Leaderboard

A polite notice from @BuildHub It was decided that this thread would be locked for a cooling off period as things got a little personal. I have, as a site moderator, edited the content according to site etiquette and forum rules. Anyone who has commented in this very helpful and informative debate can now please check their OWN posts for my editing. You will each find I have marked and identified the edited posts so if there is no marker, it has not been touched. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS ANY MEMBER TO DISPUTE THESE EDITS ON THE OPEN FORUM. Any genuine discrepancies can be corrected immediately. Please contact me directly PRIOR to making any amendments and I will accommodate / facilitate the requests accordingly. This is to ensure any edit / amendment doesn't make the thread non-sensical. Let's keep a good forum great ? "Have a nice day y'all"? @BuildHub

I couldn't understand why someone would want a donkey jacket, then I saw your ( soon to be uploaded ) avatar picture......

This should offer some light relief.

In a nutshell, laymans terms if you will: For final circuits, the ones where you "plug things into", or have fused connection units etc: You can have: An (A1) ring circuit on a 30/32A overcurrent protective device, "opd" run in 2.5mm serving a floor area of 100 square metres max. An (A2) radial again off a 30/32A opd run in 4mm serving a floor area of 75 square metres max. An (A3) radial off a 20A opd run in 2.5mm serving a floor area of 50 square metres max. You need to try and ensure your loads are spread between the legs of the ring btw. All in the On Site Guide to the regs. In the actual regs there's even excellent, pretty pictures showing all these in the Appendices. Sorry, but I'm not about to go scanning pages from my books. Be careful with 4mm radials as some sockets have such small L/N/E terminals you'll struggle to get the wires in. Let's face it some are so dire you won't get 3 x 2.5mm in! And you can go "off piste". You can sometimes for example reutilise an old cooker connection point and come off of that with a ring! Colloquially known as a lolipop circuit. All perfectly legit if you can justify the design. But.....with everything "you" need to consider a multitude of things; the installation method for the cable, the ambient temperature, opd characteristics (Type B, C, D )...grouping list goes on and on. For instance if a cable is covered by thermal insulation for more than 500mm the current carrying capacity of that cable should, as a rule be HALVED. It could mean you need to go up a cable size. This issue often manifests when high current cables such as for showers get insulated over and they basically melt! It's a whole new lot of esoteric terms for most. (Just like when I couldn't figure what a "PIR" had to do with insulation! ) It's why people go to college etc for their respective trades. Of course, get it wrong and...it's the L word!

Shouldn't that really be under their feet?.................................

This conversation illustrates why I employ electricians and build fences.

Yes, and no, but don't use them, Its a catch 22, the only way to use a banjo properly with a plastic enclosure is to fit it outside the box, slide it onto the gland, tighten first nut up to it, fit gland, tighten 2nd nut, but 2nd nut will not stay tight, plastic creep, so you need the first nut to hold banjo tight to gland Piranaha nuts are the answer, saves a load of faffing about.

So are my going out clothes. ?

I'm definitely going to have a go with a pipe cutter tomorrow, just out of curiosity. I'm afraid I probably can't produce a great video, of construction channel standards, but I'll see if I can have a go at making one, as if it works, then it'd be useful to know, as a lot of people probably already have pipe cutters.

Anyone tried a decent pipe cutter? I have sheath strippers, etc, and up till now have always just trimmed the outer sheath back, used a sharpie to measure the cut point on the armour wires, wiggled the inner core around in a cone-like motion to neatly get the armour wires clear, then trimmed around the armour with a pair of sharp, double action, side cutters. Does a very neat and tidy job, but is a bit of a faff. So, looking at that tool, what happens if you ran a pipe cutter around the outer sheath, right where you want the armour wires trimmed, so that it scored the wires, then removed the excess sheath and broke the wires, as in that video. Then use a standard sheath trimmer to trim the sheath back the right distance back from the cut armour and cleanly removed the sheath (and I have to say my adjustable sheath cutter, with its sharp blade does a MUCH neater job of cutting the sheath than that tool does). From then on, it's assemble as normal, ideally with a Pirana nut rather than the banjo and crap nut the glands often come with. I may have a go with a pipe cutter and sharp blade tomorrow on a bit of scrap SWA and see if it scores the wires enough to get them to break cleanly. If it does, I'm going to kicking myself, very hard, for not thinking if this before, all the more so because I have a pretty expensive pipe cutter, that was one of the best investments I made, and if it can do this job as well then it'll be a real bonus. Also, I can't help thinking that a very sharp, hard, pipe cutter wheel may score the armour wires more cleanly than a bit of junior hacksaw blade, although I may be wrong.

People construct their own online Learning Networks, @Ferdinand. And what people learn from any resource is not always what the producer intends. I always bless @Construction Channel : he has no idea how much his vidoes have taught me about building. I have watched almost all of them 3 times - and each time I learn something new. Poor Faye for one thing

I've been enjoying* the recent threads on CU's ecetera. Im really likening the idea of radial circuits. In fact the last few conversions we've done have all had cbus lighting which is entirely radial. So other than the slight negative of adtional wiring (bit it doesn't seem a lot to me) are there any disadvantages? Are there occasions where a good old ring is still better? In short in the perfect world which is better; ring or radial? *Well mostly. Please note as the OP of this thread I polightly request that the word "lethal" is excluded from all replies

Twin turbo is what it stands for here.

