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Modern houses in England never have basements. The housing is small and cramped and built as cheaply as the arcane laws, forcing you to build in brick, allow. Its the worst housing stock in the developed world.

Sorry, you were asking were to start: get a structural engineer to look it over. A few hundred quid is trivial compared to the cost of the house. You could also tell your insurance company to fix it. However, my SE told me that the worst news you can get is that you have subsidence...

A picture of the tree would be good. I listened with interest to a radio documentary on this subject. Insurance companies were writing to people asking them to cut their trees down. However, professional arborists do not regard trees, even huge old ones close to buildings, as capable of...

Now you have me interested. I know for a fact that there is a 15 ft high brick wall above the section that has been removed and above that the roof of the building. Do you think it would have stayed up there on its own without the 4 x2 box needles? There must be some reason that the SE has...

Sorry, you don't have the full picture. I have added a view of the steel beam below. The props are not on dodgy floor boards, they are positioned directly above humungous ships's pine joists which are about 8 inches broad and 18 inches deep.

Thanks for your reply. That's a good question I can find out later, but meanwhile I have posted the SEs drawing below and perhaps you can tell from that. There were a bunch of silver ties lying around the floor but I did not see how they were inserted. It is indeed a hefty section and...

****Thanks for your reply. Mr Corrigan (the builder) seems to be a bit obscure. He told my 25 year old niece that she told him to put the door opening there. This was despite the fact that the drawing and calculations were provided by the structural engineer that he put us in contact...

Is there a way to rotate the images the right way up? Thanks for you help.

I am wondering what I should do and whether my builder's work has any chance of meeting the building regs. We are in a 4 story tenement with a concrete tile roof. We wanted a structural wall removed and a new doorway opened. The engineers drawing had the steel beam and the concrete lintel at...

This was after I complained

This was before I complained

steel work problem

The sink unit has a washing machine and dishwasher on either side. My contractor has located the isolator switches in the under-sink cabinet on the back wall, right beside the plumbing. My question is whether this conforms to the current IEE regulations? If not, is my contractor obliged...

Thanks for the replies. I am not actually doing the hole myself. The reason I asked was so that if it was possible to cut the rectangular hole I could have gone into a discussion with my contractor armed with a little knowledge. Anyway, the contractor took a 127 mm core through the block...

Hi, My sister has a ground floor tenement flat in Glasgow. The outer skin is 700 mm thick sandstone blocks. I want to vent the cooker hood in the new kitchen out through the wall. The spigot is 150 mm round which I will convert to flat channel which will run along the top of the units. My...

Hi John, If I was interested in piece of mind I would go to yoga classes. :-) What I want is low heating bills and not to lift the floor in the next 30 years before I die. I'm like to Federal Government... I only build to last.

We are having a complete new heating system installed: 31Kw Vaillant EcoTech, seven rads and new pipes. My first though was to replace the existing 1970s microbore with 15 mm copper lagged with Tubolit or similar product. The first couple of engineers wanted to use plastic pipe, but it is...