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Morning I’m in Cirencester first question. Why electric showers. would be my last choice, unvented cylinder and nice thermostatic mixer shower will provide good shower pressure and loads of hot water.

I am getting very frustrated with the Scholmore metal dry lining back boxes. They look great in the blurb but I have either got a bad batch or something is fundamentally wrong with the design. They are difficult to fit as the spring mechanism that holds lugs is almost always dysfunctional, slides out of its guide at the bottom & tilts over so takes a lot of fiddling to get it to grip and fitting the face plate involves even more fiddling. Maybe I am missing something but I cannot see what. So I am looking for alternative solutions to fire protection in drywall back boxes. I have found these inserts: From Astroflame which look can work with both plastic and metal back boxes so I can use the standard plastic back boxes and fit these things although, to be honest, they also look a bit clunky - does anyone have an experience of these inserts or perhaps a better solution all round to the problem.

Thanks Nick (big fan of Wales here). Neither AONB or listed but we are in the Severn Estuary SAC. I think that's mainly concerned with new build but IANAL. Please keep asking, I'm not sure what's helpful. My usual tendency is to provide too much info but feeling my way here so that's helpful. I've returned to looking at MVAC with Solar + battery, so interested to hear good and bad experiences with those in old buildings. We have some 40cm walls (mostly internal), 12cm ceiling spaces, and only one loft space that could house the central unit, but I'm wondering if a small diameter high velocity air duct system is feasible, maybe supplemented with Solo internal units (eg Panasonic Solo RAC). I don't like split AC because it is so out of keeping with the character we want to keep (beams, old floors, doors, dodgy staircases and stone walls). Current plan is: - garden room extension to living room - replaster throughout (Diathonite) - replace ceilings - rewiring + home automation - damp course - dig out and insulate concrete floors - restore Inglenook, solid fuel stove - double glazing - hot water taps + electric showers (no tank or hot water plumbing) - heating tbd. No mains gas so it's heat pump or oil and we hope former is feasible. There are other things of course but that's the core. Any suggestions to look at that help us keep things old and quirky appreciated. We have old wooden internal doors covered with lead paint we wish to keep for example. I'm technical (physics and computer) but have no experience of builds although my dad was in the trade (stories there!). My wife is the aestheticist, and doing the heavy lifting while I do research and spreadsheets, which is weird [laughing]. We need more emojis here btw.

£10k “grants” handed out like sweets. Ffs.

That would be sensible, ergo “not going to happen any time soon”….. 🤦‍♂️

Hi, and welcome Are you in a conservation area, or area of outstanding natural beauty? Listed? We thrive on info here, so get the fingers tapping on the keyboard and then ideas and info can be forthcoming! 🙂

We're first timers in our sixties, renovating a 200 year old Gloucestershire property as our last home. It's very basic (no central heating, damp) with a stone centre, brick semi-added pre 1860 and s 20th C. extension at each end. Removing the plaster and some ceiling my wife has revealed questionable [cough] building techniques which explain some of the cracks and a patched up Inglenook which we plan to restore. Early days but we have a builder and architect for a garden room style extension. We have lots of ideas and plenty of time, but of course not enough money :-) If you've done anything like this by all means tell us we're barmy, it just say hi. Met a couple this morning and got chatting about this, and they recommended this forum highly. I'm learning so much useful stuff from others offline and online. For others I can recommend Mastodon (a non commercial social network - no ads or algorithm getting in the way). Posting questions there has been a great help.

Lift the 5a one as much as possible, then same for the socket to see if you can hide this. Plasterer was shite, decorator equally as guilty. Just unbelievable that this incredibly low standard of work could have escaped the 80’s and still be so prevalent today in 2026. I bet neither of those two tossers houses look like this. Utterly embarrassingly low standards from these people. The ‘fix’ is to remove the outlets, PVA the openings, apply EasiFill and allow to dry fully, then sand and paint, then, repeat if necessary, and paint. If you have a PM then send the bill to them.

FYI there are v few oak frame builds on Buildhub. We have one (not an off-the-shelf design) from Carpenter Oak which we’re really pleased with. Oakwrights are another big player, also Welsh Oak I think. I don’t think there much saving on off-the-shelf vs. custom btw except for a bit of architect’s fees.

