Carrerahill
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Everything posted by Carrerahill
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Estate Car to carry house doors inside, flat
Carrerahill replied to Ferdinand's topic in General Self Build & DIY Discussion
Volvo V70 all day long. Go for a 2000-2007. It will also give you half a million miles service if the basics are looked after. There are plenty of mint condition ones at this age and they are mechanically spot on (unless some maintenance-phobe had them). Have some fun too and get one that will eat most BMW's, Audi's Merc's etc. out there! The rear seats can be folded down totally flat (if you remove rear seat bases - 4 easy clips and the lot is out) to create a dead flat load bay extending right to the rear of the front seats. -
You will be painting it every 8-12 months to be honest. You can buy 20 litres of floor paint for about £40 from the guys that go round supplying business units on industrial estates etc. anyone who has a painted floor in a business premises knows that floor painting is about a 8-12 monthly maintenance program. For a domestic garage I could recommend the 2 part epoxy stuff, expensive for the good stuff but it should last you a really long time if it is just normal domestic traffic.
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I am hearing you, but I have this in parts of our business premises and it's been fine in terms of slipperiness etc. It's like they have in Costco/B&Q etc. It's not like the glass finish people put in their homes, but it's very smooth with a slight sheen to it and the epoxy seal is just to stop it staining, it still appears to have some porosity to it. Looks smart. Issue I find with floor paint is that once you paint it that's you, you are painting it every year to keep it looking smart.
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I am going to diamond our floor and clear epoxy seal. It will look like polished concrete and have a resistance to oil etc. soaking in.
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Another question related to the above. I am going to build a gable truss which will be sheeted, wrapped etc. then I am going to fix cladding, I might just use some fence board, maybe some 150mm boards and then maybe a 75mm board down the join the way they often do the cladding on chalets and things. Or I will try and get some of that Marley weatherboard stuff. Anyway the fact is that some sort of cladding will be fixed onto the gable end then it will meet the block work that will simply be rendered. So question is about what I should line up with what. Here is my thinking: The idea here is that the OSB sheet will sit directly inline with the blockwork, then I can run the membrane down beyond the wall so that any water will run past the wall and not potentially onto the wall plate, when I install the membrane I can leave a nice leaf that can overhang the render, then allow the wood to come down an additional 100mm to cover it. How does that sound? Another option would be to let the gable truss sit another 12mm to the outside of the wall, then let the OSB drop down over the wall plate and down the wall a little too.
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Blockwork
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4x2 flat option:
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OK. The garage is now built I am happy with it, looks like it is going to be very spacious for my needs. So I have done some quick CAD drawings of what I think I will build for the trusses. Below is a basic exploded drawing showing the roof from the rafters, a rafter showing checks needing cut in the middle then the truss at the bottom. The truss will be an 8x2 joist and 6x2 rafters, Peter said 2x6x2 to give me a 6x4 which I can still do but I am thinking of 2 central trusses now and the gable end trusses so I wondered if I would be fine with a single 6x2 design - I am thinking of weight here as I will be lifting them into place with my brother (well that's the plan) so don't want 2 of us to be up a platform trying to pull up heavy trusses. I could always sister them in situ. You can see from my drawing that the truss is checked at the top to take a 6x2 ridge, then just over half way down another check for a 6x2 purlin then a 4x2 at the bottom which will just sit on the face of the 6x2 but I guess this could also be arranged just to sit on the wall plate? The thinking behind the angled 4x2 is to put roof loading onto the truss so that the wall plate is not being loaded with a diagonal load trying to spread the wall, but I suppose if the rafters are well attached to the ridge and mid purlin then they will not be moving outward anyway. There is also going to be a central spine running from the 6x2's down to the 8x2 that I have not drawn in this version yet. So thoughts please guys. I will also do a 4x2 on wall plate drawing and post that now.
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Thanks Peter. I will come back to this in a week or so to bottom out the design and price it up - sounds good to me!
