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I wouldn't take a pay cut for anyone ?

Why do we self build If you google yesterday evenings Lancashire evening post You can read about a couple who have purchased Storey home for £400000 With over 200 faults

Not sure, TBH. It was a cement rich mix, I know that much, with a fine sand and a touch of dye to better match the dark grey kerbs. One of the brickies here will almost certainly know far more than me about it, I just watched a chap doing it.

So only 1553 posts to go.

If that's the 210k bloke I just can't see it myself. There's got to be a catch. Is he supplying other labour or materials? Is this his turnover or his profit? Did this include a one off year where a capital gain was made? No way is a one man band subcontract plumber earning 4K a week in profit.

I'm pretty sure this is how Pimlico Plumbers works. In essence it's a bit like a franchise, where the plumbers are offered jobs and can take them or not. Those that are prepared to take on a lot of jobs and work long hours, earn the most. I'm pretty sure it's a system that was well thought through, as the guy that runs it has made a mint, and seems to have a reasonable reputation. The advantage for the plumbers is that they get the "brand advantage" of being Pimlico Plumbers, with the livery etc, and they get to choose which jobs to take on. In effect they are all sub-contracted self-employed plumbers who need to maintain certain standards and response times in order to retain the rights to use the livery and get work from Pimlico.

I’d leave as is if it’s “accessible” from the bath but just make it easy to remove in future - Cling film and expanding foam are your friend here while you concrete. 40mm is fine for a short run but @Nickfromwales will be along shortly to disagree with me ... are you having a shower that can drop the contents of a tank in 2 minutes or are you going to go for a decent flow rate ..?

Ahhh sorry ..! Thought you were coming up from under the floor hence the 2x45 comment. Single is fine - better than a 90. If thats above ground then it’s a standard rubber reducing ring - solvent weld adapters available that I’ve seen recently are quite pricey and TBH you would be welding uPVC to ABS anyway in that situation unless you went with something like this and then went push fit. http://www.drainageonline.co.uk/110mm-Push-fit-Soil/40mm-Boss-Adaptor-for-Solvent-Weld-Waste.htm Downside is these have a single O-Ring and aren’t that happy with offsets where the standard ones allow some adjustment http://www.drainageonline.co.uk/110mm-Push-fit-Soil/40mm-Boss-Adaptor-for-Push-Fit-Waste.htm

Those branches aren’t 63mm - they are 63mm inner that takes a rubber bung into the hole and then a push fit 32/40/50mm waste. I would not be burying one of those in concrete ..!! Get a solvent strap boss the right size and bond it and the 50mm waste pipe into it, and then make a pair of 45 bends to give you your 90 degrees to the trap.

Olives will be ok once established as they can cope with down to -10c as long as it’s only a short spell. Young bushes struggle, a decent tree that is 6-8cm should be fine. The best ones in the UK are varietals such as Olea europaea Leccino and Maurino if you want to actually get olives. Leccino is a sterile olive so needs a pollinator and Maurino will do both pollinate and be self fertile. If you want something faster growing and don’t mind a bit of pruning then the Spanish olive or Olea Eu. Picual will suit you fine. They also take plenty of abuse too - something to bear in mind if you have someone who doesn’t know what it is to prune it ..!!

Sorry - sorted now.

We have an olive tree, pot grown though. As long as the soil is well drained and you are not in a particularly bad frost hollow or windy spot they should be fine. The sunnier the better.

Here you go: BC_Trada_Span_Tables _2008.pdf

So after 14 months of stress and worry we were granted full consent, for a replacement dwelling on our plot. A couple of years ago we where told we would not get planning full stop, so being a bit of an awkward bloke I decided to go for it. We have had to jump through plenty of hoops and spent a big chunk of cash but it’s done, PASSED. I would like to thank @JSHarris for his encouragement in making a scale model, I think this shocked our planning officer to the detail we had put into our application, I think he was also shocked when I produced photos from the 60s showing our plot and our neighbours house. so the moral to this is don’t give up if you feel you are right and also supply as much supporting evidence as you can. Im going to add up all the bills and see what it has cost us, if anybody is interested I will put them up. Thanks to anybody who offered advice or encouragement. Russell and Lorraine Griffiths.

