LSB

where do you get the details of usage ?

the trouble with 6a is that it doesn't bend as well as 6 and will break if you force it and as it is thicker it can be tricky to get in / out of RJ45 sockets

thanks It's funny you say that, I was helping out at a village fete last weekend and someone who walks the nearby footpaths commented on the progress. I guess I just have the project plan to see ahead.

This blog is for me to look back over time to see how things have changed and to assure myself that we are making some progress, albeit very slow. I appreciate all help and friendly comments, but appreciated that this is not an exciting blog. Looking through my diary for the last month it seems to say, work / work / work and not on the conversion. Moving to a new factory seems to entail lots of extra hours. Good to add some OT to the budget, but by the time the taxman etc. have their cut it's not as much as hoped. Anyway, this weekend 7th / 8th August is the server move which means the rest of the office staff can move so one more busy week with them and it should slow down. The factory is a different story, but that's not my responsibility. Anyway, back to the conversion. After looking in more detail when replacing some blocks we realised that the crack in the middle of the long back wall went from top to bottom and was not level, but luckily hadn't cracked the somewhat limited existing foundations. Thanks to BH and advice we went from the plan to stitch to removing the whole section to replace. So, from this To this, and hopefully soon the gap will be no more. To provide access for drainage and just add more space on the back, which is south facing, we have been removing rotten sleepers and the steel girders which held them up. This picture is back before everything started growing, now the whole bank has been covered in bracken as you can see in the picture above. So again, from this To this, which will ultimately be retained by gabions and cleared the whole length. Getting out all the tree stumps, rotten sleepers and metal girders is quite a labour intensive task, thanks for diggers. As of 2019 this stretch was completely impossible to get through with lots of weeds and tree branches growing through what is now our windows. I didn't think at the time to take any pictures, but I'm beginning to become part of my children's generation and trying to remember to take photos daily of everything that does and doesn't move. Not something that was ever done when I was young. So, onwards to August, building up the gap, extending some internal walls and if we can get a floor saw then breaking more concrete, hopeful at an auction tomorrow. Good luck to everyone on their build and back at the end of August. Jill

So, that will work for the high edge of the roof, but not for the South side as we are very limited with the height of the roof and the windows will be right at the top of the wall as this is how the openings already are in the barn conversion.

The roof will be raised seam zinc or steel. Windows vary in width as follows. 1. 1175 2. 1870 3. 1000 4. 1860 5. 1500 6. Not measured yet, but probably 1860, it's still a shed for storage and won't be cleared until we have an outside workshop. I haven't decided on the type of lintel yet, I was going to use steel, but not for any particular reason except they weigh less to lift up. Do the lintels already have steel bars running though. I also wondered about BC, do they just allow whatever is there. These windows are all for existing openings in the barn along one side. The North & East side will all be new ones in a new wall. The West side will be new openings in existing walls.

The roof is technically flat @ 12 degrees and this wall with 6 windows is the low side, so I guess it is taking the load.

More about these lintels. I've been looking at lintel calculations, which takes into account the weight above. But, these lintels will have one brick above, to make it level with the blocks, but it is then the roof. How do I calculate what I need in the scenario. Yes, I am getting an SE, but I'm just looking at designs and wondering how it works.

This isn't really building materials, but tools, but wasn't sure where to enter. We need a floor saw to cut a 25m concreate passageway so we can dig it up. We've tried the digger and the concrete breaker with no luck. Hiring one is about £250 per week, but delivery (10*2), plus a new blade (95), plus VAT = approx £450 per week. Does anyone have any better ideas, we've considered buying one to then sell on, but how do you know they work. Don't suppose BH has one to loan. Because we both work full time so don't get much done in a day we also don't want to hire when you are paying even if you don't have time to use. We also can't find anyone who is interested in digging it up for us as we don't want all the groundworks done, just this. TIA Jill

I wonder if whoever bought it at auction had actually viewed it.

we have 6 acres and no neighbours so it is way down on our house for both those reasons All the houses on the road I live are are very old, character, individual large houses with large or very large gardens / fields, but that site only reckons about 500k for them when they sale, if ever on the market for a huge amount more.

This link just goes back to this forum thread, could you possibly send me this link again.

I did a pre-app re knock down and rebuild and was told that as it is in the countryside that would count as a new house and there was no chance of that as I don't have the funds for a 'special' house. They only reluctantly gave Class Q because the SE said it could be converted. There is a place near here where the idiot knocked down everything and the planner spotted when driving past and he lost his planning and his barn. He sold up and moved on shortly afterwards. Our barn has a footpath running along the wall with the cracks and as it is at the top of a hill you can spot it from the road. All my neighbours support us, but who knows who is walking / driving past and is jealous.

Although it is a barn we are converting it is a modern one (60's) and constructed of single skin hollow blocks. Here are pictures First one was large, but following mortar lines. We cleaned out the gaps, but there was already lots of mortar missing. This is now repaired. This is the one that HID thinks needs stitching as taking down and rebuilding will be a lot of work. This does seem to stop at the floor and not affect the foundations. This is another one that follows the block line, but the mortar is still in situ so not sure what to do . HID does understand your comment and thinks it may work. But, he's not sure what to do about this one. We have a couple of others like this. As you can see on the larger crack picture the foundations are not much to write home about. As a class Q barn conversion we can just leave the walls and foundations, in fact we are not allowed to remove any external walls. But, the replacement roof will be much heavier that the one that we took off. We have to use the same covering (metal sheets), but we will be adding insultation etc. so we need to be sure that the walls can take the strain. The SE hasn't been out yet as we are still preparing the site for him to come and look to do the diagrams to create the BC drawings.

