Alan Ambrose

>>> I have this vision of walking through the house in a state of blissful house completion euphoria Are you naked at this point? 😄 On second thoughts, don’t answer that.

This may be nonsense advice for your situation, but we chose to run a garden lawn sprinkler, actually two, on a hose timer - coming on for say 5 mins every hour. We actually did this for a couple of weeks as we were away and the weather was properly hot. Zero cracking. As others have said, a little cracking isn’t a big deal anyway. The contractor asked whether we wanted relief cuts / control joints, but we chose our sprinkler method and plan to use it again.

@G and J - this kind of thing?

@Mr Punter - an 11-course brick plinth around the base of our Suffolk-barn-like structure, not load bearing, just for aesthetics - both for us and the planners. @G and J - that's interesting, do you need to put mesh behind them to stop creepy crawlies?

Does this calc sound right (as it sounds like a lot of air bricks): If I'm using these air bricks which say they are 1,290 mm^2? List No. 350 Square Hole Air Brick 215 x 65mm - Forterra I'm only ventilating a few cm behind a brick plinth which doesn't do any structural support btw. Can I still use the floor area calc even though I'm not ventilating the floor area? Would peeps use, say, some stainless mesh masticed behind?

Maybe it just fell off someone’s project plan. Also odd though that the engineers were not inspecting. Or failed to notice.

Looks like the contractor didn’t put in the required reinforcing. Odd really as it was obviously important…

Blue patches are the ‘handiwork’ of the dodgy wood fibre blowers-in. This was their solution to me asking, 1/2 way through the job, whether they had thought about the gable and eaves overhangs. They obviously hadn’t looked at the drawings I sent them or even looked at the building before they started.

Interesting, I hadn’t thought of hemp board.

The 50mm service cavity was the design number and is based on the gap between the inside of the walls right now and the oak frame, so not much to play with. Could be reduced, say to 40mn, but at the expense of losing service cavity room. My oversight of course. I can’t remember what I was thinking re insulation in the part of the service cavity that doesn’t have services in. Will have to look at old docs. Seems there’s one 50mm option though. That will save us from battening I believe - will buy some 25mm boards locally to check.

@LSB Of course, external battens are up, mouse guard is 1/2 on, cladding has been ordered - should be here in 2-3 weeks:

Yeah, reporting back, I can see just one 50mm offering: Savolit Plus - Wood Wool Boards https://bio-space.co.uk/products/savolit-plus @ProDave - internal it's 12mm ply / 50 mm service cavity / 12mm ply / 15mm plasterboard If we use flex, we'll have to batten everything. If we use 'wood wool board' we won't as it'll hold its thickness OK. This is my list for anyone going down the same path: We could use much cheaper XPS, but it's flammable as f..k. We may well do 60mm service cavity on the next barn to avoid this problem.

@G and J Nah, excavation to 3.5m - I think piles to support excavation are often 2x the excavation depth. >>> It’s only money I guess ... planners wouldn't let us have 2 storey.

Not so mini - 8m to 12m.

Thanks, but by ‘solid wood’, I mean more stiff sheathing / rendering board than soft flexi fill.

Posi-joists with blown in cellulose or wood fibre? This is easy to do - insulation installed in a couple of days. The problem is finding a reliable & professional installer. Unfortunately, we didn't .

Just started piling here for our basement and trying to get barn 1 watertight-ish. Just ordered the cladding .

This is for filling the bits of our 50mm service cavity that don't have services in. I can find plenty of 40mm & 60mm offerings...

I think progress is progress by whatever means. @JohnnyB ?

As we have not met up in person for a while, I’m interested in how everyone’s getting on?

My analysis so far:

@saveasteading I'm wondering how your rainwater plans are coming along as I'm just looking at this subject? For us, garden watering only and I'm wondering whether I can use a crate system like you would use for soakaways but surround it with DPC-like stuff so it mostly doesn't leak. We have a bunch of big pots planned and at our current place these are supplied by mains water and an irrigation system - works well but not inexpensive to run... The kosher tanks seem crazily expensive?

In a non-airtight non-PH, we used rockwool to provide the non-combustible barrier. There will be a bit of thermal compromise of course for the penetration, but I see no reason not to use a non-combustible for ait-tightness - some combination of cement board, high-temperature mastic, silicone sheet gasket maybe? We intend a woodburner in the new place so will have to sort this out ourselves in the future.

I think Octopus likes to revert you to their standard tarrif on a regular basis unless you intervene.

I wonder whether they could reliably locate the old drawings and calcs - might they have slimmed down the sections at the top of the building, perhaps during construction, not expecting that anyone would put on another 19 floors 60 years later. Also, do they ever produce as-built drawings after the fact for big commercial buildings likethat? Lastly, was there any reliable way of verifying the section many years later after the concrete was sprayed on? For all the beams/columns?