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Great post, well done. The article is well worth a read. Our political system needs an overhaul. Also our attitude to immigration needs to change rapidly and recognise that we are in serious danger of losing our British culture. One big threat is the intolerance of Islam. We live on a small island, we have nowhere else to go.

I thought the description “Anywhere Houses” was quite an appropriate description for many new-build housing estates. (see extract and link to Telegraph book review below). 'Where We Live' a new book by Jonathan Glancey is a survey of the decline in British housing: lost successes, noble failures, utter disasters. Above all, his wrath is directed, and deservedly so, towards “Anywhere Houses”. Dispensed from above, these featureless new-build estates turn Somewhere into Anywhere. Their “cul-de-sac roads [are] named after brutally built-over fields, orchards and meadows”. They have no centre in the form of churches, shops, pubs, schools, monuments, social centres or libraries – and thus no character or purpose. They’re bereft of context: landscape, local culture, even building materials. They stand in opposition to traditional towns, which are “endlessly fascinating” places of sanctuary and variety, where “a fish market might just jostle fin-by-gill alongside a beeswax-scented medieval church, itself sited next to [a] fashionable art gallery”. Where We Live is a commendably heartfelt book. Yes, Glancey writes, things are bad, and they may have been thus for a while – but this isn’t a defeatist lament, because defeatism isn’t a responsible option. Beauty and utility are worth fighting for. We need to challenge the parallel failures of government and industry, banish the narrow fixation on costs and consultancies, and get back to some existential first principles: democracy, autonomy, decency, meaning." The full book review:- https://archive.ph/vv7xF

Yep the engine sump, rotted from out to in, went in the lower corner that I fixed with plastic metal, but it was rough in several places. When I contacted Parks, he mentioned that this was a major area of concern, and suggested that it was replaced before inspection, as they would.more than likely fail it anyway if there was any sign of leaks. The clutch was ready for replacement, glow plugs intermittently errored, and timing belt was due, so I took out the engine replaced what was needed, cleaned up some rust in the engine bay and sent it for inspection.

Nice idea, I've looked at your link, but it's a pile of mince. The facts are. Building Control and Planning are two council departments that can actually make a profit. But any profit they make gets hived off to pay for other services, it does not get reinvested. If it was it would solve a lot of the structural problems we have. Planning and BC have a major recruitment problem. Because of this graduates can see that there is no real route to promotion, for talented folk its not a career option. Your idea is just tying to polish a turd. We need to first make the job attractive, no amount of digital stuff is going to solve the fundamental problem. I can tell you this as I deal with Planners and BC in my day job. If you want to make you idea a success then you need to address the fundamental issue I've just pointed out.

https://youtu.be/lsOVb0BipAw?is=E_-NANuc_YEXu2A3

Forget Smith for now, you have missives to complete, a house to design, build and if you set it up and plan well, lots of enjoyment ahead. The legal technicalities and caveats are likely your next challenge. It's dry stuff but if done well it will set you up for the build. In the round you persevered and encouraged the seller to the table, a great achievement. They probably feel good also, what's not to like?

Contrasting opinions there, but as long as it doesn't dry out the trap I'll go for it.

No, house will be wet underfloor. It won't be cheap but as we are currently in rental we will be saving enough not to worry about that. Also, given that we have a lot of insulation in the Pod I'm hoping that it will not require too much heating!

So are you planning electric UFH in the house? Sounds expensive to run.

Had a tiler come and look at a job today. We have a 22 sq.m. pod that we are building to live in whilst we build the house. The Pod is a test bed for the house build and so the tiles we are using are 1200 x 1200 x 20 limestone as planned for the house. We had planned to tile the Pod ourselves but when the tiles arrived the other day this option rapidly disappeared when we realised how heavy they are. We are planning to use an electrical UFH mat and the tiler seemed to think that this should have a screed over before tiling! I have installed an electric UFH mat in our previous house (under slate tiles) and didn't take this approach then simply sticking the mat down and tiling over. Any views on whether this screeding idea makes sense, is the normal way to do it or are they simply making more work than is necessary? Thanks

Have you bought a heat pump cylinder, or a regular cylinder?