I'm not sure, Peter, but I seem to remember that there is a part of the VOA form that asks whether the application is a change to an existing register entry. We received a letter from the VOA notifying us of the banding, and advising that they had copied this to the local authority, but that we could appeal the banding if we wished. The letter gave details of how to appeal, together with the time limit. In our case I was happy that they had taken the points I'd made on board, about the thick walls reducing the internal volume and there being no central heating on the first floor, and had put us in the lowest band I could reasonably have hoped for. I didn't deal with the council until several weeks later, when they wrote to us asking how we would like to pay the Council tax for the part of the year since the valuation date to the start of the next financial year. As far as I am aware, council tax can only be levied on a house that has been valued by the VOA and put on to the register, as a new entry. I believe you can ask to see the register. It seems possible that the council may have asked the VOA to value the new house without telling you, just to give them a way to collect council tax from it. I'm pretty sure they are supposed to give you notice of this, by issuing a notice of intended completion to you, with the date on it from which council tax will be charged. It looks like you'll have to try and find out what has been going on, then challenge the VOA and the council. The VOA were quite helpful I found, the council far less so.

So I’ve had the wife sit down with a calculator and add up exactly what our planning consent has cost us if anybody is interested here it is. Topography survey. £546 ecology survey. £1065 ecology cemp. £1008 architect. £4462 hydrology. £1320 landscape architect. £640 planning consultant £4597 council fees. £385 model making. £88 photocopying. £22 total. £ 14134 there you go that’s a bit scary, I had anticipated this costing around 15grand, so I’ve come in under budget. Bloody hell, I’m going to go back to bed and cuddle my wallet as it’s still in shock. On the bright side our land has just increased in value by a large chunk.

Here we go again..... to close this 'how many hours does it take to be an expert issue' off I think we can rely on the 'some people never learn' and the 'how long is a piece of string' sayings of yaw that sum it up well and add "You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." Eleanor Roosevelt and remember that experienced people spend most of their energy avoiding doing, or carefully managing, anything dangerous.

Thats the same in any walk of life. Professional credibility only truly shows itself for what it is when things go wrong. Beyond mere licensed competence exists expertise by experience. And generally that occurs after about 50,000 hours. Even if you have no formal qualification. I have a very loooooong way to go with this building lark. Another 45000 hours. I mean, I can't even manage to ring a tradesperson.

I'd advise contacting them ASAP, with a list of points as to why it does not meet the rateable hereditament tests in the case law quoted in the links in this post: If you're methodical you should have no problem in making the case that it does not meet the legal requirements, but I suspect you will be dealing with people who are inflexible and not particularly well-versed in the law. Certainly the first person I spoke to at the council was pretty aggressive and bullying, and passed me on to her manager. The manager didn't understand the law at all, and I managed to get her to refer my points to their legal department, and quoted the relevant items of case law. The moment their legal eagle was made aware that there was no potable water on site, the whole thing just went away, with a request that I call them when the house met the legal requirements to be habitable. They will try it on, as these people have learned that being bullying and aggressive, with the authority of the council, makes most people back away. The hardest part for me was staying calm and civil when dealing with them, as I was steaming mad. I can clearly remember being on the phone to them at the top of our lane (there's no signal at the house), finishing the calm conversation with one of the morons and then shouting and swearing with pent up rage. The lady walking her dog that passed me at that moment just smiled at me and said "was that telephone call a little tiresome?". Calmed me down better than a bottle or two of wine.........

Our planning officer told us the same, 100mm tolerance on all dimensions, except the ridge height. Apparently ridge height is the thing planners get the most complaints about, according to our chap. We had complaint about ours, and luckily I was able to borrow a Total Station, stick it on the OS datum nail that is conveniently still in the lane by our drive and in the presence of the planning officer demonstrate that we were actually lower than the stipulated ridge height. It annoyed me a bit that the neighbour that complained had gone directly to the planning officer, as we were bending over backwards to keep that particular neighbour happy, spending a fair bit of extra money to give them what they wanted along our shared boundary.

In case anyone is confusing a little grinder with some gi-bungous petrol building slayer....... A diamond mortar rake which fits in a hand held 4"grinder. ?

