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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.

Some ICF suppliers will provide a design layout, for illustrative purposes only, perhaps that can be had and use that and their own ignorance and on you can get

Can this not be done under a building notice ? Is that still allowed? 30 years ago we built a much larger side extension under a building notice with a very good builder and it was a cost effective way to nearly double the size of the house.

Like these charcoal blocks. Basically as @Russell griffiths says finish slab inline with internal wall

One approach is to look at what the cost/sqm is going to be. Compare with the cost/sqm of similar property on RightMove. Think about long term needs/plan. Yes moving costs and stress are high, and there can be reasons to 'build at a paper loss' if other factors come in. But you should know what your economic justification is.

Are you any good at plastering? If not then I would go for a rolled on finish somewhat like artex or masonary paint.

Good morning . I would like to apply a thin coat of render or plaster to cover up the brick and make nice, unified walls in my garage/ workshop. All I want to achieve here is a reasonably smooth white wall and to make the place brighter, more enjoyable to work. The internet says the cement render should be applied at a minimum thickness of 16+mm in 2 coats. Silicone renders are faff with fibre mesh. At that point, I am leaning towards something like Toupret Joint, Skim & Fill product, which can be applied to anything at any thickness (it would eliminate all the hassle with reinstalling electric sockets etc. Is there any better way of achieving what I am looking for? Is my current idea wrong for some reason? All advice is welcome.

Spot on as usual. There has to be someone on a build that is good with detail and can discuss detail. I mean 'detail' can actually just mean having actually looked at the drawings at all ! When seeing previous work and customers definitely go prepared with list of specific questions and willing to dig down a bit. A quick look around and general chit chat with Mrs Smith isn't going to shed much light. Can they give you an example of an issue that came up and how it got resolved ? Did they have effective review meetings ? Was the actual builder on site - every day - once a week - once a month ? Did people turn up ? Did anything get redone or corrected ? Costs ? Schedule ? If the customer doesn't know then chances are they can't really give any insight into the builders competence. Perhaps the foundations are made of cream cheese - Mrs Smith wouldn't know.

This is going to be very expensive to build to turn a smallish bedroom into a bigger one and add a porch - if you ignore how much you've already spent, are you 100% this is the best way to improve your house and meet your needs? Sunk cost is painful but not a good reason to keep spending more money. I appreciate I'm not in your shoes but I struggle to see this being worth the cost and disruption