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Brickwork on the chimney is excellent. Keep the updates coming 🙏👌

Not exactly “easily portable” I’m afraid….. Any joy?

I’m working on a current project with a lot of ‘smart home’ vs HA, and have ‘suggested’ that we use the Aico relay base to shut off the MVHR in the event of a smoke detection / fire. This is likely to be in the form of contactors et-al, but I did think that a £5 relay that simply shorted N & E together, bridging those terminals in the double socket feeding the 2x MVHR units (on a 2.5mm radial from a dedicated RCBO), would suffice. Connecting N & E together trips an earth device, reliably, so I can’t see why that wouldn’t be an absolute / definitive solution here. Single strike, RCBO off, can’t come back on until manually reset. Shelly would become a secondary layer over the same terminals, if a wifi signal was required to perform the same function. Criticism / objections (or applause) welcomed.

More progress should be finished soon

The plumbing superstore is competitive. Used to be called JTM plumbing.

+1. Just paint it, and save a fortune ££££.

He actually only charges £9k, the rest is my manager's fees.

Meet your fitters at the door, invite them in for ‘the chat’. If that goes well use them, but if they are obtuse or confrontational then you just smile and say thanks for coming out, ask them to make their way back out the front door…and give them the FO. “He who pays the piper”.

Why position the posts directly above the pipe? Move them both towards the house a bit so they are not over the pipe, dig their foundations below the pipe and build up from that to support them without imposing weight on the pipe. Then a semi cantilever frame to support the weight of the extension on the posts now closer to the house.

Would this help? It looks like you might have space to move the public sewer outwith the zone of influence of the new foundation? I'm assuming the direction of flow runs left to right on the drawing. If not then just reverse the diagram. For reference a private drain is a drain that serves only one house, a public sewer serves more than one house and often this asset belongs to the water board. As others have said you should determine,if you need build over permission for this, you will need permission to move the sewer, build over or near to it. The notation R/E indicates a rodding point. Best to do it right to avoid later potentially horrendous complications.

ouch. The SE should be able to advise the likelihood of agreement. The purpose is that your design should not apply any weight at all to the pipe or its surounds. Also to allow the pipe to be worked on or replaced without added dificulty. I expect the solution to be to excavate on both sides to below the pipe bedding, and pour concrete bases to above the drain level, and ensure gravel is over the top. Then a layer of polystyrene to ensure no loading from above, and then a bridge of concrete with reinforcement, up to ground level or wherever the post goes. That's all straight-forward, other than being old-fashioned spade work. But I think the next stage is still to get the information you have paid for, and find a builder or two. A good one will give an approximate cost based on gut feeling, or a think about how long it will take his 2 or 3 guys. (labour x 3 will be about the cost.) And if they say £50k or more I assume you can then make your decision easily.

Hi, thanks for all the discussion so far! It's giving me lots to think about! When it comes to points about the small size of the extension - the idea is not to increase the value of the house, as I have no plans to sell, and definitely don't want to move. Although turning a poky single bedroom into a reasonably-sized double might increase the value, actually I want a 'hobby room' which is ideally long and narrow (I intend to build a model railway around it!), and when a figure of £30k was mentioned I decided that was acceptable to me. Any other kind of extension would be difficult - house is link-detached so cannot go out sideways. A loft conversion would be possible (some others in the road have done this) but the height of the roof ridge is very low - and I'm 6'1". Extending out backwards might be possible, but the garden is small and a first floor extension there would definitely annoy the neighbours. I did think of 'filling in' the base of the new extension to make a bigger downstairs hallway, but wouldn't find this space very useful, and it would also block some light and views from the living room window. Also the intention is to match the appearance of my neighbour's extension. Re the course of the sewer - this runs along the front of a group of 4 link-detached houses, then into the road. My neighbour's extension did not have to worry about this, as they are on the end of the row, so the sewer commences at their manhole, it doesn't go under their posts. So looking at the Southern Water website, it looks as though I could apply for "build over" permission myself, and pay the £771.60. I'm not sure if I have all the documents they detail on this page though... will have to go through what I have... also unsure what happens if they refuse permission; is the money lost and I have to get revised plans, with the posts moved, and start again?

"Amtico Premier partner" - oh dear! Concerning. I am planing to have Amtico LVT and thought "Amtico Premier partner" meant an easy life. I wonder if Method Statements exist from Amtico than be can inspected and quoted.

Sorry, my previous post relates to @ProDave's sugg'n of a Bldg Notice. I too remember when you could do major works, or even a new-bld IIRC, on BN.

AI says that Sheffield City Council says: "You can only use this for minor domestic jobs. You must use a Full Plans application instead if your project is near a shared public sewer or affects a commercial building. [1, 2]". Maybe it's the drain.

We (un)subtlety told the surveyor the valuation we needed. He did this on all bar one occasion.

I agree with @torre For such a modest change to the property I could not justify the cost and feel the professional services fee is already disproportionate to the scale of the project. If you still plan to move forward at least build a proper enclosed lobby, new front door, etc instead of just a porch.

Doesn't have much argument if the instructions say to mix and rotate and dry lay. It's good that the instructions do say that, as I don't think they always do. I hate repeated when products mimicking a natural product have obvious repeats. Tilers, vinyl layers, paving slab layers are not necessarily aesthetes. But it's part of their job so well done for hanging on to that boulder.

Honestly. Needed background/sky line of planets etc. Claudes first "demo" was basically like a BBC BASIC attempt. 2d circle and some ellipsoid clouds. Exactly what Chat would do i.e. CHEAP AND CRAP. Getting chat to improve on that is possible but hard work. Had a proper chat with Claude and it did a new "demo ". Took every technical detail in for how to render at low cost but look stunning. It's new demo blew my mind! To be clear these aren't static renders these are cheap to render 3d meshes. Claude's been busy now for 18 minutes as it integrates this into my procedural worlds!

10K is correct. That's what I charge.

@Wadrian . I did it. That's all you need to know for how easy it was. I think from memory and some years ago unit and pipework maybe 3k ish.

seems even manufacturers are going to need to retest or reformulate their products for our planets ever increasing temperatures

18mm OSB painted white? Easy to fix to.