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Right, had a chance to take some photos, unfortunately in the rain, so not the best. First off, this is the side of the house, where I have two "10 W" LED floodlights running from a solar-charged 7Ah sealed lead acid battery in the box on the wall: I have one light over the back door and the other pointing more or less at the wheelie bin storage area, The battery box is a bit big and bulky, and I may change it later to a lithium battery, like the one I've more recently fitted at the front, as that seems a bit less conspicuous. This is what the lights look like when on. They point downwards and really just light the path and that junk-filled area at the front right which is where the wheelie bins will go (when the Council get around to sending them............). The spread of light is pretty even, with no real dark spot between the two lights at all at ground level. This is the newer lithium battery powered system at the front of the house, it has the same solar panel as the one at the side, but uses a very much more compact battery, so is less intrusive looking. You can just about make out the LED strip stuck on inside the drip rail groove, on the stacking cill above the front door. And this is what the front lights look like when on, they light up the area aroudn the front door steps well. There is some light coming from the 240V PIR switched "10 W" floodlight I have fitted above my electric car charge point, that lights the path from the end of the drive to the path at the side to the back door, lit by the first set of lights. I could use a 240V LED here as I already had power to the charge point. Hope these give an idea of the sort of light output these things put out.

Peter, the JTM site seems a great find. Much appreciated. The stuff was ordered last night, and has already been despatched. One other observation re the pressure testing. One issue with using an air based meter behind a double check valve is that you can't really use this to check for slow leaks, so I've splashed another £8 for a wet gauge and connector, so that I can crank the test run to 6 bar, say, and isolate it. If the pressure drops on the wet side, then I've got a leak somewhere . We hummed and harred about even bothering to check all runs before we put the appliances on, but as I said to Jan: it's going to be months before we do some of the wetrooms, so it's better to know now that we haven't got any pipe breaches during boarding out before we start decorating. PS. This thread is a somewhat dynamic and evolving story. I wonder if it will ever compete with @Onoff's Bath Surround / Boxing In, and concealed pipework? I will have to roll up a summary for normal mortals when we're done in a blog post

If you have a good view make the most of it, you can use blinds for when you use the bathroom and it does make it alot lighter not having obscure glazing, this is our bathrrom

Hello all - I'm Clare. This forum looks like a very interesting place, so I'm very glad to be here. I'm looking forward to working through all the helpful material and adding some of my own, as well as a long list of questions... I started a blog a while ago - its a new build, back garden plot, in a village just outside Exeter. Its taken some time to get to this point.... https://clareandharryshomebuild.wordpress.com/2016/01/04/the-waiting-game-25-years-for-outline-planning-consent/

Exactly, exceptional stuff...used sparingly? once tried it on a greenback (the name I use for the things they sell in ten packs for washing dishes) to scrub some engineered reused flooring and the sponge thingy just melted! Impressive

I should have said, we got our completion certificate the other week after 18 months. We are far from finished of course but we've convinced the BI that its not a complete liability although I'm sure it still is. Still quite a way to go to finish bits off although it is all functioning as it should. Just the epic loose end and snagging list to contend with. 55 sq m and so far we're 90 grand into it. Ball park as I gave up counting long ago.

Just emailed this guy to see if he's still offering a good deal, got this from him... Hello, Email us the drawings to print-them@mail.com and tell us what size and how many copies. £2 for A1 drawing and £4 for an A0. All prices include postage.

No, it won't cause any issues at with the MVHR, as it's not changing the air flow at all. They suck from surface level to remove cooking smells, vapour etc, filter the air then blow it back out into the kitchen, with the smells and vapours etc mostly removed. Most use a mixture of washable filters to trap oil and fat vapour, plus an activated carbon filter to remove most of the smells. The manufacturers would like you to always fit new filters, but on the conventional recirculating hood we have in our old house I found that the two filtration units were easy to clean/rejuvenate. The mesh oil and fat filter cleaned up well by just sticking it in the dishwasher and the activated carbon filter was just carbon granules between two bits of stainless mesh. I found that it was dead easy to take one of the mesh sides off and bought a big bag of activated charcoal granules very cheaply (the stuff is used in pond filters). empting the carbon out and filling the filter with fresh stuff was clean and easy to do, and a fraction of the price of replacing the filters. I still have a bag of activated carbon I bought several years ago, left over.

I'll get me coat....

Some info from BPC who a lot of members have used https://www.bpcventilation.com/blog/the-cooker-hood-conundrum

Of course, we never moved out - even though adding 55sq m to a 75sq m house is a pretty disruptive project.

I used these LTP Scourers for cleaning our external engineer brickwork, maybe less chance for acid flying anywhere with no bristles. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LTP-Emusifying-Scourer-Black-Pad-Coarse-Texture-/200805084725

Agree but wood has a lot less embodied energy and it looks like we won't have Ali clad so best possible on that aspect. However great chunks of the build has Ali facias so the windows reduce it not eliminate it! Anyway we shall see what we shall see at the weekend!?

Jack, thanks for starting this thread, not that I need to clean up but it's prompted me to make sure my feature fireplace is covered up before plastering starts. Prevention is better than cure.

If I recall correcttly (please shoot me down @Barney12 if I am suffering from a vivid imagination), Barney's Bat Hotel is the leading operator in the 5* segment of the Pipistrelle Holiday Market. Think Soho House for bats. 1.8m head room. Own private entrance. House cleaning provided annually. And so on. Perhaps we should submit it for an Award , and guided tours could be offered to enthusiastic Bat Men flying in on batwinged microlights.

