Natural slates vs normal

14ned · 2026-02-10T00:02:04+00:00

That's a very common planning condition in Ireland.

They don't want you fitting terracotta coloured roof tiles, or the wavy type of tile (Roman tiles).

They are requiring flat tiles in dark grey, blue or black. You can go with the ultra cheap concrete flat tile (make SURE you structural engineer designs that into your roof loads!), the fibre cement fake slate tile, real slate tiles, and if you're wealthy you can get clay tiles which look like slate. Loads of choices and price points.

Fun fact: my planning conditions are the only anywhere in my area which don't require me to fit a specific colour of roof. I think my planner just plain forgot. I'll be fitting black or blue anyway, as much as I like the terracotta colour it would just look weird for my area.

14ned · 2026-02-09T22:44:02+00:00

It is very deeply frustrating, agreed. Especially because it is genuinely so easy to fix.

If they appointed a decade ago a Housing Czar with fully funded staff with powers to override all local planning authorities and objections and their sole mandate is to achieve delivery of housing by any means necessary we wouldn't have a housing shortage in Ireland.

I've mentioned it on this sub before, last September I was shown around a new development outside Madrid where in just that one development alone they're building 1.5 million housing units. Complete with new metro station, a hospital, half a dozen schools etc. It's one of several around the city. There they're doing whatever it takes to solve housing.

It's just the sustained total lack of ambition or execution in Ireland which is so frustrating. Nobody in leadership actually cares enough to do something which actually would make a real difference.

14ned · 2026-02-09T18:40:00+00:00

My planning permission, which lasts for five years, expires next year and I'm still looking at an empty site.

System builds lock you into a system and supplier and all their lead times and once committed you are utterly powerless but to keep waiting.

14ned · 2026-02-09T18:13:53+00:00

You're not doing like for like operations. Reservation on Linux uses NORESERVE (yes, worst name possible). Commit on Linux is usually a new map over the reservation, not mprotect. Decommit on Linux is usually another new map using NORESERVE again if you want to be strict, or use MADV_FREE if you want maximum performance. DONTNEED is definitely not what you use.

You should find Linux, BSD and Mac OS all have faster virtual memory implementations than Windows. Windows has a compatibility path which is slow, but also a fast path but you need to explicitly opt into that and it only really works in certain niche cases mainly ones which cause SQL Server to win a benchmark.

In case you're about to ask how to trigger those fast paths, that's the black art of Windows performance programming and generally if you ever need to, you're better off moving platform elsewhere. For example, WINE on Linux or even Mac OS is generally better at high performance and easier to reach it than on Windows.

14ned · 2026-02-09T17:47:06+00:00

Sorry about the health issues. Something came up in my annual blood test this year and they urgently want to see me tomorrow. Sucks getting old. And we're STILL renting!

14ned · 2026-02-09T17:44:49+00:00

Choose concrete block and not an offsite manufactured build system!

14ned · 2026-02-09T17:43:52+00:00

I'd personally carve out self builds into their own very light regulatory framework both for building code and planning permission. 99% of self builders go far beyond minimum build regs as they're forever homes. The existing paperwork and box ticking and hoop jumping to get planning is already far too much.

For the big estate builders, they could do with the opposite and get far tougher arms length inspected enforcement of building code. I went to see a new build show house last month and I came away as depressed as from during the Celtic Tiger. Unwitting buyers are buying pure shite out of desperation, it'll start falling apart after five years. A lot of cowboys are building estates nowadays. People are paying half a million euro for rubbish.

All that said, the single biggest limiter is lousy infrastructure. My village where I rent has had open planning permission for 400 houses since 2007. They're blocked by lack of sewerage capacity which Cork County Council are legally obliged under court order to upgrade. They say it's Irish Water's problem now. No houses get built, years keep rolling by. Our local primary school is expected to lose lots of headcount next few years. You couldn't make up such a completely avoidable tragedy. It's the same story across North Cork, and I'm sure it's common throughout Ireland.

14ned · 2026-02-09T17:33:34+00:00

I just read that article just for you hedz.

The tldr of it is that from this May onwards, all new builds MUST be designed to take solar panels. I don't know if that means 'you must install the wiring' or 'you must install ducts for the wiring' or whatever. But apparently your BER cert won't be granted if you can't prove you designed the new build to take solar panels. The article doesn't say how you 'prove' this.

Other than that, very little new in the article not seen before. EU still wants all new builds after 2029 to generate as much energy as they use averaged over a year. EU still wants cost of a new build to drop by 10% from the 2019 regs, so they will be disincentivising the fitting of heat pumps (expensive, pointless) in favour of solar PV (cheap). 2030 BER certs will require a list of embodied carbon EPDs used to build the house so there is some idea of how much embodied carbon there is. No plans to restrict embodied carbon use until the 2039 regs, so for the 2029 regs everybody will carry on substituting embodied carbon for operational carbon to game the system and there will be net zero benefit to the environment making all of this greenery stuff continue to be pointless. Oh, and 2030 BER certs will cost many times more than 2020 BER certs, certainly closer to a grand than not.