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Now following on from above, the roof design - I am going to build it myself rather than buy in trusses (they didn't work out cheaper anyway and they looked like flimsy weak junk). The walls will be 10 blocks high all the way around, the gables are almost certainly going to be built in timber, sheeted, wrapped, battened and clad in cedar etc. There is also a central butt which makes me think I could build 3 sturdy trusses (the timber gables making up 2 of these) and run in purlins over which I could sit smaller rafters and not have joists. I can get some decent purlins from a local building merchant and could use a decent ridge board such as a 8x2/10x2. The idea behind this is that I can maximise headroom - I will probably floor out some of the roof space once I see what storage needs I want but I am going to avoid this for as long as possible as I don't like to encourage hoarding. So I am looking for thoughts here. The only real spec I need to stick to is the roof needs to be about 30° as that's what is on the planning drawing and it will probably have tiles but I may go for those metal sheets that look like tiles - again advice appreciated. I am keen to blitz on with this and start the extension later this summer!
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First photo is just the trees cleared back along slab edge, the second shows the progress by about lunchtime on the Sunday. We are sitting at 7 blocks high with front butts and corners higher - we had a bit of a setback on the Saturday night in the form of a 1 in 30 year rain occurrence, the brickie had all the corners up ready to fill the sides in on the Sunday, I got out with tarps as soon as I could but the walls were bleeding mortar and one totally collapsed. We have not had rain for over 4 weeks and it had to rain that night! Anyway, I cleaned all the blocks up and this was all rebuild on the Sunday morning and then progress continued. It is to be finished on the 30th which suits me as then I don't need to think about the roof design till the block is up!
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Morning All! OK - the block, sand, cement and lintels are outside, the slab is ready (felled a couple of small tree's and gave the others a trim back) I gave it a good clean to ensure good mortar adhesion and I am waiting for my neighbour who is a bricklayer. Don't laugh but I am sitting on ACAD just now tweaking the front door design. The garage is 4800mm wide, I must come in about 1000mm from the left to avoid tree's further along I don't want to remove but I am now not sure if I should go 3000mm wide or 2500mm etc... I have spoken to a roller door company and cannot remember what they said about maximum width, I don't want the block built then find I have gone too big! Also, don't need to think about this for a couple of hours but need to choose my window height! I will upload photos later/tomorrow/Monday.
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You can get airtight on commercial grade down-lights, most of the tin bashed stuff from China isn't up to much but plenty good for domestic use. You are looking at £120-250 for a commercial down-light that will have all the attributes you need. I have some WILA down-lights which come with all the thermal ratings and are guaranteed air tight - but at £170 a pop they are not everyone's cup of tea. Aurora are OK for domestic use - Chinese made and the chips are over-run.
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I would be installing a good quality fireproof sealed (IP65 or better) LED down-lights in this space. The bezel on good ones comes with a seal to but this can be made. If you use the right product then it will have all the properties you need. Decent quality commercial grade down-lights would be the best option - if money is of consideration then something like this would work: https://www.screwfix.com/p/luceco-f-type-fixed-fire-rated-led-downlight-white-800lm-8w-220-240v/9966T?tc=IB4&ds_kid=92700030354322698&ds_rl=1245250&ds_rl=1248181&ds_rl=1249484&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIxbuQp_PD2QIVbr7tCh1CIQgqEAQYAyABEgLjuvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds&dclid=CKHLpqjzw9kCFTED0wodDYcKPA Note you can get 2 of these in Costco at the moment for £22. These can also be covered with insulation - good quality LED fittings will under-run a better chip which means heat is less of an issue - which is why insulation coverable fittings are now much more common.
