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I think , if you regard the insulation, from your house cavity running up under the roof as one continuos layer like a tea pot cosy, then you are starting at the right place. if you put a sharp bend in it say behind your cupboards then thats OK, providing its still continous. But it must not...

I would lift the debris out until I was certain I had got down to some level which would take the weight of the stairs woodwork. i.e. you did not have a loose brick "arch" just under your stairs, which could collapse. Frank

The foam will oxidize in 5 years or so and become loose. Use lime mortar. Frank

First thing to do is is have have a squint around the waste pipe. The whole of the under floor voids should be be packed out with glass fibre insulation so tight you can't get your hand down the side of it. If you fix this it will reduce your heating bill. I would sacrifice the ceiling...

Wood is OK for a shed down the end of the garden but not for a wall you can actually see. Apart from the obvious colour change after a couple of years, there is the problem of it moving about, and exposing unbleached bits and gaps and actual cracks within the surface of the planking. Kevin...

Roofing felt does not like the sun, some component of it rots away and the tarry bit goes rock hard. I would go along with Woody and remove as much of it as possible because it will fail at some time. 6" is only just enough to flash from the base upwards. Frank

As both "leaks" seem to be associated with openings in the outside skin of your house wall, I reckon that penetrating rain is running down the inside of your house wall cavity until it hits the lintel, then piles up and drips out (the wrong side). Before the conservatory was built, this area...

Cavities used to be built open, no technology existed for sealing them. Unless some one can describe one here!! Their invention was to make walls water tight by allowing water that penetrated the outer skin dribble down the inside of the outer skin. In the day (after about 1890), heat insulation...

I see see you are calling it a "ridge beam", is it not just a bit of 6" X 1" ridge board? The joists hold it up the problem is to keep the ends of the joists from splaying apart. Frank

My brother wanted to replace a 1930s lightweight garage with a proper extension to his house. 100' away near the end of the garden there was a little (6" X 4") cast iron flap in the soil. Turned it was a "lamp hole" and he had a 12' diameter sewer pipe under his garage. Thames water wanted 18'...

Err, No joists in pics, I thought that the Edwardians chiseled out a slot on the inside face of the wall, inserted your long straight bit of wood then put the joist end on it ("wall plate" ). This then set all the joists level, perhaps using better skilled crafts the using brickies to set all...

That looks like a bungalow made with cavity brick walls filled with glass fibre, where some one has put a second storey on it using Celcon blocks. I would seriously do the maths on the upper wall and see how much its costing you in heat loss. Is the building rendered and painted? It looks...

Watched " grand designs" on a CH4 repeat, the other night where a couple of Pilots were building a new art deco house. The board insulation at the corners in the cavities were clearly NOT special sections and not even done well. 90% insulation coverage is better then 50 %, the problem is that...

The person who designed the building thought venting was required. One hopes he knew what he was doing. It all depends on if water can get into the void. Being pessimistic, I would say yes, even if the design is for it to remain dry. Frank

Good time to vent /insulate / VCL your ceiling void. I hope you are putting a parging coat on the outside wall. Frank

"Standard sized mixer" ? Standard sized bucket?, Experiment with ballast only. I have forgotten now, but for smaller jobs I used bagged ballast, I think I used one bag ballast + 3 1/2 litres of cement, measured with dumpy plastic measuring jug. (Don't get caught using the misses one :-) )...

Point not made :- If you had some sort of leak above your ceiling the bottom of the joists should have water marks on them, some sort of dark line or even a tide mark. Lift the loft insulation , perhaps with a spirit level to have a guess at which way water would go. Get a powerful torch and a...

PVA could be used, problem is its not damp proof, i.e. if tiled over , the dampness from the atmosphere and washing tiles could loosen them. Also as used bare, I wonder for the short term it will remain sticky. EVA could be better (waterproof wood glue), sort off in its name. If you could get a...

I think that the room should also be heated, else when you open the kitchen door a waft of warm wet air willl hit your cold walls and condensation will occur. You have to either make it part of the house or seal it off and vent it , so its "outside". Sounds as though you are making it part of...

Insulation techniques short comings:- 1. All rigid foam, internal and external. Mainly that it shrinks, look at the spec, listed as less then 1%, so in a 20' frontage (240") a vertical gap of more then 2" will occur. would help with more layers of foam and sheet overlaps, so gap is not...