Visti

The thickness was what put us off the fiber boards, but I like the miter solution. Well done! Shows that we should have done ours ourselves!

Aye, we've the same passive wall with airtightness on Monday. We're planning to do any external penetrations immediately after the airtightness test but before the cellulose gets blown in. We've been told it can be done after blowing it in, but I believe doing it inbetween just makes the most sense.

Much improved! Still some details like above the window to the PV I'll get them to adjust, but much better. Will show more once the final two pitches are done @Cpd Thanks again for all your helpful advice. I'll be DIYing my carport myself with these sheets!

States it clear as day. How are they disputing that?!

Yup, can concur. Even when challenged on the price per panel there was always a good reason the cost barely wavered, even if the # panels wen't up and down by 20% or specs changed. Never could get it split by line item!

Good news is I think the contractor felt ashamed enough to apologise and rectify the work on one roof today. Turns out being a reference for half the other self builders in the development has some sway when they realise it! Taken today and tomorrow off from work to supervise onsite directly and ensure the rest gets fixed too. Thankfully I had spare material for the car port which can be cannibalised for this, and they'll be paying for replacements directly out of their fees.

Last week they had asked to delay works and when I said no due to kock on effects they just didn't turn up. So this week they rushed. They didn't plan or think about how to operate on site in a desperate attempt to get to the next job. I had half the garden setup for them to sort and cut the material on the ground, battening to make frames to carry the material, winch to pull it up, they ignored it all! It was heated indeed this morning. They defaulted back to excuses and them not having the right tools or equipment etc... Bad attitude really. Tried to blame me and other contractors. When I asked why those issues were never raised with me they said they were minor and they could work around it... A bit hypocritical. I reviewed what exactly they were doing and pointed out that at no point were they following the installation instructions I had demonstrated to them and had printed out in my hand. I pointed out that jig and recip saws should only be used for short stretches and curved cuts, not the full fecking length. The sheets should be upside down on a covered surface during cuts to protect the surface from scratches, they hadn't. I've given them today to show they can do it properly and fully rectify the installed sections. If not, I'll have to DIY as no other roofer around these parts is interested. Should have seen the red flags. Experience gained I guess.

Thanks Cpd, I spent an entire day off on Monday going over the install and the steps. Seemed ok on the first day as it was just the simple roof with no windows. Today's walk about was just a mess. I decided against DIYing it following other advice in just how important it was to get the roof right. Shouldn't have listened to them and gone with your original good advice!

Steel. Cladco specifically. Good stuff too.

Just want to share how bad unsupervised workmanship can get... thrown off site until they convince me otherwise. Hell I could DIY this roof better than these professionals... may just have to now! That is all, just need a vent

I found the lighthouse episode to be quite a downer. Very divorced from reality in many areas; the scale of the house, financing, foundations, staging of works etc... Just all seemed excessively naive. Sad overall really, losing such a wonderful spot when they could just have settled on the smaller house. Agree with @LA3222, the architect was likely a cause, overselling his vision without thought on budget. Shame the builder didn't get more sound advise elsewhere.

Yup. The regs specify the amount of rainfall you should scale your gutters too per roof based on area, but that isn't 100% foolproof. There could be 1/100yr rainstorms or other peak events you have to cater to as well, hence the need for some overflow in one way or another. I've oversized my downpipes too just in case so that I've at least double capacity at all points in case one end fails entirely.

Aye, the primary factor was the eventual weight of the water as @PeterW explained. If we didn't have an outlet, we'd accumulate 1.5tonnes per gutter across 10m. It might have held, but was an unacceptable risk to our Building control officer, so he applied balcony regs to get an overflow installed since we couldn't go over the edge.

It is a time, money and quality question. You can have two of the three, but never all. So a lower £/m2 is always possible, but what do you sacrifice? Your time, or quality of the materials/workmanship? Granted time is a realistic one for self builders to pour in, provided one can spare it. Lower quality is hard for most to swallow given it is often more personal for self builders. I think for me the cashflow from a full time job is more critical to the project, allowing us to get in earlier with our newborn!

