SimonD

It's both funny and sad how it gets to that point. For me it was the proverbial straw of having loads of annoying timber offcuts everywhere. Too little for a skip, a hassle and cost to get a rubbish collection company and anyway how eco is this for a small load of waste? It was too much to take to local tip without being sent to the weighbridge for payment (they've already warned me about this). Garden incinerator won the day and I'm racked with guilt..

Before going out and buying a load of panels, plus everything else you need, I'd highly recommend you get yourself a spectrum analyser. There are apps you can download onto your phone. You also need to work out the room's frequency response. This way you'll have any idea of the frequencies you need to target within the room to get the best results and know whether the room is likely to amplify certain frequencies. You can also measure ambient background noise produced by mvhr, pumps, washing machoines etc. so their noise gets dealt with too. Looking at the acoustic panels, they provide very good noise absorption around about 1k Hz and above, but because they're thin their effectiveness will be reduced for lower frequencies (the sharp edges help a bit for refraction) as you'll see by the graphs produced by the manufacturer. TBH it is a bit pointless to spend loads on targeting higher frequencies only to be left with annoying low freguency hums, or the bass of a male voice. You can get free software to help calculate the room modes, like Modecalc, which also has a tutorial. Otherwise, there are products like Celenit and Savolit wood wool boards that have acoustic certification. Celenit has a calculation service to help with room design. Here's also a link to a document that shows some common absorption coefficients of materials so you can compare to the products you're looking at. Noise control in Rooms HTH.

I frowned upon mine because it was horrible, inefficient to use and annoyingly noisy (constant ratatatata). It also broke very quickly. I threw it in the bin and bought a proper positive placement nailer.? About the only thing it had going for it was access to some tight spaces. Once you've done a few joist hangers in a row, I'm sure you'll know what I mean ?

I have some recent experience and knowledge with this. For the most part you'll find the timber frames designed with cripples and jacks as per standard framing convention. The 'California,' 2 stud corner is now a standard detail. Yes, you can of course start removing jacks and cripples, but it may not always be the most helpful thing to do. You'll have to know that your windows can be side fixed with no support below to remove cripples and in some case, if you have a large span, your removal of jacks for header hangers will necessitate double kingstuds, sometimes even triple, so you lose a couple of studs in that arrangement, but again it depends on the loads. If your designer is thinking ahead, you can design openings to fit within the stud spacing, which makes things easier and more efficient. With respect to your top plates, if your rafters are aligned with the studs and the frame is stacked, there's no need to double up your top plates. I've seen so many over here that are doubled up, even when there's no need, so I think mostly it's just habit. As for using 2x6 at 600cc you'll find that the goto wall is insulated between studs with some internal insulation to reduce cold bridging. If you really want good thermal performance, then filling and wrapping the frame externally with insulation is more sensible, like they do with wood fibre, and/or use a double wall, which is fairly common in the rest of Europe. I see you're in South Glos. That's not too far north of me. I found it difficult to get supplies of 38 x 140 cls as no merchants around here carried them, other than B & Q but they're only 2.4m long and stock is erratic. One merhant in south Wales that did hold some stock, told me not to bother with what they had as it was only fit for kindling. So I had to order mine by the full pallet, but then at least I knew it was decent quality as it was delivered by the merchant straight from the supplier. I can give you details of a good merchant depending on where you're based, if you like (prices were very good too). With all the local suppliers of 47 x 150 carcassing timber, many store it so badly, I wouldn't want to frame my walls with it. The other thing to keep in mind is that around here, many merchants supply osb sheathing in 8 x 4 sheets, not 2400 x 1200mm (as they do osb floor boards). In my case, the prices I got were so good I framed my house in imperial rather than metric instead of going to the bother of ordering in the metric sheets.

Along with all the other questions about off-lift service, have you specifically asked the company to quote for off-lift and alternatively have you asked if you can arrange your own transport to collect the load and drop it off at your place with off-lift? I paid about £700 for the collection and delivery of some long beams on a dedicated artic. I'm amazed at the prices mentioned so far for crane hire. Around us I couldn't get anything less than about 1k for a day's hire of a crane with sufficient reach to get over the house, which was for full contract hire. Even when I hired a crane with operator and crane only it was something like £750 + VAT. Otherwise, it's probably a forklift and then break up the packs to manually haul around the house, or use something like I've got that goes through doorways. It's been brilliant for me to get things round the tight spaces on my site (I've also taken things up stairs with it):

What specifically is the problem raised by BC and your neighbour? Knowing this will probably yield more specific replies. I think that the job of BC isn't simply to confirm the building is built according to the drawings, but that it is built according to Building Regulations. Sometimes these things can differ on site. For example, if it's to do with footings, the real world will overrule the drawings. My drawings were approved for 1m deep footings. Unfortunately at one part of the house at one meter the ground was wet, soggy, mushy clay, so much deeper foundations were required. I also had to increase the overall size of some pad foundation trenches due to ground conditions. At some parts I was allowed to go to 800mm instead of 1m by BC because the ground was rock solid. That's fair play. But as per what both @the_r_sole and @ToughButterCup have said try to get the details in writing together with what is being requested to satisfy the requirements. That way you can either go back to them with some alternative evidence, or do what's needed. I had this instance with joist hangers. BC asked me to go back over mine so they were full face nailed. I showed him the nailing pattern given by the maunfacturer for wrap over installation, explaining I'd simply followed this and was this okay - yes he said and job done. HTH

