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The patio is too high. Raising it has made it even worse and he should have known better. The wall looks very damp. Could you form a channel next to the wall around 120mm wide x 150mm deep to act as a French drain?

Recently had a decaying bit of back patio behind our 1890s Edinburgh tenement taken up and relaid. Apparently there wasn't much under it before and by the time the guy (recommended by some gardeners we use) had put down a base he was happy to put it all back on, the whole thing was an inch or two higher than it had been before. Unfortunately that means there's now a dip around a couple of low vents in the back wall. One of them (on the right in the photos) is from the bathroom extractor (it runs down and under the kitchen floor behind this wall); I've no idea what the other one is. I noticed the dip had collected pooled water earlier this morning from heavy rain last night, although it had all disappeared (I hate to think where!) by the time I got round to taking the attached photos a few hours later. (The spirit level in the second photo is just something to make it easier to see how deep it is.) Any thoughts on how to deal with this? My first idea is to put some sort of little "hut" over it (with enough louvre to allow the vents to still vent) and make sure it's sealed enough around the sides to not allow water to flow in under it or down the walls. Open to other suggestions though. (And my Google-fu is not having much luck finding where I could buy such a thing ready made if they exist... just endless meter boxes and simple vent covers). Thanks for any ideas

Both better than plastic insulations. Both worse mineral wool but by the time fire gets to the frame your real protection has failed anyway. Cellulose has excellent airtightness properties and most of the best results are from timber frame with pumped on site cellulose. I have less knowledge of wood fiber. Blown mineral wool is a choice too but. Cheaper and good U value but doesn't contribute as much to airtightness.

Yes, good point, the table in our case is going to be a shelf just below the plug socket and above the lamp / Network socket. There is only 300mm from the bedside to the in panel door edge so its a squeeze but does need thinking through.

I was already thinking I would have a lever handle ball valve, but I was thinking to have it downstream of the stopcock as those stopcocks are so standard I assumed that I'd have to have one for regs. I'll have a PRV downstream as well.

I like the ball valves with a handle. You may need to adapt to copper first. The old screw down stopcocks can seize and leak. We have about 8 bar pressure at home and have a pressure reducing valve as well.

procedural generation does it itself also

I have a 25mm MDPE pipe that I want to connect to 22mm copper and have a stopcock. I could either use a coupler, 25mm MDPE to 22mm copper, and a 22mm stopcock or use a stopcock that has a compression fitting onto the 25mm MDPE itself. How robust is a compression fitting onto the MDPE as that's one hell of a place to have a failure! I know Plasson make a combined pushfit adapter and stopcock, but availability is low, the price is high and I'm not so keen on a plastic tap.

We have a very similar setup for switches and sockets. The only thing I can add from experience is to think about the bedside tables you are going to use (if any). The shelf of ours is right at the height of the sockets, so it means you can't fully push the cabinet back to the wall, and you have to pull it out to plug and unplug items. Small thing but annoying nonetheless!

Hi all Curious what the general consensus is between blown-in wood fibre vs. cellulose (warmcel) for a passive(ish) timber frame home. So far what I'm seeing is that cellulose is a bit more commonplace. What I'm hearing so far: - Wood fibre is technically better. It gets installed to a slightly higher density and is less prone to slumping if it gets damaged. - Cellulose is more affordable and more common. And probably fine in the real world. - It's unclear which is better from a fire perspective? Anyone have any experience/thoughts on these?

A lot, in my opinion. AeroBarrier

Nor might I either, but paying Devon prices didn't work out well for me, so I'll see what the Surrey quotes look like. I agree, but I don't want to do everything through email & Teams, so it matters to me. Thank you for the Splash tip.

Looks like I can achieve this setup. The brown is the paneling (150mm centers), The Cyan is the King Size divan. The circle is the 400mm reach from the corner of the bed to reach the light switches, the white with center lines is the final stud and the sockets and switches look OK to me. As @garrymartin says I could stop the grooves below the Sockets and restart above but I feel it looks more authentic if they run through the center of the sockets.

Do you have holcim round there? We have a local quite advanced batching plant. Local businessman set it up and they bought him out. They do it too. Even some of the volumetric boys are doing it round here now but I'd be a bit wary of them.

Did they take it back at their cost?

I'd be surprised if glulam is cheaper so I'd lean towards steel. I have a garage 5x5m with 45x 225 timber joists. Was looking at extending the width to 6m and I don't think you can make it work running the joists this way. I can either put a steel over garage door and run timbers 5m way, put rsj in where current 5m wall is, or you can get I beam/jji joists/posi joists to span the 6m. Would that be a solution for you?

Glulam will be deeper. Price up in both.

I've found the blockages in progress to be right in the middle of local authorities' hierarchy. The hands on people who have good ideas find they get passed up the chain then stop. The highly competent top administrators give instructions down the chain until they stop. At the same level and even the same person, who has reached their level of incompetence and wants nothing to change. I imagine it us veey difficult to remove that blockage: in fact one chief executive of a LA pretty well told me as much. We can get rid of the incompetent politicians, at least in theory. As for praise for the people who do something for the community.... it exists but is drowned out by the complainers who expect something for nothing, but don't contribute.

The new garage being built with ICF walls has an internal floor dimensions of about 5m x 6m, with the single pitch (flattish) roof sloping from one 6m side to the other. My current plan is to put in a central 5.5m(ish) beam with joists at right angles (~3m each). Q. Glulam or steel for the central 5.5m beam?

Running a business and local politics/volunteering organisations are different. People don't really understand local politics and what they can and cannot do witness reform candidates running for country council positions on a platform of stopping the small boats - an area in which they have absolutely zero power. I would suggest you try a turn at parish council - with your amazing competence I am sure you'll be able to turn things around and then you won't have to worry about the recycling or potholes or whatever irked you. And in the unlikely event you fail you'll have learned a lesson in how even brilliant people with good intentions can't always succeed.

And i bet everyone marvels at how well run the ville hall is. Absolutely nobody whines about the booking system or the noise or the parking or the sound system or the kitchen not being laid out well or any of the hundreds of reasons people complain about the village hall.

Retired people make up a large % of parish councillors because they have the free time.

Then do it. Stop carping and become a parish councillor. You'll probably find things aren't as easy as you think and then have to endure people calling you useless and saying they could 100% do better.

There is a saying that 'bad things happen when good people do nothing'. You are doing nothing, but feel entitled to criticise. To me there is a disjoint in thinking there.

So where does that leave you? What's the fix/work-round for the Cemex stuff, and what are you going to use instead of the lump of 'clod'? If all orders are detailed, in writing, then wriggling out would arguably be difficult. OTOH total inactivity/failure to engage works for recalcitrant contractors all the time. Also, it just occurs to me that any 'obvious' description, especially in a product name, probably has to be queried. You said '...there is a clue in the name 'Easyflow', but maybe there simply isn't! 'Oh, we call it that, Sir, but it's stiff - and does not flow easily - when we think it should be.'. I am not sure I'd have queried that either, but it's a Life Lesson... Keep us posted on the next steps and, I sincerely hope, the success thereof.