Yes I'm aware of the dangers of keeping wood too close to the stove... it does make a huge difference though if you can get the moisture meter to read less than 10%. Suffice to say I would never leave it unattended. The increased efficiency is remarkable... I have sometimes pondered some sort of Heath-Robinson contraption where you suspend a basket of wood above the stove, on a counterweight, and once the water has been baked out of the wood it would swing out of the way. Somehow I don't think I would get it past SWMBO...

You are right. I should just get on with it. I sense a slight shift in my thinking - just keep gentle, polite, consistent pressure on the Council to draw things to a close. A carefully worded letter every few months will do. Ian

Is that stipulation a locally applied bit of legislation? I'm not fighting with my neighbour, I'm cross with the behaviour. Curiously, I also have a grudging admiration for his doggedness. @jamiehamy, you sound like a close relative of mine @MrsRA. That's exactly what she'd say I suspect.

My advice is blunt - let it go. You have a house to build and some sort of planning battle is the last thing you or anyone needs. At the end of the day, look at it from the other side - they want to build a house there. They are probably only doing what any one of us might just do and playing the system. Let's say your build takes far longer than planned - and neighbours down the road started complaining because the place is an eyesore with a half built house on it? Stranger things have happened. You would be at the receiving end of the very same type of complaint. Either way, you say you'd be happy if they build the stables and go, or they get permission and build the house and stay - so it's obviously the caravan part that's annoying you - which is fair enough. But I think you need to pick your battles - and I don't think this is one worth fighting when you have far more important things to be doing. If it was me, the last thing I'd want when I'm building my house is to pick a fight with my neighbours if I could help it. You did ask for a strategy - that would be mine!

Thanks for the words of wisdom re stoves but I think I'm doing fine. My first stove was an Aarow which was OK... when I moved house I shopped around a bit more and ended up getting a Charnwood. Massive improvement, the airwash feeds via tubes in the top of the stove and the preheated air does a far better job of keeping the glass clear. The new house has a Burley stove rated at 89% efficiency. I cannot wait to get it fired up, it has been designed by someone who really understands the principles of how a fire should work (i.e. get it hot, keep it hot, nothing up the chimney except CO2 and H2O, ideally). I also bake all my firewood on a rack above the stove, so it is already hot and dry when I throw it in. Obviously this needs a bit of an eye kept on it, especially when wood has resin pockets in it. The smell lingers...

Something about TT and TS and ground spikes and wires and other stuff that is way over my head.

I have e-cloths but forsee much of my future cleaning fingerprints off that! Glad we used the diamond coat paint on the hall walls as without a banister they were filthy, however it does wipe clean pretty effectively. Maybe I'll hold off selling the caravan and just park the kids in that for a few years...

Freudian slip? Yes, it's nice (I live in west Surrey), but prices are eye-watering. I'd prefer to have lived somewhere cheaper so we didn't have to tie so much money up in a house, but this is where my wife's family live (mine are overseas) and where we ended up with my work a few years ago. I wouldn't move now we're settled, but I do sometimes look at the amount we have "invested" in this house and wonder...

@Gorlando Best to start a new topic in 'house design' so this exchange doesn't get lost . Cheers.

There should be. The problems seem to stem from a change after the final design is agreed on. Take a kitchen extractor and MVHR. The two do not play nicely together, and both involve punching holes in the house. The same is true of a wood burner (not that these are recommended for so many reasons). If these are not agreed on at the very beginning, and space made to fit and maintain them, then some reshuffling can cause problems later. The last thing that you want to happen is that someone drills a hole through the vapour barrier, then decide that the pipe of cable would be better off 150mm to the left or right. It is also worth decide if you want a cold or warm roof at the very beginning.

You definitely need a Section 80 notice for the demolition. The good news is they are free! (Well at least they are from our local authority building control). They will write to your service suppliers (electric etc) to inform them. The one thing that no one has mentioned is "neighbors". Its well worth keeping them in the loop if they are going to be inconvenienced. A nicely worded letter giving them plenty of notice goes a long way.

If I buy a small field,will you try and put planning on it for me?

That isn't cheating that's a good way out. FYI if your ever half inch short , a straight coupler and an M&F 90 into that will gain you the missing length.

In conclusion I learned a few things from this: 1) don't order stairs until your finished floors are complete and walls are plastered - final dims can change from drawings and you don't want to be hacking expensive stairs about to fit. Also check what support your stairs need - if not sure a big wodge of timber in the wall to cover all eventualities is probably not a bad idea. 2) if you're after a certain look that's really important to you, don't compromise. I'm glad we held out and went for the more disruptive option to get the look we wanted. 3) most mistakes can be remedied and often are not as drastic as first though. 4) removing and reinstalling MDF staircases is a great way to stay fit. The three that we have must have been in about out a dozen times each during plastering, painting and this recent malarkey. Considering selling them as a keep fit accessory. Seriously though, what to do with 3 x Jewsons softwood & msg stair cases?