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Hi All, I have a cupboard on the ground floor of my house, house is a suspended floor which has 50mm EPS between all the joists which helps but it was a bit draughty, not an issue in 90% of the ground floor now as all rooms and hall I laid rolls of underlay all taped and up the walls at the skirting which I then laid a 22mm engineered floor over with glued joints, the kitchen has 9mm ply, screed and tiles so the house is pretty airtight on on the ground floor. Good ventilation exists under the house from the original brick vents. The last remaining draughty area is the cupboard under the stairs, this is no longer a cupboard but rather 2 large drawers and a cupboard as I built a custom storage system into the space. I clearly wasn't thinking it all through because at the time with it wide open and easy access I should have laid ply to seal it all up but rather left it bare boards, the issue now is that with the storage system framework installed it would be difficult/impossible to lay in sheet material, since the drawer and door fronts have gone on last week I have realised just how draughty this cupboard is and the drawers and cupboard and always freezing. Now the frame for the storage system means I have effectively tanked this area and it got me thinking. Do I simply mix up a sand/cement screed and pour it in to a thickness of 10mm to act as a one piece seal? If I did this should I put some DPM so the moisture from the screed doesn't soak the timber too much. I know it would not be recommended method for a floor, but it will never be trafficked. I did contemplate resin but could not cope with the idea of stinking fumes for weeks on end and the constant off-gassing. For the record it would not be easy to seal from the underside of the floor because there are intact dwarf walls to 40% of the underside of this cupboard which would mean breaking through to get access - not keen on that and secondly because joists sit on this wall it would mean loads of custom cuts to make up some sort of sealing system. Thoughts please ladies and gents.
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I would just notch that back bar, in reality is is serving very little purpose other than to tie the sides together at the back and stop them flapping in the wind. Now the cabinet is installed they are almost redundant. If you were worried you could remove the section to allow the pipes to clear comfortably, then screw a batten of real wood to the back plate to reinforce it. I doubt the chipboard being damaged by moisture is much of an issue (from seeing it survive well in a bathroom on the back of a damaged cabinet), if concerned check it then apply some paint/varnish/silicone to the exposed chipboard.
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Hi guys, Got a question I think one of you guys might be able to answer albeit not really a build related question: Do I need this cold water tank in my commercial property? Here is the background... I have a business premises which is basically a commercial unit that has had offices/kitchen/storage built into it, so when it was built in the early 00's it was just an open plan unit with a male and female WC, above this "toilet block" is a cold water tank, it must be about 200/250litres (based on it's size compared to an oil drum which is 205litres). We would like to develop the area above the toilet block to tie it into the mezz storage level we already have but the tank is bang smack in the middle for weight loading reasons and it really makes the space useless. All that is fed from this tank is the two toilets. It would be a simple case of cutting the two pipes that go to the tank and join them somewhere downstairs thus making the toilets mains fed. Apart from the obvious issue of if the water supply is cutoff we would only have a cistern full of water for each toilet to flush is there any reason why we could not remove this tank? I can think of no logical engineering reason other than that the valves in the cistern might not take mains pressure (although they should) but I am fitting a PRV to the system due to a new 15litre Ariston water heater we have installed which requires the incoming pressure to be no higher than 3bar so I can reduce the supply to the whole property with the Honeywall valve I have already purchased. The reason I am asking and not just doing, is because this is a commercial property and occasionally Scottish Water do make system checks of our water system to ensure we are in compliance (non-return valves before water heaters and so on). If anything I see a tank as a liability for many reasons. Is this tank a throwback to an older plumbing code?
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Concrete was placed today... 6.2 x 5 - 200mm slab C35
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Update: Just off the phone to my ground works man. The concrete has been booked for next Saturday 08:00. The shuttering is 3/4 built, but only about 2/3 rakers have been set, so this weekend I must fit all the rakers, lay in the gulley and T branch for the waste, lay in a piece of electrical conduit to get my SWA in via the floor, lay in a piece of conduit for the water, and a 4 inch conduit for data or control cables or whatever and haunch it all. Then I need to do a final level of the hardcore and the ground work man will be round on Sunday to whack it (just the final 75/100mm cover). Then I have next week to roll out the DPC and lay and tie the rebar. All seems quite doable, although I really only have this Saturday and evenings next week. I am looking forward to getting this stage done as I feel as if I have had a hole in the ground for some time and it will then let me strip all the shuttering and have a major tidy up of all the wood I have been amassing to build the supporting structure of the shuttering. I can also start getting the ground levels up to the slab more or less worked out. I will post photos, promise - I just might not do it soon!
