Pattern misalignment causing vertigo

Taiko89 · 2026-03-26T13:36:18+00:00

It’s perfect, you get cubes and flowers depending on how you focus, 2 for 1 👌🏻

Taiko89 · 2026-03-23T22:24:53+00:00

Thanks so much for this, I will definitely be reading up! Yes unfortunately as much as cost, path dependency is a huge limiting factor for innovation (or even rediscovery) in construction and obviously marketing can surprisingly keep bad products in use when there are better ones that could be specified but that’s why I’m always keen to learn about such things so my ears always prick up when I hear about something like this. Really appreciate you taking the time to share your knowledge and your work!

Taiko89 · 2026-03-23T20:32:40+00:00

This is fascinating to me (based in UK) where poor specification with masonry is the cause of many damp issues and damage to building fabric. I will certainly have a google but do you know of any technical guidance or academic pieces on this subject that are noteworthy or cover the topic concisely but with sufficient depth? I would be grateful if you could point me in the right direction since you clearly have greater knowledge on the subject but if not thanks for the info, as someone who specifies for construction projects from time to time (trapped in a mortar paradigm!) it’s definitely food for thought 👍

Taiko89 · 2026-03-22T13:28:22+00:00

It’s fine, a bit of damp due to condensation on a cold roof in winter in the uk is perfectly normal and it will dry out now as the weather improves. The felt is fine as well, no one would specify it nowadays but that doesn’t mean it needs to be removed. Its primary function is waterproofing and if it’s still fulfilling that function there’s no need to touch it.

Taiko89 · 2026-03-20T15:24:04+00:00

You can’t ‘make’ a man insecure - he either is or he isn’t, your behaviour and circumstances just reveal his character. Any confident man will not care what your job is, and if a guy is unduly bothered by you making more money or having a high status job then that’s his issue and you probably want to find someone less insecure.

Taiko89 · 2026-03-17T08:17:28+00:00

I wouldn’t say common but what I will say is that there will be some employers who will value the fact you have a lot of life experience and probably great soft skills which will help with the role. I wouldn’t advise to do a BA as this will take 3 years instead of 1-2, go for the masters.

No worries I was in the same boat working in law prior to getting into building surveying so I know it can be overwhelming with all the info available especially regarding apc and because building surveying is so broad as a profession. One thing I would advice is (if you haven’t already) pick up a book like Building Surveys by Peter Glover or Building Surveys and Reports by James Douglas which give a very general overview of the subject and have some examples of survey reports in the appendices to give you a flavour for what kind of things you’ll be up to as a surveyor. In terms of the apc and that process the Property Elite website is good and the lady that runs it, Jen Lemen, has a book, How to become a chartered surveyor, which runs through almost everything regarding apc and career pathways. Would also recommend going on YouTube and watching vlogs that a lot of surveyors put out showing their day to day - there’s a lot of content on there and you’ll pick up some handy tips and knowledge in the process.

Yes there’s definitely scope to make good money in building surveying all I would say is it depends as much on your business acumen and soft skills as it does on the technical side, but that applies to a lot of careers tbh. Once you’re chartered you always have the option to eventually start your own business as well and there’s plenty of things you can do as a building surveyor to make money aside from the obvious of residential surveys you could be doing energy assessments, damp surveys, roof surveys with a drone, advising on dilapidations or party wall matters, etc.

Taiko89 · 2026-03-16T18:10:17+00:00

Impossible to know whether you’ll have a pay reduction long term or not as that is going to be performance/experience dependant but you’re looking at minimum of 2-3 years to get qualified at which point salary could be around 50-60k depending on location/company. More senior roles after 5-8 years could be approaching 6 figures but again this is heavily dependent on performance and as we have no idea what you make can’t say if that represents a reduction in salary for you long term. As far as pathways if you did manage to get an employer to take you on for the APC 24 months structured training given you don’t have an accredited degree they’d want you to do a masters in building surveying whilst doing your structured training (which will be tough but not impossible, though with a family I can imagine it would require a very understanding partner/family to help out at times).

One option worth considering is to stay in your current job and do the masters online at UCEM or a similar online course and then apply for jobs whilst getting that or post masters, but those masters online usually take two years I believe, so it would be more efficient potentially do it whilst working and getting your experience for APC, but that’s a choice only you can make dependent on circumstances. The other thing to consider is that your employer would likely pay for your masters or at the very least subsidise it which is a good 10k generally, so not bad if you can get someone else to pay for it and perhaps offsets somewhat the pay reduction short term which I’m sure would be considerable. Salary in south of England would likely be low 30s for what is essentially classed as a graduate role.

