Alan Ambrose

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?

Actually reading through the list, I'm thinking of applying for pumped hydro using coal gas or peat fuelled steam turbine and then storage using either diabatic compressed ammonia or zinc bromide batteries. Maybe a little less than 50MW.

(0) For 'fun' make an account and look at HV & LV resources in your area together with unutilised capacity. Hope that it's shown in green: Network Infrastructure and Usage Map (NIUM) — UK Power Networks

OK for anyone following along from home, for UKPN: (1) Go here Distribution Energy Resources (DER) | UK Power Networks (2) 'Buy' the forms for free from here: ENA Document Catalogue and they'll email them to you (FFS). (3) Fill them in and email them to the address in (1). .... (4) Laugh as you've received about 820 pages of closely written text and example diagrams of tidal lagoons etc. (5) Consider whether Friday 4:30pm is too early for a beer?

@Spinny re siegenia: Thanks, as far as I understand: battery, bluetooth and retrofit.

Thanks. For anyone following along, it seems Rationel were somewhat unsure where there sensors were and said they couldn't do them on tilt-and-turn. 21Degrees claimed to be able to fit on anything and mostly knew where their sensors were.

You wouldn't believe the nonsense I got back from the various 'brick matching' services e.g. below. I know less than nothing about bricks but even I can see 3 or 4 shades in my example and err, one in this. I told one guy, who had shipped me a bunch of random sample boards of any old red brick - to just stop and cross my name off his list.

No, and I think it’s sold now. I see there are other machines on eBay though.

Depends what you’re doing, of course. But, we tend to use (for a timber frame build) 3 x sets of bought in sawhorses with sheets of 18 or 25mm ply on top. No vice, maybe the occasional clamp. We’re largely cutting sheets of ply and C24 at this point. Not much use for an mft yet. A tool strongbox for somewhat nickable tools, some wire shelves for non-nickable tools and supplies (these are both undercover now) and a 20ft container for less used tools, fixings etc.

@Captain Scally I’ve asked you questions here and on eBay as I’m interested. Any chance of answering them?