saveasteading

Drainage drawings are often inaccurate. The previous owners have allowed this soakaway, or else it is even older and was just not recorded. You are probably stuck with it. The bco has to ensure that your rain goes away safely. They can't insist on closing the neighbours connection, but you need another solution. More details would help, but I suggest you take your drainage (new, and also existing if you can) as far away as you can. Or to a pond. Have you scope for this? Barrels on dowpnipes slow the flow to the soakways. In time the soakaways will probably bung up with leaves and muck. I doubt if the neighbour is allowed on your plot to rebuild it.

It seems from a very quick catchup that Grenfell had pir on the wall, and polyethylene filled outer cladding. Not pur. I have tested pir on a fire, and it burns rapidly, creating more heat and flame spread. Have never used pur or pet, assuming that is the term. Long before Grenfell I met some firemen at a seminar. They told me that they kept well away from any composite cladding, especially secret fix, as it might suddenly fall off the wall.

I'm happy to learn that I'm wrong if I am. Perhaps pur has changed since last I checked, but we had clients' insurance companies checking that we didn't use it in composite panels. So now from a quick check I find this from Kingspan. The most notable differentiating factor for PIR is its flame and smoke resistance. PIR slows the spread of flames and reduces the smoke emitted from the fire when compared to PUR products.

Pur burns very rapidly, and also melts and flows. Pir burns but crumbles. In a domestic situation it shouldn't burn, as what will ignite it and where would the oxygen come from? Toxic fumes when not on fire? Don't know, but surely it would be on the far side of plasterboard and polythene.

Please report how it goes. If you aren't airtight yet, the draught should be doing a fair amont of the drying for you already.

A solution to keep it slim is to fix plywood on top, with lots of ringshank nails. The plywood converts the joists into T beams. You need an SE to give you the design to hand to bc. Then you don't need any steel.

The reason for slow drying of screed is that the water is essential to hardening and avoiding shrinkage cracking. After a month in damp confitions the chemical reactions are complete. The temperatures of ufh shouldn't be a problem. Evaporation will reduce the slab temperature, so don't expect it to feel warm. You might need lots of ventilation.

I don't know about email alerts to threads. Someone else may advise. There are emails to alert re any private messages (which i only use if it appears sensitive). But you could 'follow' members who regularly discuss the topics of special interest, or who are generally interesting or entertaining.

Rock will not shrink and expand seasonally due to tree absorption. Rock is good except where you need to trench for drains through it. You won't need a raft either, just footings for the wall and ground bearing slab for floor. Very, very much simpler and cheaper.

The best, most trustworthy supplier will give you their best, or near best right away. The ones who say they will match anything are being lazy of greedy and don't deserve a return call. We got the best price from the local independent bm, which was a surprise and pleasure.

So that is unusually deep, and good news. You can excavate your floor depth without undermining.

No, it is a huge amount. First discuss with SE to see what holes they would want. If local they will know what ground to expect and the likelh best constriction method. Then 2 or 3 holes, 2m deep is likely to suffice. Jcb, half day including transport.

Ok all makes sense. Do you know the depth snd construction of your footings?

You have Russwood at Newtonmore itself. Best call in. We got our treated cladding from there.

But may diverge enough to be worth changing the design. Eg if bricks go up but timber comes down. My experience is that it takes many months for trades to accept that rates are dropping. They will sit at home through pride, until sent out to take what is going.

Yes if the stone could be laid level, that should really mean that you don't need the lower concrete. After all, commercial sheds don't need insulation so there is one slab, straght onto dpm on stone. It is really down to conditions and expectations. Doing away with the slab would have been an argument too far with our SE...we settled for this as there were bigger arguments on other stuff. We saved about £15k but it could have been more. If we hadnt been professionals ourselves i dont know if we could have prevailed. In reality, the bottom slab gives control and cleanliness and it is easier to get the pir tidy. Did you say earlier that there is existing slab? Can it stay?

Although you probably don't need fireproof enclosures, they could be the solution. Little fabric bags over the lights, sealed down somehow, with mineral wool, or at least something, over them. This all done from below, which will require some thought.

Having been shocked at the cost of stove and, especially, flue compared to Spain, i have now reconsidered. The flue supplied locally is in a different league, re joints, closures, and getting bits required to complete. Eg the plate to the ceiling is white, and vented, as opposed to black and basic. Joints seem to be much better, not just push fit and whatever mastic chooses to stay in place. And more. Part of the difference is that spanish houses do not include timber, so the solutions are relatively primitive. So we are at least double the cost, which will affect economic viability. But we need a second stove too, and it will also be obtained locally.

Apologies for the confusion. I don't write this stuff with the care I would if doing it professionaly. If your ground is really bad there may be a need for the industrial loading slab you show below the pir. It can carry forklifts. But think of the load on your floor ....feet and furniture. This then sits on pir with very low strength. Therefore you don't need even more strength beneath that. All you need is a flat, clean surface for the pir. In theory that could be just sand blinding, but in practice that is difficult. So my suggestion for you is 75 or 100 stone, then 25 max blinding, then 100 concrete with fibres, then pir then screed. Plus dpm twice. The concrete could be thinner but is trickier to lay accurately....go for 75 if you want. But this has to go past your professionals. I don't know your project circumstances. If they say no, please ask why. Remind them of the cost...it is a good idea to have worked that out to tell them. The readymix company rep may not be used to fibres, but they are standard and from Sika. They simply pour them into the wagon from a premeasured bag 1/m3.

Yes. We used plastic fibres and the slab was 100mm I think. It was laid by the family who had no preconceived bias. So the fibres added about £10/m3 to the concrete, and saved all the steel. Labourwise the concrete is a bit stiffer and added 30 minutes, but was countered by much easier access without mesh to cross. And no mesh labour. Normally we would slice crack control next day but for somd reason ig wasnt done. But there are no cracks anyway. The junior SE was reluctant but the senior one stepped in to say it was ok. This was not a normal discussion though, as we are as qualified as their senior guy. To summarise, we laid sub-base, dpm, 100 concrete, 125 pir, more dpm, 60 poured screed. The latter was by professionals. When concreting do not add water to the mix.

The windows i have looked at, the trickle vent is a thing, plugging between frame and pane. So no link from vent to frame

The more ignorant, the more arrogant and certain?

Call me suspicious. 1. Builder buys stuff worth £1,000 including £100 for your job and £900 for his own. 2. Ditto, £100 worth delivered and £900 'to follow'. Cancel the latter and builder gets credit against his account. 3. Worth £100 but bill me at £1,000 and correction credit note. Customer pays £1,000 and builder keeps all but £100 and a bung for the shop asssistant. 4. Or of course it was a genuine mistake, but by what process i can't imagine.

It is understandable to worry that you have one chance to change this. Hence probably overworrying. When the position was first decided, you were at ground level and no ugly trenches. That surely was thd right time to make the decision. All the above comments are good. Windows prevent you seeing the wide picture anyway. And relax.

BTW our excellent joiner who built our stick built section, (*) does not understand airtightness. Vcl layer not taped, and he had never had to do it before and so wasn't going to do ours. We had to do it. Implication being that lots of new houses are not built properly. So training and qc really will be issues. (*) I watched him doing it and it was highly skilled and efficient, and solved problems, so had done it often. Had been to building college too, so presumably the tutors don't know either.