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This roof/chimney abutment flashing has been chased into a rendered wall to form a straight edge. It’s acting as a soaker because the lead runs under the roof tile, but water can penetrate when rainwater runs down the wall behind the flashing and through capillary action via the poorly fitted…
A new government must ensure the construction sector has enough skilled workers post-Brexit, or its housing and infrastructure manifesto pledges will be redundant, says the Federation of Master Builders (FMB).
The FMB has called on all major political parties to recognise the importance of…
Article updated on 31 January 2024Recently, one of our LABC teams received an application for ‘the refurbishment of and alterations to a dwelling’. When the surveyor arrived on site, this is what greeted him:While technically correct, it did stretch the term ‘refurbishment’ a tad.The site had been…
The independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety is being led by Dame Judith Hackitt and the interim report was published in December 2017.
Its purpose is to make recommendations that will ensure we have a sufficiently robust regulatory system for the future and to provide…
How did your interest in construction develop?
In the olden days (1960’s - 70’s), when I was about 12, a teacher asked everyone in my class to tell her what they wanted to do when they left school. I had been building things with Lego for years, so whether that had anything to do with it, I don’…
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…
Article updated on 31 January 2024Roof trusses offer a quick and efficient alternative to a conventional timber roof but they're quite delicate when not in their fully braced vertical position.They work through a combination of tension and compression to ensure that the timber chords and web sizes…
Cold bridging is a common problem, often arising where a gap occurs in the insulation of a building.
Whenever there is a break in the continuity of a property’s outer envelope, there is a risk of a cold bridge appearing. Such an area will often be colder than the main areas surrounding it and…
Responding to the budget by Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, LABC Chief Exec Lorna Stimpson said,
“Understandably the budget was dominated by the government's response to coronavirus. And the Chancellor was correct to say it was the key urgent challenge but not the only challenge the country faces…
One of our surveyors came across this on site recently:
At first glance it looked like someone was trying to compress a 100mm toilet discharge pipe into a 32mm waste pipe. On closer inspection our surveyor discovered that the toilet had been repositioned internally after the connection had…