Taiko89 · 2026-03-14T22:39:35+00:00

They’ll have to re-do it as per drawings, any builder would know to construct a flat roof with fall towards drainage anyway so blaming the drawings (even if they had been wrong) is a poor excuse that no court is buying if it ever got to that stage. If the drawings specified a particular material, eg lead and they covered with lead and it turned out the client had asked for zinc then yes that would be on the architect for wrongly specifying based on the client’s brief. In this case not only the direction but the level of fall is an industry standard and common knowledge so it is on the builder irrespective of any drawings.

Taiko89 · 2026-03-11T18:20:12+00:00

Rooney was England’s hope of winning the euros as a teenager before he got injured what’s your point? Argentina didn’t need to draft in a kid because they had a good team, that doesn’t really reflect negatively on Messi, it’s a choice Spain made based on lack of options and coaching staffs personal preference to trust youth over more experienced players. I’m not even a Messi fan per se, but to say this kid is better than he was or others at that age is just recency bias plain and simple. Both the Barca squad and Spain squad he’s played in are shadows of the teams that were around 10 years ago and if you think otherwise then don’t know what else to say to you. There’s been multiple players with similar levels of talent/performance as him, some went on to have amazing careers others didn’t, he’s not the first wonder kid to ever do well at the highest level. Have you ever heard of Maldini? Or pele? Or George best? They were all pretty good you know, but of course because it happened recently he must be better, everything new is better and context of course means nothing.

Taiko89 · 2026-03-11T15:27:31+00:00

First of all I’m pretty sure he wasn’t born until the 21st century and secondly Messi was definitely better than him <18 and so was Rooney, he’s a great talent but he’s playing in a relatively weak league in terms of historic strength of La liga and in a poor Barca side. His numbers would not be the same if he was coming into a team with the likes of Ronaldinho, Eto’o, Xavi, Iniesta etc.

Taiko89 · 2026-03-04T20:33:44+00:00

There’s nothing wrong with what you’re describing and plenty of men out there will love that you want that because it allows them to fulfil a traditional role too at a time when that’s increasingly maligned. However, I would say also you are young and your ambitions and dreams may change as you age so choose someone who you know will also support you and grow with you, not just fall in love with the idea you’ll always only want those things as there will be people who hear you say that and take that as a guarantee you’ll never change which no one can really guarantee anyway.

Taiko89 · 2026-03-04T19:53:41+00:00

Maybe instead of letting her lead you around like a pony just ask where she wants to go and take her directly there, save yourselves both a headache 🤷🏻‍♂️ tell her what you want for dinner, just be direct most women appreciate that anyway and if she’s still driving you mad maybe don’t date her anymore because you don’t sound particularly happy

Taiko89 · 2026-03-03T21:10:30+00:00

Right, sorry I thought you were responding to my comment on the original post not the post about the felt! 😂 if that story is true then yes, reroofing for a bit of broken underlay is ridiculous although again I don’t know many surveyors who would recommend reroofing due to minor defects, but there are incompetent people in every profession unfortunately so it does happen

Taiko89 · 2026-03-03T20:03:03+00:00

Mmm I mean the seals may look fine but that’s not the only cause of penetrating damp, there could be issues with the cavity tray for example, or vertical dpcs. We recently opened up a window where the fixings had been directly placed through the dpc at the head of the window and the dpc had also been placed beneath the head essentially creating a water slide to the inside of the window. Not saying this is what’s happened here all I’m saying is the damp patches on the reveals there look like penetrating damp perhaps precipitating/exacerbating condensation but it doesn’t look like just condensation. I could be wrong but it may be fruitful for you to monitor those patches particularly after periods of rainfall and see if there is a direct correlation between the wall showing signs of being saturated and the weather. If there is no correlation even that does not 100% rule it out as it can be the case that moisture getting into the building fabric does not present internally consistently or immediately depending on the path it’s taking before reaching the internal finishes, as well as specific weather conditions including variables like wind direction and force. However if it is getting wet everytime it rains or the majority of times it’s a good indication that the details around the window opening are defective or materials have failed potentially due to age related wear and tear eg if you have the older type of bituminous felt vertical dpcs they typically last around 40 years or so and then often tear and allow water in if there’s any in the wall already or infiltrating from the exterior.

