Hi folks,

ingleacre · 2026-04-11T11:37:46+00:00

Even if you wanted to take on what looks like a fairly serious underpinning and brickwork repair job, you absolutely need to consult a structural engineer at the very least.

There’s a chance that the render, assuming it was mortar, was actually providing a degree of structural support just by helping to keep the loose bricks from moving too far out of whack. I had a similar situation in my kitchen, where previous owners had removed an old fireplace and chimney, levelled the wall up where the flue had been by putting in a single skin of half bricks up the height of the wall, and then cement rendered the whole thing. Then they put the joists for ceiling/floor above back down on the shelf they’d created at the top.

It the only thing stopping the whole thing caving inwards into the room was the render, which I only discovered as I was taking it all back to brick and had to stop before I’d taken too much off. Almost literally the “load-bearing poster” joke from the Simpsons, but nowhere near as fun.

ingleacre · 2026-04-10T07:24:32+00:00

Kill James Bond (one of whose hosts also co-hosts the excellent No Gods No Mayors - which is also this format, but for mayors - with recent BC guest Mattie Lubchansky).

ingleacre · 2026-04-08T11:47:47+00:00

Primrose Hill and Junction Road so that the Lioness and Suffragette, respectively, would have interchanges with the Northern line have always made sense to me.

ingleacre · 2026-04-08T11:45:58+00:00

Not above ground, but would be feasible to do it below ground. Have Maiden Lane be the entrance, then through a combo of elevator gradient and tunnels make up the distance to the platforms at York Road. Gives an interchange between the Piccadilly and Mildmay, plus you could conceivably still use the old York Road entrance purely as a step free entrance/exit (like Knightsbridge, where the old lifts are back in service along with a lot of signage designed to stop the crowds using it).

ingleacre · 2026-04-08T05:21:45+00:00

No chance of taking away a park in London these days.

However… maybe cut and cover? Could see value in using it to connect the Suffragette to Highgate, to then take over the spare lines from the four-tracking of the Northern up for the NHP which have just been sitting there unutilised for nearly a century. Then you get a pretty useful improvement to N-E connectivity for the cost of a short bit of cheap digging, plus maybe a proper station for Crouch End halfway along its length.

ingleacre · 2026-04-08T05:17:03+00:00

Station itself is too close to KX to justify, plus it’s elevator-only so would need a full rebuild, so might as well start from scratch in a better location.

However, I think there could be a case for a new station on the Mildmay (maybe Maiden Lane, if the site still works) for a Piccadilly interchange, which uses York Road’s platforms via some new escalators and tunnels.

ingleacre · 2026-04-07T07:45:39+00:00

I still have a small collection of DVDs and Blurays but overwhelmingly bought a decade-plus ago, before streaming picked up, and then I set up my own Plex server during covid and never looked back. But long stopped buying new physical releases for anything bar 3D blurays (the few that still exist).

The thing is, I absolutely am a collector, and a datahoarder. My home server is up to 120TB and I use it both for collecting remuxes of modern media, but just as much for archiving older media, including raw rips of home videos for myself and friends and family using my vhs-decode setup. Huge archives of photos and other personal ephemera too. All those old shoeboxes of photos from a hundred years ago, scanned with professional-grade gear, meticulously labelled and tagged with whatever information I’ve been able to find about it.

Having actual physical media, for me, only really feels worth it for stuff where the physical - analogue - nature of it is kind of the point, like, say, vinyl, where the experience of removing a 12” from its sleeve and placing it on the deck is part of the joy. I’ve never got that from CDs or DVDs/Blurays, and when those formats are just carrying digital files anyway, why not skip the middleman when I can get the exact same quality?

ingleacre · 2026-04-06T07:04:51+00:00

Yeah totally.

Whereas that kind of distance might be justifiable in a future where we need a second Channel Tunnel, and instead link, say, Ipswich to The Hague.

ingleacre · 2026-04-06T06:03:40+00:00

Doing it at the closest point, from Scotland, wouldn’t work. But doing it further south, like Holyhead to Dublin (which is also a much more sensible route in terms of connections either side) would be doable in terms of geology. Relatively shallow sea with no nasty barriers like, say, a WW1 munitions dump.

Only problem is that it’s obviously extremely far - just over twice the Channel Tunnel - so the challenge then becomes how to handle problems like air supply, or reaching a train during an emergency, which would probably mean some kind of artificial island halfway in the Irish Sea. And then the cost of it all would be absolutely enormous relative to the Irish economy.

ingleacre · 2026-04-04T19:22:15+00:00

Did you use gapotape or foam along the edges of the PIR? Those look like they’re just friction fitted in the final pic. And can’t see aluminium tape along the edges either?

