BadgerBadger

It was pretty straightforward when a contractor put a tarmac entrance in for us - tarmac lorry delivers pile of tarmac, roughly positioned in the right area, then lots of rollering to get it flat. You might need to think about what happens to the excess that's leftover, we ended up with quite a bit as you obviously don't want to be short! No doubt a small area would be less.

We're a similar distance, to be honest we go so frequently you get pretty clued in to what we need. Site clothes just live in the car, and go back and forwards to be washed as needed, so we don't really feel the need to store "personal" stuff on-site.

We're looking to do something very similar - but if the compriband is covered by the cladding edge strip, what's the advantage vs simple mastic sealant if its covered over anyway?

We've just completed a fairly similar below DPC build-up. Our cavity fill came up to the level the beams sat. The telescopic airvents simply sat in gaps in the slips under the edge blocks. Don't forget you'll need to line them up with the external brick bond, so the embedding them in cavity fill might limit your flexibility. Rigid insulation is hard to get right, but doable with care. Cutting around airvents and cavity trays is particularly time consuming, and I imagine many contractors would take short cuts. Our boards were flat edged and taped, and to be honest I feel tongue and groove would have made it harder, particularly with masonry build and wall ties etc.

We are building this way - it some ways it's really good, but be careful it's very different from a single contractor build. There's nobody on-site with visibility of the full build so much more responsibility falls to you to get things right, and it's dragged us to be much more technically involved with the build. You'll find a way, and be relieved your contractor has been honest with you!

I'm somewhat stumped! What's best way to get a stepped cavity tray for a pitched roof abutment in the right place? Our build has an attached garage with a pitched roof against the gable wall of the main house. There is a stepped cavity tray specified along the abutment to stop water tracking down the internal wall over the garage. I need install the stepped cavity whilst the house gable wall is being built i.e. before the garage roof is there. The garage roof uses fabricated roof trusses. My current thinking is to try and make a dummy truss/jig based on the roof truss dimensions and position this on the garage wall plate and work from there. How is it usually done?

Could you achieve the same "olde worlde" look by careful choice of brick, maybe lime mortar and a different brick bond, as opposed to trying to increase mortar thickness?

Today's question of the day! Our first section of DPC are going in, but should I be ensuring the edge is visible in the finished brickwork? It's ended up recessed about 10mm into the mortar, obviously a small potential breach for damp but it's also not obvious to any casual observer / building control / warranty inspector that its actually present. It's only a section in so far and we're only a couple of courses above, so easier to fix now rather than later, or is it just generally acceptable? Thank you!

Apply for your water connection as early as you can. Ours was seemingly straightforward but took ages to get in. There are lots of hoops to jump through, ours required an inspection (of our temporary outdoor taps) which I held off doing initially until we were getting underway properly, but I probably should have just put a standpipe on the fence and got the ball rolling quicker. We had a long time without water and relied on a hosepipe from neighbours. I'm not sure what we would have done without that. We used the hose to fill a few of those 200 litre blue barrels, which worked very well. In fact we're still filling them now, just from our own supply. Definitely recommend getting the sewer connection in early too with just an inspection chamber on the boundary. Probably paid for itself in savings on portaloo hire by emptying our own small chemical loo into it, and now we have water we've rigged a full flushing toilet in a shed. Luxury.

I think what they're saying is your larger room is too big to be just a single loop, so it needs two loops to cover the area. But as your shower room is quite small then the second loop is able to cover both the shower and remainder of the large room. But that's means the shower room can't be independently controlled as it shared with the main room. So if you really want the shower to be independent you'll need two loops to cover the larger room and a separate third loop for the shower.

I have a slight issue where part of my substructure coursing heights are slightly out. I can correct it by laying the first course on a 40mm mortar bed, is this too thick? I would prefer to correct it in the first course, as it's getting close to being visible above ground, so just wondering what my alternatives might be?

Just coming up to our joist installation - what is the benefit of doing the above vs. using masonry hangers? It appears to be much more fiddly.

