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Hi folks, a question for those of you who have a timber I-beam dwelling. Where an internal stud wall abuts an external I-beam wall sheathed with 12.5mm smartply, does the external wall require reinforcement with a noggin of some sort to take the fixings from the stud wall? Or is the smartply sufficient on its own to take the fixings? (The I-beams in the external wall are at 600 centres.)

Greetings fellow builder bods, Having solved the problem of how to secure footer plates to a friable lime slab floor (with the marvellous help of you brilliant people) we have rocked on with putting the start of the stud walls up and dry lining the barn. Sheeps wool insulation (from Cosywool) will go between the uprights. We will also be studding out the roof rafters in order to give us the depth for the insulation we need to achieve building regs U-values and for our own warm home wishes, so we are holding off the internal partitions until we have done the first part of that so we don't have unnecessary scaffold faff. We have framed up all but one of the 9 windows, but still got 3 of the 4 doors to do. But not bad progress in one week especially when one of us was poorly and should have been in bed really. Self-build fun and games! Handling wood is SO much warmer than handling stone which is a welcome change in this weather! It sort of seems a shame to cover up the stone walls which represent a good few months work for me. But they aren't the prettiest of their type given that we have kept the old lime wash on in places where it was sound and didn't need attention, and we do want the house to be warm when all is said and done. If I want to see stones I'll have to go outside. ? We had to choose between setting the footer plate further out from the stone wall and losing more floor space but not needing to trim anything... or tailoring the uprights around the irregular lumps and bumps if they protruded too far. We picked the latter, of course, so the uprights are truly bespoke fitted in places! We did have one run of a few meters where we didn't have to use the jigsaw at all - we liked that bit. We are currently 2 years into this build and it is nice to be doing something so immediately visually obvious. Up until now we have mostly been altering/making good existing structures / features which isn't the same. I spent a fair chunk of a year repairing the stone walls (while the kids were at school mostly, so not the same work rate as a full time labourer would be able to do) and when I was done it didn't look a whole lot different (though structurally certainly was)! But now everything we are doing from this point is adding fresh new stuff and as such feels like more progress. If anyone is curious or thinks a question about any of this would be useful please feel free to ask. ?