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I hope you’ve got the drawbridge working? 🤔😆.

Who is principal contractor? It’s their role to do due diligence and help you reach out for costs, with tenders.

It should enter into a junction box, fixed to the back of the cabinet. From there it can be either trunking or conduit, trunking prob easiest here. Basically you shouldn’t be able to see the brown or blue cables at all as they’re not PVC/PVC.

Extension, but been empty for some years…

That's the only one of three that made decent progress, and that's still probably the case 3 years on tbh. I did make an early mistake of using garden soil for some planting, so maybe a nutrient overdose.

A lot depends on how you plan to get the work done. If you want a single contractor to do everything (or everything up to a defined point - e.g. leaving you decorating), then having a good local QS on board to run a tender (and to oversee the ongoing contract financially) is often a good move. If you plan to split the work into different elements that you (or your site manager) will be coordinating, then you may well be dealing with smaller contractors who may not be used to pricing work that way. See my comments here (and the thread in general) for more.

We have planning for a self build w formative budget 520k, hopefully events in Middle East won’t derail this beyond recognition. QS (who is local) is asking for approx 10k incl vat to go through detailed design, tender analysis and contract review. Architect suggests she can populate formative cost document to get to tender thus saving this 10k. Is skipping QS at this stage likely to save money or lose money later? thank you for your wisdom!

Another one here. Three bedrooms have openers. Only opened for window cleaning (tilt & turn). Two bathrooms. No windows, only large (non-opening) rooflights. All fine.

assume not new build zero vat then

China is reducing imports. Their goal is energy security through independence. Being reliant on coal and imported coal at that, is counter to that aim. So they are increacing local production whilst reducing reliance on coal as a %of their mix. Given the size of China it's going to take a while but they are driving in the right direction. So is the UK to be fair.

It's not that it isn't secure. It's that there isn't enough of it (besides all the other issues). Again, if we use coal to become energy independent we still have to electrify the economy (ev's heatpumps etc) and we have to rebuild lots of coal mines and coal plants. And then work out what to do 25 years later when the coal runs out

A good few years ago Microsoft was running an underwater study for exactly this reason - don't know where it got to but with the size of some of these centres, it would be a bit of a task to make them water proof. I think the tests they ran used units the size of shipping container. However, the massive scaling approach by AI is just one silly choice - it's the whose is bigger the better thing. It is actually possible to run very fast and efficient AI on extremely small installations, which maybe at some point they'll realise it makes more sense and costs less money.

Like all their arguments it's simplistic in the extreme and designed to appeal to people who can't or don't understand nuance or complication. The UK deficit is over 70bn The total number of illegal arrivals is less than 50k. So unless each one is costing us £1.4million it's not the answer.

Australia has 160 billion tons of thereabouts of proven coal reserves. Reckon the Chinese will be running coal fired stations for a good while yet.

Nordan now do supply & fit, at least the Cardiff branch does. That’s crucial for us because of the reduced risk, but also because we can get 5% vat on supply & fit as opposed to 20% on supply only. I might be wrong, but I think Westcoast is the manufacturer and Rawington’s windows are from Guttman?

China gets a lot of coal from Australia. About 85 million tonnes. Which, fascinatingly has increased by 50% since 2023. Did they know something.

I was a professional estimator for many years. It took 10 minutes to have a feel for the cost, perhaps +/- 20%. An hour to be within 10% of OUR company estimate. Then a week for a commercial estimate. Other contractors were doing the same in competition. An online service can only do version 2 at best. Then your real life quotes vary according to their skills and efficiencies. But they are all pricing the same project you have shown them. Real value comes in discussing alternatives with the builder you like. Turn this round, miss that out, change the roof construction and so on. I'm not saying you can or should reduce the cost dramatically every time. What do you have at present? Architects' concept or detailed design? Maybe it's a costly design

It's almost as if they're suggesting a lot of public funding issues are caused by uncontrolled immigration and the costs entailed supporting/dealing with it. Weird eh?

Sorry my reply wasn't aimed at you it was to the people who were telling me coal isn't secure.

They will fix the energy security issue by stopping the small boats. They will fix the potholes in the roads by stopping the small boats. They will fix the cost of living crisis by stopping the small boats They will fix the NHS by stopping the small boats They will lower taxes by stopping the small boats They will ensure England win the world Cup by stopping the small boats. They will get rid of the itchy burning sensation between you toes by stopping the small boats. They will fix your leaky roof by stopping the small boats.

Nordan was on our shortlist - very helpful/professional and product looks to be decent. But didn't use in end for 2 reasons - 1. we decided increased risk of splitting supply and install contracts wasn't worth the saving. if you are installing yourself different scenario of course. 2. wouldn't offer increased depth/height of bottom rail/sill we needed due to flat timber frame reveals and being set back. Without raising at base extended sill ends up without adequate fall, if at all. Installer offer to do in ply/similar if we ordered windows undersize but didn't tick the box for me. We used Viking products from Nordica supplied and installed to passivhaus standards including extended sills with upstands to edges and increased sill in factory. Brilliant job / happy with products/people. Air test ended up at 0.45. I don't know other names but always worth checking actual manufacturer/product being proposed as white labelling/rebranding not unusual.

China still has a big infrastructure for coal as it was a huge operator and coal is still used. There is a huge amount of inertia in the planning and commissioning system.

This is a good example of why we need a bit of nuance in the debate. You can quite truthfully say that China are building a large number of new coal power stations every year. And if it suits your agenda, that's the end of the sentence. The bigger picture is that these plants are in part replacing older, less efficient ones, and are acting as backup to an increasingly renewables dependent grid. So that China's emissions are actually falling. Good luck finding that level of analysis in the Daily Mail or GB News.

There is no need to be patronising - have I spoken to you that way? I and a few others may just possibly have thought ahout this issue once or twice. Soon all the fossil fuels have to go, or we wipe outselves out. There's a famous quote similar to "Humans would be the first species to choose to make itself extinct because it wasn't cost effective to bother doing the right thing." The sooner we stop dragging heels and at most use fossils ONLY as an emergency backstop the better. Carping and delaying makes everything worse for everyone.

China is building new coal, but not much and as some is replacing old coal the total growth in thermal capacity is very modest. About 60Gw (out of nearly 3,500 Gw total) against 90Gw of wind and +300Gw of solar. As you can see even though energy production is rising the share by fossil fuels is falling. For all the people who say "why shoukd the UK do anything, China is the important one" - China is doing something. They installed more wind capacity in one year that the entire UK grid (some 45Gw is, depending) and more than 4x in solar. LNG imports were falling (luckily for them) and oil was falling though it did rise slightly last year, mostly due to refilling stockpiles (wouldn't that have been a good idea). I believe actual use of liquid fuels fell.