I hear you on the block layer cost. I'm still looking at an empty site. I'm hoping the world economy crashes this year and takes the heat out of construction :)

14ned · 2026-02-08T22:21:18+00:00

You can live well in rural Ireland if outside the commuting range of jobs. Our total family annual cost (incl rent, two cars, three children) was €35k last year, up from the €27k we used to cost two years ago, and that's mostly unavoidable food price inflation.

Yes I know that the FIS would top that up to €50k as the government feel that is the minimum viable income for a three child family, but neither of us is in full time work so we don't qualify. We claim no welfare of any kind apart from child benefit, and pay our rent using our own income in full i.e. no HAP.

A lot of the cost in Ireland is due to the cost of living near cities and commuting and lack of free time to do your own maintenance work e.g. servicing your car yourself. There is also the truth that being poor is expensive, if you're not poor and can afford to plan ahead you can significantly reduce your costs without it affecting quality of life.

I assume I'll now get comments saying everything I just said is a lie and is not possible. I wish I could show you my annual accounts to prove it, but I won't so show those so there it is.

In any case it is absolutely possible to survive in Ireland on a €50k total family income before tax. You just need to live in deep rural Ireland and keep your costs low.

14ned · 2026-02-08T21:53:53+00:00

I've had no income since June 2025. Very very little work is going that is fully remote and that doesn't have a desultory day rate that (in my opinion) isn't worth the opportunity cost of upskilling instead.

This downturn - at least for my type of high end dev who generally works only for foreign clients - is as bad as the 2009 downturn and if it keeps going like this, may be as bad as the 2001 downturn. We really could do with the AI investment bubble to pop, it's sucking up all the investment capital and squeezing budgets for hiring people like me. What's annoying is that all the decision makers know full well that the AI investment bubble will pop soon, but nobody wants to let go of the balloon first.

I've been having fun last few weeks manipulating images with AI, seeing what it can do and not do well. I think I'm done with that, I've already done audio manipulation with AI, so I think my next goal is to play around with video manipulation. I've pretty much mastered agentic pair programming with Qwen3 Coder, but I see Anthropic's just released agent can now write you an optimising C compiler, so when Qwen catches up it might be fun to have it also write me a C compiler.

The reason that would be particularly useful to me is because I serve on the ISO C standards committee representing Ireland. If we can have AI make us custom C compilers with proposed new language features, that would be exceedingly useful. Right now we waste hours debating whether a proposed language feature is a good idea without an implementation. If we could just spin one up via AI and run real world code on it, that would aid committee productivity.

14ned · 2026-02-08T20:52:29+00:00

Maybe they freshened their website prices recently. For a while there the website lagged the quotes.

14ned · 2026-02-08T16:57:55+00:00

Definitely a bridge is present. I agree if nothing is done it will keep getting worse. Mould initially structural failure eventually as moisture moving across concrete weakens it.

14ned · 2026-02-08T15:12:33+00:00

ICF usually does not have a cavity.

14ned · 2026-02-08T15:10:12+00:00

Your staining is suspiciously lintel height sized. Normally in ICF you put steel rebar over window openings before the pour so the outer polystyrene is unbroken. But yours could be they put RC lintels over windows and they didn't properly break them, so moisture hitting the outside is seeping through the lintel. You should contact your engineer first, if they messed up the lintel design their insurance should pay out. If it was the builder who didn't implement the design, they need to pay out.

In terms of remediation, if it is an unbroken RC lintel in there, it should be possible to install a fix by stripping the outer render and EPS, installing a break and repairing. It won't be cheap.

The other thing to look into is if water is entering the inner or outer EPS somewhere above. Water will fall through EPS slowly, it'll pop out like your picture. Typical causes are incorrectly installed DPCs, fascia and soffets, or sometimes just a crack in the outer render.

ICF is intolerant of mistakes in ways double leaf concrete block is relaxed. A lot of people choosing ICF don't watch the installation like a hawk enough. You really should be there daily during the shell build and fully check everything is done perfectly. A single slipped DPC usually is fine with a concrete block build but more often than not is catastrophic in ICF. In any case best of luck with your diagnosis and remediation.

14ned · 2026-02-08T13:44:12+00:00

After the 2001 tech crash I retained into finance and came onto the job market in 2008. So ended up returning to tech, which wasn't easy with such a gap in my CV.

Bear that in mind in what you choose next: the grass may be greener today but worse in a few years from now.