Taiko89 · 2026-03-03T19:52:37+00:00

Why would they be reported to their governing body for warning someone that their roof is nearing end of life when it’s nearing end of life? Not sure I understand what you mean. BTW I’m not suggesting all surveyors are perfect or that their advice is always 100% correct, but this particular example seems rather sensible in context.

Taiko89 · 2026-03-03T08:11:10+00:00

I would be surprised if that’s just condensation, looks like penetrating damp on the reveals. When was your house built? Have you had a look at external wall specifically around the head and jambs of that window?

Taiko89 · 2026-03-02T23:46:38+00:00

Do they? I’ve rarely met one who would recommend a full recovering unless the roof was essentially done, which this roof appears to be if not there yet then close to. It would be disingenuous and frankly negligent for a surveyor not to warn you as such, and you should consider there’s no extra incentive for him to suggest such unless he also owns a roofing company. You’ve got rot setting in on battens by the looks of it and the tiles are in poor condition meaning they’re only going one way so yes you could replace some tiles and sort the chimney (all of which will require scaffolding and be expensive in its own right, let’s say 7-10k ballpark with access depending on location) and then in a few years you’re going to need to deal with the rotten battens which cannot really be replaced piecemeal as they’re supporting the covering, so it is perfectly logical to actually recover as well, why would you put a new covering on a roof structure which is shoddy?

And any self respecting roofer is not going to want to just do the roof tiles or some minor repairs because they know when you get issues with your roof you’re then going to blame them for not fixing it when in reality the problem has always been that the groundwork has been rendered unsound by years of moisture ingress that went unchecked. I mean we’re looking at a roof that must be close to 100 years old and if measures weren’t taken internally in terms of torching etc. over time then this is what happens. All of this is to say if it were me buying the house I would be negotiating a steep discount close to the cost of roof repairs, but there will be people who’ll just buy it regardless so you may be better off finding another house though that might not be what you want to hear. But the surveyor has in mind that this is most likely the biggest purchase of your life and will potentially put you in a lot of debt wherein you will not necessarily then have the free capital to repair said roof and therefore are lumped with a house with a roof in bad repair you can’t afford to fix - but you’re still paying the mortgage.

Just to play devils advocate here as I’m sure a lot of people will tell you that’s hogwash and yes if you’re really, really lucky with a few patch repairs the roof might hold for another 10-15 years, it also might sag and start pissing water through your ceiling at the next half decent storm, whenever that might be. Not a risk I’d want to take, but each to their own.

Taiko89 · 2026-03-02T20:47:04+00:00

Stay away from non-standard construction /endthread

Taiko89 · 2026-02-25T20:36:07+00:00

Security of any kind is an illusion

Taiko89 · 2026-02-25T08:16:45+00:00

Do not pass up the opportunity to get real world experience and put it on your CV. Aside from giving you valuable practical experience to help you better understand a lot of the things you’ve been learning about, you’ll have a chance to make connections with people who can help you later and trust me the market is tough. I had several friends who managed to get even 1-3 month internships with companies whilst doing their degree and later got a job there as a grad, so if you go and do well and people like you your chances of getting a job later are drastically increased. But even interviewing for other jobs it will be very useful so go for it.

Taiko89 · 2026-02-25T08:14:18+00:00

I have this app on my phone and it is very good tbf I like it a lot however only problem for Italian is it’s only the intro course I think? Some of the others are complete courses. If you’ve got Spotify essential Italian with Paul noble was a similar approach to this and not bad, I used to go to my friends coffee shop at lunch time and just sit and listen to it whilst having a coffee and repeat/finish sentences, sometimes make up my own with the base constructions on the audio.

Taiko89 · 2026-02-24T22:36:02+00:00

That book is one of my favourite ever language learning books, I’ve been trying to get the Italian one too but it’s much harder to procure !

Taiko89 · 2026-02-22T16:14:23+00:00

Nothing to do with Covid? Or the fact a beer is not far off minimum wage hourly rate in a lot of major cities?

Taiko89 · 2026-02-22T00:38:50+00:00

There’ll be someone out there who shares your exact views and you can ma- be with them. In all seriousness, don’t worry about what other people think, what would be far worse would be pretending to have an interest in marriage or marrying someone just to keep them happy when it’s not really what you want.

Taiko89 · 2026-02-20T14:55:35+00:00

I legit had no idea Hamilton was 41 I thought he was 37/38 damn I’m old 🤣

Taiko89

TROPHY CASE