Rich

Hey John

I'd put money on it that your roof is NOT the original roof. I was trained as a slater/tiler at college when i was 18 and have worked on many many re-roof's where we would carefully take off as many slates as possible, chuck out all the cracked ones and replace them, then re-roof the entire building and once finished, it looks old, but nice and tidy...

You look at most slate roofs, 30+ years old and you can see they are in need of re-roofing as slates crack, slide out of place and generally fall off over the years.

You can tell a good slate from a bad one by tapping it with a hammer and a bad slate makes a distinctive thud sound, very dull, and sounds like it will break if you hit it again whereas a good slate makes a nice clean "doink" kinda noise.

Also, the mortar in your loft has been applied from the inside, hence its shape and might have been done when the roof was re-roofed...

Given that you seem to have zero felt under your slates, it may have been re-roofed a VERY long time ago, either that or the roofers didnt know anything about felt at the time, as its the norm to lay felt over the battens before putting the slates on, although not essential, it does ensure that should a slate dislodge, you dont suddenly have a gaping hole in your roof letting water and wind, and wildlife into your loft space...

Hi Curly

There is ALWAYS an issue with weight, but thats the point of the tool, if its a featherweight tool, it either wont be strong enough, or wont have enough clout, thus it will be useless.

Professionals get used to it and DIY'ers just bitch about it, although the DIY power tools are a LOT lighter than proper tools such as Dewalt/Makita...

If you ever feel the difference between a Black & decker to a Dewalt, that should tell you a lot...

Hi, i have recently been looking at various gas training/plumbing courses that are available. My questions are does anybody have any idea what i should be looking at doing as a complete novice with only DIY experience?

and does anyone have any experience using one of these training schools advertised on the internet?

Cheers, Dan.

Hey Dan

I think the best thing to do would be to contact your local careers office and get the number for your nearest building college, alternatively, give the CITB a ring and ask them about training courses, thats if they are still called that (Construction Industry Training Board)

They put me onto a Roofing apprenticeship when I was 18, for 2 years and that was ok, but they cover pretty much everything you need to know about construction training...

Just had a look and it seems the CITB are now: http://www.cskills.org

DIYGuy!

You only need to do the walls that lead to the outside so that's usually only 1 or 2 walls in a room and not all four. It looks great. I put it in matt paint. It has a very slightly sandy texture when dry, but is not noticeably different than walls painted without it. It takes a while to mix it in, but is no different to paint than regular paint. You can use a brush or roller. It dries quickly. I actually felt less cold coming from the wall after the first coat before it was fully dry. I really like this stuff.

Well, show us some pictures then, lets see the finished article, and some close-ups of the paint finishes with/without it...

What do you mean by secondary glazing?

Thanks

Mike:)

Hi Mike

Personally, I wouldnt bother with it as he hasnt even taken the time to introduce himself, other than to bomb straight in here and post up his survey.

If he cant be at least a bit social, then he's not too unlike those guys in the high street with the clipboards who want to sign you up for something you dont want.

Secondary glazing by the way is a second layer of glazing, like having 2 windows, one behind the main window. Sometimes found in old office building where they have big sliding windows which you can slide open, then open the main outside facing window. Its fairly uncommon in homes as most homes have uPVC Double glazing

Hi again,

I'm finally delivering on my promise. Steaks, anyone?

Hey Eddie

That turned out really well in the end, that definately something to be proud of, enjoy sitting back, belly full of steak and beer, belching in tune to "I made that"

Well done mate...

I think that also makes you the forums very first "Project finished"

Hi thanks for that, I guess your right Im over complicating it.

I am only taking the sky light out because it is about 50 yrs old and made of plate glass, you can here the wind coming through the sides of it. So I really must take this out.

Where did you get the loft ladder?

My loft ladder was from a builders merchants for £89.00 and had a local builder fit it.

Yes oddly I figured that out, it is quite heavy sorry im such a tight ass sometimes I had loads of mdf in the garage thought I could do some skimping but when I got there most of it has absorbed water from the floor.

Ive never seen the bubble wrap foil before can I put this between my brick wall and plasterboard?