Quantity surveyor. Highly recommend. Really woke us up to what we could afford. Thought we could do it for £1250/m2, but that wasnt bases on anything more than assumptions. We really scaled back and should be able to bring in our build at about £2000/m2. Smaller house, less fancy stuff, but affordable

We've battented and counter battented with standard treated battens, 38 by 25mm. I guess you could place instect or rodent mesh along with the first line of counter battens to your structure, with your foam filler stapled against the counter batten and topped with mastic tape, ready for when you install the corrugated on top... It'd probably be only a little bit of extra effort, but I can imagine installing the sheets on top of that will get quite faffy. Win and rain has been the main concern for us, the insect and rodent issue hasn't been. Our roofers, architect and building control haven't said a thing about it either

I've steel as with @Cpd and have the foam closures at the top between the corrugated and the ridge cap. The bottom is left open to allow for ventilation, and I should note that they descend into a hidden gutter, so wind can't get driven up.

We had a one pager where we went through our priorities, the sorts of lifestyles each of us lead and what we wanted out of our own house. We also listed basic requirements for the rooms we needed, but that was an aside. We let the architect take it from there after an hour discussing our style. See attached Can only recommend giving them as much freedom to work with if you are indeed forking out for a dedicated architect. Else I'd have a stab myself and get someone to draft it up for you 197_Graven Hill Vistisen_Briefing Document_260417_DRAFT.pdf

That is not a bad idea at all @LA3222! I think I'll take that on board!

I could use a 2nd opinion on how to protect my overflow from the elements! Long story short, I've had to retrofit a box duct (9mm marine ply, 35x90mm internal cross-section) onto each end of my hidden box gutters. It is lined with a single ply membrane (PVC) but not much else at the moment. Dark blue in the detail below: I want to cap off the exposed part with some Alu trim as shown below: Any idea whether this will help, or whether it'll just make things worse with drip marks and the like?

Envirograph stock a good range for this purpose. Our neighbour went with their CV strips mounting them on battens to cover the distance of the full cavity. They come in various thicknesses, but would have cost us £13.18/m2. We went with the RSM/I range which are able to cover a deeper cavity than those above at less price. We paid £10.38/m2 for 100mm deep ones, with the intumescent able to cover the final 40mm in case of a fire (138mm cavity on ours) Attached documentation on this range FYI. Tenmat also do similar products but we found they were about double the cost of the envirograph. Cavity detail of ours was: IS-55-RSM-WEB.pdf 2017-Efectis-R001685[Rev.2]_Intumescent_Systems_snp.pdf

That should be an easier install as well I should think! I'll look at how we can build that into the counter battening before the cladding goes on. Thanks for that idea @Vijay!

I hadn't even considered the PV run off given my focus on the roof and gutter, but that is a very good point! Thanks @JSHarris Thankfully we've brought the cladding up quite a way, but it still looks like it'd just shoot off over the edge. I may ask the question, but hesitant to unpack a new box of problems just now, hehe.

The gutter has turned into a bit of a bodged design. Originally the eaves of the roof terminated at the box gutter height, but as we've had to push these up at the gable ends, we've had to increace the cladding height to match. That means A structural brace behind the cladding above the box gutter is required to support the top of the cladding There is no more opportunity for overflow over the out edge of the cladding as it'd take so much water before going over that the weight would become too risky Access to the box gutter is now constricted from the top, making maintenance difficult. I like your idea @JSHarris, so may use that as a tactic. Checked with my warranty provider and they don't really care about #3 after all! A bit of mesh above would do fine to prevent stuff from getting in. #2 is the big stopper, so we're going to have to put in some overflow outlets just above the down-pipes to accommodate H3 1.7... just another day, another change!

I've looked at he H3 regs and can't find any requirements for access to clean the gutter. An issue with our design means we'll only have 30mm openning from the top between the roof and the edge. That seems like an issue to me, but nothing is stated in the regs, and there are few alternatives. Am I right to be worried?