Search results

I think in this case it would pay off to get the man with his thermal imaging camera to come and do a report of your house and figure out where the hot and cold spots are to determine where the heat is escaping. With sealed windows, cavity wall insulation and a new roof with loft insulation I...

What are your walls made of. Was it empty before you moved in. Where is this house situated (Freestanding on top of hill facing north with little trees or shelter around) etc. If you block the vents you will probably get issues with damp and mould next. What floorspace is this...

Supported by means other than direct physical contact with an item acting under force. along those lines? For example a balloon filled with helium tied to an empty bottle would be an item acting under force... remove the string and if the bottle is still supported without any item acting...

Funny thing you say that, but they don't do all this building control stuff over here for residential buildings. The only thing they want to see certificates for is Gas and Electricity, and that's only for insurance, a bottle of something to drink goes a long way in getting things signed off...

16KW Multifuel, but will be used on wood for the foreseeable future as we have a fairly large stockpile. The ducting would be ran in the hardcore layer, under the blinding sand, insulation and concrete. Temperatures can be quite strange in this country where at night it can be -5 and...

Write a letter of good will that in principle you agree with their application. However you want to be assured it won't have any adverse affects on your property (Means they need to get a structural engineer to look at the whole building) and if the building starts moving, its their...

Most modern stoves have a separate combustion air intake since modern homes are made practically airtight which can create a backdraft. Looking at schemes there are two ways to introduce cold air to your fireplace, one is via a dedicated ventilation channel in your chimney, or via the voids...

Depending on what you fill the void up with, certain materials are supposed to have a chemical effect on copper, but the following website suggests that it doesn't.. so no idea if its an urban legend or what...

Creating footings ontop of a concrete strip is one way, but I would need to clean up all the bricks completely, and I'd need to mix mortar instead of concrete, which means having to get sharp sand (We have all in ballast) or alternatively sieving a whole lot of sand! Not to mention having...

Woody, I see what you mean now, and now that you have put it like that it makes perfect sense. I have never seen it done before, and I was curious as to WHY it is a bad idea other than "Its a bad idea" answers. However, I'm still wondering if this really is such a large issue since its a...

Why bother posting if you have nothing useful to add to the conversation instead of a silly picture and making unnecessary statements? Woody, I realise how concrete "works", I also know how compressive forces and loads are distributed through materials. For it to fail, it would need a...

I could jump on every single thread on this forum and post my opinion. Opinions are like an *rsehole, everybody has one. People are stating their opinion along with a reason why they think it might not work. Frost damage/absorption of water: It's in the ground, capped with concrete...

Why do you think it will crack? Why do you think it would settle any more than an pure concrete or pure brick footing would? Do you know it will from experience or are you just taking a wild guess? Do you have any source to confirm this? Both materials used separately have been used...

Because the bricks aren't all the same, they would require cleaning up first, I'd require mortar, and it would all have to be built up straight course by course. This would be very time consuming.. Trench, layer of concrete, bricks, layer of concrete, bricks layer of concrete with adequate...

Like mentioned above, it really depends on what exactly is below your feet! Dig a test pit about 1 to 1.5M down and see what you find. If its solid clay there's not much you can do. If you find sand and water perculates from the bottom up, again, not much you can do. Otherwise only two...

This is what I meant: Layers of brick buried in concrete.

They don't do reclamation yards here. There's piles and piles of the things all over people's backyards, cheaper and easier to use block-work which has a far better insulation value and is easier to work with. It would simply allow me to use the old bricks for something useful. The...