If your using your loft just for storage, then I wouldnt even waste money on plasterboard at all, and if you do put the foil bubble wrap on your walls, make sure you get the breathable stuff, NOT the normal stuff if your going to stick it straight onto the walls.

The normal stuff is for stapling to the underside of your rafters where there is already plenty of ventilation between the tiles/slates.

Remember, its only plastic and foil, so if it cant breathe, then neither can whatever you stick it to if its solid (Like a brick wall) and you wouldnt want any condensation on the back of the plasterboard on those warm days when its cold/damp at night...

This stuff is nice and light, easy to work with, clean, and installs in minutes, and if you only have 1 striplight in your loft like I do, it really brightens the loft space when you switch on the light so you can see what your doing.

Again, if its only for storage, why even bother with a roof-window, thats just 1 more thing that can leak/fail. As its only for storage, a velux is a waste of money especially if you already have a skylight, and a skylight will have less seals/fixings to go wrong or leak

I just had a pukka loft ladder installed that opens in seconds and thats it, insultated the loft, boarded it all over with chipboard loft boards, polystyrene rafter boards and foil wrap over that..

Nice and toasty, easy access, and doesnt weight 2 tons sitting on my ceilings, so no ceilings getting bowed or plaster cracking

Hiya Verne

Its readily available in most DIY stores, I use it to make wing bags for model RC planes to prevent my wings getting popped when moving them from garage>car>airfield and back again...

It comes in roll form and is completely flexible, you can bend it, fold it, duck-tape it together, its great stuff...

Comes in breathable and non-breathable formats, with the breathable stuff costing a bit more..

My local Focus sell it in rolls costing

No, I wouldnt use MDF at all, its far heavier than needs be and absorbs water/moisture like a sponge if it gets wet (Leak in the roof)???

Why not just line the walls with foil backed bubble wrap which will be 100x easier to put up, breathes, and is a far better insulation barrier too.

You can apply it to the walls with spots of "No-more-nails" and be done fairly quickly, and only need a stanley knife.

Hi Dan

When you say box the walls off, could you elaborate a little?

Funny thing as I'm doing exactly the same thing at the moment, finishing the insulation, and putting down chipboard loft boards for storage..

On the walls, you will need to make sure anything you put on them can breath.

Got something that isnt a ".bmp" file, like maybe a jpg straight from the camera?

Hi Mate

Do you have a picture of your affected roof area?

Hi all, i've been thinking about putting air conditioning in my house for a while now, i was just wondering if anyone has any experience with these ones?

http://www.cooleasy.co.uk/product_wall.htm

Also if anyone has had any problems with them?

Well Geoff, as your already from that company, why dont you tell us instead of trying to sneak a link in under false pretences?

Nothing worse than a tradesman trying to deceive people.....

Is this how cooleasy operate? Sneeky and deceptive?

1,000 a day building piers? You're are hard taskmaster DIY Guy:D

No, sorry, thats 1000 a day under normal brick laying circumstances, such as walls. Doing peirs on his own, and having no labourer, around 500 a day would not be asking a lot.

Hey TomTom

A good brickie should be able to lay 1000+ bricks a day, but thats with a labourer. If he has to keep stopping to mix up more muck, then you might only be looking at half that figure.

So possibly, 5 peirs a day as a rough guess I'd say, or rent a mixer for

hi all,i have bought some engineered oak flooring and have been advised to put it onto secret fixed to sub floor silovil adhesive,as it is going onto a concrete base.Is this the best thing to use?

Hiya Novice, welcome to the website

When you say "put it onto secret", can you elaborate as that looks like a possible spelling mistake, but I'm not sure what of???

Engineered oak flooring is plywood backed and you should find that the plywood backing is in strips, allowing it to expand and contract without pushing up the floorboards when it does, so as long as you dont restrict the movement of the plywood under the floor, preventing it from doing what it does naturally, you should be fine.

One thing to consider is, the harder the floor is underneath, the more the oak flooring will take the brunt of anything dropped on it if there is nothing soft underneath.

I laid 80 square metres of Engineered oak flooring myself not long ago and laid it all on a very soft yet firm underlay, taping only the underlay to the newly laid plywood flooring and allowing the oak floorboards to simply "sit" freely on top of the underlay which makes for a quieter flooring surface when walking around on it, and less prone to huge dents if things get dropped on it, but your flooring finish will also help this too, depending which finish you choose.