We've been a little restricted on both ridge height and plan depth, so are using raised tie trusses to achieve internal ceiling height. So from the wall plate there is a short section of sloping ceiling, before it flattens off across the main ceiling level. Above this there is a small, but very usable, loft space which is also intended to house our MVHR unit. I'm current debating how best to insulate this detail and make it airtight? Our architect detail has rigid insulation between rafters on the sloping section (with a thinner layer underneath to limit thermal bridging) and then switches to a thick layer of rockwool above the flat ceiling. So our airtightness layer follows the internal ceiling. This detail leaves our MVHR unit in an uninsulated space, the thick layer of rockwool reduces headroom/crawl space further, and all the upstairs light fittings and MVHR terminals will be crossing the airtightness layer. So it crossed my mind if a better solution might be to run the rigid insulation all the way up the ridge, therefore bringing the loft space into the thermal/airtight envelope? There would be some fiddling sealing required around the ceiling ties, and general trickiness of installing the insulation but we have some vaulted space elsewhere in the build so it would be consistent with this. We would likely still want some acoustic insulation at ceiling level, but it overall might reduce the amount of space lost in the loft and make the MVHR detailing easier.

Thanks for the advice all - new gang in and currently working to day rates for the time being, maybe switching back to meterage later. It's early days but seem to work hard, and have laid more than than their wages if I was paying previous meterage. So promising start, but it does mean I need to be on-site all day to make sure everything is moving efficiently (and lend a hand where I can). Off-site again due to cold, so just need to it warm up again (but not rain!)

Hi all, I'm just checking I've got a detail right before we order our floor! Structural engineering drawings mention "joists parallel to walls to be strapped to inner leaf..." and sure enough all our floor supplier designs are showing restraint straps at 90-degrees to the joist direction. We are using masonry hangers (probably a rapid build variant to aid build sequence) but all hangers specified appear to be standard non-restraint types. So my question is whether I need any restraint straps running inline at the ends the joists too? Structural engineering drawing is silent on the matter. Reading NHBC guidance it states: Restraint straps should be provided along the direction of the joists and spaced at a maximum of 2m centres. They are not generally required at the ends of joists in buildings up to, and including, two storeys where: restraint type joist hangers in accordance with Technical Requirement R3 are used, or joists are built into a wall and bear at least 90mm on the wall. We've decided not to build joists into the external wall to help with airtightness, and so am I right in thinking I should therefore be using restraint type hangers or adding restraints straps to the joist ends? (it just seems odd I'm having to push for it to be specified!)

I've concluded this is a bit of a myth. They can certainly walk into a merchant and get given a better rate straightaway, but if you can work out what the best genuine rate is and then tell them this is all you're willing to pay there's no reason for them to turn you away. Plus, time is money for many builders, so convenience is a key factor as opposed to chasing the lowest possible price.

Which parts of your build are the most complex? These are the areas that need careful management and where the most potential for cost-saving is. If your shell is straightforward handing it to single contractor may be quite cost-effective, with limited scope to make savings by doing anything else.

How are planning to structure your project? Single contractor all the way, part of the way, splitting everything to individual trades? PM'ing a build means different things to different people, and the level of involvement needed for different approaches varies massively. We have ending up falling more towards the individual trades end of the spectrum, and the technical involvement has ramped dramatically.

Any thoughts on how sensitive the expiry date printed cement bags is? I've found mixed info online. I have a number of bags of Mastercrete that expired in Oct, stored outside but seemingly in otherwise good condition.

Yep - definitely not expecting a higher productivity on a day rate. But... Part of the problem we've fallen into is that we have a lot of fiddly brick details that are taking time to get right, so the brickies are losing money on their meterage rate. We're falling back to a pre-agreed day rate for some areas, but equally struggling to get them to site consistently as they can't be sure they'll meet their wage.

Our bricklayers are currently working to a meterage rate, but various reasons it's not working brilliantly. We have a looming possibility of doing a greater proportion on day rates, potentially with a different gang. So what the norm on sites...? Let's say I've agreed there's 2-3 weeks work to be done at a given day rate but it's then too wet to lay bricks on some days - do I have to pay regardless or do I just tell them not to come at short notice? What if they're on-site but lose a few hours?

We are very much "in the middle" of our build. The start seems a long time ago (we broke ground at the beginning of the year), the delays are stacking up and we're still a long way from being weather tight. Completion is currently unimaginably far away. Changing clocks and a turn in weather, and it's definitely feeling harder than it has previously. So I'm really intrigued - what stage of the whole build process have you found the hardest? I don't think we're in a bad place by any means, but definitely keeping my head in the "marathon" mindset and aware we have a long way to go.