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Well I had rented one but it went back after the excavations, in retrospect I should have kept the digger for another couple of days and got my recycled aggregate and Type 1 delivered the following day. Anyway I did what I described above and now the site is rock solid and fairly level. It took a fair bit of effort to move double handle most of the Type 1 but in the end it was all worth it. The concrete was meant to be being poured today however I had a shuttering issue at the weekend, it should be built this weekend and the pour completed next week.
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So, the plan above didn't really, well, go to plan! I have only just received the last load of type 1. Whacker is coming tomorrow. With any luck I can post some images of a site ready for shuttering by the end of the weekend.
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Hi all. Quick question, I had 8 tons of 6F2 recycled aggregate dumped on my garage site about 4 months ago, this contained some pretty big stuff - 3/4 bricks and lumps of concrete, fine it was just to get the base fill and once spread over 30m sq it was not that deep so the first layer of type 1 filled all the small voids, this first fill was just about perfect for running a vibrator plate over (less than 150mm rise in fact) and would have been the perfect plan at the time but that didn't work out. I then got another load type 1 delivered and decided to place that round the perimeter of the area to build it up as some will run off into a lower area, at this stage it was still within first compaction limits. I was then on the phone to my merchant who was looking at my account and said he would do me a better rate on the type 1 going forward because I was not being given the full trade price and had bought a lot, so I just jumped at the chance and ordered another load. This load was carefully tipped at one end of the site so my plan was to compact the area that is about level and then shovel all the new stuff out then compact it again, the issue is the area the stuff was dumped on, I am going to need to dig it back down to a suitable depth for first compaction then whack it all, then pull the type 1 back over the area. This just sounds like a lot of extra work, my fault I know but what are peoples thoughts on whacking say a 250mm depth of type 1? By the way, this stuff was compacted to an extent as it went down as I continue to park my Defender on the hardcore and the area that would need dug up has been run over with the Landy about 100 times and feels like concrete now. The loose stuff now sits on top of this. I am going to get the whacker tomorrow morning so could get a fairly big one, I was thinking of the 400mm 12kN or if it would help with my depth issues I could get the 500mm with 15kN but at the same time I have been advised by my structural engineer that using too big a plate could cause issues with surrounding buildings foundations and could also damage my rear retaining wall. So, what are peoples thoughts here, any similar stories or issues?
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Here are some photos of the progress. I got 5.8 tons of 6F2 (recycled aggregate) delivered on Tuesday, whacker is coming next week (Friday I think) and on the same afternoon loads of MOT are due to arrive, so plan is whack the site, get a load in and levelled, whack it then get another load.
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Hi guys. I have building warrant and planning now so I can think about starting very soon. I am trying to sort out the timber frame aspect of it just now and note the warrant drawings call for Tyvek Reflex and 2.0mm breather membrane to BS4016 - so I guess I just wrap the frame with something like Tyvek housewrap then wrap it in the Tyvek Relfex. I am tempted to send the commencement letter ASAP so I can just start firing up the frame but want to make sure I can get it wrapped ASAP so need the right stuff.
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Well the digging is all done, the lawn has been raised and the garage site cleared and dug out. I need to go in and sort out bricks and stuff which I piled up then I can start with the hardcore going in. I am pleased with the result, the lawn site needs graded properly as it was just roughly graded with the excavator as we ran out of time! I opted not to do the front lawn scrape as I didn't want to have too many mud pits! Photos on soon once I get them from my camera/phone.
