Flat roof make up

[Mike]

4 hours ago, -rick- said:

I thought the air sealing externally was for hot climates where you ran AC inside and want to stop the moisture getting in. With our climate we generally want to seal from the inside out.

In that kind of build the air sealing won't end up being external; external insulation goes over the top of what you see there. Or at least the majority would go on the outside. You could put some between the studs but, following the UK rule-of-thumb, it would be no more than 1/3 of it avoid the risk of condensation within it and hence the need for a separate internal VCL.

[Gus Potter]

23 hours ago, Tony L said:

I’m away from Friday, for 9 days, so I must just explain: any comment anybody posts will be gratefully received, although I won’t respond until the week after next,  because I’ll be having a fantastic time snowboarding & screen time will be limited to essential work comms only.

Enjoy your holiday., but see you are still monitoring comments. So in that context hope this helps.

 

23 hours ago, Tony L said:

Even if I start again with somebody else, there’s no guarantee the next person would be any better. 

 

Agree. I've put my day job hat on and thought, how would I go about sorting this out, bring discipline to the process? You mention that you are keen to avoid stressing your personal set up, that is a material consideration and probably the most important one. The rest is just building mechanics, how much it's going to cost to build and recognising that at times you need to make reasoned design compromises in places and then compensate where it is easy to do so. As I've said before I like your design, not everyone will but beauty is in the eye.. 

 

Now as a word of encouragement, you are not the first to experience this, and you won't be the last!

 

If I was going to tackle something like this I would probably just spend half a day, may take two goes at this, say a day,  listening to your journey, trying to understand what you actually want from the build, how you got to where you are. Often when I go to an initial site concept design meeting I try, insist, that all parties are there. So that would be you and your partner. This works well as I have the "day job" advantage, if there are two of you then less chance something gets missed, questions not asked by you.

 

I would ask questions as prompts, let you talk and from that it lets me build a picture of your basic requirements, the things that really matter to you. The conversation needs to be general, technical stuff comes later. One of the things I do it to assess what time you have, your skills, where you lack them, where you need help, where you can learn and help yourself and how that help gets delivered. 

 

Now all that sounds wishy washy and a bit woke, but once I get a handle on your capability and situation it lets me put together a costed design brief after figuring out what needs to be done to bring order to the project. 

 

Yes you don't "want to go back to the beginning". The next step is to look at what you have, what is useful, viable, what relationships can be salvaged and what can't.  What do you need to do to get BC approval, an approximate build cost. A bill of quantities (BOQ) is a different animal. 

 

@Tony L I think you'll get there in the end so keep your head up!

 

 

 

On 13/01/2026 at 21:16, Tony L said:

There was also a substantial fee for, “building contract admin, PD & on-site support”,

For all, this is worth a look at as there is often confusion about what all this means. 

 

The following is a bit of a summary, not perfect mind!

 

Often self builders on BH will employ an Architect / designer to get planning permission. The same will produce a set of drawings with sufficient detail, thermal calculations and the like to get BC approval and many use these drawings as the "construction drawings". Sometimes it's fine bit other times it leads to dispute about money, lack of fit up on site, changes made by the builder (as they go off piste) that compromise the structural design big time. 

 

Some divide the design into work packages, say the foundations, a timber frame, but the interfaces never get thought through, again money and time is lost as these interfaces never get properly designed. The Client is left disappointed as they can see they are not getting what they think they are paying for.

 

Client may then go back to the designer and might say, your drawings are crap, the designer then says, I was only contracted to produce sufficient info for BC approval, and I have excercised reasonable skill and care in the sense that a competent builder should be able to fill in the gaps, my drawings are not detailed construction drawings, see my terms and conditions!. Cost is not a primary consideration, safety is, no one can run about designing stuff that has no chance of getting built safely!

 

The next step up is to produce a full set of detailed construction drawings. This is kind of the level that @Tony L is going into at the moment. From that you can generate a respectable bill of quantities (BOQ), on Tony's job it will be lenghty, cost a fair bit and this falls much within the remit of a Quantity Surveyor. There is no point in spending loads on a comprehensive BOQ unless that is coupled with a recognised form of building contract that eveyone signs up to., or at least something similar, a bespoke contract, risky though!

 

Few domestic self build Clients do this, unless it's a mansion and you have loads of money!

 

So say you have a set of construction drawings, a BOQ and a recognised building contract. You now need someone to Admimister the contract. They may or may not be the principle designer. Story for another day. But the new PD rules now require in essence a much more hands on approach to what is going on on site and ensuring that the builders / Client does not go off and do there own thing.. which they often do! The risk for the administrator is that if you authorise a payment to the builder and it turns out you have authorised too much then you are on the hook and liable. Most adminsitrators will authorise payment but caveat, from what we can see visually the works are at this stage. They do not certify the quality or accuracy of the work for example. 

 

On 13/01/2026 at 21:16, Tony L said:

“building contract admin, PD & on-site support”,

This is a key thing. What is NOT offered it seems, is what we would call a traditional Clerk of works service. A traditional Clerk of works is on site pretty much all the time and they are responsible for standing over the builder at every stage, absolutely nothing gets covered up.. every thing is checked for workmanship, level, setting out and consitency for example. My own PI insurance covers me for SE design, Architectural design and contract admin, it explicitly says that Clerk of works function is excluded, and for good reason. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Tony L]

Thank you very much @Gus Potter & @Iceverge for your recent posts.  I have so much to do before I go away, I'm going to have to leave this now, & pick it up again the week after next.