Care to show us which flooring you went with or are going to be putting down?

Hi Jezb

Do you possibly mean under-floor heating with ceramic tiles on top?

(Like in a bathroom or kitchen)

What exactly is the Vinyl for, and what type?

Got any pictures of what your up-to?

Thats a great finish eddie, shame its not in the UK, otherwise we could all swing by for a barbecue

lol, the CoW ????

Hi there

Pricing your work can be fairly easy, you can either do it several ways, depending on the job in hand...

Day rate, per job or per 1000 bricks laid for example...

If your building a garden wall and you know it 12m long, double skin, 10 courses high, you know its going to be around 1000 bricks, or if your quick, 2 days work, so you can either quote the job as x days work + materials, or if its a mega complex job that might take ages you could quote per 1000 bricks laid or a day rate (handy if you have a client that keeps changing their mind all the time)

Have you worked as a bricky before now for other people?

Leaving the site really clean and tidy often impresses the customers more than the quality of workmanship.

I wouldnt say that so much, the 2 go hand in hand, you dont want a good tradesman who builds things fantastically but then leaves you with a bomb-site to cleanup after he trashes the place, but its no use to anybody having shoddy workmanship, badly built walls etc but clean ones...

I recently had builders in to re-render our house and they would spend about an hour at the end of every day cleaning up, sweeping the neighbours drive down, removing all the dust sheets and tarp's from everything they covered, and they did a really good job on the rendering too, so I was very pleased as this is one of the first times I have ever happily paid a builder for doing a good job of something...

All the previous builders I have had the mis-fortune of dealing with, I have had to ask them to leave or re-negotiate their prices after they had totally screwed up a job, clean or not, crappy work cant be hidden...

Its just the professional thing to do, do a great job of what has been asked, and dont trash the customers property in the process of doing it.. Keep in mind that after your gone, the customer has to live with whatever mess is left behind.

WOW, its hard to believe this was done by the same person....

Did you really do this? What happened to the pointing on the inside?

Hi Eddie

Well, as long as your using some sort of trowels at least?

I actually wasnt kidding about pulling it down through, you wont be able to do anything with the muck once it has set, except scrape bits off, but that will leave staining and possibly damage the bricks.

Oh, and dont underestimate yourself too, I repair computers and laptops, build and maintain websites and run a national UK web hosting company, but was still able to build a wall, so dont knock your own ability, you can easily knock up a barbecue, but as with all things, a little practice is required..

The entire point of doing something yourself is also about the enjoyment :-)

Hey Eddie

Not a bad first attempt, just a little work on the pointing and the muck mix and you will be all set. (pun pun)

Seriously though, will this all be visible permanently or will it be hidden?

I would seriously advise though that its well worth practicing, even consider pulling it down carefully and having another bash at it...

Put the muck on the bricks at 45 degree angles, scraping the muck onto the 4 edges of the bricks side (1 side only) so that you can gently place the brick down onto the muck bed laid out, and tap it into place until the muck is not quite "ozzing" out of the joins, then, take a length of hosepipe and run it along the joins to give a nice even finish, and then brush down the joins with a hand-brush, that way you shouldnt even get any muck on the faces of the bricks at all.

If the mortar wont stick to the side of a brick when held in mid air then its too wet or too dry, your muck should look almost olive green'ish when wet.

Shame you dont live in Croydon, I'd come over and help you myself

I learnt muck making and pointing years ago at building college when training to be a roofer, and it sure is something that is a fairly east once you get it right only once..

What trowels are you using to lay your muck down?

When I built my garden wall, I used a 3:1 mix of building sand which stuck beautifully, dried a nice colour and was nice and easy to point as it dried slowly enough to put down an entire 4 metre course at a snails pace...

There are lots of different types of sand to use, some for bricklaying, some for renderingetc etc.. Like I said, you dont need lime, your not building a house so its nothing really to worry about.

Your problem is not how quickly the muck sets, but the fact that it doesnt hold anything together when it does.

Ditch the lime and go with a 4-1 mix sand/cement. General building sand should be ok for this little job, nothing too fine.