I would love to have left the floor, but as we cannot go up and had quite a lot of roof at 1.8m we had to go down. What we have in the remove / crush pile is pretty much solid 6"+ thick concrete. Obviously, there is mud on the rubble, but not mixed in. This little lot is a side pile that is too heavy for our digger to lift and put in the main pile. We have this currently from approx 20m * 4m = 80m and will ultimately have about 200 sqm. There is a small area which is already low enough as the roof is sloped. The plan is then to put in mot type 1 sort of layer, sand, dpm etc. etc. to raise the floor back up to 20cm lower than where we started. After removing the rubble we dug out old sand / mud and stones all of which were used or stored elsewhere. Most of it has become the build drive as the deliver lorries were getting stuck coming up the slope. With so much crushing it ourselves is probably not feasible. But when we bought our house 20 years ago there we many concrete pig sty's which were knocked down and crushed on site by a company. The lot cost 14k, but we were able to then sell it all via a company (friend) and ended up a little in profit. I have been very careful to remove the old DPM and any metal so I think it's fairly clean. Ironically the person we know who will supply MOT type 1 if we need it will arrange to take this lot away, get it crushed and then sell it to people like us. From the previous lot many of the houses in our village had some for driveways, house extensions etc. We are aware that a lot of this is so solid that it will need a large crusher, the smaller Rhino that we looked to hire wouldn't touch it. thanks for all your points I shall do some sums tomorrow.

sorry to be dim, but is this what you are saying that you need ? an example from one of my sheds. Width 3.29 * Length 3.62 = 11.91 sqm, * 0.35 = 4.17 = cubic m So, I have the concrete from this in big lumps, will I get 4.17 * 0.7 when crushed = 2.92 And, will I need 4.17 * 2(ish) to put back of hardcore = 8.34

I don't know, what is the difference. I was just asked by HID to cost it out. The SF one is Helifix

so, we had to dig out the floor of the barn which was 6" concrete then sand / rocks to lower the floor. We used the sand / rocks for driveway and to fill a big hole and piled up the concreate. Do you think that what we took out should roughly equal what we put back. Sorry to highjack your question. What we are considering, because it is 240 sqm is getting in someone to do the crushing, this will cost about 2k, but we can't possibly crush it all ourselves in 2 hours (cost same as yours) so in the end the cost won't be that much different. I haven't got the cost for a grab lorry yet, but someone on here said about £300, but I'm not sure how much that will be for.

I have the same question, but how do I calculate how much hardcore we will need. I used to be good at maths, but then I got old

How did you know what all the different trees were, I struggle to identify some here.

The same happened on an old farm near where I used to work. Huge trees, beautiful healthy. Chopped down then year later Hopkins home building site.

We have a crack in one of the walls in our barn conversion. HID wanted a brick stitching kit, but looking at these they are expensive for one crack. The ScrewFix offering is £210 Does anyone have any ideas on alternatives, TIA

We are planning on some of these barn style sliding doors, but does the lintel need to go just above the opening or the whole width of the opening and where the door slides. We were also planning on having one of these on a stud wall, but I'm now wondering if they will be too heavy. Advice greatly received as usual.

now that sounds like a plan. my son in law works at the nuclear investigation site so maybe he could help ?

Well despite the light evenings progress has been very limited during June. I've been working 8-6 with an hour travel each end, then with the dog to walk the horses to sort out and dinner there has just been no time. I've also been decorating in our house, which needs to be done because we have visitors in a couple of weeks. HID has been more productive, but as we have our separate roles he has been held up as well. Just outside the end of the barn when we were trying to dig out roots we hit some rubble. We thought it was a couple of stones, but it ended up being tons. The hole we started digging had lots of voids which we were worried about, particularly as this is exactly where the drainage pipes were supposed to be going so these had to be removed. Some of them were too heavy the the digger to lift so they had to be dragged. In the end we had a very large hole, but with digging out the floors we have enough to fill it, it's just hard work. One of my jobs is racking out the floors to get them more or less level, but I keep finding more rocks buried as part of the sub foundations. So, we thought, let's use the digger and dry the dumper in. Started well. What we didn't consider was that when the front goes down, the back goes up. Dumper well and truly stuck. As we didn't want to empty it to move again we ended up raising the roof with props to get the dumper out. Really stressful as I was worried we were going to pull the roof down. Not trying that again. Now we've knocked down the middle walls that are not supporting anything we wanted to start removing the corridor which is sloped as it, obviously, needs to be level. But, once we started we realised that even the lowest bit is 8+ inches thick of solid concrete. Plan B needed. We think that it will be a frame and level. I'm now hoping that the rest is as thick as it will certainly be solid and stable. We do need to remove the kerbs either side and there are some drains which we need to investigate and probably fill in. this floor is the base level from which everything will be built which means that the other corridor, which is 6" higher needs to be removed. HID is planning on hiring a cutter to do some of it which will then allow him to dig it out. So, a non productive month all in all. Hopefully July will be better, although I'm still going to be very busy at work. But, HID is currently in Slovakia for work so has to quarantine at home for 10 days. So, apart from checking emails and taking calls he plans on spending lots of time on the build (demolition). Looking at the barn in detail we still have so much to do just to take it back to basics. Then the SE will be out so the BR drawings can be finished. This building lark really is a lot of effort ? Thanks for trawling through, if you've made it this far and next update the end of July.