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The roof will be slated back end of next week - The TF for the house arrives on 29th May 2018. Will update again thereafter.

The limitation of the Cochrane approach here is that it largely does meta analysis to aggregate the results of a related cluster of trials, and use statistical aggregation to draw out stronger conclusions than the individual studies can make. The process does not deep dive into the individual studies to assess how well they implement best study practice, nor do they attempt to mine all of the abandoned studies that were coming up with the wrong answers. So whilst Cochrane can remove silly outliers and represent the study consensus, they don't highlight systematic flaws or biases. So in the case of use of statins for cardiovascular disease they correctly aggregated 18 RCTs comparing the use of statins against with usual care/placebo. So yes, treatment A which involves long-term expensive drugs is better than do nothing. But treatment B which involves lifestyle changes on the part of the patient and potentially reduces the income of the drug companies has absolutely no chance of finding funding for trials, and so we can make no trail-based statements for treatment B vs do nothing or even treatment A vs treatment B. I remember looking at a similar Cochrane review on ME/CFS and even went through the actual studies, and came away deeply uneasy and dissatisfied. The average of a pile of shit is still a pile of shit.

Thanks for all the comments guys. I wasn't aware they were a pain to fit. We have not boarded or plastered yet. Walls have 50mm battens to provide a service cavity. Hopefully at this stage our electrician will figure out a workable way to fit. I hope so because I would like some different ones in other rooms. It was just a nice feeling to actually buy something decorative for the inside of the house rather than materials for building it.

How about an old freezer. Put a water coil in it, plumb it into your UF pipework, and when it is hot, turn thee freezer on and divert the heating water via the coil in the freezer (put the freezer outside in thee shade).

I have spoken to a company in Glasgow called The Beauty of Marble that would make it for £1500. That price seams pretty reasonable for a marble bespoke vanity/sink. https://www.facebook.com/thebeautyofmarble/

My real point here is that Fluoxetine is an SSRI that might be an effective treatment for certain types of clinical depression, but there is evidence to support that CFS patients are in general suffering from clinical depression so IMO its use is entirely inappropriate. As I said to my GP: I am fed-up with being bed-bound, but being fed-up is not the same as clinical depression, so no thank-you. Most trials are funded by the drug majors who have vested interest in proving that long-term repeat prescription of some drug is an effective treatment. The trials are badly constructed and often have shifting success criteria. Those which reach negative conclusions are quietly shelved on cost grounds before being reported. @JSHarris, I think that your being prescribed ARB is a good case in point. IMO, another case in point is the use of statins. I accept that they are effective in reducing the risk of heart disease if you have high blood pressure or other arterial problems, and especially if you don't exercise. However, surely patients should be supported in trying to use dietary and life-style changes to address these risks first? Or do we just give up and put everyone over 50 on the bloody things?

I always, always do this now. It's not that I don't trust them, but GPs are expected to have such an incredibly wide range of knowledge that it isn't surprising that they aren't perfect. Trust, but verify!

A photo!; even better. Wobbly red line shows intended path for down pipe - so it would be 1 continuous thing; no traps; access etc. as will be embedded in concrete. People like photo's - note how I have tidied up the front. First time it's been that clean in 4 years!

One of the problems of that class of drug is that it is not affective in all people. Estimates of effectiveness range between 0 and 70%. This is a case of very bad medical practice. "If you drink and smoke less than our Doctor, you will be fine". when having my lifestyle criticised by my GP, I offered to race him to the roundabout and back, he declined (my local GP surgery was put into special measures, and they wonder why the health of people in Cornwall is so bad, we have a dreadful NHS down here compared to most parts of the UK).