The muddy phase of our build is about to start. And hoping to reduce the amount of extra cleaning to be done in our cottage, I'm attempting to encourage folk to clean their boots before they come into our kitchen for tea and sympathy. To do that I need to make the cleaning process easy and quick. The prospect of @MrsRA standing there with a rolling pin and a look of thunder on her usually smiling countenance - shouting "Get em off !" and me countering "Have you seen how clean they are?" does not appeal. How have you managed it?

Sorry late to the party: £27.00 per square meter on Demolition £115.00 per square meter for initial groundworks (hoping to be a lot less) £440.00 per square meter: foundations, frame construction and erection, insulation, airtightness etc £184.00 per square meter for glazing..........OUCH! I've budgeted another £138 per square meter for; blockwork, rendering, roofing, roof line and rainwater goods. I was hoping that was high. Now I'm not so sure :(. Oh and £92 per square meter on ECOLOGY! [INSERT LARGE QUANTITY OF SWEAR WORDS] So I'm up to £858.00 per square meter for the above Some days I wish I had never started!

@Steptoe, I didn't misunderstand you. The point I was making was really addressed to other self-builders reading this. In chatting to the guys that have worked on our build, one very common observation is just how ignorant and inconsiderate some customers are; they seem to think that just because they are paying for something then they have the write to treat the workers involved as servants, and then they bitch about the workers' attitude. The whole idea just makes me and Jan cringe. Our slater worked on our roof last February and it was really cold and the wind was cutting at times, so we kept him supplied with hot drinks and the odd bacon butty, as well as working along side him on the verge and eave detailing and fitting the roof windows. He mentioned that that having customers like us was very rare, and by example he'd worked reslating a roof on his last job, and the customer had been at home all of this time; during the 3 weeks, she had said hello once and had never offered any hot refreshments. Our philosophy is: Treat anyone that is working on your site as a peer and offer them the normal courtesies that you would expect. Make sure that you've prepared the area and preconditions so that they can do their job efficiently. At the end of the day, anyone pricing up a job has included a contingency. If this is eaten up working around and dealing with hassles that aren't really their fault, then they might start to cut corners, but if they are running ahead because they haven't had to use their contingency, then they will use it properly on real issues that do occur. Accept that everyone can make mistakes. So you should be tolerant of and cooperate to work around reasonable mistakes; the sort that you yourself could make. OK, some people adopt a hard nosed "it's your responsibility; you fix in your time; not my problem" policy, but in the end if you do this then you are just cutting your nose off to spite your face. The only important thing IMO is: is the final job fit for purpose and to the general standard that you expect? Going to war over petty demarcations is just stupid. If you are flexible on others' mistakes, then they will return the attitude when you make yours. I know that this approach can open you up to be exploited, but our honest view is that we've liked every workman who has worked on our site, and I can't recall a single "bad penny", and we've been very please with the standard of work. We've only had one real issue with anyone trying it on during the whole build, and that was our plasters' boss who did the pricing and scheduling was just a liar when it came to promising and keeping start dates and he pissed us around terribly, but the plastering team themselves (when they did start) did a fantastic job, so we still ended up recommending them to friends. Maybe we were lucky, or maybe you make your own luck.

The first part is the euro pan connector. You should have had a 90-110mm adaptor with the frame. Do you have the pic of the components from when you bought it? I'm sure I saw one. The second part is the actual pan connector which goes onto the pan. It gets cut to length and filed to a chamfer. That then pushes into the first part ( which is held captive on the frame by the black plastic shoe and clip ). With me so far?

I agree with the stance, but i sacked one worker after he told my customer the same. Lasted till 10:00 and he was gone. What he should have said is "can I bring some clean steel toe capped trainers in as I need to wear PPE in work". So, as I'm in and out of customers houses, and they deserve some respect, I carry blue disposable hospital slippers / overshoes to go over my black work socks and like @ProDave would never go in wearing my boots. I need these people for me to earn a living so when they say "jump", and I say "how high ?" Bought a new pair of boots Saturday in SFix and they need to be comfortable when laced 70% up, so I can still wiggle them on or off without the delay. .

I tend to bulk buy fittings anyway - I'm swapping over from Speedfit to Hep2O at the moment so any jobs I do for anyone else get the spare Speedfit ones out of my box ... I've started to use Toolstation more as there is one next to our office - electrical stuff is BG and CEF mainly plus a few others, and plumbing is either Speedfit or an own brand which is a little odd. Pipe prices aren't too bad either. With JTM and BES I tend to over order anyway and end up with spares but they get used - at 40-60% cheaper than Screwfix I tend not to worry and the likes of B&Q become a last resort..!

Well, the beam and block is all done and foul drains work starts on Monday. Today we've been sorting through stone for a drystone wall.

I guess we are at a different stage in life than most self builders so it does make sense to think ahead. We have moved from flats, to houses and now the'plan is to build a big enough house so we can start a family and not have to move for a long time. Trying to do DIY with cats is hard enough without having kids to worry about!!

That was our fear, but then we weren't too fussed as long as we could afford it and we got the house we wanted, as we don't intend to sell it.

Our TF, which should provide a U Value of 0.12 W/m².K has been costed out and that is hitting £260 per sq. metre. This doesn't include windows or external doors but does include erection costs. All the other elements such as Utilities, Foundations, Slates, rainwater goods, external wall etc., which haven't been finalised as yet, will bring that figure, into the area mentioned by @JSHarris. [Hopefully! ] PW.

Get on the Aico website and they'll send you one of these. You have to register but it's no issue:

s24 etc. will cause a slowdown in house turnover. But supply and demand!!!. Less to rent and less to buy. House prices can for the short/mid term only go up!

If it's like any other forecast remotely linked to brexit, then the reality will be an increase in house sales.......