Leaderboard

As for the building regs bit remember the enforceable bit is: M1. Reasonable provision shall be made for people to: (a) gain access to; and (b) use the building and its facilities. Section 8 (accessible switches and sockets outlets in the dwellings) is all advisory (should) so at your discretion, as long as you provide some at the appropriate height you can argue with any inspector reminding him that the only legally enforceable bit (the statute) say that reasonable provision shall be made!

When you park your car, do you have to make sure all the tyre brands are the same way up and the wheel centres/logo in the same orientation?

The Screwheads all lining up was an old British Rail thing on old trains with wooden interiors.

Oh, yea of little faith

I am doing all of the interior woodwork on our house, and I've invested maybe £500 in basic tools: a new chop saw, table saw, router, planer / thicknesser, multitool and a refresh of squares, rules, etc.. All budget items from Titan or Erbauer ranges from Screwfix. OK, if I was a professional making my living from this, then the equivalent might have been 4-5× this price, but for what am I doing this stuff is 90% as good as the best and 400% better than what I had. For example, my new Erbauer chopsaw was half the cost of my old worn-out one that was 15 years-old and is just SO much better. £500 pays for a couple of days chippie time and this kit has saved me far more than that. Moral: if you are going to do a job yourself then you need to be properly tooled up to do it. OK, spend £100 on the Chinese or east European tool that might have a few flaws and wear out in a couple of years rather than the £400 trade best-in-class equivalent, but you'll probably be using it on only one house, so what the heck. Don't try to do without the tools that you need to do the job. It's false economy.

I knew you'd bite before me

From my recent short holiday on the Isle of Mull A young Sea Eagle: Fingals cave on Staffa Puffins on Lunga (Treshnish Isles)

The regulations on switch and socket heights are for "general purpose" accessories. You can have a dedicated socket for a special function at any height, e.g one high up for a wall mounted tv or projector. So if there is any question, stick a label on the floor socket "table lamp only" and it's no longer a general purpose socket. Or just put a rug over it when the BC inspector comes to look.

We were in this position two years ago, as the person who renovated had run out of the possibility of recovering his investment, and left the conservatory unbuilt with a ufh pipe termination. For some reason it proved impossible to connect, and I can't remember why. Will try and check later. In practice we deliberately went for higher spec options in the conservatory (eg top grade DG), and the supplier included 100mm of celotex rather than 50mm in the walls and floor at no extra charge, and we went with one side wall having clerestory windows. We installed an underfloor electrical system from Screwfix just in case, but have hardly ever used it, and find that opening the double doors from the kitchen or lounge is more than acceptable. We have only ever used it to heat the downstairs while the boiler was broken. Our conservatory is roughly 4mx4m and North facing. So perhaps planning for a carefully specced conservatory instead may "Occam" your problem, though buyers will probably want a comforter. If you go ufh give some thought to future supply of fittings. Ferdinand

There isn't enough heat from a pair of 15mm pipes to heat the air gap under a cupboard - you need much more than that. You can insulate the pipes but it becomes counter productive as they wont benefit from the warmth of the slab when they are in use. Can you identify where a potential secondary manifold may go and run pipes to that point ..? That may help you better then you can run the outer room off a different controller potentially