Carrerahill

No it needs to be be the reflective stuff - thank you for your offer - I spy an reply from Christine Walker who is A near me, and B it looks like she has the exact stuff I need! Thanks again.

I got myself some 2 section, extension/A frame type ladders. Delivered in the AM and they had paid for themselves by dinner time!

Glad this all went well. Could have been nasty. I was out fighting sheets of OSB yesterday. The Celotex stayed put miraculously!

Hey, excellent, the shiny silvery reflective stuff? I am in Scotland but if it was not going to be an issue I could email you a label to print and stick on the bag and I will arrange uplift and arrange to square you up for it...

On the scrounge here, I am looking for about 6m of Tyvek Reflex or any breathable reflective membrane, Protect TF200 Thermo etc. I ran out with a small piece of wall to finish and a bit above a door and don't fancy paying £340 for another roll to use about 6m of it! Does anyone have some of a roll left I could buy, or do they have enough on a roll they could sell me some by the meter? I would arrange shipping and square up with you. I could actually use a little more, about 10m, but that is not critical, it was an over engineering situation! Help would be much appreciated. Thanks

Well that is what I realise, I have binned more sets of ladders than I care to remember as they have aged and got damaged and been condemned! So I seem to be in this situation where I need more to replace them all. I think I am going to buy a big set of 2 section ladders and worry about smaller ones in the future.

That is more or less what I have just now. Need more height you see.

I am looking for some ladder thoughts and advice. I have a set of super sturdy, read super heavy, multi-purpose ladder's which are still tied off to the new garage roof (as a reminder to fit the rest of the ridge tiles!) and then I have a borrowed set of 3 piece combo ladders (A frame with extension or lean against etc.) they are really good, tall enough to reach the top of the garage gable end comfortably which is about 4.6 meters and feel secure yet also small enough I can take them into the house and change a lamp or something without being ridiculous and could be stored in a cupboard, what also is handy is that they also fit in my Volvo lying down with the rear seats down without having to sit over the front seats - I like that - I often help out friends and family so being able to take ladders with me is useful. But they are not my own set and I really need to clean them up (still more or less immaculate as I keep all tools) and return them. I was going to just go and get a pair more or less identical but my requirements would call for something a bit taller that could let me get up to gutter level on the house which is 7m where the ground level is lowest. With this sort of size I end up with ladders that are not really "household" sized, they become too big for the car and a bit bulky for the cupboard (although realistically they will live in the garage) so what have you guys got, what do you find is a good middle of the road one size fits all ladder? I don't really want to have to have 3 sets - the big fold up set are great but really only for use close to the house or in the garage or where I need a platform as they are too heavy to lug about and actually a pain in the neck to deploy as you need to lay them down or prop them up and unfold bits and then you smack a wall and end up needing to paint again... Who would have thought a ladder purchase could be so difficult. Has anyone used these guys - they seem reasonable, but is there a reason for that?! https://www.laddersandscaffoldtowers.co.uk/index.html

Fact is somewhere you need a vent, a vent and an AAV obviously both do quite different things in their own right, albeit a vent will do both - so make the BCO happy there is a vent somewhere and you should be fine. I think if you suggest to the BCO that you want to maintain the integrity of your roof, he will understand that and also respect that if anything, you are trying to make this building better which in his eyes should be a good thing. I suspect you would have more luck asking him if you can have a horizontal vent section (with a run on it obviously) exiting from the side of your house thus saving your roof or as @JSHarris says draw his attention to the treatment plant ventilation setup. Venting depends on many factors but what you are trying to vent is any possible hydrogen sulphides, ammonia, methane, carbon monoxide etc. build up from sections of pipe, if a gas can build up and get trapped then you have an issue. It seems they will often allow AAV only on short runs of soil that go directly to a manhole cover or vented stack, so say a toilet on the ground floor, it can be, from top down, AAV hidden in wall or above ceiling height, toilet connection, slow bend 90 outflow to manhole this section is un-vented but I think it is so short there is no risk?

Before you cut anything, is there not a way around this? My BCO has accepted a horizontal section of vent so that it can come out the gable... The fact is, as soon as you penetrate it you've compromised the roof and no "seal" will ever be as good.

