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As above, the BSA is a bit of a mess. Contractors and designers do not have to be 'registered' under some official body, they only need to be competent to undertake work in their respective fields. 'Competence' is not just limited to passing an exam and having a piece of paper to prove it...

Yes to 1-4, subject to points made previously (exposure, returns etc) Re 5, gravity + friction keeps the beam in position. Of just a little more concern is the height of the block wall above ground level (3.3m). Wind applies not just horizontal compressive force on walls but, more significantly...

It isn't waterproof - are you perhaps thinking of Formica-faced board? A few years ago I was in a DIY store where I heard two 'builders' pulling out some white 225 x 8ft contiboard and one saying to the other, "this will do for the fascia board".

Your first problem is, as Nose pointed out, SEs - particularly inexperienced ones - will opt for the wind-post in order to cover themselves completely, being mindful of their PI insurance. So from their point of view, why should they do some rather more complex wind-load calcs taking time, when...

The old wind-post hobby horse wheeled out again by some SEs. The distance between the party wall and the original side wall of the house seems to be around 5m, which is not excessive for a horizontal span, and IMO no post would be needed, assuming the house is in a sheltered/suburban area and...

Those bricks which are 'edge-on' are part of the foundation to the chimney, so your hole is actually a void you've dug under the foundation. The casualness of it might surprise you, but the ground looks to be sandy and probably of reasonable bearing capacity; the builders of old would have known...

Bolting-down in that situation would serve no useful purpose. As long as the garage wall is not too high, and there are reasonable lengths of brickwork returns each end, lateral stability under wind load wouldn't be an issue. If the roof joists are running parallel to the wall in question, they...

Is this the arrangement?

UC posts! OMG NOOOOOO!! OK, lets get to basics. Your beam will be carrying approx 16 m2 of flat roof over a span of 5.7m, right? Live load will be 0.75 kN/m2, so tot 16 x 0,75 = 12kN - x 1.6 for the partial s/factor = 19.2kN dead load (assuming joists + chip deck + finish) will be approx...

Far too big for a roof of that span - that's not engineering, just guesswork. IMO and with a back-of-fag-packet calc, a 203 x 133 x 25 would be the optimum in bending and deflection. And you don't need a pier - waste of time and money.

Why do you need a pier? The beam won't be carrying a particularly high load if its just a flat roof? You could sit the new steel beam direct on the 1/2 brick wall on either a concrete padstone or a suitable steel spreader plate. Presumably the end of the steel beam would be covered by a fascia...

Yes the lintel has failed, caused by expansion rusting of the steel reinforcement. Water has obviously been getting in somewhere. In the 1960s, they generally didn't bother too much about cavity trays above lintels. Ultimately it would need to be replaced by a couple of steel beams running...

If the existing beams are in line on opposite sides of the wall, there's no reason you couldn't put the new beam(s) directly underneath. (if the space on the left was an original kitchen its quite possible there are timber beams across that part, particularly if its a pre-War house).

The fact that there's a pier on the right-hand side of the wall suggests that the beam is in two lengths (there may be one or two beams to each span). If they are separate, its unlikely you'll be able to join them effectively, and the elongated beam would be highly unlikely to span the full...

As long as you're only going to be storing light stuff up there (kids old toys, suitcases, decorations etc) you could notch the ends up to nearly half the depth of the joists - it won't affect the deflection or the bending strength; all it affects is the shear stress at the bearing, which is not...

A typical padstone of high-strength concrete might be 140-215 mm deep. A steel bearing plate could be as thin as 12.5mm (depending on load and beam flange size).

One of the factors affecting pad size is ground bearing capacity which can vary widely. In the absence of soil testing, most SEs assume a ground-bearing capacity of around 100 kN/m2 for unfactored loads. So a 1m x 1m pad would be assumed to support an unfactored load of 100kN. In a domestic...

Instead of concrete padstones, steel bearing plates can be just as effective if the right thickness.

Some builders are now using studwork for the inner skin, maintaining the 50 cavity, and filling the space between the studs with 90 PIR, but it needs 32.5 mm insulated plasterboard internally. The relentless increase in U-values is becoming ridiculous and using up valuable space, critical where...

I'm sure we could all debate the thicknesses of insulation 'til the cows come home, but it seems to me that even many inspectors now don't appear to know what type and thickness of different insulation products will give the required U-value. They keep increasing the standards every 2 or 3 years...