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Is it a steel beam, or have you just hit a reinforcing bar in what would be an insitu reinforced concrete beam? I've come across a few houses built after WW1 which incorporate a full-width r.c. beam. If it was a steel 'I' beam and you hit the web, the depth of concrete would be far more than...

Yes, bang one's head on the roof more often but be warmer.

Screws would be perfectly OK spaced as you suggested. (Consider 80mm screws as 100mm will poke through and result in blood everywhere). No need to glue (glue and screws have different characteristics and don't 'work together') though it certainly won't do any harm - just a bit messy.

Or convince the BCO that, under the sloping section, headroom would be reduced to an 'unreasonable' degree, and therefore the thickness of insulation should be modified accordingly. Some inspectors are more reasonable than others.

It means that the allowable bending stress is 10% greater. But there are other factors to consider, such as excessive deflection, and just because the beam might be 10% 'stronger', it doesn't mean the deflection will be 10% less. In domestic floor joists, excessive deflection, rather thann...

BS 5268;

Two 6 x 2s screwed together would be stronger than one 6 x 4. That layout would be OK, assuming the 4m trimmer is supported off the wall below, as the main floor joists are. If not, it might be subject to excessive deflection in view of the partitions it is supporting, and the point load from...

That would work. Many stairs have a newel which is not supported, but once the risers and treads are glued and wedged into their housings, the whole assembly remains rigid.

THe vertical crack in the wall just looks like normal aerated concrete block shrinkage and nothing serious.

If you expose the brickwork, not only does it look naff and very 1970s, but it also holds the dirt and dust.

Yes, you just screw 2x2 to the undersides of the rafters (up the slope).

Its only available for properties built between certain years - I think between 1947 and sometime in the 1970s, but i might be wrong. I doubt you'd be able to build one on your 3-bed 1930s semi in Acacia Avenue.

There are several ways: you can use the wall-panel permutations as shown in BS whatever-it-is, assuming no return, to see if the panel itself will be OK under wind load. If that fails, treat the return as a beam under triangular load from the side panel - assuming a cracking pattern similar to...

We can argue the point on lateral restraint until the cows come home - it's one of those moot points, often where experience comes in. But where builders often 'do their own thing', its perhaps better to err on the safe side. But this still doesn't address the issue of deflection. I've not done...

He will either have use approved private inspectors, or more likely none at all.

According to the older editions of McKay's, it was common practice on plain tiled roofs to fix a tilting batten under the tiling battens at the end, giving that slight upward tilt. The rationale was to help keep rainwater from running off the verge and causing staining on the wall.

Item from the Heil about a Birmingham man who got planning permission for a detached garage, but built it as a tiny two-storey dwelling instead. Of particular interest are the originally-submitted plans - could have been drawn by a five-year old...

Yes, for that beam, the ratio Le/ry is about 360 (even if we take the effective length as only the actual length instead of x1.2) which is way beyond the maximum 250 in the tables. Once the parapet is up and the roof on, the top flange will buckle outwards - the bottom plate won't give much...

A 254 x 102 x 22 on that span is absolutely bonkers - first class fail/bottom of the class. The twist downwards on the plate is due to excessive torsion on the beam; open-section beams are not inherently good at resisting torsion effects - as jks says, hollow sections are better. As a very...

Probably hardboard!