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Copper sulphate solution works pretty well, and tends to be persistent enough on concrete to stop regrowth for a couple of years. Bleach or Jeyes fluid will kill it and clean it up, but the latter smells awful. I think the best approach would be to clean them up with diluted bleach and a scrubbing brush, then rinse them off and allow the concrete to dry out. Mix up a strong solution of copper sulphate (buy some copper sulphate pentahydrate crystals and gradually dissolve them in water until no more will dissolve). Brush or spray this solution on to the concrete, and don't worry about the bright blue colour, it isn't permanent. Allow the cills to dry out and the residual copper sulphate in the concrete will inhibit algae and moss from growing for a fair time. The rain will eventually wash the copper sulphate out of the concrete, maybe after two or three years, but just apply some more and you'll have protection again. This also works on concrete paths that are prone to going green, or concrete paving slabs. Use with caution on stone, though, as some types of porous natural stone may stain - test a hidden area first to be sure. You can buy copper sulphate crystals on ebay cheaply enough.

Only works when you are doing it while looking over your shoulder to see who is doing the walk of Shame the morning after the night before.

Nans attic...lol, stick your own head up brother? It's a CWS for sure. As ever, thanks to you all free giving knowledge monkeys. Learned a new phrase I like recently; 'pay forward'... It's a form of giving back...freely given support, advice, mentoring and even money But, on one trusted no commitment deal, that at some point whenever in the future you are in a position to 'pay back' you do so and keep the cycle going. It's why I love the forum, an everyday example of this philosophy in practice

Seems to be coming together well. Currently at about £3300. Ikea units with an oak trim strip made from some oak skirting :-) Picking up the granite tomorrow AM hopefully we will be looking and hopefully pretty bespoke. That'll be £300 and £90 for the acrylic.

So, after the last entry, we were back to scratch again, having managed to secure an additional piece of land and an alternative access to our plot. Lots of measuring and pacing out later, we were able to basically take what would have been the 2nd floor of the planned house, and put it on the ground floor. The ground floor footprint was made considerably bigger by this, and the overall shape was much less "passive-friendly", but for our tight site, it really was the only option. After a lot of refinements with the architect, he came up with a design that we absolutely loved, gave us privacy from the surrounding buildings, parking AND a little garden. So, some pics at last! Before we got the additional land, we had bought two of the pre-fab 50's garages that back right up to our site and intended to demolish them to gain access. This photos shows a peek of the site through the first panel we removed. There was a massive step up from the ground slab of the garage to the soil level of the site. Looking back, this should have been our first warning of problems to come... The site was a former garden centre, so there was a large timber building (previously a showroom), a play house, a load of slabs, display boxes, plant racks, millions and millions of plastic plant pots everywhere, and 5 world-weary apple trees to get rid of. And a lot of topsoil. Did I mention the topsoil? It was a LOT of work and expense to get rid of all this stuff, as it all counted as "mixed waste" so the disposal fees were enormous. This is when we realised the importance of being on site to supervise. We'd had a holiday booked for months and months before we knew we'd be doing this work, so we briefed the guys doing the clearance (who we trust) who estimated the remaining skip loads. We get back a few days later to discover it had been over double that number and our digger driver had got into a dispute with the skip collection driver over what counted as "waste". So instead of the expected bill from the skip guys of about £2-3000 at the absolute WORST, we came back to a bill of over £10k. This necessitated a somewhat hasty trip to the skip yard and a "full and frank exchange of views" with the owner. After showing us a random picture of some rubbish on his phone and insisting it was from our site, our bill was halved. Left a nasty taste in the mouth though, that's for sure. So, we eventually have a clear site, and now another problem. If you're a gardener, you'll appreciate how lovely this topsoil looks. And it is great quality - this plot has been used for nothing but gardens and grazing since medieval times. Unfortunately, that leaves a rather extensive period of time during which the topsoil has nothing to do, but get deeper, and deeper and deeper. By the time we came to own the plot, the topsoil and subsoil layer was over 2m deep in places. Obviously, (after it was explained to us), you can't build a house on top of topsoil. Things grow in it. Things you don't want under your house. So, it had to go. BUT, we couldn't drop the level of the house by 2m, as the plot is surrounded by other buildings and dropping it down that far would cut out essentially all the sunlight coming into the house. If anything, we wanted it higher than the current level to maximise the light. Two options - piling with a suspended floor or simply replacing all the soil with compacted hardcore. We also (briefly, until we got the quotes in) considered adding a basement. That idea didn't last long. After speaking to Hilliard about piling, he mentioned that each pile would potentially be a partial cold bridge, so that was a little off-putting. But we got quotes anyway - they weren't horrendous, but a lot of piling companies weren't massively keen on the site, surrounded as it is by 3 storey blocks of flats, a listed street frontage, crumbling stone walls and potentially a LOT of angry neighbours. Despite this, it was an option we were considering, until every warranty company we spoke to said that they wouldn't issue a warranty for mortgage purposes if there was any black earth under the footprint of the house. So, many many many many tractors and trailers (and pots of money) later, 1000 tonnes of soil was dug out, and replaced with 1000 tonnes of hardcore. And not any hardcore. Due to our engineer (about which a LOT more could be said), it's all Type 1 MOT. All 1000 tonnes of it. Compacted to within an inch of it's life.

Ahhhh, the yoof of today, they've lost the skill of scrubbing the doorsteps and window cells every morning..... Just like my mum used to do.....

Cheapest I could find (bought in the summer) Radon Gas Barrier Roll 300MU BRE Certified 25m x 4m £62 inc delivery and VAT. lbsbmonline.co.uk Local BMs took the piss.

Get a grip man. Just empty it. (Your partner has not told me to write this post )

I can remember buying large (perhaps around 2 1/2 litre or so) bottles of plain bleach, from the local hardware store (now sadly closed), and I agree, I thought it worked better. I think that when Domestos started marketing their bleach as "thick", implying that this was advantageous, many other manufacturers followed suit. The thickened bleach definitely doesn't seem to dissolve as easily; it just seems to run down into the water along the sides and sit there.

I've been a very strong advocate of this for decades, as I've always been of the view that you get out of life only as much as you put in. There is a slight drawback to this; every now and again you come across someone who is suspicious of your motives, and can't believe that you're not doing it for some other reason. My personal view is that those that think like this may have been influenced by the greedy, self-centred, selfish society that was the product of a certain political leader's policies in the 1980's, but then again that might just be my own personal bias.....................

I'd go a slightly different route on the Celotex. Get a price on 60mm and 75mm and do two layers - slightly cheaper on material normally but it's easier to handle and cut in two layers. You will need to factor in the labour but it's not a difficult job and you will find you get a better fit.

I bet you can't wait to get out of the ground!

Ferdinand has it spot on about the rigs. If you look at a medieval street map of the town every building has a long strip of land behind it, traditionally a kitchen garden or pasture for a horse/cow/goat. The town was agriculture based, originally, and pains have been taken to preserve as much of that history as possible. Our plot was the original rig length by double the width, we could see where the original boundary line had been, but the dividing wall had long gone, unfortunately. We had an archeologist who told us all this stuff when she came on a site visit, fascinating. That's also the reason why there was SO much blimmin topsoil (over 2m deep in places!) all over the place - the land had just been used as grazing for hundreds of years. We found a lot of cow bones.