office to write me a letter confirming some existing founds could be reused. I didn't even submit U-value calcs. We even have a lintel detail that is nearly 5m long - we just spec'ed it up nicely - to be fair one of the SE's in the office did it - but it was the same as my first guess as to what we would need and no one asks a thing.

All I was saying is that don't make your architect decipher your life too much, I've sat around the board room table for many a kick-off meeting, from a private individual to Saudi Aramco's entourage of Saudi Princes and there is an idea, a seedling, of what they want, maybe something as simple as a sketch to artists impressions and a spec of sorts. I don't want to know that at 08:00 Mrs Jones makes toast while Mr. Jones takes a shower after which he then moves to a seating area to be served his toast. I want Mr and Mrs Jones to tell me they need a shower somewhere a worktop to put the toaster and room or area big enough to house a dining table. If someone started to go on about life-style I would polity ask them to turn that into a document or even a simple list of what they require for them to lead this lifestyle. As for the projector, I appreciate things like that must be planned for, but as I said in my post above, "... just make sure any sizes or building details to accommodate these items is allowed for". Regarding something like a tap - I would arrange that with the plumber at first fix in his spec.

I was unaware OS maps in DXF format came in in meters, I guess for an OS map that would make sense - when we export maps (they show full utilities and other things not normally on OS maps) they are always in mm, if I want a particular area, I key in the grid ref and it spits out a 100m, 250m 500m or 1Km squared DWG with the grid ref location in the centre - that then often becomes the base of our external site drawings etc. - I suspect that is owing to the requirement that we need to often XREF or drop drawings and objects, in mm, onto these drawings.

What you are going to need to do is find something you can scale from, then use a map of a known scale and use that to work out the size of a given object, then pull the new map into CAD, type scale, select the whole map, then click a base point (anything will do, use the corner of the line of the object you now have a size for), press R then select the beginning and end of line of the object you know the scale for then type in the new size, so say 41m type in 41000 then hit enter. The whole drawing will now rescale knowing that that line you have just dimensioned is 41,000mm. You can do a couple of reality check measurements of things to see if it seem about right. Frankly, the chances are PP won't even know if it was a bit out, at that scale they are not exactly going to turn their scale rule to the 1:10,000 side and measure of the drawing! They clearly just want to see a larger area and they are just being bloody difficult. Let's face it, they can look on their own OS maps or indeed Google maps or anything they want to see the surrounding area.

I know exactly what he means, if you import something into CAD or indeed are sent a CAD drawing that has just been drawn or created without a scale (I refute your comment CAD has no scale) then the components of the drawing do not accurately represent the object they show. They are just lines of differing lengths making up an object(s). I would doubt it would be in m, usually mm, meters is far to course a unit to use in CAD. An example - we were sent a landscape drawing for a site this week, we need it to produce HV cable route drawings, it came as a PDF (why people think PDF is an acceptable working format I do not know!) our CAD guys imported it then asked me if I had a reference for scale but this was just the drawing of a chunk of ground and a road in the middle, so when you dimensioned the road it was 1.2mm wide (this is where I refute your scale comment) so I said I know the road to be about 6000mm wide, but I also spotted 2 parking bays outside a building further across the drawing, I told the CAD guy to assume it's a 2400-2500mm wide bay, so we split the difference and went 2450mm for the bay, we used the bay as the reference and set the scale of the CAD drawing, we did a reality check and wham the road comes in a 5986mm! Close enough for me on a HV cable route drawing! So what @SuperJohnG is trying to do is create a scale from which to then allow him to correctly scale it in the paper-space drawing. CAD has a scale, without it half the software used in engineering design wouldn't work!

What irritates me the most about all of this, and yes the skipping of PP annoys me, but possibly not as much as this, is the waste. The environmental price tag on that development and it could all just end up a pile of broken masonry and twisted metal. That is sad. I assume they can keep the tennis court - can't see that harming anyone, well maybe, if the players get tennis elbow.

I appreciate you have put a lot of work into this, this, to an extent, is a common specification document. I'd think of this as Detailed Building Specification, although, it also lacks in plenty of more important details, probably the ones the architect care more about. I currently have one open in front of me for a major private healthcare provider, apart from obvious differences in the language used, the biggest difference is with formatting and it has a good index. I'd use your spreadsheet as a base document to format and copy and paste the document in a word doc and then you can PDF it for dissemination to those tendering. The one I am looking at now simply has a front page, what it is, who it is for, who wrote it etc. page 2 is a nice easy to read index which splits a whole hospital down into 15 chapters, within these 15 chapters further breakdown exists. So it allows me to go directly to the chapter(s) that are relevant to me: Mechanical, Electrical, possibly Data. I am not involved in "Joinery" but looking at that as an example it basically has a written spec for every detail, then there is a schedule of materials including door, skirting, hinge, timbers with model/types and manufacturer listed. In less than 20 seconds I can tell you where to source the hinges for the doors and what finish and screw to use. When you then hand this document over it can be easily read, for example, basically all the electrical systems and home media and all sorts is totally irrelevant to the architect, unless of course you need a detail to house a projector or screen, in which case that goes into the main building spec or do a room matrix which lists what each room must have. Often a room matrix is an A4 or A3 landscape page which has a clear and concise grid/table that goes through each step from the floor upwards. It would not mention sub-floors and wall make up as that is general construction but it might start at Flooring then have a breakdown of the carpet, then onto skirting, Howdens Oak skirting, then paint so on and so forth until the light switch make and model is listed (although no electrical spec, just that they want MK for example). A good spec will allow you to literally read 1 or 2 chapters or paragraphs and every detail that pertains to your involvement or trade or specialism can be understood and then followed. Reshape it a bit, knock down some of the points, does your architect care about a projector model... I'd also remove all the questions/research, this is a spec, have a separate titled, dated, revision marked page or document that has these questions on it, this is easier to deal with. I think the column, "purpose" of a room could be removed - self explanatory, the longer it takes to read the more it will cost. Why does anyone in your build need to know your lifestyle, you use your lifestyle to design the building and make it suit, but an architect doesn't want to have to mentally put on your shoes and come up with a suitable house. I think this should go in it's entirety. Get rid of brands, architect doesn't care - this would be more for the final spec to give your main contractor - however, I assume you will purchase your own items and free issue them to the relevant contractors for installation? In which case no one really cares about most of these things until fit out - just make sure any sizes or building details to accommodate these items is allowed for. Ideas section is fair enough - it's your wish list. I'd arrange them by priority though, lets them concentrate on your highs. Remove storage and simply add it to the requirements.

20mm over how long - it looks about 8-10m? If it was being rendered I wouldn't even get upset about this - a little bit more scratch on that area even to take it to a 10mm difference and you would never notice it.