saveasteading

That is because you don't have the freedom that Britain has to buy from wherever. Oops. Politics Seriously gb doesn't produce cement any more so it is imported. Stone and sand aplenty though, so the rest of the cost must be higher wages, and profits, and prices from different sources remarkably similar. Best price for lots of blocks is usually about the same as readymix. So may be about £1.50. Perhaps others are more up to date on current prices.

Standard blocks are about 70c here inc vat and aerated about €2-3. What's the price difference there? Today wickes are saying one dense block is £2.70, inc vat, aerated £2.60 and medium dense £3.25. Each. Obv that comes down a lot for quantity.

No, but learning something better than not. Actually the schools I mentioned it was 16+ for these activities. We took on an apprentice and he changed trade twice once he saw the real jobs on sites. Ended up OK.

Perfectly normal. Many companies will use their accountants' address as the registered office. They will not normally open letters but forward them. Someone is probably there, but contacting may be tricky. There are dodgy registered addresses too, but don't assume they are all bad.

I did buildings for a couple of schools where I got to know the senior staff well. One officially did trades, such as catering, hair, nails, plumbing, brickwork. These kids mostly learned admin skills eg scheduling meal ingredients, then costing them. They still did some formal classes and I gather took them more seriously because they realised the importance. In another school they did not have this setup but some lads were allowed to disappear to an onsite garage and fiddle with an old car.....the alternative being disruption or truancy. That was stopped in handing over to an academy....as were sport, music and theatre. I also did a maths practical in every school. Just how much concrete do I order for the floor slab. A x b x c = d m3 The decimal point was the main issue in the top set. Sums for the rest. We seldom got to question 2 in an hour. How many lorries of 6m3 capacity will be needed? Shocking really. But the teachers said it was very worthwhile, esp that I said I used arithmetic all day, every day. The most satisfying was a very special needs kid, with 2 staff. We did colouring. But this lad asked a very astute question about why was there a piece of wood in a steel frame (temp prop). He saw it as interesting but the teachers proposed it as a silly question. I approve of skill and trade classes.

I did detailed cost comparisons for a 4 storey building, I think I've said before. All aspects included, eg other trades. I wouldn't normally but the room size favoured eps for once, I thought, and I had been looking into it in detail. The ICF people said it was perfect and there would be a big discount for size. The geometry was fixed, as was that the walls were brick faced, which you would think favoured cavity wall. In best price order. Timber kit. Metal kit. Steel frame. Stud internals. Brick and block, beam and block floors. Eps systems. But that was for us, designing and constructing, with total design control. It may be a completely different order of costing for a small house and diy. Certainly the cash difference is less as a sum rather than %. I'm a bit nervous about polystyrene blocks on a windy site.

That always seemed excessive to me. Timber and plywood woild have been my choice, costwise. I like timber because things can be adapted to fit, and fixings are easy. But i can see the attraction. You will have a heavier structure that won't budge in the wind, or creak. Not only that but you will sleep easier. A small building in a windy place can suffer extreme wind loads. If I remember rightly, an extreme wind gust is typovcally about 15m wide, engulfing and tugging at your dinky home. What will the roof be made of? Wind at edges and especially corners can be very destructive, and yours is mostly edges.

That will depend on whether you have mains or a tank in the loft. With a new syphon you get 2 plastic cones to insert, one wider than the other. That's how low tech it all is. Other surprises in first time work on a wc. The seal from cistern to pan is primitive. Just plumbers mait (gunk) and gravity, and maybe an adjacent metal bracket. The syphon mechanism is just a bit of polythene that flaps up and down. Dual flushes include a hidden screw to unlock the lid. Screws to the wall will probably have rusted and not come out.

The thing about a practical SE is that they are quite likely to say that the dead tree is irrelevant, where a bco might not. I see where the worry about engaging an SE comes from..the nhbc implies that you need an SE for deep founds and that an SE will design piles. Not so. An SE will specify only what is required, and that is probably mid depth standard footings.

As ProDave says. When exposed, lift the float and see if the water stops. That means a very simple adjustment may suffice. Where does the water go next? To overflow or disappearing into the pan? A cause of the latter can be muck in the syphon seal (which can be amazingly primitive) , causing it to keep dribbling into the pan.

I prefer threaded bar in epoxy, at least a week after pouring.

You teased me into looking up the tables. Cypresses are high water use....and a felled tree is often a leylandii....so maybe. Other conifers are listed as medium demand. Anyway a long dead tree has zero demand. And I thank you as I had never noticed the chart for distance from London. 50mm less every 50 miles. I don't remember that being in the original BS document. My hunch is you will end up with 1.5m depth close to the stump, and less elsewhere (depending on the other trees....but rowan is low demand.

No , it would mean 2.4m footings which is about 1/3 the cost of piles. But if we (or SE or bco) discount the long dead tree then everything is shallower. I think I would discount nhbc depths for the dead tree as the ground has had 2 winters to recover.* But I would locally take the footings below tree roots. * I have done this several times, the difference being it was my decision and I was there to see the circumstances. No it isn't. Do you know what type of conifer? Some have very little effect.