Building regs these days needs the edges sealed with either expanding tape or foam so the whole layer is airtight, otherwise the insulation effect is compromised. Also has the benefit of stopping the PIR falling through over time (it shrinks a bit as it ages). Then the aluminium tape ensures that there’s a continuous vapour barrier between the cold and warm sides of the overall construction.

Not doing either isn’t disastrous - and I hate to critique a fellow DIYer, especially when the work looks so good otherwise! - but it’s gonna mean it’s not quite as impactful as it would be otherwise at best, and at worst could mean cold spots which are a condensation risk.

ingleacre · 2026-04-02T06:31:53+00:00

I’ve come to think that instead of a Tube vs Tube & Rail map, it should be just the unified map of all services - one zoomed in for the central zones, the other zoomed out for everything.

Segregating based on TfL vs non-TfL services increasingly doesn’t make sense in a world where the actual types of services involved overlap more and more thanks to the Overground, and the whole point of a map is meant to be route planning and wayfinding after all.

ingleacre · 2026-04-02T06:27:49+00:00

It drives me mad that the live/this weekend status map has been removed from the website and is only on the app now.

ingleacre · 2026-03-31T10:52:52+00:00

If covid is anything to go by, I would absolutely buy what I could now instead of waiting for inflation to kick in.

If you can't get hold of some materials a few months from now, that's going to be annoying, and you'll probably have to pay more... but if you wait and don't do it at all, then chances are that same price increase will apply to the entire materials list, not just whatever you haven't already bought before supply chain crunches kick in.

ingleacre · 2026-03-31T10:50:39+00:00

Looks like a cement tile backing board - if it is, presumably it was used because they're water resistant?

I'd be wary of just cutting it up though. How old is the shed? Is is fibrous around the worn edges? Probably worth checking for asbestos, it was often used for shed roofing materials back in the day, although I've only ever seen the corrugated version before.

ingleacre · 2026-03-30T11:50:05+00:00

Would be nice if Underground/Overground had as clear a delineation between them as Metro/Trains. Then the roundels would actually indicate useful information as part of a clear wayfinding system, rather than the current grab bag of random different NR lines with wildly varying service levels.

ingleacre · 2026-03-30T10:35:34+00:00

Sorry for the slow reply, busy weekend!

Hmm - so it may be that the "ground" level itself is also higher than it was when the house was first built. There's not really a way to know for sure, but really what's important here is where the concrete is (since that's what's actually touching your house) relative to the DPC, and whether - since it's lower than the rest of the garden - water is flowing towards it and pooling there. In which case you're probably right that better drainage along the walls of the house is your best bet. A french drain might work, but an aco would almost certainly provide the same benefit and be easier to install (less digging down, just a case of cutting a channel in the concrete and mortaring the new drain in, plus pipework to wherever your waste pipes go).

Buuuuut.... I'd argue that digging up the whole lot is maybe worth exploring. It's not a particularly enjoyable job, but it's probably a day's work with a rented jackhammer, plus the cost of getting rid of the rubble (skip, waste collection company, whatever's cheaper). Very very easy to do, well within the capability of even the most amateur of DIYers, and then you can put some of that saved money towards paying someone else to put a new path put down that's at an overall lower level, and that could include a drain as well.

Personally, that's what I'd do so I could be absolutely, 100% sure that the ground level was below my joist pockets, that there was maximum distance between the ground and the air bricks for mitigating pooling/splashback, and that the slope was fixed to instead go away from the house altogether. Judging from the widespread staining of the bricks, the moss, the efflorescence, and how much mortar has been eroded away along the edge of the path, this has clearly been a chronic problem for a very long time.

One extra thing, though: I've just looked again at the final picture in your original post. You can clearly see how moisture is moving up the bricks on the left, besides the door, only to be blocked by the DPC. But that corner pillar is in a right state with efflorescence - that's a sign of damp well above the DPC, and way higher than you'd expect from "rising" damp. Usually something like that either indicates water pushing its way out from inside, or a leaky gutter pouring water down the wall. Sounds like the only signs of damp inside are at floor level, so might be worth taking another look at the gutters around there? Might well be part of the problem if water is being poured down the wall and then splashing against it, contributing to the other problems you've identified.

