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The design for our house includes several honeycomb blockwork walls in the solum area. The walls are structural and will be built using dense 140mm blocks. My question is whether there is a standard spacing for building a honeycomb wall, i.e. how big should the gaps be? Thanks Andrew

Why put insulation under the garage? We currently rent the house next door to the site which has an uninsulated concrete garage floor. Other than summertime the garage floor is so cold that you get condensation on the floor whenever you open the garage doors. I am trying to avoid that in...

Why quarry dust? Two reasons: 1. I'm up in Shetland and quarry dust is available locally but I think that sand has to be shipped up from Orkney. 2. The guy who produced the spec for the building warrant said dust in the application. Interesting point about putting the insulation above...

I am building a garage which will have a concrete floor in it. The concrete will be laid professionally so that I end up with a nice level, polished surface but I am doing nearly all the prep work. The floor will be: natural rock type 1 (250mm) quarry dust (50mm) DPM insulation (75mm)...

I have recently started to build my own house. The scaffolding is now up and I am wondering what safety equipment would be best. My biggest fear at the moment is falling off the scaffolding into the "hole" where the house will be. It's a very windy site. I have been looking at fall arrest...

Thanks for all the advice chaps. AA

Yes, that is what I mean. Thanks for the tip about closing the screw. AA

I am building an ICF house and in amongst all the gear was a foam gun (and 48 cans of low expansion foam). There were no instructions with the foam gun. I am quite happy with all the procedures for loading and changing cannisters and how to clean it. My question is whether you need to use...

I am building my own house. My foundations are supposed to be 600mm wide and 300mm deep with a layer of A393 mesh 75mm from the bottom. The A393 mesh has been delivered and is 4.8 x 2.4m sheets. Ideally I would cut the sheets into four 600mm wide strips. If I do this I end up with some of...

Thanks for that. Isn't there a danger that when I put the wacker plate over the hardcore it will damage the MDPE pipe?

I want to have a tap in my (yet to be built) garage. The tap will be at the point in the garage farthest away from the rest of the house. If I want to run an MDPE pipe to this tap (and on from there to a greenhouse further down the garden) am I better off running the MDPE pipe under the...

Thanks for the reply r896neo but I am not sure that I understand it. Do you mean Yes I am asking for trouble mixing the blocks or Yes I can go ahead and use the aircrete blocks where I need to?

Thanks for that. I'll try not to appear in a future edition! The NHBC good practice guide says not to mix blocks of different types in a wall. I was going to try to avoid aircrete type blocks because of their bad press for shrinkage and cracking plaster but they would make things a lot...

Can somebody help me sort out my blockwork heights? In my new house that I am about to build the load bearing internal walls will be built of solid blockwork. I know the finished floor level of the first intermediate floor so I know that the top of the TJI floor joists will be approx. 22mm...

I am about to start building my new house. The consumer unit will be in the attached garage and there will eventually be a separate outbuilding which will require some power (probably just a light and a single socket). The foundations and the walls of the garage will be made from poured...

Can somebody please tell me how my ridge is supposed to be built? I think that I have got to grips with most of the roof but the ridge still baffles me. My new house will have a slate roof. As we are in Scotland the roof will have plywood sarking boards so the roof construction will be...

Thanks for all the replies. I am going to go for dry lining boxes.

There is also the situation where somebody (like me) wants to do the work themselves and then get building control to sign it off along the way (having notified them at the start, of course!). I am building my own house and I want to do as much as I can myself while keeping within the rules...

I know that I can get bigger boards but they seem disproportionately expensive. I can get two fully loaded 10 way high integrity boards for about the same price as a 20 way high integrity board with no MCBs. Either way the total cost is about the same and I think that the two boards give me...

I am doing a bit of planning for my new house and I have a question about Henley blocks. The house is quite big (approx 400 sq m) and will have nearly 20 circuits. Rather than trying to squeeze everything onto one high integrity board I was planning to get two 10 way boards installed. We...