My thoughts exactly! Sadly, that's something I'm beginning to believe now too. I've met quite a lot of architects since starting my self-build journey and I sometimes wonder whether fabric, barring how it looks, is even in their vocabulary. However, one architect I know locally who runs a medium sized practice explained they come across this and being medium sized, they're lucky enough to employ a mixture of those who like just the design and those who are technically oriented. This means they can mix the two to design things fully on project. Perhaps there is yet hope! ?

Many chemicals loose their potency over a number of years but Boric Acid based preservatives have been used for a long time and even in ship building. It gives good long-term protection and is relatively safe. You can buy either Boric acid power or ready made solutions and simply spray/brush it onto your timbers. If you're worried about timber being particularly exposed to moisture, you can use a Boric acid gel for extra protection. HTH

I think we might need to tell the architects that. Out of about 6 architects including 1 architectural technician we spoke to only one emphasised energy consumption as integral to the design and one who said the design would be 'energy efficient' (I now know I should have asked him, compared to what?). Everyone else emphasised they'd give us an "award winning" house. We fell for the charm of the 'energy efficient' and he simply designed a timber frame with 89mm studs filled with some cellotex, and forgot about the EWI on the ground floor. In another conversation I had with a younger and more recently qualified architect it was suggested that building technology is moving so fast they don't have the time to keep up with developments in insulation systems.

We had a load of the stuff growing out the back. Last year I sprayed it with this stuff - it all went brown and died off and no sign of it so far ?

Not all the time. It depends on the council/Parish council relationship. I once sat on a Parish council planning committee and despite having a retired barister as chair and all our objections being in line with planning law, we were almost entirely ignored. It was a waste of time. However, with our current development, our application was recommended for approval by the planning officer, but the manager referred it to the council's planning committee because the application was considered contentious. The Parish council had objected, despite those objections being non-material. We only had one other objection, again all non-material. The committee approved our application and I suppose if it hadn't we could have appealed, but what a waste of time and money for everyone. But during the committee meeting several other developments were refused only on the basis of Parich council recommendations, with one councillor specifically saying that they had to listen to the local opinion as they know their area best!

Nice, I've always really liked oak trusses with those steel ties.

Confusion from use of terminology as I'd read " 10m x 5m with a 3mx2.4m Oak section on rear" in the OP while assuming trusses are normally load bearing. Never mind ?? Best thing to do then is speak to your architect before he does the details to understand what he's planning compared to what you desire. ?

Designing a room and furnishings to reduce noise in the room is a bit of a mathematical task where you really need to know the typical noise profile you're dealing with in the room and what sounds you need to absorb. For example, for a porous material to be effective for a given frequency, it's thickness has to be a quarter of the length of the sound wave. Easiest way to deal with your needs is to focus on reducing sound transmission through the wall and then use soft furnishings etc.within the room on a trail and error basis to get to results you need. Building regulations Part E , between walls. Chasing a wall to embed pipes or cables. With the masonry wall, it doesn't matter. If you're using blocks that are capable of taking the load, it can be load bearing or not. Same sound insulation properties.

If it's an oak frame, the trusses are highly likely to be structural. Essentially you'll have something like trusses, purlins above and then rafters. As @nod said, you'll likely go for insulation between the rafters. You can go for warm roof but with this roof buildup you could end up with a very thick roof structure which may be undesirable from an aesthetic point of view. Here's an example pic randomly sourced from web:

Are you having visible oak beams in the ceiling?

Whilst this may be the case the problem is that we tend to be far too optimistic about our ability to control and know how to change complex systems to achieve the outcomes we plan/desire or try to predict. Often this leads to errant decisions that sound plausible, merely giving the illusion of progress. Generally we also tend to be very bad at making decisions for the long-term. Yeah, we can't predict the future, but with some forethought we can make decisions and do things that set us up better for the future. That kind of thing concerns me too. It is too localised and rather arbitrary. Whilst we certainly did adapt, I'd question that it can be categorized as a recovery. There was economic regeneration, yes, but both financial and political systems we built as a consequence of WW2 were primary reactions to ensure it never happened again. As time has rolled on those systems are still racked with the same anxiety. I believe there is still a lot of trauma driving these social and economic systems. Modern supply chains seriously lack transparency, making it almost impossible for consumers to make fully informed decisions about what they're buying. In the construction industry it's just as bad. Some of the supply chains are so complex, the final manufacturer of a product doesn't even have full knowledge of some components, or the ethical/moral standing of all suppliers. Global supply chains and mass production from the cheapest source tend to bring big unintended ethical, moral, economic, social and environmental problems, many of which we've been experiencing in the west already. Nah, when the government sold off its valuable public network, it did this driven by the stupid neo-liberal ideology espousing the idea governments can't pick winners, not because it couldn't pick or create winners. ? This idea about governments not being able to pick winners and should stick to regulating failures is a myth which I think has been fairly well debunked in economics circles, even if it does still perpetuate in the popular press . In fact the 'free market' side of it has actually been found to reduce innovation and is no better at picking winners - it's just they keep quiet about all the losses and takes credit for winners off the back of government support. Also, investors tend to steer clear of the higher risk early stage innovations, especially those that require vast amounts of capital, like a lot of renewable tech. thus slowing down the development of new technology and business (Mariana Muzzucato wrote a good book on this).

