ProDave

I hope doing dig and pour in the same day, someone remembered to inform building control and they managed to take a look before the pour? The drone pictures really make sense of the site.

I am pretty sure these are all C24 timbers. My worry is not that they are "wet" still and will rot, but whatever unknown chemical has soaked into them might not be good for them in the long term. If it is as I suspect car wax polish will that do any harm? The only other thing it might be is oil, but I am sure that would smell of oil. I am absolutely confident the timber is dry now and there is no issue with damp getting in (sole plate bone dry and no staining) so this is the result of a spill of something and no more.

mine are all 11mm, but my outside walls have 2 layers of 11nn racking. I am putting OSB on one side of even my non load bearing walls, it makes them so much more solid.

Are you SURE they are not load bearing? If load bearing they may need OSB racking panels as well as plasterboard.

100mm (actually 95mm) is standard with 12.5mm PB. If you are really tight you can go down to 68mm CLS on 400mm centres if a room is tight and need every last mm of space in a room.

If you don't want it for storage and there are no services there to maintain, I don't think you have to have a hatch. but personally I would want one, even if by moving it to a different room meant it had to be smaller. A lot of "joiners" only want to fit pre made standard sizes hatches rather than make a custom small one to fit the space.

Our house is all timber frame. The frame between the house and the garage has been left open on the garage side for some time, and the garage has been used for storage of just about anything and everything. I have just emptied the garage in preparation to plasterboarding it and finishing it and I found this: My first thought was bugger, there is a problem with the DPC. But that is not the case. I have removed the timber skirting, and peeled back the DPM and it reveals a bone dry sole plate with no staining so it is not coming up from below. I now think the staining is the result of something being spilled while in storage. There were some pallets against that wall and all sorts of stuff was on them as makeshift shelves. The stained area feels dry, perhaps slightly waxy? and has no smell and is still completely solid. Best guess is a bottle of car wax polish may have leaked. Question is, what if anything should I do? Treat it with something?

So does that mean as an all electric house (heating by ASHP) that if my as built SAP is done with SAP10 it will get a better EPC rating than the design SAP done with SAP2012? (everything else being the same?)

BUY one. I got one for £150. It would have cost something like £30 per half day hire. Oh and I have already hired it out twice and recovered half my purchase cost.

The bricky doing my foundations put a lintel over every opening. To me it looked silly putting a lntel over a bot of 63mm duct for the tv aerial cables but he said that is what BC will expect.

You have obviously got somewhere to turn the water off. Can you follow it back to the stopcock and see what fitting that has and see if you can attach a larger pipe at the stopcock?

Can I just add my plea, for gawd sake disconnect that cable. How many times do you need to be told that is bloody dangerous. You might not care about your own safety, so please spare a thought for the next owner.

Ah you must have been a member at our local clay pigeon club where I did an EICR recently. Most of the traps were correctly wired with a SWA supply, except the furthest away that just linked to the next with a bit of buried 5A flex.

Is it stiff all the time or is it free if you lock and unlock it with the door open?

What do you want on the Island? Ours has the hob and some sockets, but it is a gas hob so the power is only for the ignitor. I ran 6mm cable in 25mm conduit, with swept bends each end, so if we ever change for a massive induction hob I can pull a 10mm cable in if I need to. The hockey stick for the gas pipe was built into the foundations right from the start and it came up (just) within the footprint of the island. To run cables in conduit you are going to have to cut a channel in the slab.

Get your local DNO (electricity network operator) to come and look at the cable to see if it's "one of theirs" I did this when I uncovered an unexpected cable, which turned out to be a disused telecoms cable.

Net especially. If one foot does sink then just that corner of the tower would end up a bit lower. I don't think it would be left with the foot levitating.

Welcome to the forum. I wanted to build my own house when I was 25, but the financial institutions had other ideas so I bought a 1 bedroom rabbit hutch starter home instead. I had to wait until I was 40 before I got that chance, and now I am doing it for the second time.

screw jack bases are standard. I stood the legs on offcuts of timber, anything I had to hand just to spread the load a bit.

Just to say those are the correct "twissle" nails for joist hangers. Just not enough of them.

UFH is normally controlled from a manifoild that controls the temperature and has an individual valve for each loop. Then each room has it's own thermostat that controls 1 or more loops for that room. Bathroom thermostat typically has a sensor in the room and the dial on the wall outside the room.

Leave it wet and have a walk over glass cover and lights shining down?

Re the steel frame, I would look at buying a cheap table with a cheap top but nice base, and just putting your Oak onto the frame of the cheap table.

There is a new pumped storage scheme proposed above Loch Ness https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-44560894 This is in addition to the smaller one already in operation at Foyers that is a combination of conventional hydro generation with an element of pumped storage.

Now if I had read that article on April 1st....... Personally I think the overhead of all the other moves the crane has to do to traverse, pick up, set down etc will seriously eat into the stored power. But like others it would be nice to be proved wrong.