Mr Blobby

I couldn't agree more with what you say about keeping control and oversight on the build. The alternative to 'hand posession' of the site over to a main contractor fills me with terror. Our circumstances are very good to manage the build. We are renting a house round the corner from the site, and my day job is only a few days a month so I can be on site every day no problem. It just seems a no-brainer to build to watertight and oversee progress, as you say, trusting airtightness and clean cavities to a main contracter trying to maximise profits leaves me very uneasy. What I'm really naffed off about is that the plans were all approved last summer and I had hoped to be building this summer. Everything, including finance was in place to start this summer. The root cause for this delay goes back to the spring when the M and E consultants issued a draft tender document full of errors. They then issued their 'final' tender document at the end of April that was rubbish so I told my architect that the tender should be issued without delay and without the M and E so that things could move forward to try and rescue a summer build. This would in effect have been to tender to watertight. My architect came back to say he had discussed this with the QS (not me) and they had decided this was not in my best interests (conveniently it would be in their interests as it would trigger their tender payment milestones). They wanted the tender to go out with incorrect specification. I still can't see the benefit of that approach because the tender specification cannot form the basis of any meaningful contract but would instead leave me captive to the main contractor in negotating out the errors in a time-consuming and costly change control process. Which would have triggered another 'negotiation' payment milestone for my QS. Win win for him, lose lose for me. With no faith in the tender process I lost interest some time ago in what my QS and architect were doing and got down the site to sort out the disconnections and demolition of the old house, much to their dissaproval. As expected the cheapest tender came back for 705k with overstated M and E costs, but in reality, even if it came back at 300k, the specification was wrong and I would have spent the winter refining detials and paying professional fees for wasting my time. Building to watertight is what we are going to do, and what we should have started this spring. It is just a crying shame that my professional advisers refused to discuss options and persuaded me not to do this. The reality is that it was in their best interests, not mine, to issue a full (incorrect) tender in one go with the minimum effort to hit their payment milestones but sabotage my summer build in the process. A few weeks ago I emailed my architect to explain how I would have been much better off if I had tendered to watertight earlier. Architect does not agree. He says the tenders should always go out with maximum detail, even if its incorrect. I can't quite figure that out. When I told him I had the finance in place to bulild this summer and that was my primary requirement, something I had told him many times at the start oif the year, his response was that to build to watertight is a self build. His firm doesn't do self-builds. His clients aren't self-builders, and 'we don't work with self builders'. When I asked why, he said that self builders consume more of his time. I thought this a dangerous position to take because it is prioritising his own interests over his clients. I wasn't surprised when he recently called me back to say he didn't mean what he said about not working with self builders and that he would continue to support me. Where I am now is that I'm talking to builders who are very interested in building to watertight. I still haven't had any numbers back though and the clock is ticking for this summer. I guess I'm left with two questions. Do I postpone the build to May 23? And do I get rid of my architect at this late stage? We've always got on OK and I always pay his bills promptly but I think he was manipulated by the QS and is unable to recognise conflicts of interest. This has the effect of undermining trust. How easy is it to change architect?

This is where I went wrong. I contacted TSD a few months ago only to discover my architect had already instructed his SE to do the work without telling me or providing me with any of the drawings. Should have gone to TSD to get this done months ago. Oh well.

Firstly, can I say how much I enjoyed reading through your quotes. Blimey. The ASHP price seems high, they cost about 5k for a small panasonic unit including the KNX interface boards. I think there are things you can do now to start the process moving that may save you money. Contact your utilities to price the disconnections. Get your asbestos survey done and get some quotes for demolition from the bigger local demo firms. All this can take time to sort out and you can probably get the demo done cheaper going directly.

So, if I understand this, you put in a traditional trench foundation and then an insulated slab on top of that? So no hard core under the insulated foundation for drainage, just around the outside? ... I agree on insulating the garage floor, but had thought the only option was to go the traditional route of concrete subfloor and then insulation and then screed on top.

So things have moved sideways a little. Builder on site has suggested excluding the garage from the KORE slab to build the house first and then add the attached garage on a strip foundation afterwards. His reason is that this would leave room for a telehandler to get round the back of the build and remove the need for a crane. That side of the site also slopes away a little (about 500mm) and appears not to be on such a firm rock base as rest of site. Image in earlier post above shows garage attached to right hand side of house. On the face of it, building the garage on a strip foundation seems like a good idea. Is it? Has anyone else built a block structure with part strip foundation, part KORE foundation? Of course I will raise this with my SE but very interested in feedback here as I have no idea if this is a stupid thing to do.

Thanks for this. Others on this forum have attached the window to the outer leaf of a cavity bllock construction, which I like but I think would eliminate the cavity closers. Which is probably not an issue.

Where the cavities are closed, and the window is in the cavity then what do you attach the straps to? The inner leaf reveal?

My QS emailed me with scope of services, prior to engagement, to include cost estimates. He then refused to supply any cost estimate when asked to do so. I will be asking him to return some of my fee (fat chance) and referring him to RICS. Legally this would be either misrepresentation or breach of contract, take your pick!

but the RICS code of practice should stop this and doesn't, so its a lottery. I'll be complaining to RICS of course, not that it will do any good.

