Alan Ambrose

@Nickfromwales I like the look of the array a lot.

>>> Anyway back to topic There was a topic? I thought these threads were all free association, no? Oh I see…

I say do whatever you fancy and brings you pleasure. A backup plan for the inevitable glitches and for a later luddite buyer might be a good thing.

Reading the officer’s feedback, I think they’re saying: + it is going to the planning committee, so prepare. + he/she thinks they can negotiate a couple of small amendments to the design, making it ‘acceptable’. The good news is that they’re not saying that two storey won’t fly. If they thought that, they would probably say that clearly right now, and you might be back to the drawing board or filing an appeal. Yes, the applecart could still be overturned, but I think things are looking OK. Fish for the amendments (which consultees have not replied yet?) so you have time to think about them and negotiate them. I wonder if a couple of supporting neighbours would tip the balance. Question for your architect maybe?

There are ones for ceilings AFAIK - none for walls?

Sometimes you guys worry me...

>>> You might have got mixed up Yeah sounds like it - easy for me to do Thanks for the clarification.

>>> Plan is to get the Oak frame in place first. This is all being made off site so will just be craned in and fixed. Then the ICF walls will be built around the outside. Then the SIP roof panels will be added. Sounds a good plan. FYI am I trying to get an understanding right now of how accurate, straight and upright you can expect oak frames will be once erected. >>> We need to get the Oak out of the elements as quickly as we possible as the rain affects the finish, and obviously the drying out time increases the wetter it gets. It shouldn't absorb much water, but the more stained it gets, the more work it is to get it unstained. >>> you will need to clean the oak with oxalic acid when it’s all done to bring back the natural colour. Or lightly sand/bead blast it or a combination of both - acid on the very stained bits, then blast all over. >>> we were thinking to allow just a small gap, maybe 20mm, to allow a wet plaster skim behind, but will definitely look into this more and allow more wiggle room. The conventional way is to allow 15+mm (more if you can't guarantee how wobbly the icf is) and tuck the plasterboard behind the posts. Something like this, which has a 20mm gap also (defined by the spruce strips):

Don't suppose you have a drawing or photo rather than us all trying to imagine this in 3D?

@SBMS >>> Most self build insurance policies are not index linked OK that suggests they are even more useless than I previously imagined. Do you thing that mortgage providers catch onto this (which would be a problem if selling) or are they oblivious?

I think some here are talking block walls, some timber frame and others, maybe, metal frame?

I assume your LPA doesn’t have CIL? That would argue a ‘no’. If they don’t, then at least one other here (sorry, can’t remember who) has started a build then proceeded to a different design when it got PP.

I would say that 95% of the time most feel that to agree with the extension is the best course of action. No reason though to back off on the pressure or press for feedback. You could always propose a shorter extension but bear in mind that the LPA may run over the agreed time anyway and you don’t have great tools to prevent them. My LPA doesn’t even bother to ask for extensions.

Jeremyw @G and J @olley @LSB @DIYHacker @GaryChaplin @Nick Laslett @JohnnyB @FuerteStu See above reminder

>>> planning purgatory Oh that's where I've been for 2 years - I didn't have a name for it .

>>> intelligent membranes Whenever that term's mentioned, I always imagine little busy-bee vapour control bugs looking puzzled and scratching their heads...

A kind of longhouse? Nice .

>>> New guys argument was they could be accidentally hit. Our smoke sensors here have only gone off when being tested with the aerosol stuff and when someone was vaping underneath them. So, clearly useless. Sorry, I realise that's not much help.

I wonder whether it's still sensible though? I organised a bunch of extinguishers here, which were fine until some dumb 'management company' took them out with the theory that people might be more inclined to hurt themselves. Yeah, don't bother to try to put out your chip pan fire ... let's just let the building burn down.

A related question. Do the standard providers allow for inflation? - (say) £600K rebuild cost now may well be double that in 10 years time.

>>> Yes, we are essentially building the house twice. This gets trotted out fairly frequently on BH. So, conventional brick & block isn't? Something else covered with SIPs isn't? Yeah, don't worry about it if it works for you. The other one usually raised is 'green oak expands contracts all over the place, how will you keep it airtight'? Err, steel beams do this too, maybe steel doesn't have a great thermal expansion coefficient. Is this a problem in practice? So conventional softwood stick built doesn't move with moisture? Green oak will move across its width but an irrelevant amount on length. It'll also settle down very quickly. >>> We did speak to Oakwrights about it, but their costs were eye watering FYI - I'm having sensible conversations with them re frame supply only. You can get a rough number for retail oak in £ / m^3 from online suppliers. (Last time I calculated it was £2.3K/m^3.) Then see how much the joint work and erection adds to the quoted price and check whether it's honest. I figure the oak frame guys should be charging about 3x the retail cost / m^2.

So, this holds the slab while it's setting and effectively makes a void later, protecting from heave? This assumes the trenches are deep enough, secure, never move, and are strong enough to handle differential movement?

ps. menu:

I called into The Crown, Stowupland on Sat - purely for research purposes you understand. Had a word with the publican, Mike and booked a table for us in the quieter bit. I'll probably eat, but he said he's happy if not all do. Give me an idea of numbers for Thurs so I can expand the table if we need. I thought we could each spend a coupla minutes giving a sense of where each of us is in 'the journey' and what we're building and go from there. Drawings, pictures etc would be great.

Has it always done this, or is this a new thing? Suggest checking the obvious things first - backup battery, tightness of all connections at panel and at all call points. Also scouring the fire alarm forums … assuming those kind of forums exist. If it’s been doing this from the start it may be a Honeywell design issue. Easiest thing probably is to get the lot replaced - probably not v expensive. Yeah, you could try and do a proper diagnosis, but intermittent faults are notoriously hard. Also, while personally I’ll try to do anything and everything as DIY - making a modification to a fire system, in a rental, even if the manufacturer has screwed up the design, is probably something even I wouldn’t do .