Alan Ambrose

Hi, can ayone recommend a fire engineer? I have two things I need help on: For a small block of flats - risk consultancy re reduced risk following cladding work vs. backup genset and stairwell pressurisation system. For my single storey timber frame new build - plans check and recommendations for fire stopping detail etc.

For Therm you need to get the 2D CAD details of the junction into the package together with the thermal values of the components. Then you apply the boundary conditions (i.e. temperature) on the inside and outside of the structure. Run the calc and it’ll give you the heat flow across the junction. Now, you need to take the heat flow in the idealised junction used in your overall heat calcs. Subtract Therm’s number from the idealised number and you end up with the psi value - that is, the extra heat loss per linear metre of junction that you need to add to your idealised calc to cope with the actual junction details. Once you’ve got the hang of it, the hardest part is getting the CAD into Therm (either redraw in Therm or figure out how to transport DWG/DXF from wherever your drawings are now). The Therm UI is a bit basic but OK. It does produce some pretty pictures which are interesting and enable you to better understand how the junction is working thermally.

Is it possible to split the big dormer into smaller individual ones like the front? The it would ‘fit into the street scene’ better?

How about designing a best guess scheme that the LPA will approve. You can probably add a clause saying ‘subject to local ground conditions when excavation/SI is done’. Get your approval and crack on. Then redesign (and re-submit to the LPA if necessary) once detailed ground conditions are determined. In terms of the actual drainage problem - as others have said, water is going somewhere right now. It shouldn’t be impossible to figure out how that happens. Likewise, I’m guessing there are known mitigation measures for slip. Piles maybe?

Congrats, it must be very gratifying to make so much progress.

We’ve had a bunch of LPA inconsistencies on our various applications. Some of them are laughable. It seems each case officer is allowed to make it up as they go along - a lot of the decisions are based essentially on someone’s opinion, even though they’re wrapped up in the language of ‘policy’. Appeal is a route but plan on it taking 9 months for householder’s. The ‘consistency’ thing is large a myth IMO. Maybe set an appeal rolling but at the same time re-submit a v similar application but this time hassle the LPA management and get it pulled into committee. Good luck, you have our sympathy. p.s. we did eventually prevail on both our applications. Two elapsed years and a lot of energy wasted though.

I don’t know if it helps any (as they probably want an ‘expert’) but I didn’t find the freeware Therm hard to use.

Wowee, nice

>>> have a 110mm at each shower footprint Ooooo - underneath the shower tray?

You want to rotate them a bit like a venetian blind?

@Nickfromwales - can I ask - what if the shower trays are level with the floor finish and you're on screed + concrete slab with insulation under? If you can't get enough fall in the screed, do you chase out a bit from the the top of the slab?

Thanks for the update.

Yeah, but if you have the insulation under the slab?

There are three other techniques that may help in tricky circumstances - one is judicious use of small hubs to avoid running parallel cables over any distance- powered by PoE if possible. The other is use of ethernet splitters - in some circumstances (non-PoE I believe) you can ‘get two lan connections down one cat5’. Lastly vlans might help in some instances when you want two logically separate networks ‘down one cable’. The internet was designed to offer a bunch of flexibility…without running vast quantities of point-to-point cables everywhere.

@Mike That’s interesting. No problem getting a pressure test?

Yeah the response to the Grenfell ‘not me guv, must be him’ finger pointing was to ‘demand responsibility’. Well once peeps thought about that for a minute, it meant anything remotely safety-related needed a professional … and most importantly their insurance. So insurance industry / paper pushing / friction gains a lot. Common sense and speed not so much. Of course, sometimes you really do need a professional. In this case, maybe the route forward is to use a different SE. Yeah consistency is good, but this is a pretty stand-alone calc.

Usually this would be triggered only when you got PP and made a new, otherwise unplanned, development i.e. a sizeable uplift in land value. If you bought with PP and have not got additional PP and developed on, say, a bit of garden or an old barn. If not generally it wouldn't apply. Or maybe bought with PP for 1 dwelling and split into 3 plots and uplifted the land value that way. An easy way, maybe is to check with the solicitor who did the original conveyance if they're still around.

You need a V12 Ferrari 😁 to complete the set. Do they still make those Mazda rotary engines?

That's it really. For the people with a lot of experience - what's the best quality go to manufacturer?

While we only had ‘fibre to the cabinet’ i.e. local copper, and all speeds were v low, it didn’t matter whether we were using wifi or cable for any particular device. When we finally got proper fibre I had to figure out why I was only getting 100 Mbps at my PC. Cue replacement of some hubs for 1 Gbps ones. The old cat5 cabling was fine for 1 gig. The various wifi devices generally get only 30-100 Mbps depending on how close they are to an access point.

I think it depends a lot where in the country you are and the local geology. Around here it appears v difficult to locate an ‘MOT 3’ material off-the-shelf. But then it’s all sand and clay here. I think you (and I) want crushed granite, limestone or basalt with ‘no fines’.

In fact, I suspect that fretting over bng for the gardens on single dwellings is a waste of time. By all means let the big developers think about it, if only for the benefit of their customers, but otherwise the authorities should be looking for bng impact from the big landowners - they’re in the position to make the biggest difference.

Yeah, totally agree - it should be treated the same way as CIL. Who on earth thought that two different systems, both involving a self-build exemption, was a clever idea?

Did anyone have trouble getting the waste pipe to the foul pipe with the right fall and staying within the screed?

I think tplink has a real security problem, feel free to check. For my 10 cents, cat5/6 to proper computers for gb access, wifi for everything else, unify access points on poe, no mesh. But cat5/6 + poe for cameras etc and anywhere you don’t want batteries (to my mind, that’s everywhere). Check the range of access points - you probably only need 2 for house, maybe +1 for garden …. unless you have say, foil faced plasterboard internally.