Yeah, they didn’t bother to check Companies House when making Covid loans.

Solicitors are a whole new playing field. £500 for a local firm to write a simple letter seems to be par. in principle, quotes for work like this are based on no of hours expected x (outrageous) hourly rate. Things that bump the rate significantly are (a) specialist work that not many lawyers understand and therefore can do, (b) critical advice on high ticket items, (c) practice brand name recognition. An easy ask is ‘what’s the process’ and ‘how many hours do you think it would take’ (+ ‘what’s your billing rate’). They will be very open about their billing rate. Also, what skills they have. It’s unusual to just get a fixed number unless that’s what you asked for or the work is so standard (e.g. conveyancing) everyone knows how long it usually takes. Maybe the £9.5K number means ‘we’ve never done this before and we’re not particularly interested in finding out how unless you make us a stupid offer’.

Not me. I would spec it on external render though.

Ah joined up government! You'd have thought they would be plugged in to the land registry and could see if you are the registered owner there before writing that email. Costs everyone more time to deal with the email and response.

Jeepers, that's a lot of invoices! We finally got an initial response from HMRC just over a month after the initial submission: "You are not named on the planning permission. Please provide evidence such as your Building Agreement, Purchase Contract, handover documents, land transfer documentation etc; to show when you acquired the Property/Land." This is because our planning consultant was sent the planning approval. Anyway, we've now uploaded several further docs to show we own the plot, we're the actual planning applicant etc. So we wait another month, I guess...

For future reference, these are a fantastic way of getting around bad edges. Several on the market, but these 'skim over' ones are loved by the plasterers I've fitted them with. As they can just go straight over. They even make downlighters ones

Do people really mesh internally? Id be interested to know if blockwork or plaster cracked. Can you hack some off below skirting line?

The thing with thermal bridge calculations is a high psi just tells you that the bridge is much worse than the surrounding structure at keeping the heat in. This means that if your house is otherwise very well insulated then you will get a higher psi. If you decide to mitigate your thermal bridge by increasing insualtion adjacent to it, you increase the psi - counterintuitive. A high psi is (imo) not an issue provided that the building taken as a whole is sufficiently insulated and your thermal bridges are good enough to prevent condensation and mould, so the lowest internal temperature at the bridge is more illuminating.

Forgot about this on my doorstep. 3MW electric and some thermal. I think they are selling on the back of lithium extraction. https://gel.energy/about/united-downs/ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cewzg77k721o

As suggested by @ADLIan and @IanR, it is probably the thermal bridge calculations that are the issue. You are far better off using existing calcs than having custom ones. The default psi values are unbelievably negative and these are probably the ones that were used.

If you haven't decorated yet and it's something you plan to sub out then I expect many decorators will be used to doing this work and it might not be a huge deal just to get them to do the filling.

Bed joint reinforcement (the train track stuff) above and below the openings may have helped. I have only specified it on rendered walls or brickwork feature panels like stack bond. Mesh in the render also helps. You best option now is filler.

This is down to detail. Is this "plaster on the hard" or plasterboard? If plaster to brick or block the back boxes need to be well fitted and deep enough to reach almost the finished level of the plaster. If too deep the spread has to do his best forming an edge in free space. One of the reasons I hate plaster direct to brick or block. If you don't want surrounds as suggested above, you need to build up the gaps and form a corner with a good quality ready mixed plaster.

To add, one of the great potential use cases of a technology like this is if it works you could go to the site of an old coal/gas power plant. Drill a deep hole and then start using the heat to drive the existing turbines using the existing power lines. It has potential to be an excellent solution to base load. Again not something to wait for, but if it materialises in say 5 years as viable, then it could seriously reduce time to net zero for planet earth if it can be rolled out at scale.

My parents would probably have used plastic surrounds (used to be common to stop grubby fingerprints on walls/expensive wallpaper) First hit (not recommending) https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/390878577772 Having said that, I think our standards have moved on and you probably want to unscrew the sockets, fill and paint. But that's a lot more work.

100% The worry with something like this is that the sceptics see this and start using it as a reason to not spend money now on existing solutions.