Not a help this as it's another question but what reason are they not wanting to extend it? I am asking out of interest more than anything else and also in case we run into something like this so we can better know how to avoid. Sorry for a question to your question!

Nice work, that is the sort of thing that I like to do, but lets face it, you only get that where someone pays a lot of attention to doing a design for you, or you do it yourself and take the time and care. Bearing in mine infill panels can cost upward of £50 (probably more on some materials) on some finishes it is in your best interest budget wise not to waste money on bits of chipboard with a nice finish on them. My brother got a kitchen from Wren, it's a nice kitchen, but the design was done by them in house, I was not overly impressed with some of the corner cutting - rather than make best use of space lots of bits of infill and panels stuck on here and there. Luckily he had a really good joiner, who was able to work with the units and parts he had to make a better version than what Wren had designed. He modified units superbly to fit around things and hid a boiler that was not even on the original plan to be hidden as they somehow ended up with an extra door. It is rare to get a joiner that good, I would class him as more of a high end shop fitter type.

I think the first thing I would do, is look at the planning portal and get a copy of the plans, then see if it was clearly shown like this, if it was, and assuming you got the statutory planning notice, then you have no leg to stand on as you had the opportunity to look at it and object if you wanted. Your roof is 40mm over the boundary so it was perhaps noted and they chose to do the same, albeit a bit more than yours - give and take - fair is fair. Be careful, your neighbour might say OK - I will move my roof back, but you need to move yours as well and then you have just shot yourself in the foot! If the plans show a much tighter roof to the wall then you have a bit of a case as the extension has not been build as detailed - it could be a case of the builder put up the extension then the roofers just sort of did their own thing and created that size of overhang, they could have done it much tighter, i.e. about 30mm had they used dry-verge units. When you know the boundary wall was going up what did you expect to happen with the roof, was it discussed, did they suggest it would be tight to the wall? Do you need to do maintenance soon? Are you potentially just creating an issue? As for adding a pitched roof to yours that would be easy, you would just get involved with your neighbour, tell them your plans, get the relevant permissions depending on your situation and remove their verge, with their written consent and match their pitch and tile type and tie your roof in identically to their roof - that would look really smart. As for maintenance of your roof - well, it may be difficult at the corner but given it is a flat rubber roof I am sure it would be easy enough to get the downturn down the gap and seal it. The builders mess on your house, yes fair enough, I would have them put that right and make sure you are satisfied. I am sure the neighbour and the builder now think you are being a nuisance but that it just what happens with things like this.

If they tried that with me I would flip. Especially given that most of us here probably know more about the critical measurements of our houses than anyone else and probably even did a lot of the design. I remember going into a place like this with a CAD drawing, the guy started to tell me how it may not be 100% accurate, I told him it was and told him it would be more accurate than any measurements he would ever get. He said it was their policy to do it themselves and I told him it was my policy not to let someone disrespect me by implying I cannot measure a room properly.

My answer is no, you know what you want and if you can design your house you can sure as hell design your own kitchen. The "designer" is someone who can work their in house software, I am sure it is a great service and it is good for getting parts lists but other than that they are just given a job of blasting a design together for you and with all due respect don't really care about our individual needs.

It is a commercial solutions, as you would rarely see this in a domestic environment but it's easily done. They are just using MDPE pipe, anything that suits the materials, temperatures etc. will work, so in your case some off cuts of 22/15mm plastic pipe, then as for the capping/sealing compound this is just a semi-permanent polyurethane or silicone. The reason we say semi-permanent is that electrician number 2 a year down the line may choose to use that duct for another cable, so he digs it out, make a space, then repacks and seals. The capping material really is nothing fancy, it is usually fire resistant to stop fire spread. https://www.dortechdirect.co.uk/everbuild-fire-mate-sealant.html?gclid=Cj0KCQiA5NPjBRDDARIsAM9X1GJ6AsjkfVpVcKUwcV-cJrX3x2VD0xjsQ1Oxp7NbsOykwRzg8jFjre4aAvr3EALw_wcB

