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ProDave

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  1. ProDave
    I don't see what advantage that gives you over a plasterboard box? (yes I know some hate PB boxes) It seems to have a flaw that the bit that screws to the stud sticks proud of the stud by a few mm. That will create a bump in the plasterboard that some will notice. What fixes the "free" end in their picture? it would appear, nothing. It also ties you to positioning the accessories a certain fixed distance from the studs, no chance to make them line up with other stuff as you may wish. Not for me.
  2. ProDave
    When we had our summer (about a month ago, all 3 days of it) the house remained comfortably cool inside. I would love some thermal gain right now.
  3. ProDave
    I was aiming for the same sort of overall thickness of wall as a "normal" timber frame. I had already concluded that leaving a 50mm cavity then 100mm blockwork was a very expensive rain screen that adds very little to the insulation as that cavity has to be so well vented so is open to cold air. So my designer came up with the established wood fibre and render cladding system, and a thicker frame to fit more insulation. Overall U values allowing for the cold bridging of the frame 0.14 This document shows how to use wood fibre cladding with either timber or render finish http://www.greenspec.co.uk/downloads/?filename=pavaclad1.pdf I was originally going to use a form of blown in insulation, but changed to using the frametherm when I found it was half the price, gave the same U value, and was a DIY job. Because of the frame make up with the OSB racking layer on the inside (lots of people tried telling me I had put the fame up inside out) the frametherm insulation went in from the outside as I clad the walls in the wood fibre board, doing one wall at a time and getting it rendered before moving on.
  4. ProDave
    Its a "timber framed" type of construction but using steel for the wall frames. There are diagonal bracing members so they are not relying on the cladding for racking strength. I doubt it's going to be directly rendered as they are wrapping it in Tyvek.
  5. ProDave
    My normal protocol is the boarders can cut a rectangular hole for the box, BUT they become responsible if they cut it in the wrong place. Usually the boarders just drill a hole and poke the cables through, at least that way all positions are identified. In spite of telling them the height to drill said hole, it is surprising how many times when I go back to cut the rectangular holes for the boxes, the "temporary" hole is left above or below the proper box position. The boarders never care, their answer is "The taper will sort it" Same when they bruise a board through lack of care. Last time I had an "open ring main" the missing box turned out to be behind a radiator who's position had moved after first fix and nobody thought it would matter.
  6. ProDave
    Our build is 195mm studs with 100mm wood fibre board then render on the outside. What external finish are you planning to have? You definitely can build a frame out of I beams, a friend is building just like that near me using JJI I beams. I would have thought any builders merchant could supply them but you will need a structural engineer to sign off the design. For insulation between the frame members I recommend Knauf Frametherm 35. A lot less horrible to handle than most glass wool type insulation and rigid enough to stay put with no slump even when insulating a 45 degree roof.
  7. ProDave
    An appeal needn't cost you anything. I did my planning application for that garage myself, and the appeal myself. The gist of the refusal was the garage was outside the established building line and closer to the road than the house was. There was a very good reason and that was we had an odd shaped plot with only a tiny "back garden" but lots of land to the side. The local planners wanted me to put the garage in the small back garden area (where it might even have been permitted development) but that would leave me little usable garden, so I wanted it to the side to preserve my back garden. The appeal inspector wrote what I thought was a very thorough evaluation of the pro's and con's and concluded that yes it was closer to the road than our house and the neighbours house,. but the other side of the lane was an old cottage fronting directly onto the road without even a footpath. The inspector concluded in light of that, our garage being a bit closer to the road was not out of keeping, and also provided a "beneficial sense of enclosure" to our garden.
  8. ProDave
    Some planning officers should not be in the job. When I was in the south I wanted to build a garage, which I described as "built of concrete blocks and rendered" The planning officer said to me "even if it's rendered it will still look like a prefabricated garage" and no amount of discussion could persuade here that it was masonry built of blocks and cement. It was refused, and won on appeal.
  9. ProDave
    I must call by next time we go south. J33 is where we always pull off for the cheap petrol.
  10. ProDave
    ... And the council need to come and resurface the footpath?