The layer of gravel confuses me. Am I forgetting some need for it? Gravel moves all over the place so can't be walked on. Rebar is jargon for steel reinforcing bars. Mesh is made of bars at preset centres for convenience in slabs. If the bars are different sizes, remember that the big ones may have to go in a certain direction. My other concern is that the floor plate sits on a narrow strip of concrete. Also the fixing is very near the edge and likely to fail. And take it deeper....the first 25mm doesn't provide worthwhile resistance. With that tiny amount of side insulation, I'm not sure that the 200mm under the slab is necessary. It's just all a bit weird. Sorry I don't have time to draw something else up. On the other hand, I assume it won't be used an awful lot, and nobody is sleeping in it, so it is somewhere between a garden shed and a house.

Some builders don't take advice from anyone. Seriously, anyone. It doesn't sound complicated. You are 90% sure you will find clay. Calling it high plasticity will increase the foundation depths for trees but that is cheaper than site and lab tests. I would be redesigning armed with the tree tables and bco agreement as I went along. Dig your footing as designed and check the strength at the bottom. How to, later. This is traditional building, but you have multiple advisors on here. 99% of advice on BH is good. The other 1% just aren't agreeing with me. Because you are being sensibly cautious we don't expect you to cut corners so can give this pragmatic advice. Ie if you weren't, we might be saying to get an SE. In any case, your house will have normal founds, and it isn't always great to build extensions much deeper.

Yes, £20 well spent on 2 x 10mm (or bigger) rods at mid height of a 300mm footing. I was just imagining the finished construction, with a tree stump sitting there, rotting. It has to go, if there was anh doubt remaining. It won't, be fun for whoever has to dig around roots and cut them , but has to be done. When you have the trench dug, you will likely have small roots sticking into it. Prune these flush with the sides so they don't stick into the concrete. Photos as you progress would be good.

Bad wording, sorry. They are rated. Look at the slip ratings. If they don't have them, be very afraid of slips and falls.

If I may enter this. Passivhaus is good for providing strict, proven methods and attention to detail. Far too many houses are flawed because of corners being cut, lack of attention to detail, and basically not being a holistic design. So an option for control of this is a good thing. My own choice would always be to design the building I want. If that means that the big windows face south for the view, and have bifolds, then that is the priority. A wood burning stove too, if in the country. Then make it work efficiently, but appreciate that sometimes the doors will be left open, or the windows opened on a whim. But I don't trust 'others' to get it right and so I interfere and observe throughout. Not everyone can do that. And then there is the cost. It isn't available to everyone. Passivhaus is good design. Non Passivhaus can be good too, perhaps even better.

As a minimum there is the blue roll of foam that keeps the screed away from the wall and lets it shrink with minimal cracking. I would try to add PIR vertically to this, or only use PIR. The thickness depends on how much the wall will cover (and physically protect) it. Stud,service void, plasterboard, skirting.. Chances are you will have lots of off-cuts you can use. It needs a detailed, scaled cross-section through the wall to floor interface to work this out. Then draw arrows to represent the easiest route for heat to move, and try to improve it. It is my opinion/feeling that there isn't a huge amount of heat loss through this junction, because the screed is thin and so the actual heat loss is not huge, with the insulation in the way. So getting 50mm in there is a big deal. Of course it is more significant with UFH as the screed is at 30C or so. Not enough is made of the area of the floor slab, ie distance to the cold outside. The ground is a good insulator. So a narrow building will lose more heat to the ground than a wide one. In theory you could put lots of insulation depth near the outside walls and less near the centre. In fact you can use none in a very large space.

Just so I am sure. I'm thinking it isn't needing deep founds. What type of pine? What is your ground? Clay/sandy whatever? Distance rowan to building and other pine To building.

BCOs don't tend to know much about groundworks or trees. Well, about Engineering really. Groundworkers main asset is being prepared to get dirty and wet....no training apart from seeing bad examples. It's a pine so doesn't bother the ground too much. Dead 2.5 years so 2 winters to wet the ground. Shouldn't be a problem. Rowan and pine would have to be close to be significant. The easiest way to measure is on Google earth.

If no shoots have emerged from the trunk or roots then it is dead. If they do, just lop them off or spray. This is tricky. Must not upset the wall. Also, ripping out the root ball might destablise lots of ground that will be under your new wall. I think the whole trunk should be removed. A labourer can expose the roots, then cut them. If there is a tap root then that is a problem...perhaps just scrape with the excavator to see if it comes away. OR heave it all out (carefully for that wall) and build the foundations to below any roots. You say nhbc dont cover it. That is only because the distance is zero, and so use 1m, or whatever is nearest. How long has the tree been down? What does the bco say? This isn't a situation of ticking a box. You do not want the ground to heave dud to the tree removal.

Of course you are right. Mine had to be set out of reach.

Noted: not for everyone. I rather like the ir heaters that are built into a picture frame, so it gently warms the desk or sitting area. Also saw a few years ago, an electric wall paint. Low voltsge to opp corners of the wall, and the paint emitted low heat. I saw it as useful in corridors or work stations in big workshops or warehouses. Haven't heard any more about it though.

No, that is what i meant. I hadn't thought on it before, but the IR is hitting only about a sixth of the body, including one half of the head. Btw I notice that all IR heaters appear to be made to glow visibly recently. (Mine is black, with a few tell-tale spots of red where the coating is thin.) Marketing i expect, but it does remind you to turn it off.