I knew a guy who had a "boiler house" about 10 meters from his house. He ran 22mm flexi's fully insulated and foil wrapped etc. then the whole lot was run inside 4 inch soil pipe which he insulated then ran in a bed of gravel along a trench. Worked well. For 1 meter I would probably go a little over the top but it would work well. I would probably create a concrete/block channel, with a mini PIR insulated slab foundation, DPC round the lot, PIR insulation up the sides, insulate the pipes with good insulation, foil wrap them, then fill the whole trench with some sort of insulation fill, then PIR lid and a concrete slab or something over it. Sounds mad, but for 1 meter you really could do a seriously good job as costs would be acceptable to go "over board" You can buy external heating pipe which is a big insulated pipe with both flow and return within it, but I doubt you could get a meter or so of it on its own, the termination process would probably be about as long as the run and the whole thing would not be worth it. As for the old flue, I would make up the insulated pipes, pass them through then pack any free area around the pipes with off cuts of pipe and then fill the hole - that is standard practise for filling ducts and sealing them, basically your hole in the wall is a short "duct". See sort of example here:

OK - this is not difficult in terms of what needs to be done, but may prove difficult in execution depending on age of your house and the way it is wired. If it was me, and I was doing this in my property or indeed specifying how these works were to be done, I would first create a new sub-main, so from meter tails, into a 100A switchfuse at the meter end, then out on a new cable to another isolator (so you can isolate whole CU locally) before your CU. The sub-main cable would ideally be a appropriately sized split concentric cable (LSZH - low smoke zero halogen is best for internal use like this), probably a 16mm² or 25mm² (depends on your supply rating) or SWA (they end up bigger overall diameter) - however, you could use T&E or even meter tails in conduit - with all cable options except split you really need to have a separate 16mm earth cable - check your split concentric spec, it should have 16mm² on 25mm². You cannot rely on steel armouring for your earth. Depending on route and protection you would really need to protect the whole sub-main with an RCD which is not ideal so I would look into a suitable route and almost certainly use split concentric - that is what the DNO would run. Then to the final circuits, ideally I would want to pull in new cables from the first and last socket on each ring and new feeds to the lighting, cooker, shower radials, this way you do not end up with a junction box to extend all the cables back to your new CU - that is just messy and can impact circuit suitability.

On my building warrant drawings, with regard to the timber frame it says, "... consisting of Tyvek Reflex and 2.0mm cavity breather membrane...". What does that actually mean? To me I would just get a roll of suitable house wrap and attach it according spec - what gets me is the "and" and what does the 2.0mm refer to? rather than a dimension is this a typo and it was mean to be 2,000mm²/m or something... anyway confused and I cannot ask the guy who wrote it now. So, with the timber frame started at the weekend I will need a roll of something suitable this week - I know you can pay all sorts of prices for these, I don't want cheap but I want reasonable, I don't know that spending £400 on a roll of DuPont for example is worth it (well maybe it is) so what you guys have found to be good I'd be interested in hearing about - also, if I am buying a roll, as it is only an extension it would be good if it was one of those wall & roof membranes then I can use it all over. Thanks

No, not quite - national grid own all the 400kV and 275kV infrastructure and some 132kV, once it steps down to 132kV, 33kV, 11kV, then the end user voltages 415V then it is owned by, for example Scottish Power, Southern Electric etc... albeit these guys are also energy suppliers they also operate, regionally, the network. So in Scotland it is common to see Scottish power working on lines etc. I don't know who it would be in your area. So that is better than it being national grid network as they are not moving for anyone - however, it depends what is up there, you see all supplies are 3 phase to a point, lots of older houses even have 3 phase directly into them (now they just pick 1 phase for balancing reasons and run in single phase cable from the street as it is cheaper and easier and safer really) just because a house only has 1 phase coming into it, doesn't mean that it wasn't tapped from a 3 phase cable only meters away from your front door, so this is why I am interested in your cables because depending on what is up there it could potentially have been installed privately to take a connection to a dwelling - the DNO then installed a meter on the end of it all and the assumption is it is owned by the network operator, but it may not be! I was involved in a rural project where we specified SP approved poles and cable, ran a pole drop and installed in SP approved methods, SP approved duct and more SP approved cable and ran in a cable to a property that SP then came along and connected up for the customer. It was far cheaper than getting them to do it - ultimately it meant it was privately owned from the local tap on a pole, albeit the DNO had equipment in the building that was theirs - bit of a ramble but my point is that in rural environments is common to see private water, electric and phone networks, albeit a supplier will then utilise it, IF they can see compliance to their network spec. If your cable is private, and with no paperwork to suggest otherwise, you may end up in a situation you can arrange for a new ducted section to be installed - you do the hard work - they pull a cable through the duct and drop it at pole A, run underground for your site, and it comes back up at pole B. I cannot promise anything, but we have an account to a network operators database which may let me look into your cables for you, the issue is that in rural environments (and city amazingly), believe it or not, the operator often doesn't actually know where half the cables go to and from - I was absolutely astounded when I first learnt this. If you PM me the grid coordinates of part of the line in contention, I can see if I can pull it up and see if there is any info on it.