  11. ProDave
    That sounds like you are considering tench fill? which is where you dig a foundation strip, then fill it all up again with concrete. That is one possible way but as you have found, expensive. A normal strip foundation is dug to the required depth, then 200mm of concrete poured, blockwork built up from that then soil goes back on the outside and hard infill compacted on the inside. The required depth nobody can answer without seeing the land and without a test pit or 2 dug. A previous house we had in Oxfordshire I built a garage with 600mm strip foundations in nice firm ground. Where we are now I had to go more than that just to strip the soft black organic soil before I could then dig the strip foundations which were almost a metre down from that, so 1.5 metres overall.
  12. ProDave
    Started in March, Finished in June. No wonder you didn't have time to keep the blog updated. I won't let SWMBO know how quick you built your house...... Looks very smart indeed. Well done.
  13. ProDave
    I think the purpose of a site measurement is to make sure the frame has been built to the drawings. It was a little strange that our builders came to measure the openings before placing the order for the windows as they were the same ones that built the frame. It was virtually a sanity check to make sure that they had indeed made the window openings the size shown on the drawings.
  14. ProDave
    As an aside, I wonder how the insurance will deal with a leasehold flat in this block? Normally it would pay to refurbish the flat I would expect, but that's not going to happen. Would it just pay out the market value of the flat and the insurance company then own a lease on a flat in a burned out block that will almost certainly now be demolished?
  15. ProDave
    And there will be no record of any instruction to do so.
  16. ProDave
    It can work differently with different window suppliers. In our case the window supplier did not attend site, but the builder who was supplying and fitting them did come twice and check all the measurements before finally submitting the order, as he would be the one with a problem to solve if something was wrong.
  17. ProDave
    Being pedantic, that on it's own was not necessarilly an improvement. Contactor 1 cold stick and you would not know, until contactor 2 also stuck and the sunbed stayed on. Such a circuit with two contactors is a recognised safety circuit used in machine controls, but the important addition is they are controlled by a safety relay that monitors the auxilliary contacts on each contactor and will not energise them if it detects that one of them is stuck on already.
  18. ProDave
    You are going to hear a lot more arse covering over the coming weeks and months, and there must be a lot of people now preparing their "it was not my fault" case.
  19. ProDave
    "This property has been removed by the agent. It may be let or temporarily removed from the market" Jesus, £2145 per month. We are renting our 5 bedroom house for less than half that. On the bright side, if that flat was empty that's a few less casualties.
  20. ProDave
    People on the boating forum are discussing how to prepare your boat to make off into the sunset in the event of the breakdown of society. Not seen that since the cold war days.
  21. ProDave
    It's the garage wall so not bothered about any chilling effect. Re a heat alarm, just use a domestic heat alarm normally fitted to a kitchen ceiling, then it can be linked with a 3 core cable to all the other smoke / heat / CO alarms in the house.
  22. ProDave
    I note conventional wisdom is to place the ASHP so the unit (and the fan) is parallel to the wall and half a metre or so out from the wall, drawing air in between the unit and the wall,. and expelling air perpendicular to the wall. Is that really the best orientation? I am giving consideration to mounting it perpenducular to the wall, so it takes air in once side and expells air parallel to the wall the other side. My main reason for this thinking is the direction of expelled air will be away from the habitable rooms of the house and therefore less likely to be audible. Also most of the time here that would mean the flow of air through the unit is going with the prevailing wind. In this scenario the unit may be closer than half a metre to my rendered, wood fibre clad wall. I guess thee is nothing stopping us fitting a heat alarm inside the top of the ashp and linking it to the house alarms?
  23. ProDave
    The sheer key will do nothing imho. It's only keying into hardcore that is laid on a slope, and the whole lot, hardcore included could, no make that probably will slide down the slope. I would level the site in steps so at least the infil is sitting on level ground. Perhaps another footing and dwarf wall at each step? Buttress walls on the inside of your wall which I think is what drawing 3 is trying to show? and buttress walls on the downhill side of any intermediate dwarf wall. To level the site in steps, you will be removing a lot of soil. Use that removed soil to raise the ground around the garage. You will be removing the top layer of organic soil anyway won't you?
  24. ProDave
    Report it as a fauilt "somebody has driven a tall vehicle down the lane and snapped my line"
  25. ProDave
    You won't pop a fuse and 50V will only give you a tingle if you have wet hands. Just make sure you photograph or otherwise note how it connects and in particular what pair of the incoming cable is the live one (it's usually at least 3 pair cable)
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