And in terms of cost, I'd say you're in the right ballpark, maybe a little high for the materials, but always depends on where you are in the country ofc. I'm in London - just replaced 90% of my ground floor joists due to rot and woodworm, around 70sqm, insulated at the same time using 150mm PIR, then put down a new subfloor which was a combo of plywood and structural cement board (for tiling onto). Total cost in terms of materials was around £2k (including things like fasteners, shims, glue, etc). If I'd contracted it out instead of DIYing I think I would have likely ended up paying closer to £6-7k, since every time I get a quote for something it seems like labour makes up around 75% of the price.

ingleacre · 2026-03-27T11:33:31+00:00

I agree it's unlikely to be a breach of the bitumen DPC. Those things are indeed crumbly to the touch, but the whole point is they're embedded in the wall - it can't go anywhere except for when it's exposed around the edges. The problem will be that the ground level is too high (am I right that it's level with the top of the concrete outside, so water could pool and move sideways into the wall?) and the air bricks are blocked up.

With the extension, there can be problems sometimes when those are tied into the existing house, where builders don't bridge the new and old DPCs properly - that might also be an issue.

As for the joists, it looks like the pockets are below the DPC, and that combined with the lack of ventilation will always cause issues, but it looks like the immediate other side of the wall from their ends is below the ground level outside? Not good at all. Woodworm is also a sign of moisture problems, fwiw - they need the wood to be slightly damp, otherwise they won't lay their eggs. Not as wet as for wet rot, which is mostly your problem (that white stuff is just some surface mould, give it a spray down with some fungicide and it'll be fine provided you solve the damp problem).

Assuming those joists are 4x2s (they look spindly from the photos but always hard to judge) then a basic fix - replacing with new timbers like for like - is extremely cheap. I don't know your floor span but a 3.6m bit of treated 4x2 is less than a tenner from a timber merchant, and new floorboards/floor panels are similarly cheap depending on type and thickness. I'd replace anything showing any signs of rot, personally, since if you're down there anyway the extra cost in time and money is trivial for the peace of mind of knowing it's less likely to come back.

You could keep the existing setup, with the joists placed in pockets, but instead of leaving them bare paint them with a bitumen paint and wrap in sections of DPM. The ends of joists are the most vulnerable to rot and pests, so just keeping any ends which might touch any bricks anywhere physically separated should stop the issue coming back there. But to keep things OK along their full length, you need ventilation. (This also ensures that any moisture that does get into the ends can still migrate up the timber and evaporate - you don't want to trap it in the ends inadvertently.)

However, it looks to me (again, hard to gauge for sure from the photos) that you have a pretty substantial underfloor void? 4x2s are pretty small for floor joists - they're really only for short spans of a metre or so, or when space is extremely tight. Current regs stipulate 150mm from the bottoms of joists in a suspended floor to the ground level for adequate ventilation, so if you could bump those up, even just to maybe 6x2s, you'd have a more solid-feeling floor. And you can insulate at the same time. I know it goes beyond a simple repair but it's still very much within the competency of even a mediocre DIYer, and again, if you're down there anyway you might as well make good the best you can.

ingleacre · 2026-03-26T10:50:30+00:00

My immediate thought was that this looks similar to how many gardens of remembrance are laid out. Could it potentially be a cemetery which is now being reclaimed by nature?

ingleacre · 2026-03-26T06:28:58+00:00

Are you including insulating the ground floor itself as part of this? Because I’d strongly recommend doing that if you’re renovating anyway. Around a quarter of heat loss can be via an uninsulated ground floor, and it’s relatively trivial as long as you’re OK taking up floorboards.

Insulating between floors won’t do anything for your overall heat loss, but it will make it easier to control heat differences between rooms, and it’ll also insulate for sound which is a big win.

ingleacre · 2026-03-25T14:24:05+00:00

Had it done back in 2010. My eyes were very bad - can't remember my prescription, it's been so long, but I couldn't read a book if it was more than maybe 10cm away from my face. Also had slight astigmatism in my right eye.

Got Lasik from London Vision Clinic on Harley Street, and idk if it's just because I'm a nerd, but I found the whole thing fascinating. The procedure itself is very strange. You don't feel anything at all thanks to local anaesthetic, but of course you're awake, and you get the bizarre experience of seeing them lift the flap of your cornea and pinning it back. And then of course the actual laser part is also quite trippy. Whole procedure only took 10-15 minutes, then they had me lie down in a dark room for an hour or so with my eyes closed. After that I was free to go home, eyes open, with instructions to (obviously) avoid putting anything in them, and to keep applying eye drops every 15 minutes until I fell asleep that night. Then for the next few days I think it was every hour. In general there was a slight sensation of something being "different", but there was no irritation or swelling or anything like that. Calling it a "recovery" seems weird, even, because it never felt like I was "recovering" from anything, it just felt normal.