We are building a four-bed detached house in the south of England and for a whole host of reasons (well mainly privacy!) I thought I’d try a blog in a slightly different way. I’ve been making notes of “lessons” we’ve learnt along the way and I thought I’d try and write them up whilst we progress before hindsight has the chance to alter them too much! Some of them are things I wish I’d known or realised beforehand, others are just little things that have worked well for us, but hopefully they might be useful for others at a similar stage and I’d be interested to hear how they compare to your own. The first chunk are my notes from finding land through to gaining planning permission… There’s no doubt luck is required to find a good plot, but you can give yourself the best chance to be lucky. Research planning applications, look for areas of land on Google Earth, use Land Registry, write letters. Don’t just wait for Rightmove. We paid a lot of money for a site without planning permission – many people told us we were breaking the biggest self-build golden rule. We were clear with ourselves about the risk we were taking, understood exactly why the current owners didn’t want to put planning in place and, importantly, we made sure the price we paid reflected the risk. Neighbourly relations are hugely important and you likely need to be prepared for people to object to your development no matter what you design. Disruption, noise, loss of green space, loss of privacy, and just change in general are all very real worries for people. We wrote letters to everyone in the immediate area outlining our plans and kept them up-to-date with our progress. We worked really hard to always be polite and courteous, even when we weren’t always getting that in return. We can now happily meet any neighbour know we’ve always done our best. Everything takes longer than you think! During the design process the weeks seemed to tick by very quickly – every iteration needed our architect to re-work something, and then come back to us a week or two later. Be open to your architects ideas and suggestions, think things through and question your own presumptions, but also don’t be afraid to push the design in the direction you think best. Our plot is in a conservation area so our plans were always going to come under a lot of scrutiny. Read up on planning applications in your local area and follow the applications as they progress, in particular read the statutory consultees responses (highways, trees, conservation). You can learn a lot by seeing what amendments or information they’re requesting and how that might translate to your own application. We used our local authority’s planning pre-application advice services with a fairly mature set of plans. This cost as much as a full planning application, and took longer, but was invaluable for letting us get feedback from the conservation/planning officer away from any neighbour scrutiny. We’d agreed at the start a fixed price with our architect through to full planning submission, this proved very worthwhile as significant re-design was needed on the basis of the pre-app feedback. We listened to our neighbour objections, and tried to mitigate their concerns where practical, but at the end of the day we knew we’d be submitting plans with things they wouldn’t like. We made sure we explained the rationale for why alternates weren’t possible, but otherwise pushed ahead with the design we wanted that stood us in the best stead for planning. Despite all our neighbourly relation work our application attracted objections (as expected!) but went through smoothly as we’d addressed all the material considerations from our pre-app. Importantly we remained on good terms. If the shoe’s on the other foot - and you’re objecting to a neighbouring application - make sure you focus on the material considerations. One neighbour picked up on the aspect of our design we were least confident would get through but then buried their remarks on it in the middle of long-winded list of other non-material objections. Had they clearly presented their case and focussed on the material considerations they likely stood a much better chance of influencing the planning officer.

Hi all - I'd like to pick your collective minds on roof ventilation please! The majority of our roof build up has rigid insulation placed between the rafters with a further layer placed under the rafters to reduce thermal bridging. Our architect details show a 25mm gap on top of the insulation which is ventilated at both the eaves and the ridge. There's a breather membrane over the rafters, which are then battened with plain clay tiles. I haven't quite got my head around why I need both eaves/ridge ventilation and a breather membrane? We have a fairly traditional looking roof so I'd really like to get away from dry-fix ridge ventilation systems. Build is planned to be fairly airtight, with the airtightness layer on the underside of the roof insulation. Could I use something like Klober Permo Air to remove the need for additional roof ventilation?

Great! I was worried the whole house was done - so builder's invested a few hours to show what easily achievable on one arch, not really a big deal if you have to take it down but you can now work through and see what's practical vs cost implications. Keep us posted! We're working through similar with our brickwork at the moment. What bond are you using - do I spy a queen closer..?