Search results

House sellers in Scotland are obliged to have a "single survey" with a fairly standard format. Not directly applicable in other parts of UK, but sample reports will give an idea of the sort of things a surveyor in any location might be looking at. Here is one example...

Many people consider curvaceous shapes to be rather attractive, and here is another of the same company’s offerings: https://www.builderdepot.co.uk/13mm-x-100mm-softwood-tongue-groove-v-cladding?___store=default&refSrc=21436&nosto=nosto-page-product2

..... and here is the picture from the OP's BuilderDepot.co.uk website link -- looks to me as though it may have already started to cup. Was that the best piece they could find for the photo?

It's very near the beginning of that link to the Statutory Instrument: Part 1 (General) - 2 Interpretation - "floor area" is about 16th item in the list. I hope it hasn't been changed, because my current "self-isolating" task is construction of a wooden shed that will be within a whisker...

Extract from Statutory Instrument 2010 No 2214 - The Building Regulations 2010 (England & Wales) “floor area” means the aggregate area of every floor in a building or extension, calculated by reference to the finished internal faces of the walls enclosing the area, or if at any point there...

mikeey84 said "Mortar has a tensile strength of around 2.5MPa according to ..... " What is the problem with those units? The same ones (MPa) are very commonly used nowadays to specify concrete. For comparison, a 1:1:2 concrete mix could have compressive strength of about 25MPa. Your...

I beg to differ. Gap-filling + gravity is an antiquated method of construction that only works if walls are made very thick at the base, like a mediaeval castle. I think you will find that any good mortar does have some tensile strength, and that is why a mortared wall cannot be pushed over...

Block-to-block joint with mortar would have some tensile strength, and a lot of shear strength. Block-to-timber joint presumably has neither, so your inner leaf would contribute nothing to prevent the wall from falling outwards. Or am I mis-interpreting the photographs? As an aside, why are...

Would one of those toilet macerator pumps solve the problem and allow you to leave the slab intact? I've no personal experience of them, but somebody on the forum is bound to know.

I have a prefabricated timber garage with 6m span and 15 degree pitch roof. There is one truss mid-way along the 5.4 building, so the bay length is effectively 2.7m. The dimensions are roughly equivalent to those of the OP's building. The truss is a very simple design, using 150x70 timber...

Try this website for a guide price: https://www.donaldsontimberengineering.co.uk/instant-quote/

If that upper triangle (“truss”) were in one piece, it would be a VERY strong beam. You can probably make the individual timbers act together (as though they were a single piece) by nailing or bolting sheets of plywood on both sides. Should be an easy calculation for a structural engineer...

Apologies for diverting this thread into a discussion about perforated bricks. Woody, many thanks, what you describe is very like the way we were shown at school 60 years ago (between Bedford and Peterborough, so almost everything was built from Flettons). I still have about a dozen of the...

I recently used some perforated bricks (ten holes) and found them really awkward to lay. Even with quite a stiff mix, lots of mortar fell down the holes and the slight movement due to laying a second brick would cause the first brick to sink down as mortar was displaced upwards into the holes...

You are absolutely correct, it ought to be within spec. Having moved house to a new location, and being unknown to the local suppliers, I had to pay in advance, and just decided to get on and use the stuff rather than start arguing (obviously becoming something of a coward in my dotage), and...

MOT Type 1 seems to be very variable in quality. I have found that hand ramming can compact the stuff reasonably well PROVIDED THAT there is a good distribution of particle sizes, and that it is not too dry. If the supplier delivers a load that is nearly all 40-60mm size with hardly any...

I made enquiries about self-compacting concrete (SCC) quite recently. Company websites make it sound ideal for anybody who has difficulty finding a squad to spread, tamp and float ordinary concrete, and YouTube videos seem to suggest that all you need is one person to wade through the mix...

A potting shed will usually have benches along the walls. An extra-thick wall below the bench top could substantially reduce the internal floor area and still be OK for the gardener (provided there was toe-space for standing close to the bench). Building Control might regard this as cheating...

This sounds entirely sensible and logical, but I was told (a long time ago, in relation to a Scottish property) that whenever Building Control approval was needed, it would be illegal to occupy or use that building until a Completion Certificate had been issued. Is this still the case? (Or...

Maybe an old-timer accustomed to doing the "half span plus two" calculations in his head?