Faz

Good luck with it mate - presumably the neighbor sold you the plot so there should be few issues. Mind you - the chap who sold me the field threatened to come at me with his shotgun as the lads doing my steel frame called on him first. He did say there was no point in me responding as he didn't have his 'ears' in so I just had a smoke and enjoyed the view as he ranted on. Probably for the best as I would have otherwise terminated that little discussion with words not allowed on this site. The steel guys were proper good tbh - Immense fab based in Peterborough. I went around their place - great set up, good price and great blokes.

Made the mistake of not bothering with dinner as the football was on (a terrible Spurs performance) so will stop off at the cafe in a minute!

Well, 13,000 bricks arrived today on an artic which refused to back into the site. Had to sort it of the road. Offload went ok with the forks with one pack a bit mangled by the hiab which let go at the back of the site. Spent the afternoon stacking bricks onto a pallet. Waved off the artic load of 7n blocks due tomorrow to the mech yard to drop off as and when - it looks like they have swallowed the cost! 20T of sand that was due tomorrow came today after I was gone - it been dropped in the right place by a miracle. Trench Blocks, cement, wall ties etc arrive tomorrow. Steel frame on my bit comes in tomorrow and brickie kicks off Tuesaday.

The LABC scheme is now run by (and possible owned?) Premier Guarantee. They are a disaster and well worth avoiding imo. Used them on an 88 apartment scheme and the experience was horrible - the only upside was the inspector they used who was very helpful - mind you, he had been given oversight of all of the Persimmon schemes in the patch due to the number of claims arising so he had his hands full!

We combine the Approved Inspector role with the warranty inspector's role so it is no so lightweight. Tbh - the BCO is a useful chap provided you are not trying to take the piss if you take the time to have a chat with them.

Just get your shotgun license sorted out and thin them out :). Having moved up to Cambridgeshire from London that seems to be the standard approach around here!

Warranty providers are the highway robbers of modern development imo! On our last big scheme Premier Guarantee were the provider and their A rated contractor cocked the whole thing up and went bust half way through. We sorted out the mess made of the 'completed' flats (50 or so) and built the rest to a decent standard - they decided to charge a premium increase os £190,000 - total joke. We have used Build Zone since and, while they are a bit tardy getting the certification out at completion time, they have generally been ok. Interestingly, their self build warranty for mine cost less that the commercial policies for the other plots albeit that is with my company (which has a rating I suppose) doing the works. I don't know if anyone has ever tried claiming against any of these people but I did have a claim for a client in the 1990's against the NHBC and it was a total nightmare - took years to sort. A bunch of chancers tbh (like the entire financial services industry!).

Even if you had to pay double their local rate you would be quids in! Wistow - blimey - just down the road from me! About 2 miles I would say, just the other side of Upwood.

I don't know if they will do it but it can't hurt to ask - https://www.mickgeorge.co.uk/contact £360 is a joke.

That is outrageous! I am in a 'shire' too - thankfully a much cheaper Cambridgeshire! Tbh, at that price, it might be worth you giving some of the people up here a ring (provided your shire is not Berkshire or Bucks) . My stone lorries (same chap) are coming 40 miles to my site.

Big time! It never hurts to ask. He wants us to drop 20T of limestone in his access as the quid pro quo - £275 + VAT - I can live with that. Our muck away quote was £130 + VAT per load and it wouldn't surprise me if there were 100+ loads there (especially as it is raining!).

Made some fairly decent progress - all 3 foundations dug and poured with minimal waste concrete (3 - 4 cube for the 3 houses plus the quad garage - I can live with that). 240T of 50mm clean limestone spread around the plots. The clay goes away next week (I found a local farmer who wants the stuff so loading and transport costs only - £2000 all in). Got water and power (borrowed from the neighbor) laid in yesterday so teas are now available in the cabin & water there for the mixing station. Getting tea laid on must be milestone No 2 after getting the concrete in! Bricks & blocks etc arrive next week and the brickie starts on the 3rd Nov. Game on.

Depending where you are in Lincolnshire (it is a big place!) I might be able to recommend a few trades in a month or two as we are on a site in north Cambridgeshire at the moment.

Welcome aboard. You are always going to have to take a bit of a view erring towards the worst case to be honest. The site we bought we purchased with the anticipation of piling - our SI was particularly favorable and we were able to do a deep strip. Our engineers set the depth to 2.1m ( nightmare btw) but I asked BC on the first dig how deep he wanted it to be told 1m down and at least 300mm into the clay. Happy days so across the site the depth is between 1200 - 1400 mm - the topsoil thins rapidly to the point we are all in clay. That quick chat saved me £25k+. I am not sure what Structural Engineers add to a project anymore - on this scheme we paid them £1,500 only to totally ignore their design and on our last 2 projects they put in enough steel to support 88 balconies you could have built 2 oil rigs out of the stuff. They are all clearly over engineering to avoid PI claims.

You need to have a proper look at this if your water table is high. We are building on the Fen outside Huntingdon and have set our FFL at 600mm AGL for planning - it looks like we are going to drop them in at 0.00 AOD - yep that is Sea level which is 800mm above current chopped up ground level. Spent the whole morning walking around site with the laser level sorting that out! Still hearing the beeping now (set out the concrete levels in my foundation too - beep beep beep!)