Hi @Nickfromwales and all, I get that you want me to fill the cavity with concrete. But have some concerns that mean I don't really want to do that. The DPC is above the bottom of the door cill and has been stepped down to run under the door cill. Note the door is only a single door so the reveal is 890mm wide only). So the cavity wall below the floor level is below the DPC. It has grey jablite type insulation in it. I was able to pull one piece out to have a look and found there was some moisture at the bottom of the cavity there when we had very wet weather. Clearly some moisture from the ground/hardcore outside the door can work it's way through the outer leaf to the bottom of the cavity when it rains a lot. The jablite was used at that level rather than PIR because it can cope with any moisture better. So I don't want to remove the inner celcon leaf (which would be complicated now the rest of the floor is in now anyway) because it would remove the cavity 'protection' from damp, and the jablite insulation. The inner leaf is also thermal blocks and provides a point of support for closing the cavity with a board over. The cavity is also probably 450mm deep there so would be quite a bit to fill with concrete and have dry. The fundamental problem is the lack of any support on the outer leaf side of the cavity, and the fact this is difficult or impossible to access with power tools because there is only the 100mm cavity to fit any tool into. Therefore my proposed approach of bonding a support piece to the outer leaf, which also has to be insulative. To deal with the stilhetto issue I am now thinking I could put 6mm No More Ply cement board over the 20mm XPS backer board to provide more rigidity and spread any point loads. (Not sure on the best thing for bonding the two together ? No more ply adhesive ? flexible tile adhesive ?). Then the. cementitious floor leveller should go on the top of the cement board quite happily. New diagram attached. On my test piece I bonded the XPS support strip to the concrete outer leaf with Rawlplug bonded anchor R-KEM 2. Chat GPT is suggesting there might be better alternatives to use for bonding XPS to concrete - thoughts. The biggest risk would seem to be this support debonding down the line. (I have some metal angle brackets but there is no way to screw them into the outer blocks.) More thoughts comments please as I need to close this out nowish.

If your anywhere near there on a new build, something is well wrong. UFH the parts are cheap enough. Your heat pump doesn't need to cost much either, mine was £2100 including VAT, you can claim the VAT back on new build. I would do a direct cylinder and just do cheap rate water heating, a cylinder is about £500. Then it's a matter of sourcing the fan coils. One in each bedroom. If you want to run fan coils at low temp for cooling you need condensation drains on fan coils and an electronic mixer, other option (the sensible one) run it at same temp. Your most expensive bit is the fan coils. If that's the fall back, why are you being anal about cooling - be pragmatic install A2W simply as above and actually have cooling. (Don't bother getting ripped off by a grant scheme)

blockwork looks much better this time!

I think i'd be digging out the pea gravel, bedding and surrounding these in lean mix concrete. Possibly a 25mm bit of eps where the pipe joint is to allow some movement. You don't really want the ground at the edge of you slab settling.

I do it on almost every job. Doesn’t dry the trap out, that’s a wife's tale, as you’d only do 2/3 of the dead end of the tray anyways; when you turn the shower on the hot water almost instantly warms the remaining 1/3, and the UTH is a 1/3 of the tray away from the trap. ”Do it”. 🫡🙂

Do you need a condensate drain in the wall for these air cons and fan coils presumably?

Traditional dab is fine. Lots of smaller ones, vs a few bigguns

Im Midlands so hopefully a bit more reasonable. If we exclude the price of UFH and manifold from the equation. I imagine I will have this whatever method of heating I choose. Also I will partially DIY this with either a plumber to connect up the manifold or both of us for the day to do the lot. Likewise can probably exclude the cost of cylinder as again will be fitted no matter what. So if the rest is 15k and can get the 7.5k grant then I suppose it's not too bad. If it starts getting up to 20k upwards or 15k and no grant then i would seriously be looking at a gas boiler (if SAP allows). Boiler installation, exc UFH and cylinder would easily come in below 5k supply and fit. Ideal world i'd like something like the Samsung option but like others I suspect it's pricey. I had a look at fan coils tonight online and the Daikin wall mounted ones look just like the aircon units. Are they just not as effective if powered by A2W instead of A2A? So if we say I was happy to spend 5k (guesstimate) on a couple of aircon units and a traditional boiler system would be 5K (all excluding UFH and Cylinder) then 10k is my baseline. If I am getting 7.5k grant back then I can look at spending around 17.5k on a system and still be happy. That's my man maths anyway.

Maybe so called under tile heating with electric elements just for the 10 mins you're in the shower might be an option.

I think it's a good idea. More comfortable, dries the tray (slightly) faster. The UFH pipes will only be at 20 something degrees so I doubt they'll have enough punch to dry out the trap.

Yes. You can put some polystyrene round to protect it a bit if you want. I remember digging a foundation by hand years ago, and coming across the storm water drain, then the foul drain below it. Both were encased in concrete. I had surround these with polystyrene, then reinforcing rods before the foundations for an extension were built. I was a teenager at the time, and my reward was a new stereo 😀 You'd think I would have learnt my lesson before building a whole house nearly 50 years later

Tile adhesive or traditional plasterboard adhesive? The wall is brick with cavity.

As an update, we finally bought a Kress 4X4 version and it's a cracking bit of kit. Can climb up slopes that I slip on. The only problem is the software doesn't allow it to drive up a 1.5m high brick walled walkway which is only slightly wider than the mower. Hopefully there will be a software update soon.