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Thanks to the members of buildhub for the constructive advice and a good ground worker we have managed to get our foundations in. The archeological watching brief wasn't the problem we had feared and nothing was found to delay this first step of our build.

So like @TerryE we have made some temporary stairs. Downside is we need a double winder as the permanent ones and I'm not up to building one of those but given it's only an off cut of Egger and 4 pieces of spare 8x2 and some rails I'm pretty pleased with it ..! I've got a joiner on site who usually does 2nd fix but he's been worth his weight in gold as he happily cut this lot from a quick sketch - no it's not to building regs but it doesn't half make it easier to get things up and down stairs ..!!

Just to +1 what Jeremy has said. If you spot an OpenLeach van in your local area. STOP. Talk to him and befriend him.

Not a problem if the slope in the floor extends beyond the defined shower area that the glass covers. That's when you need a "true wetroom" where you can pour a bucket of water in the middle of the room and nothing gets to the doorway.

@Nickfromwales can give more info, but our combi defaults to a mode where it tries to keep the DHW side hot all the time, in order to reduce the warm up time when a hot tap is opened. This is OK when you're in the house and using hot water regularly, but is a pain if you're not. Finding how to turn this feature off may not be that easy. For our Vaillant the feature is turned off by turning the DHW temperature control down to zero (fully anticlockwise) and then turning it back to the set temperature. If there's a power cut, or the boiler is turned off and on again, it goes back to the default mode of preheating the DHW. To turn the preheat mode on, then it's the same procedure, turn the DHW temperature control down to minimum and back up again. Our combi has no easy way to tell when this mode has been set, or reset, as there isn't an indicator on the display for it. I think you can go into diagnostic level 1 and scroll through the codes to see if it's on or off, but that's a bit of a faff. My guess is that other makes may well have a similar feature, but will almost certainly have a different way to disable it.

Well, I don't want to say get some bloody pics.....but..... "GET SOME BLOODY PICS !!"

It's SWMBO who has decreed "No sealant, no channels" EVERY shower door, screen etc we have ever had that has had some form of channel that the glass fits into usually with a rubber bead strip of some form, ends up going mouldy unless you keep spraying it with bleach. It's a wet room we are having, so I don't see an issue if there is a few mm gap between the glass and the wall and the glass and the floor with just a few stainless feet and brackets to hold the glass.

also, happy customer here

For the avoidance of any doubt - 'Wow! actually?' ;-)

You know its crazy in a National Park when they phone you on the day of determination to ask if you plan on having electricity and telephone in your house and that they're concerned about it... I kid you not!

Cool. Thought I was off the Xmas card list there for a mo. ??

Happy BPC customer here.

Depending on the make you should be able to get concealer / converter rings to sort this type of fubar: https://www.downlights.co.uk/hole-concealer-jcc-fgled.html What make are they btw? (Should have got the bloke who laid the lawn to fit them! )

Did you have Stevie Wonder Electrical fit them ?!? You could have cut them neater with a chainsaw. . Is that the 6w one? Can you fit the 9w one so it fills the existing hole, or is that one of many in the same view?

Jeremy's first comment is accurate, but IMO there is still a trade-off to be made here. At one extreme bridging could the interpreted has any extra heat loss due to the construction at the interface. We have an outer stone skin covering an MBC timber frame, and the window sit half inside the frame and half closing the gap between the skin and the timber panelling. This arrangement definitely has more heat losses then positioning the windows in the middle of the timber frame, but when I do the sums, it works out at only a few W. Yes, the reveals adjacent to the windows will be a few degrees colder, but not sufficient to result in a risk of condensation. The benefit of this arrangement is the improved external aesthetics, and the far better construction of the interface between the stone and the windows means that there is for less risk of weather compromise between the frame and the outer skin.

Not just knee pads, either. I needed industrial quantities of Voltarol just to get both my knees and back functioning again after every day of laying the flooring.............

This is the company I used http://stores.ebay.co.uk/everydayaccessories/ It cost £6.75 including postage.

I didn't even have the hard hat..just looked a bit scruffy. Only challenge is the small talk every time I went in 'How's business? Much on?' etc... always felt a bit of a fraud.

Make sure that the surveys are 'assigned' to you as part of the sale .. i.e. You become the client and get the benefit of the consultant's PII etc, and are able to use the reports without an extra fee. Ferdinand

Welcome. All sensible advice above. One thing might have been missed; a topographical survey. Levels become incredibly important. We are on a gentle slope ; knowing how much of a slope helped us save several thousand pounds of topsoil removal fees. Ian

You should be okay with that. Getting permission for discharge from the EA seems a whole lot easier than from SEPA up here in Scotland. I had so spend months proposing different schemes, which each got rejected before SEPA would give permission to discharge to the burn, something they only do here as a last resort.

Sadly, Openreach are a complete and total PITA. They refuse to deal with self-builders, so there is no easy way to determine if there is spare capacity on the local network. If you can obtain a number for the local Openreach engineer then you should find things easier. The local guys are the only thing keeping their network running, I think, as their management is a bloody shambles.

The 'legal' aspect of plates is a complete joke. Any seller just needs to say they are 'show plates' (i.e. Not for road use) in their T@C's and the law doesn't apply!

Good luck. Funnily enough we were only having "my first house" conversations in the office this morning. I remember mine well. Mortgage repossession, tired, flithy, fleas and walls bright orange from nicotine. Until we took up the carpets and scrubbed the walls the smell would make you gag! For the first few months we had: 2 x camp beds 2 x sleeping bags 2 x deckchairs 1 x portable TV (sat on a cardboard box with one of those hopeless indoor aerials) Simpler times!!

That one was a 2000mm x 850mm shower area ( mosiac tiled ) and the glass was iirc 1400mm long. Aluminium wall profile can be seen in the second pic, but I always bond the glass straight down to the tiled floor with clear CT1 as bottom channels look rough as toast and harbour water, grot and worse. Point being, you don't need anything complicated, but you do need to do a good job of fitting the screen. Masking tape either side of where the glass will hit the floor / tray, smear a bit of CT1 along the 1000mm long run and rub it in and get some adhesion going, then apply a generous 10-15mm bead of CT1 along the bit you just smeared ready to drop ( lol ) the glass down onto. Two man job tbh, but I have done them on my own when I have had to. Set the glass down gently and let it displace the CT1. Clean off the excess with wet wipes and multisolve spray, the bit you'll love the most More on that when you get to that stage

1) SunampPV does not require the same maintenance as a combi boiler. Currently there is no formal care package in place but it is something that could be arranged. 2) Currently we are still building up our installer network. We are currently asking for a 24 hour call out service. Furthermore some diagnostic checks can be done remotely. 3) SunampPV is separate from solar panels. I have been advised that it is possible for an installer to supply the same service agreement under the same product. 4) 30, 000 cycles is the current number of the rapid cycle machine and still no degradation. As such, it is difficult to predict when things will start to deteriorate. However lets say that 30, 000 is the number of cycles before the machine is caput and you cycle it twice a day. That would give you 38.5 years of use. You would then call us and and we would dispose of it for you. If you wanted a replacement we would do this too and it would cost around £400 to replace. 5) Haha, I am not actually sure about how much you can put on a steak. However I know that sodium acetate is used in salt and vinegar crisps as flavouring. Could be a way to dispose of the salt, let me know how it goes