Doesn't look like asbestos to me - it looks more like an adhesive tbh. No obvious fibers. However - any suspicions you need to get it tested and deal with accordingly. In the 50's & 60's they used asbestos everywhere - I did a conversion (Croydon Travelodge!!) on a 100,000 sq. ft. 1959 tower that had asbestos in the parquet flooring adhesive and with window seals ffs.

In normal circumstances I tend to agree but when these guys are throwing comments like 'it is COVID mate' for no obvious reasons I beg to differ. To be honest we generally do big schemes and will not put up with this b/s. We are fortunate to have the nearly the same purchasing power on a little scheme of 3 houses. If you are prepared to suck it up then I have to say well done you if you can adjust around it. This was a programme killer for us and my house in particular and I wasn't going to stand for it. The OP here was talking about taking measures to compensate for a similar situation - I am saying to press your fu*king case before spending more money to compensate for someone else.

If it is any help here is my email rant to the supplier! It was the first one (at the bottom that drew most ire - I thought it never hurt to play the man after clearing the ball!). Get stuck in mate! :- Ignoring this is not going to make it go away. You are trying to use Covid as a comfort blanket and it doesn’t wash – you are not shut down and neither are we. Tbh you deliver the product in the timescales contracted or we will just hand this off to the lawyers to sort. I can appreciate that you may have received a large order to fill and have been told to mug off the small ones to accommodate but you have an agreed a contract with us that we will be enforcing or will be expecting a refund plus damages. To pull a stunt like this 2 – 3 weeks out from delivery is a joke. I will be instructing Charles Russell Solicitors tomorrow and will be seeking costs and damages unless you want to work out a solution asap. Subject: RE: Drawings Importance: High I was expecting a response on this! Offer and acceptance (by way of payment!) forms a clear contract between us and the pre-contract correspondence commits you to a 6 – 8 week lead – you are in breach of these terms. What are you going to do about it? If you fail to deliver we will be looking to you for significant cost over-runs, prolongation and other costs. Subject: RE: Drawings You have got to be kidding! You told me a 6 week lead in mid-September which is why we paid you the deposit with the expectation of getting this by the end of October – not much has changed in the world in the past 4 weeks. This is unacceptable and a shabby excuse for general ineptitude quite frankly.

All the advice above is reasonable. I wouldn't do any of it - I would be onto your supplier and give them the biggest reaming on their life - talk about contract terms and prolongations costs and expenses and basically throw the book at them! I had exactly the same happen to me this week - I have a lot of stone (6 tonne or so) going on my house and the quote we accepted and paid back in early September was based on a 6 week lead - I have been trying to call this off for the last week or so and got an email on Tuesday saying we are are going to have to delay you to March / April becausue COVID innit' - I let rip! I recall that me mentioning that it is 'a shabby excuse for your own ineptitude' caused the most offense - they need to count themselves fortunate that I didn't phone them up if they are that sensitive! Anyway - they seem to have reverted to their original delivery schedule after I said I was going to jump in the car and take it up with them in person. This COVID nonsense has become the goto excuse to mess people around - I, for one, am not going to stand for it.

Wouldn't you be punching the vent through the bit of blockwork AGL? Trouble there is that it is likely to get blocked up in no time being so close to the ground I suppose. A row of commons on top of the block would probably sort it though.

We already had them mate from our last job in London - needed to stick them somewhere so brought them up here. I just thought that spacing them around the holes to protect idiot trespassers from themselves didn't hurt. We will use them going forward to try and segregate pedestrian areas from vehicle zones. If we didn't have them I wouldn't have bought them specially for this job tbh. We brought a whole container of surplus kit from the last job (92 flats in Bromley) and not sure what we are going to do with a lot of it - 15 - 20 Graffe & Forza walnut FD30 doors of varying sizes - not going to use them here if anyone is interested? I reckon I have enough architrave to do at least 2 plots here all free courtesy of Graffe - they had no idea what they were shipping day to day that lot.

The plot 1 foundation wasn't as much of a success story as I had hoped - the lad on the concrete pump must have dozed off and poured over the nails setting out the levels - we were 50mm up in one corner - brickie not happy (mind you - when have you ever found a happy brickie?) Plot 2 went better as I stood over them - >5mm tolerance. My monster goes in tomorrow. The ground is cutting up real bad - we are on peat here so I ordered 160 tonne of 50mm clean for Monday to stone up the rear of the plots.

The forks wasn't parked up in that photo btw - I was just policing up the barriers after the concrete had gone off and was on a fag break! All was left neat & tidy!

I did my ticket last week (£1250 plus vat) so good to go on the forks - you are spot on with the comment though - park it up in travel mode with the forks on the ground and even every time you leave it. I have to say though that the handbrake on thing before adjusting the boom went out of the window early doors - am talking about tweaks on levels running over the site btw. We bought the machine rather than have it on hire - £1560 pcm we were quoted for hire - bought it for £26k. Dug & poured Plot 1 last week, dug plot 2 today with the pour tomorrow and mine is a 2 day dig with the pour on Friday. All rain dances are banned! It is starting to cut up bad!

Mine designed at 600mm centers - can't see a problem tbf and we get the wind ripping across the Fen!