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Hi All, I wonder if anyone came across an alternative to steel beam thermal breaks? Thank you

Hello, I have a number of wooden items running from side to side in my loft. However, I am unsure if this diagonal beam in the picture attached is doing anything? For context, my very old loft satellite was affixed to it. Now, one side is in the brickwork attached to my neighbours wall and the other side connects to the eaves of my roof. My question is, can I remove it? What function does it serve? And what about the other wooden pieces in the background, can they be removed? I understand there probably is some level of function. But, the main annoyance is the diaognal beam that is floating mid air across the loft. It has some wobble to it when you lean on it, so it doesn't feel that sturdy. any advice is highly appreciated!

@MrsRA loves gardening. And that's why we chose a design which incorporated a Winter Garden inside the house. It is an unheated area on south west corner. The Winter Garden extends from floor level to the roof and so it needs steels to hold it in place. Those steels need to be insulated. A quick look at how we could get that insulation done threw up many types of insulation, and many methods of incorporating the insulation on the steel I bet someone here has done this before, and can offer advice. Please! Ian

Hi, I am currently working on a basement extension in my 1890s terraced house. There was an existing basement to the rear under the dining room but I am extending towards the front under the living room. My question is about removing sleeper walls under the living room. A structural engineer has seen the existing basement and was happy that the first wall could be removed and a wooden support be put into the party wall and across as the joists above only support the floor and is not structural. Having taken this wall down as advised and new support put in I am faced with two sleeper walls going towards the front. Can I remove these and replicate the wooden support as the first OR as they are sleepers do the supports need to be steel? The living room, dining room above has no supporting walls internally. The pictures are of the first sleeper I came to and would like to support, remove, replace with wooden beam into party wall either side.

Can anyone advise me what this mini beam is that we have discovered in my cottage end wall? We are patching rendering and have found 2 small beams in the gable wall of my 1850s cottage. It is original. The one on the LHS is completely rotten, but I am not aware it has caused any structural failure or that anything has moved. I am not sure what it is for. It cannot be part of a roof truss as the horizontal is not all the way across - unless there is a type of semi-truss which relies on the joing from the beam to the wall to provide the strength in tension. It is to support any orthogonal joist as the other side of that wall at that point is a bedroom not a roof. It almost looks like a mini wall plate for the table wall. The wall is only half brick. As I cannot see any real issues, I am inclin d simply to tprake it out and full with bricks and mortar. Ant comments would be most welcome. As an indicator of how mini this house is, I think the top platform on @Mr Punter‘S scaffold tower is at about 3.7m. Ferdinand

Jeff, from Haldane Fisher, Garstang did his best, his very best, but.... He got the beam to within a meter of it's seating , but just couldn't manage the last bit. Know the feeling? Me too. ( @Onoff, shut up) So there it rests for the night, a meter or so from it's sweet spot. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh. Here's the twist. "If ya 'adn'ta put that stoopid scaffold in't way lad, that'd a got it reet. " Said the HIAB driver. That'll teach me to prepare for the worst and put a scaffold up just in case we couldn't find a handy crane. Just exactly where Jeff didn't want me to put it. Foxtrot. Hats off to you Jeff, from Haldane Fisher! You did your best

Our ridge beam is a glulam, about 7 meters long and weighing 160 kilos: not that much as far as beams go, I would think. The sensible answer to problem of getting it up to the ridge is to hire a crane and a guy who knows his stuff. Cost £500. In the current context, that's a bit of a problem. This thread will simply document what we did, the problems we came across and how we sorted it out. We would not have considered doing this had we been richer, not had a digger, and not had some form of scaffolding under our direct control: in this case Kwikstage - other types are available. Our aim is to do this exercise in a completely safe way , lifting it, one small bit at and time such that one person can lift it on their own, and lower it to a position where the beam is completely safe. Your comments and criticism is more than welcome. In fact, it's part of the process. The 7m beam hasn't been delivered yet: I want to trial the whole process with a smaller 5 meter beam first. The 7m beam will stretch from the ridge peak at the top right, to the peak you can see on the left - the steels peak. This is a general view : first we need to lift the beam from the ground up to the level of the guttering This first photo shows the first of three bays of Kwikstage being lined up carefully outside the house. I found that setting the feet level across the entire 'installation' with a batten and a level helps greatly if you do that before putting in the standards. The construction process is greatly helped by putting in the diagonals before tightening up the pegs. (It also helps greatly to do this when you aren't tired) ( ) Doing a quick check just before coming in for lunch -luckily- I noticed these...... Notice the pegs (at an angle at the back of the staging) not hammered home. It's so easy to forget one or two: I always forget at least one. Now I touch each peg before finishing any section of the build. More to follow later this afternoon, and subsequent bits of the experiment. PS I would have used the digger to hold the standards while building the staging, but Debbie popped out to help.

I’ve just realised that the I section steel beam located in the middle of my floor joists of my first floor means I can’t run my services from one side of the room to the other without drilling holes in the web, are there any rules about this, or is it a SE redesign required to include holes?