Yes, I see where you are coming from, my initial comment was a bit tongue-in-cheek - I know that architectural firms offer more than a building concept but when projects grow in size generally their involvement does end up simply being "this is what the building will look like" then as I said before engineers make it all possible! Obviously it is scale dependent, those certainly sound like smaller commercial projects if there is no multi-disciplinary involvement with professional services being provided by relevant professional bodies. At present we are involved with an architect who is providing full services to a small multi-city commercial project, his firm are responsible for more or less everything I can see although we are providing M&E, structural and fire engineering services and a QS is doing some audits, but in the grand scheme of things it is a fairly low budget project and that is why it is all being done in house, but there are only 15 of them in the whole firm so obviously they couldn't directly service a large scale project but may be able to offer the architectural services. On something like Tesco I think they just buy a Meccano kit in all honesty!

The first point, you say a 400V line, in the UK this would usually be 3 cables with 415V potential between them running from a pole mounted transformer, but each to earth is 230V, so is it a single line or 3 x 230V cables - in which case the good news is moving them will be a lot easier and the power company will own and operate it. Does that cable then drop down to a dwelling or other building, or is there another transformer? If there is a transformer then the lines above you are probably actually 11,000V and I would not probably want to live under those! As for the regs, check out ENA TS 43-8 that certainly covers high voltage lines but might also cover the sort of transmission lines you are dealing with.

It is a bit, but, there is reality to the comment! Regarding the services architects offer it all depends what their scope of works is. I often work with architects who basically come up with the building and then advise on it's final finish and architectural details to a point or through to completion but they don't really do much more than that. In commercial building most of the services you list above are carried out by an engineering consultancy who supply engineers, QS, PM's etc. or a contractor that uses in house team or a construction management firm. Remember private builds make up for a tiny percentage of the construction industry and often result in architects sort of taking on a build as their baby and offer services not usually covered by their discipline. Yes, it just seems odd that someone who's job is to check compliance and suitability is being blamed for someone else's mistake.

I like it. As an engineer I design things everyday and coming up with new or unique solutions is what I enjoy best. The joiner and fabricator are just typical unimaginative "no" people who lack the ability to come up with new ideas and just follow blindly. Notice the person who likes it is the one who designs and creates new things for a living. The fabricator just need to be given a spec and told to build it, I really wouldn't care what anyone thought of it, the plumber probably secretly loves it because it should be an easy enough thing to connect up and shouldn't leak. Just check the dims with your plumber for the waste pipe stub - I would probably use SS pipe TIG welded to the tray that will push-fit or compression fit onto a standard waste connection - I am sure this has been thought of but get the plumber to help with that aspect to get what he would like to see - they you get him on board with it. Alternatively have them simply core the SS tray and then fit a standard type waste - I would ask them to punch a waste type "dimple" into the steel so it was the lowest point too. People will comment that you could just tank the floor and build it up with off the shelf materials, however, I think the saving on install time and the sure fire water tightness will help balance this out. Give your husband a pat on the back and compliment him on his creative thinking - this is exactly the sort of thing I would come up with. Got for it.

I prefer what you have gone for. A good solid timber frame, fully injected with insulation makes for a good fill, no bad cuts and bits missing etc.