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Agreed on the pointing. It looks like a churn-brush finish in the picture — slightly open-textured, with the aggregate exposed, giving it a rougher more traditional looking finish than you’d get from trowel-pointing.

Hi All - I need to tackle the patio behind the extension in the next few weeks and am looking for some advice on how something is usually done. The origin site shows you just paying a paver directly onto the cill which I cannot believe it an okay way to do this. There is supposed to be a weathered threshold between the internal and external floor with about 10mm difference. I am going to come down a bit more than that, say, 15mm to make sure the riddculously oversized doors don't have any clearance issues. What is the right method to bring the slabs right up to the door frame over the cill here please? Not sure if heat related expansion and contraction needs to be considered for the aluminum cill as well. Planning to use large format porcelain pavers. Any advice welcome. Thanks, Paul

We have been given a bit of leeway with one of ours as it is higher than 1100mm from the floor, bco has stated due to the amount of furniture in the room egress through the windows could be gained easily by using a piece of furniture to stand on.

Not a chance it has to be an openable window. i would not fancy your chances smashing triple glazed windows with the outer pain in laminated glass.

As Temp says above: the window needs an opening which is at least 450mm in either direction as well as being at least 0.33m2 in area - so that negates 450mm x 450mm. The dimensions relate to the opening which is why some upvc window hinges do not comply as they do not allow the window to swing fully open. The bottom edge of the opening should not be more than 1100mm off the floor. The idea is to allow someone to climb out of the window, hang from the bottom edge and drop to the ground outside - hence only being allowed for first floor windows.

One of the very few places online that will list Ajax prices and let you buy direct - Ajax Smart Alarms – The CCTV Store For the others, lots of different websites will let you view prices online so I won't paste links - easy enough to google. Best thing to do is sit down with your floorplan and mark out where you want the sensors, PIRs, external and internal sounders, keypad/control panel etc to go. Then sense check with ChatGPT/Claude and ask it to create shopping lists for your chosen products. Works fairly well and will at least give you a baseline for the parts cost when looking at or comparing quotes from installers who will want to charge labour and their profit margin on top.

Are you having a battery also, if so you need a strategy of what you are doing, as big is better to a point. You maybe better over clocking the inverter with loads of panels, so you have max output for longer periods during a day, and get battery charging as well as max exports. Lots of ways to do this even with a G98 limitation.

I’ve heard that some DNOs also want to restrict the size of your array / inverter output etc.

@nod >>> I use Venetian polished plasters Clayworks etc Without wanting to disrupt the thread, I would love to hear more about that finish. Do we need to search for a specialist who knows the material? Are there useful differences between the various options? Would you be willing to start another thread to give us all a basic primer?

We're only just into G99 but my impression from our installer was that the DNO set an export limit rather than just saying no.

If you're putting pea shingle in first, backfilled with the excavated spoil. No need to screen it

Well, half on maintenance of existing bus services, half on upgrading bus stops and stations. So at least we shouldn't lose services, but I can't see services being expanded. It would need a lot more than £10m for a rural county like Cornwall.

The excavated soil from the foul drainage trench is very flinty and I wanted to ask whether I could backfill the trench using said soil if I cover the foul drainage with 100mm of pea shingle or should I get someone in to screen it first. Trying to avoid unnecessary expenditure, but also possible problems in the future.

I have sunsquare rooflights. For standard sizes on their website the cost for walkon seems to very roughly double. The weight also goes up. Whatever the cost impact, I would say think carefully when you are making decisions which will have a very long life and impact maintainability. An extra £8k on rooflights may seem an awful lot, but over 30 years, it is just £266 a year which could easily be exceeded by annual additional cleaning/maintenance costs if you cannot walk on those rooflights. As stated above you are going to need access to clean the outside of those windows (and the rooflights). That means standing on the glass rooflights - anti-slip considerations maybe too. Alternatively some thought to a design where you can temporarily install weight bearing boards over and across the rooflights for cleaning and maintenance.

This is actually a very good idea. Part of the reason I have been reluctant to go down the balustrade route is that I have already created an upstand out of blockwork and had it all waterproofed. In order for it to be robust enough to take the 0.74kn required line load, I was thinking I'd have to rip it all out and cast an rc upstand, which I obviously don't want to do. But I think putting a steel along here could be a relatively cost effective way of getting over it. I'm going to wait for the walk on rooflight cost to come back first before making any decisions but I'm anticipating this being £10-15k, which isn't affordable.

Apply a good few coats of primer / water solution on to it a few days before tiling, to ‘size’ the surface and reduce it’s porosity. Mix up some 75% water 25% primer and give it a good few lashings, a couple of hours apart, and you’ll soon see the board becoming saturated. Apply some neat a day or two before tiling, and then tile on to freshly applied wet, neat primer.

We used it in a few places but didn't tile directly onto it. One thing I'd suggest thinking about his how porous it is. I don't know what adhesive you plan to use, but I'd guess it would suck a lot of water out of, say, flexible cementitious adhesives. All speculation on my part, so please don't rely on it! Yeah, it's so much more challenging to work with than plasterboard. However, once up, it's dead solid, and you can hang just about anything off it.

Oh, one more thing. We installed 15m of frameless ballustrading. Part of it was to go onto a brick wall. SE was having none of it. So we used a length of RSJ that was secured at each end to stop twisting. You might have that option there- length of steel running along the top of your block work, then encase in your roofing material and ballustrade fixings.

I’m tempted to use Spirit Energy’s £150 DNO application. We are going ‘max-PV’ to try and get self-sufficient power into the shoulder seasons. Is there a sense that you need to tread lightly with the DNO and finesse your application to get closest to what you want - or just go for it and see what they say? Our DNO is UKPN, we have single phase supply, and we want oodles of panels to support shoulder seasons use. House is PH-like but not particularly low energy because of the geometry.

Someone mentioned that Ajax are quite expensive, so you could add a line to the prompt above asking for good value options.

Maybe it’s worth re-visiting potential guardrail designs? You have one round the rest of the terrace, would one using the same aesthetics not blend in well? Maybe an hour or two of SE time to ensure the fixings work and satisfy BC? You might need that anyway for the rest of the rail.

ChatGPT being a right shit yesterday! (expletive deleted)ed the project with wank patches as it “ improvised “ even though I gave it real code. After a good talking to it admitted codex does better patches than it . So back to my menu loop system .

We are in a bungalow and have an internal corridor, we have two small roof lights only and it's surprising how much light the bring in. Other ideas, at the leading edge of the roof windows build up a wall and place the roof in windows higher, so they are at window cil level. Get natural protection. Same window just install higher. Question - Realistically will you ever use that space, when and how. For me and our household we never would. I would really look at the reasons for even doing this, not cheap, not easy, maybe never used space.

@raja22835 drop me a message, I may be able assist.

That's a better use of your money, looks like you have a huge garden, so may make more sense. We had a basement in one of hire properties, a pain in the arse is how describe basements. But depends where the water table is etc. On one occasion the sump pump failed, and it filled with water - fun - not. But be careful with sizing so you overheat the place. Yes to all the above