Visio has a massive library of M&E /HVAC symbol libraries if you know where they are - they are installed but not visible usually. This is my ASHP done in Visio

There's a thread somewhere where I looked at this, might be on the GBF, as it was ages ago. I conducted several "post mortems" on blown LEDs and in every single case the LED itself was fine, it was the driver circuit in the base that had failed, always through obvious overheating. The smaller the lamp, the greater the failure rate for mains powered LEDs. What I have found is that 12 V LEDs are very reliable. I've had no failures at all running them on proper DC supplies, and we have loads of them. I did have a lot of early failures when using 12 V LED downlights, and traced the cause of this to the bridge rectifier in the 12 V MR16 failing. Every single failure was a bridge rectifier failure. After a bit of investigation, I discovered than the small 12 V "transformers" for downlighters had an output that was 12 VAC at around 20 kHz. The MR16 12 V downlighter design was originally intended to run on 12 VAC at mains frequency, 50 Hz. What was happening was that at 20 kHz the bridge rectifiers in the LEDs were just too slow, as they did not use fast recovery diodes. The result was overheating and failure. Replacing the downlighter "transformers" with proper 12 VDC supplies completely cured the problem and resulted in all the MR16 downlighter LEDs running a great deal cooler, too. Almost all the heat was coming from diode losses in the small bridge rectifiers, that were really struggling to work at the 20 kHz coming out from the standard miniature downlighter "transformers". I should add that these small "transformers" are absolutely fine with 12 VAC tungsten MR16 bulbs, the problem was purely with LEDs. One tip is to see if any LEDs are getting warm and where the heat is coming from. If the LED base is getting hot, then you can expect the LED to fail sooner or later when the driver burns out. There are a LOT of fake marked, far-Eastern made, 230 VAC LEDs around that are not approved to any acceptable safety standard and it's really hard to tell which are the decent ones and which are not. It seems even some of the big name brands have been caught with fake components, so even the name is no sure-fire guarantee that the lamps are approved and will be reliable. Some types of 230 VAC lamps are inherently more reliable by design. For example, the ones that have what look like fake filaments use a series string of LEDs that operate at high voltage, so they often just have a simple rectifier and capacitive voltage dropper in the base to limit the current. These tend to run cool, as they have no dodgy switched mode driver squeezed into the base. There are also some conventional size 230 VAC lamps around that use long chains of LEDs in series behind a diffuser and similarly they have no switched mode driver in the base and tend to run cooler and may well be more reliable.

In most of the UK the temperature of the ground, below about a few metres or so is pretty constant for around a couple of hundred metres or more, at around 8 deg C. This heat comes almost entirely from solar gain, with percolating water from the surface carrying heat down to a fair depth. I used to go caving a lot, and wherever you went in the UK the cave temperature would be a pretty constant 8 deg C or so, even 400ft or so down under Wales................ Ground source heat pumps, whether they use surface, water or borehole collectors, are really solar heat collectors, by a round-about route. If you take heat out from under a house, then the ground will cool down more than if you took heat out of a bit of open ground, as there would be no direct replenishment if heat from above. Depending on how permeable the soil is, and how well heat can transfer sideways from adjacent land, you could find that you drop the soil temperature under the slab by a lot, it may well even freeze and heave. Because the heat comes from solar gain and surface water percolation, the collector wouldn't work as well as one on open ground or down a borehole (and our 53m borehole is also a constant 8 deg C, all year around). An under-house collector would also increase the ground floor heat loss, by increasing the temperature differential between the soil under the house and the room temperature, so more insulation would be needed to maintain the same heat loss as before. It's quite common for ground source heat pumps to be wrongly referred to as geothermal heat pumps, domestic ones aren't at all, unless they have collectors going down many hundreds of metres, and only then when in an area where there is either a high level of natural radioactive decay causing localised heating or the Earth's crust is thin. I once went down a Cornish tin mine (Wheal Jane) and at about 1500ft down it was fairly warm (around 30 deg C), due almost entirely to the high natural radioactivity of the granite, rather than true geothermal heating. True geothermal heat (as in from the Earth's core) doesn't really get that noticeable until a lot deeper than this mine, unless you live in an area where the Earth's crust is thin, like Iceland, Yellowstone Park etc.

So £6400 for a 14KWh storage system. Lets be generous and say I can use all 14KWh of stored energy from it every day, saving about 15p per KWh compared to the grid, so saving £2.10 every day. That's a maximum saving of £766 every year, so will take 9.66 years to pay for itself. How far will the batteries then be from end of life and needing replacement? Numbers still not stacking up for me I am afraid.

Don't even get me started on bloody windows. My Internorm windows leak in this stormy weather.