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by the current generation but assume you mean current generation of human beings. I see 'us,' as in human beings as being part of the global ecosystem so we rely on the ecosystem to sustain ourselves. If we destroy too much of our ecosystem, it will undermine both current and future generations. This takes me back to my previous comment about not having either short or long-term solutions. We don't understand our ecosystem enough to make an informed decision about what elements of it are essential, important, or which we can afford to lose. History has mostly shown us that we tend to be overly optimistic about the potential of any interventions (although sometimes totally thoughtless) and then we're caught out by the unintended conequences. We simply have no idea the consequences of not saving current natural ecosystems, and I can't see how saving them might amount to a risk of genocide. I think it would actually have a positive impact providing the necessary structural changes are part and parcel of that. It seems that pretty much all the major environmental problems we're experiencing are caused and/or perpetuated by anthropogenic systems so that's where the interventions need to be focussed. I certainly agree on the education part of this. But my first point would be to prioritise reducing energy consumption, ensuring all production is done on a circular basis - i.e. can be fixed, and can be recycled or repurposed cleanly - and minimising impact on the environment through our activities. I'd imagine it would only be sensible that renewable energy forms a part of that, but there is so much we can do that would not necessarily require renewable energy, or technology for that matter, but would significantly reduce the demand for it.

I think it depends on how you look at it. Failure to respond to change early enough is a typical human trait which leads us to wait until it's too late -the proverbial wall. Then we try everything we can to return to the status quo without appropriate change, and along comes another wall, perhaps in a slightly different guise. For me the problem is mostly structural - how we behave and the various systems, such as political and economic, we've contrived to control and support that behaviour. Despite the obvious fallacies embedded in many of these current systems and their unsustainability, we persist with them. This I think is evident in that we're desperately looking for technical solutions to the environment to simply carry on as we are. I find it pretty bizarre that we find it okay to seek and support experimental ways to play with our global ecosystem, in preference to actively redeveloping our relationship with the environment.

As always, the devil is in the detail. Generally speaking dense walls do insulate sound better. However, the materials used in the wall also affect the acoustics in the room. So when designing your acoustic walls, you need to consider both the sound levels and what you're looking to achieve. Is it sound insulation between rooms only or do you also want to reduce room reverberation, which means using sound absorption materials. For sound insulation, the minimum cavity recommended in a block wall for reaching Building Regulations requirement in new builds of 45db would be 75mm. So with some dense blocks, you can achieve this just with wet plaster, some 75mm blocks, or 100mm blocks, 75mm cavity and then wet plaster. With respect to service void, I'd avoid any chasing in the masonry as this will reduce sound insulation. Probably better to build an additional service void which could use acoustic plasterboard to improve the overall performance of the wall. Here's a pretty useful document by British Gypsum giving various wall buildup examples and sound insulation levels. HTH. LIT_Stockist_Guide_Construction_details_02.pdf

Please don't get me wrong. I wasn't suggesting for a minute that the too close to the ground argument was okay, more implying that it sounds to me like something a two-bit insurance company might use to refuse a claim! So far I think the response is disappointing and must be infuriating for you. I am looking at alternatives. I do wonder whether the Scottish climate plays into it. I don't think it's too cold per se but that is has damp-cold-frost cycles so it's not unusual to have a soaking wet wall and then severe frost. This has been found to be a problem in Finland with these EWI systems and as a result they developed their own test and certification system beyond the normal European Technical Assessment. In the Finnish case they found some systems fine, others failed - I haven't be able to find specific results to know which ones were okay and which weren't.

I went and checked mine out after you said this. Sadly they're pressed pins on mine so I'd have to either drill or cut them off.

We went for what our supplier called top swing, fully reversible. The difference is that some suppliers have top hung windows with hinges at the top, others, like ours have the hinges on the side. It's worth checking this as IIRC Aluk windows can either be top hung or top swing fully reversible depending on the window model. I really like ours and prefer them to the traditional side hung. The only thing that still catches me out is the child lock!

I'm going to go against the grain on this one. We had some in our last place. We didn't skimp and it was from one of the higher end manufacterers. We were dissapointed as the surface scratched and went hazy and the top oak surface dented very easily (we had two baby boys during this time). The scratching and hazing I think was most likely down to the factory varnish being polyurethane, wax may have been better. Upstairs we had solid pine floorboards we varnished and these floors looked as the day it was done 12 years later. No UFH and surface problems only.

Sadly, until we hit that proverbial wall.