Main Staircase
The current staircase in the house is to be replaced by a new one and it is not in the builder's remit to do this. This is for access to upstairs, as distinct from the spiral down to the basement - just to dispel any pending confusion ! Instead of getting a local carpenter to make one bespoke by hand, the builder's recommendation was to look at some of the specialist suppliers who will make you an entire staircase to a pattern, but your specific sizes, then deliver it pre-assembled on the back of a lorry.
I have recently been investigating this option. I have requested quotes from two organisations one of which you deal with direct, and one of which goes through a local Building Materials chain. The latter is yet to respond to my enquiry, but the former have been excellent. Their website is very good too, if a little haphazard : http://www.stairplan.com (opens in new window - I wouldn't want you to be sidetracked completely away from my blog !). There are some excellent pictures of projects they have done for customers, and the range of options is awesome. Delivery is 3 to 4 weeks after placing the order. I am just waiting for some answers to questions, but I am sure we will be ordering from them soon.
It's funny how, on a project like this, your view of the cost of things gets coloured by your rate of spend. We have heamorrhaged money at a rate that would have bought us a very nice brand new car every 6 weeks, so the cost of a staircase seems small beer by comparison ! We are going to have to be careful to get things back in perspective once the builder's have departed and we have to buy tools, materials and maybe services, to complete the job.
posted by shadaswell @ 9:35 pm
3 comments
3 Comments:
Steve, Ref your plastic/ copper pipe issue a while ago. We have a section of plastic in the cold feed to the washing machine. This is a push together type which can be dismantled by pressing on a 'ring' around the pipe entry in to the fitting. Same fittings can be used to join copper to plastic or plastic to plastic, and I guess even copper to copper. In the application here, dispite some silent water hammer when the valves close, this section of plumbing has provided faultless service for a small number of years.
Steve.
Hi Steve. Thanks for the input on the pipe issue. I am almost convinced by the plastic pipes, at least for the parts of the circuits that need to be fed through holes in the joists. The only slight worry is I saw quoted somewhere that the upper temperature limit is quite close to the output of a standard Central Heating boiler. The one we have at the moment seems to run very hot, with no way to control the temperature. Could be an issue ? More research needed !
Cheers, Steve
Steve,
I do rember once taking an intrest in the plastic central heating plumbing installed in a holiday home we rented. The pipe in that system appeared to be clamped in to the fittings by a clamp ring around the pipe, pursumably working against a taper. Anyway, the pipe were marked along its length with a max service terperature and advice that it should not be used within ? meters of the output of the boiler.
Steve.
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