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Although most people park their cars and vans on the road, occasionally we have to deal with an unexpected guest who arrives in their vehicle through the wall.
When this happens it’s usually Building Control who’ll visit the site following a call from the emergency services to assess the…
There’s only one month to go until the deadline for entries in the LABC Building Excellence Awards 2022.
If you’ve worked on an outstanding project that was completed in 2021 and your building control provider was the local authority, then now is the time to enter!
The awards focus on…
If you are doubling up floor joists, creating trimmers or trimming joists around stairs and chimneys they all need connecting properly so that they can act as a single unit.
Whilst timber floors and their connection details should be designed by a competent person, the ‘Eurocode 5 Span Tables (…
Levelling floors seems like a straightforward job, but it’s often complicated.
Shrinkage, poor workmanship, deflection and the type of materials used can all lead to an out of level floor - and worse, you’re likely to only find out after the job’s finished!
So, how much deflection is…
At a Construction Industry Council (CIC) Reception last night, Tony Burton, Senior Partner at Gardiner & Theobald and CIC Inclusive Environment Champion presented the second Construction Industry Council Inclusive Environment (CIC-IE) Award to the winner, Wycombe Leisure Centre. The centre had…
Approved Document J outlines the precautions needed to ensure that smoke and gases from appliances can be safely discharged. Diagrams 17 and 18 highlight the outlet heights needed in relation to traditional roofs and easily ignited coverings such as thatch and shingles.In general, outlets need to…
Did you know that you may now be ‘the principal designer’ and responsible for CDM on site? Hundreds of thousands of domestic building projects are now covered under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (CDM Regulations 2015) thanks to new changes that came into force in…
It’s now 20 years since the Party Wall etc. Act came into force on 1 July 1997. It applies throughout England and Wales and provides a framework for preventing or resolving disputes in relation to party walls, party structures, boundary walls and excavations near neighbouring buildings.
Anyone…
Another horror story emerged from one of our surveyors recently when they were called out to unauthorised work where an outbuilding was being extended and converted.
The "contractor" was clearly a fan of timber because aside from the roof extension shown in the picture below, they had also…
Building near trees comes with its own challenges for foundations as we highlighted in this Trees and foundations article. In this article we focus on ground heave.
What is ground heave?
Ground heave is the upward movement of the ground usually associated with the expansion of clay soils…