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Thanks. I've recognized that my difficulty was primarily from the head of the roofing screw catching back of the gutter. No doubt the gutters and brackets are precisely made. With correct screws I expect no difficulty. Thx, ... P.

Agree with cleaning the seal, but on the three I've done you can put it straight back in without a new one and it'll hold for years.

If they are built with noggins then they shouldn't warp too much . But I'd very strongly recommend using treated timber. The extra cost isn't great. In the exposed situation it should dry as quickly as it wets. I had a look at some of our old gash osb, where lying around or thrown on the wood pile. Most of it had been used as window opening covers. It is severely weakened and swollen. Of no use for anything. You can get flooring chipboard with a temporary film precisely for this purpose (and to catch plaster and paint). @Gone West, @torreand I can all be right, with differing circumstances.

Our posijoists were similarly left open to the elements. We rolled offcut strips of DPM over the tops of them for protection before putting down an OSB deck and it kept them nice and dry. I was pleasantly surprised how well the OSB held up over a winter. Put enough screws in to protect against uplift as high winds can turn an 8x4 into a deadly kite, we used round head screws so they were easier to locate later after months of spills

Great, as long as they remember!!

I looked for clocks I like . None are big and ‘wow ish ‘ ( or cost mega money ) . So only option was as a girlfriend once said to me “ go big or go home “

By their nature regulations tend to be reactive. Take the Summerland fire and more lately Grenfell. In earlier days it was more about disease prevention covering drainage etc. Part of the issue now is how the control of development is fragmented across several regulators, be that the planners, building control, environmental health and now the building safety regulator. I have no issue in having rules for structural stability, weather/damp resistance, fire protection etc but begin to balk at being told to fit an EV charger or the right amount of internet to an individual house build. Developers perhaps, because they are selling a product to a third party for profit. Myself, I don't need the planners telling me what plants I have to landscape the garden with etc

I got some samples from Millboard - it's much thicker than normal wooden decking but the samples looked really good - we put wooden decking down in 2007 and it's reaching end of life (it's treated every year in spring and autumn) as there are sections where the edges have rotted and I had to replace the odd section - the structure under it is solid and well ventilated so next years project is replacement. I need to understand how the fixings work because I don't want to re-do the structure to suit fixed fixings

Just how bad is your eyesight?

At last a post I understand. The Avalon local LLM was rather beyond me. Picture of it lit up please.

I would second the recommendation for Millboard, although it is pricey. I have had some down for over 10 years and while the colour has faded slightly in some high traffic areas, it still looks good overall. I recently had to pick up and reinstall the boards, as part of the timber sub-frame supporting it started to fail. I was worried about removing and reinstalling the fixings, but it was fine.

Me and my mate Claude have been on yet another side project . Bit of wiring adjustment, diffuser Perspex sheet on top and then some neat edging trim. Claude’s description: A 1200 × 1000mm wall-mounted LED clock. The digits are made of 460 WS2812B addressable RGB LEDs in 3D-printed 20mm-deep light cells behind an opal acrylic diffuser, driven by an Adafruit Sparkle Motion (ESP32) running ESPHome. A separate date and weather row uses two P10 RGB LED matrix panels driven by a Huidu HD-WF2 controller (ESP32-S3), also on ESPHome. Both controllers connect to Home Assistant over Wi-Fi for time, weather and control (colour styles, animation speed, brightness, 12/24-hour time), and everything runs from a 5V supply.

I honestly can't think of any more detail just now. What did you have in mind? It's getting very off-topic too. I really just wanted to reinforce the fact (for those that believe regulations are not to be questioned) that UK building regs are inevitably a bit behind the times, frequently contradict each other and are sometimes inappropriate to the very wide variety of cases they are applied to. During my experience with agreeing our water supply with the local authority I was driven to contact a solicitor to help, because I felt I was being blocked from building a supply that would create the least environmental impact, in direct (I felt) conflict with the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 as well as that authority's Local Plan.

Strong backs don't need to be continuous! They are only there as load transfer between joists to remove the 'bounce'. You lay in half the joists, then loosly insert two length of 4x2 slightly longer than middway, then fit the rest of the joists and slide the Strong backs to their final location and fix. Every engineered timber system has an installation system manual for trades to follow - It's wood butchery, not rocket science! 🙂

Before the walls are built 😁

Depends on the grade of OSB. I've left bits of Sterlingboard OSB3 outside and only the edges have swollen.

Environmental Health, not Building Control, regulate Private Water supplies in Scotland. A specialist contractor report is required to design and sign off a new supply.

Here be dragons.

ToughButterCup is right that a treatment plant is the usual answer, but it's worth separating Building Regs from the Environment Agency side. Approved Document H puts the options in order of preference: mains sewer, then treatment plant, then septic tank, then cesspool, so building control will usually steer you towards a treatment plant. A new septic tank discharging to a drainage field is still allowed in England under the General Binding Rules, though, provided it's under 2 cubic metres a day, outside a source protection zone 1 and the ground passes a percolation test. What you can't do any more is send septic tank effluent straight into a ditch or stream. On how it works: yes, everything goes in together, WC, shower and sinks. Solids settle, scum floats, and the partly clarified liquid runs out into perforated pipes laid in gravel trenches, where the soil does the real treatment. None of them are self emptying. Expect a tanker to desludge it roughly once a year, so it needs to be within reach of the hose, about 30 metres. Two practical points for a holiday let. Do the percolation test first, because heavy clay can rule out a soakaway altogether. And weeks with nobody in can upset a treatment plant's bacteria, so ask suppliers how their unit copes with intermittent use. Check sizing too: Approved Document H sets a minimum of 2,700 litres for a septic tank serving up to four people, and some of the small kits come in under that.

A strong back is dead easy to do with open web 'Posi-joists' - just thread it through the holes! It is only a 2x4, no 'Doh!' factor at all.

I would agree with JohnMo here. If the pump is firing along with the actuator then something is calling for heat, it is not a stuck actuator. Next time it happens, have a look at the wiring centre and see which channel LED is lit. Worth checking whether the stat in that zone is sitting on frost protection too.

That is a Macdee dual-flush valve, the white body with the blue internals and the numbered height marks on the side. The good news is you do not have to replace the whole thing. A valve that will not shut off reliably is almost always a worn or dirty flush seal, and the seal washers are sold as spares. Twist the top half out of the basket, clean the seat, fit a new seal and put it back on the same height mark.

Thinking a bit laterally do you really need dimming? In my experience bathroom lighting is a binary, you either need a lot or very, very little. You could have two completely separate circuits. I have a low-set LED strip in my shower niche that comes on with a PIR sensor, this is absolutely perfect for minimal nightime illumination. When more light is needed I have four LED selectable ceiling lights that I have set a 4500K but could be set to up to 6000K that are controlled by a regular switch outside the bathroom Regards Tet

Will they straighten out. Never seen such **** ever.

Thanks, I'd suggest you clean your cartridge. Just so l'm clear before I start waving the spanners around, is it the grey think that I need to unscrew to get at the cartridge?