So just to finish this off.... At the start of the year the M and E tender package was really late (and still is wrong) and I was explicit in my requirement to build in May. The QS insisted I wait until the M and E was ready. No suggestion of excluding the M and E to tender to watertight instead. Which would have been perfect. When I told the architect in April to exclude the M and E from the tender he said the QS didn't want to do two tenders so we should continue to delay the tender and build. (ie serve the QS interests over mine) When I insisted in May the tenders go out, the QS insisted on inserting M and E that was wrong so the responses would be pretty useless. When I insisted again to request quotes to watertight the architect said the builders wouldnt like that. When I said a watertight approach would be best because I wouldnt accept 30% mark ups on M and E from builders for inflation the QS said a phased approach is not possible and builders are entitled to price in inflation risk. Just before the tenders came back I asked the QS in a zoom meeting with he and architect how much he thought the build would cost me and if he would give me the estimeate he promised in the engagement email. He refused and after some prodding he totally lost his shit. The architect is suspiscousy supportive of the QS 🤔 When the tenders came back the prices were ridiculous as expected with the M and E way overpriced and the specification wrong anyway. So a completely useless exercise. I asked the QS if he was going to provide some guidance on the wether the tenders were reasonable and offered good value. He said no. He said I should accept the lowest offer without scrutiny or question, which is conveniently from his local builder that he introduced to the tendering process. A builder that became available after the delay the QS created. So, the QS gave no cost quidance or estimate. He caused six months of delay. The tenders went out with incorrect M and E specification instead of build to watertight. His only guidance is to accept the lowest offer from his preferred bidder. He put no price to anything. He provided no value at all, just advised me to accept the lowest tender without any cost analysis or estimate of builder's profit margin. ... and that pile of zero value shit and months of delay to my build cost me £3,750. My advice is don't get a QS. Mine was a charlatan. A waste of money that has delayed my build start from May to August.

Yes, they have this detail already.

Good point. Will do.

Do you mean 'you would not use check reveals' I can see how the guide rails wither side of the window would need to be at the width of the blind wich is likely the width of the window? So we think the blind box would go in the outer leaf, which would need to be 140 block to match the (modulo P) blind box depth. The outer leaf would be constructed higher than the inner leaf to accomodate the blind box height. Like this: So the wndow formers on the South/west windows with external blinds would be different heights for inner/outer leaf of course. AFAICS check reveals wouldn't work at the sides because the blinds require the full width of the window?

I'd really like check reveals. Architect is less enthusiastic. Not sure if check reveals would work with external blinds 🤔. Anyone done this?

What about cavity closers to make the formers like this... https://www.eurocell.co.uk/data/downloads/eurocell cavalok brochure_lr.pdf Good idea or oversold crap?

Not internorm then! I'd assumed that the former would be some kind of temporary window frame to build around, is that about right?

Good point. I think here in Northern Ireland choices are limited. We also want external blinds so easiest to order with windows I think. I'm open to suggestions. Anyone have Gaulhofer aluclad upvc with external blinds? Or are the Gaulhofer external blinds available only with the timber framed windows? Are these window formers really a thing?

I'm told that Internorm have a 6 month lead time for aluclad upvc and that I should order windows now before building my block house even starts. But what about sizing the windows? How is that done if there's no house to measure? My architect tells me that formers are used to create a dummy reveal for the bricklayer's to build against to get the window sizing correct. I've not seen this before, is this correct, and anyone got any pictures? (have told architect not to assume that internorm are the only horse in the race)

Just checked Balloo. There's a 3t limit on the holiday offer so that's £308 for the week. Which would normally be £531. update... Balloo can't deliver tomorow. boo 😒 That's a good price but this is not a 6 day job is it? Darling wife wants a trip away.

Are you suggesting I drive the digger myself? That would be entertaining 🤪

I think you're right. A local grave digger dug the NIE trench for me. I'll try and get him back on site. Hopefully nobody's died this week and he'll have some free time.

Which is what I would like to do. but this is my concern too, if some of the hardcore base is on rock with some of the hardcore base on clay soil then would there be catastrophic soil heave on part of the foundation. Not an engineer so may be worryaing about nothing I fear this is probably the only way to be sure but the ground is mixture of hard clay and stones, not easy to dig at all. May need to get a digger in. To get an idea of the layout, here it is with some topo levels. The site is pretty flat, dropping away at the back of the single-storey garage, where it may be less likely to be on rock but also far less load on the foundation. If that makes any difference 🤔

So what's the choreography here? Can't place order with KORE until SE has been on site. (theres about 450 drop at one corner of build) SE won't come out until excavation has started Can't start excavating foundation until the KORE slab is ordered I'm stuck in a loop...

Should have got Hilliard Tanner to sort this out... sleep walked into the architect directing his SE to do the work without me knowing. Oh well.

So now that the demolition is done (and from having issues getting earth rods in) its pretty clear that our site sits on a layer of rock about 400 below the surface. Before the groundworks tidy up the site and excavate down for the KORE slab, however, the amount of rock and soil condition is hidden from view and largely guesswork. And there's my dilemma. I think. Do I need to get a ground survey done now to see what I'm dealing with, or press on with the ground works and excavation for the KORE slab, breaking the rock out to go down the depth required for the 500 hardcore? Generally speaking, is it a problem to have a KORE slab on (hardcore then) rock? My architect insists I don't need any sort of ground survey and neither does the SE need to come visit the site until after ground works is under way. Am I worrying about this too much?