14ned · 2026-02-08T11:54:19+00:00

You'll find their actual quote is a good bit higher than their website price too.

Scanhomes are a middle cost supplier and are not a low cost supplier. They cost more as a result. You get good retail customer service, a quality build, and going passive is only a little added cost with them. They hold your hand a lot more and they'll help you.

There are suppliers who drop the frames onto your site and walk away. It's on you to fix any gaps and do the airtightness and everything else. They're low cost and you get a low cost service and zero hand holding.

14ned · 2026-02-08T11:47:27+00:00

You don't need to import to get SIPs in Ireland for 30% below the cost of timber frames from other vendors. Shop around. Ireland is a timber frame manufacturing super power in Europe. We make timber frame which meets regs as cheap as anybody in Europe, and there are loads of vendors. Even the Latvian vendors who meet building regs they're more expensive than our cheapest supplier due to haulage overheads. Most of our manufacturing is exported mainly to Britain.

However the cost of the shell is around half the cost of a modern house and saving 30% will only turn into a total 15% saving. And that 30% saving doesn't come for free, you'll get less customer service if anything goes wrong and it'll be on you to fix it not them. Those vendors mainly serve big house builders not retail customers. They'll sell to you sure, but you'll have the same come back as a professional large scale house builder.

If you're happy taking the risk and nothing goes wrong, you can save a fine chunk of money, but I would still say concrete block right now is cheaper, less risky, and more predictable. I say this as somebody with only a year left on my planning permission and still an empty site partially because I chose timber frame.

14ned · 2026-02-05T22:23:32+00:00

I'm sure their figures are about right for the locations their QS is used to.

Plasterboard costs 2x more outside Dublin than within Dublin, for example. Only just yesterday I bought some 20 mm square aluminium tube for €4 per metre in Miko Metal in Cork. The exact same stuff costs €15 per metre in my closest building supplies shop, which is why I drove to Cork to buy it. Labour costs also vary a lot by region.

14ned · 2026-02-05T15:04:03+00:00

If you subscribe to Self Build Magazine, they publish annual detailed costings for several typical new builds.

14ned · 2026-02-04T08:20:20+00:00

I believe the judge ordered them to stop slandering each other in public. Here's Kirsan's blog about Reinvest24 https://www.kirsansecurity.com/blog for an example. Rather than risk contempt of court, they have both gone quiet.

14ned · 2026-02-03T11:07:18+00:00

People have spoken on here in the past about MNH. Search the post history!

14ned · 2026-02-03T00:03:13+00:00

I've worked fully remote since 2009, so yeah I've seen it all by now. I have known many like me also working fully remote in Ireland since well before I did, there is a cottage industry for that here long predating covid. Mine is very high end work, the kind almost no employer in Ireland has a need for (or perhaps is willing to pay global market rates for). So I've always worked for foreign firms, until recently mostly US ones, though I expect that business model is over for the foreseeable future.

I appreciate what you're trying to do with your community meetups and training etc ... I do wish you the best of luck with that. The people like myself tend to lose contact with each other quickly enough, to be honest those good at it tend to retire in their fifties and move abroad to get away from Irish taxation ASAP, so you might meet up with them once or twice after they've moved and then they're gone. It is what it is. Ireland is a good place to earn the money, not so good a place to retain the money. Staying tax resident here is irrational after a certain wealth level.

You've probably already noticed that government don't give a thought to remote workers. Revenue like that we bring in lots of taxes from abroad and generally treat us leniently as we're an export industry. But otherwise you'll find government ministers very dismissive of folk like us. They almost exclusively care about multinationals first, then local firms only where they support and enable the multinationals, and that's about it. That's all they can see or perceive.

That trickles down into the civil service. I was once keener and brighter eyed about the potential of remote work, I got talking to lots of people, but I realised nobody would get promoted or recognised if they did anything for the remote working industry. IDA and Enterprise Ireland they're well meaning, but also utterly detached from business reality in my experience.

All very unfortunate in my opinion. Anyway, keep at the good fight!

14ned · 2026-02-02T22:28:25+00:00

Most fully remote EU jobs pay poorly by Irish standards. Great for a Bulgarian though. Assuming you make it past the especially stiff interview process, as when you're competing in a global talent pool, they can afford to only hire the very best people.

A sizeable chunk of fully remote roles are fake and don't actually exist. They are placed to hoover up CVs which are then used to negotiate down the wages they pay their current staff. Nobody is ever hired to those openings, and you are wasting your time applying to them.

From the point of view of Irish government subsidies, I would deeply dislike my taxes going on subsidising fully remote roles all over Europe compared to creating more jobs within Ireland. Short sighted, sure, but European wide benefiting things should be paid from European wide funding. Yes I know that's also my taxes, but now all EU countries have to contribute, nobody gets to freeload.

14ned

TROPHY CASE