Leaderboard

A big telly in 78 would have been 14"

Perhaps a fair description would be "allowing people passively to mug themselves" !

I have slowly stopped using cloud services. The only thing I found them useful for was sharing large file anyway. It is worth remembering that you can use a 'zipping' application that supports encryption and only upload those files. Can save a bit of space too.

Welcome. Is this something covered by Spons? I have always found the Wickes How To Guides useful in specific topic areas: http://www.wickes.co.uk/how-to-guides I suspect we need a Checklist of Reference Sources. You can find our existing checklists via the Tag: http://forum.buildhub.org.uk/ipb/tags/checklist/ I have never used one, but there are cost-estimating services out there. that some have found useful. You could probably also benefit from our thread of savings ideas: Ferdinand

Listen, Ferdinand, the eight fingers I have left are working hard enough, what's the odd missing consonant among fiends?

See How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking for a salutary case of where this can all go dreadfully wrong. Use cloud services by all means, but I strongly recommend that you keep a local copy of everything on your laptop or PC and back this up to a physical HDD. preferably LAN/ Wifi attached in some out of the way cupboard / garage. That way you guard against loosing everything in the case of theft, fire or a single device failure.

I think something microfibre based would be better than a duster and in this instance something like a microfibre noodle cleaning mitt would be a cost effective solution. Whether you use a stick, a piece of string or even put something in it to make it a pig. for those who don't clean cars and have no idea what I'm on about

Thinking about it, I can't see why a bit of cloth like a duster, with a cord tied around the middle, just like you'd do with an old school pull-through cleaning and oiling cloth, shouldn't work just as well on the small bore ducting systems.

Yes, although i do have to get a couple of things clarified. Will post when I have done that (on the to do list for this week).

This is the only photo I can find quickly (from an ebay ad for duct pigs), but it gives an idea of how the things work:

The standard way to do it is to blow or pull a pig down each duct, either directly with compressed air, or indirectly by blowing a very light pull cord through and then pull the pig through. A web search will show all manner of foam and furry pigs for cleaning out ducts, and companies that will come and do it for you; search on pig or pigging and duct cleaning. I did think about leaving a thin cord inside every duct, so that it'd be easy to just tie a pig on, with a trailing cord to pull it back, and pull it through every few years. When I realised how easy it was to blow a bit of light cord down a duct with compressed air I decided not to bother, and only do it when I needed too.

Time and time again throughout our build a remark made by an army chap that worked for me years ago comes to mind, "Time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted". I also became absolutely convinced that very few companies treated self-builders seriously, especially on the civil engineering side (and we had a LOT of that on our site). As an example, I'd done a fair bit of research on gravity retaining walls, how they worked, how to calculate the various loads acting on them, etc, as originally I was thinking of building either a gabion or Permacrib retaining wall. In the end, the wishes of the neighbour to have stone boundary wall on top ruled those systems out, so I had to get a structural engineer to design a vertical concrete retaining wall. In fact I did the design first, to see what the cost would be, before going out to both retaining wall specialists and a few local structural engineers for quotes (I already had a full hydrogeological report detailing the strata beneath the site). Quotes from SEs ranged from around £360 from a local chap, for a design, calculations, drawings, steel spec, etc (backed by his professional indemnity cover) to £1200 for an "initial sketch design, plus site visits at £250 each, as required, plus additional fees for steel specifications and working drawings" from another local firm. Needless to say I rang the cheapest chap, he seemed a very competent and helpful bloke, said he knew the site well, as he'd already done some preliminary designs for a motor home secure parking area on there (for the previous owner). He got the job, and produced a nice set of hand drawn sections, specifications, calculations and a steel specification table (clearly "old school", as he didn't even use email.........). Out of politeness I emailed all those who'd quoted but not won the job to tell them. The most expensive firm, emailed me a questionaire, asking if I'd fill it in for feedback as to why they'd lost the job. I did this, fairly and honestly, with the exception that they asked for the names and prices of the other quotes. I thought it unethical to give names, but did agree to give approximate prices. First I got a fairly rude phone call from a lady in their office saying that the other companies were all going to do a poor job (the second most expensive quote was around £700, IIRC) and then a day later I had one of the partners in the firm ring me, again telling me that I was taking a significant risk by not using them. At this point I told him that I had double checked all the calculations, using the method in BS8002, BS5628 and Eurocode 7 and found them to be correct, so what was his problem? He immediately changed tack and said "Why didn't you tell us that you had already done the engineering calculations?", from which I assumed that he originally thought I was a self-builder numptie that could be hoodwinked into paying three times the price.....................

I have rainwater harvesting for flushing WCs and garden watering/washing patio, paths and car. no filters, underground tank, (very like a septic) pump to loft cistern, to WC cisterns. perfect tiny ammount of fine silt in WC cisterns, nd more in loft store, lots in the underground one, I have trapped gullies on the rain pipes but some leaves do get in. after two months of operation the water was smelly and I was advised to add a cup of cider vinegar it cured the problem. i love using rain water for cleaning the windows.

Alas no, I ran out of timber as I used the last length to beat my ecologist and the jumped up kn*b head from Natural England into a pulp.

As Natural England rejected our application to re-home the bats today I thought I'd update this thread by swearing and throwing a tantrum Oh alright then. How about a picture of the doors that I made at the weekend. Two sets (sorry only one set photographed), one set for the workshop and one for the store. Of course they're massively over engineered (when will I ever learn!). I didn't want flimsy tongue and groove boarding so instead machined up my own boards using 25mm stock and then bonded them together with a large number of biscuits! All the frames are loose tenon jointed. Everything glued, pinned and screwed for good measure. Seems a shame to paint them black but that's what the planners demand. All I need to do now is re-enforce the door frames to take the weight :D.

I see this then think of the time, money & effort I've wasted rebuilding a poxy 10'x8' shed that I got for free trying to make it into something it'll never be! No plan or forethought really, too small, in the wrong position in the garden & just made it up as I went along. Have ended up with something far too small with various issues. My only defence is that when I started it I hadn't discovered eBuild! But threads like this are a great incentive to get it right next time. I do think though it needs one of these stencilled on the gable end: Where btw do they get in?

For those that don't know, when we conceived this forum I made some comments about summat and Ian replied "if I wanted to hear a sparrow fart", and then he hacked my profile and applied this 'artwork'. Git