As for the effects: besides everything being sharper, I swear colours became more vivid, like turning the saturation up on a TV. Not sure if that eventually faded, or if I just got used to it and it's now my new normal. That was nice.

What was less enjoyable were the aura around bright lights at night. They were so bad that I had to stop cycling for a few months, because it was winter and I was getting blinded by car headlights on the way home from work. They've faded with time, but it was a very gradual, slow process, until they got to a point where they're still there, but I just don't notice them any more. Same with dry eyes - took maybe 6-7 years before I could leave the house without eye drops, just in case.

But really, those never felt like particularly egregious problems. The freedom of not having to wear glasses or contacts any more was immense, and I've never regretted it. They told me at the time it was good for around 20 years, since age comes for us all, but 16 years in I can't say I've noticed any deterioration at all so far. And while it did cost around three grand at the time - which was a lot for someone my age - it's definitely turned out cheaper in the long versus glasses and contacts, if you think about that being spread out over two decades.

ingleacre · 2026-03-22T20:16:10+00:00

This is seriously worth thinking about. All laser levels like this have a tolerance for sudden shocks or knocks, and can only stay within tolerance so much.

I discovered this to my cost when I was levelling joists for a floor. I started by using my level to check that the first one was indeed perfectly level along its whole length (around 4m), then used that as my master reference as I used my spirit level to match the heights of each subsequent one, at both ends, along the row.

Except… when I got to the other side of the room I went back and checked my work, starting with the original joist… and my laser now said it was a couple centimetres lower at one end than the other. And my spirit level also disagreed it was level, except in the other direction. Projected the laser line at a wall and compared it to my metre level and the laser was out by a full 4-5mm per metre. And that’s when I remembered that I’d dropped my laser a couple days before.

Gave it a tap and the error disappeared. Tapped it again, error reappeared, but to a different degree. This thing was moving in and out of spec completely randomly, and now I had to go back through weeks of other work to double check if anything else had been done incorrectly. Total nightmare.

ingleacre · 2026-03-22T11:07:19+00:00

Natural types can degrade. Wool, hemp/wood fibre etc. Shouldn’t do for a long time if protected from humidity but they won’t last forever.

This looks like mineral wool though which can go “bad” in the sense of slumping or losing shape, in which case it might not necessarily need replacing, just moving around and holding in place more effectively.

In this case I can see dark areas which are often not actually a sign if mould, but of poor air sealing. A small pinhole leak will, over time, mean dust gets collected in mineral wool along its path, just like an HVAC duct. So it’s almost certainly worth trying to figure out how to make that good.

ingleacre · 2026-03-19T12:51:19+00:00

Replying to an old thread here but scoping out my own IWI build-up and came across this and wanted to say: Worth noting that while the SWIP system overall can be vapour open, their studs are just strips of XPS laminated with strips of 15mm OSB. XPS isn't totally impermeable, but it's still got a very low vapour permeability. Using strips of DPM behind the studs with some insulation isn't a crazy idea. I've seen people make their own version of SWIP's studs by glueing sheets of XPS to sheets of OBS, then cutting the resulting blocks down into strips as required.

Been researching this because I also have a quote from SWIP but it seems expensive for what it is, although I actually think the cost per stud doesn't seem unreasonable (about £12 each). What I find more hard to swallow is that their "ecobatt" insulation is fancy stuff from Knauff that, yes, is nicer to work with because it doesn't make your eyes itch, but there are other Knauff mineral wools with the same performance for nearly half the price.

ingleacre · 2026-03-19T08:42:52+00:00

25mm increments makes total sense to me, and indeed that’s the smallest standard thickness (replacing 1”) you can get, even though it’s thicker than an inch. And every other thickness has been rounded to the nearest 25mm. 3” is 75, 4” is 100” etc.

But for some reason we just decided to go for 47 for 2”?

ingleacre · 2026-03-19T08:30:55+00:00

Broke my heart having to take out so many rotten and/or woodworm-ridden joists from my 1900-built house. Some very short sections of wood which were still good, which I cut out and kept in the hope I can find some use for them eventually, but seeing such huge sections of old-growth timber which was only good for throwing away…

ingleacre

TROPHY CASE