If you've watched any of Hans Roslings GapMinder talks then these provide a slightly different interpretation. Basic stuff like A basic understanding of sepsis, hygene, clean drinking water and sewage disposal Adequate nutrition Vaccination programs Improvements in anti and post natal care are the dominant factors here. That's why places like the province of Kerala in India has a higher overall life expectancy than Washington DC in the USA. A lot of the improvements in healthy care are now largely nullified by the -ve consequences of the high-carb excess western diet, leading to obesity, high blood pressure co risks and diabetes. IMO, UK healthcare is good (or in fact great) in parts, but there are whole areas where it performs poorly. A good example is CFS/ME that @Cpd and I suffer from, and people with other systemic diseases like IBS. If you read the NICE guidelines, they attempt to distill all diagnosis and treatment down to simple ladder logic: do this test, if +ve then proscribe this drug; treatment by the application of point drugs to remove point symptoms. But the human body is not a simple linear system. You must use a systemic approach to diagnose systemic problems. Any mathematician or systems architect will tell you that linear approximations only useful in defined domains, and that you have to take a systemic view to understand the system better. In the case of CFS, a typical GP will offer Prozac and referral to a psychiatrist for CBT. A homeopath with expertise in treating CFS will cover lifestyle, diet, sensible exercise regimes, massage, etc. and yes they will often offer sugar pills. I believe in Avogadro's number over sugar pills any day, yet in this second case the whole treatment bundle is often effective and can be boosted by a placebo effect from those little pills; it is far more likely to lead to the patient's recovery than "Prozac and piss off".

From baskil. So far so good with them but have seen plenty of their bad jobs. There is always cats out on the left handside and the dog goes nuts trying to get at them.

Big planter with attractive plant in front of the thing in line of sight, and use a strimmer to address the difficulty mowing. Job done lol.

I'm thinking of having a swear box on site: to which I will, of course, contribute the most. It'll do to finance Friday Night Is Party Night in West Lancashire Off to swing a little more on the scaffolding - and contemplate uplighters.

From a self build perspective the garden comes right at the end of the project at a time when most people are broke, broken, knackered and totally over building work in general. Personally I think it’s better to take a pause before tackling the garden in order to renew enthusiasm, replenish the bank account etc. Plenty of time therefore to work on a design you may want later on, but tackle it at a point where you are excited about doing it, not when it feels like a chore you still have to do to complete the build so will compromise on most things just to get it done.

I can date my long term indigestion problem back to 2008 and the birth of my first child... brining this vaguely back on track, becoming immersed in your ‘build’, devoting every spare hour to it will mess up your diet and whilst the amount of physical activity may mask your bad diet for a while, you can’t, won’t out run it. Not that I can blame anyone but I am addicted to sugar. It is incredibly hard to come off it. Most days I would kill for a bucket of shreddies and half a gallon of milk. That shit is lethal.

Theres the old saying, we are what we eat, I am a great believer in it, and think food plays an immense role in our overall health. There are many many essential oils, herbs etc which could replace and probably better many modern medicines, but they will never get a look in whilst the big pharma are around, their multi billion $£ industry will always see that cheap, profitless oils, herbs and the like will never make it in front of their drugs, and until that changes I think we will always be on the back foot. Majority of answers to most problems are found in nature, we just choose to ignore them in order to make money, and lots of it! The worlds greed is slowly killing us all off, and the rich just don't see it.

This is all I have to hand, the first one is the 2400 wide from the outside. Second one shows both inside, this one is 2000 wide, you can just see the 2400 round the corner. These are internorm units triple glazed with internal blind's

There's always one @Moira Niedzwiecka : tek na notice; 'ee's only jelus. Well done you for ferreting around and getting them for a decent price. Let the sparkies strut their stuff - they charge more than enough anyway. ?

Medical science also has a great deal to do to clean up it's act and start working to a recognised scientific method. From just a few months of reviewing evidence from studies, I can state categorically that around 80%, perhaps more, of the evidence from medical trials and studies is flawed, and well over 50% of it is very deeply flawed, so much so that it's just wrong. Clinical decisions have been made on much of this flawed evidence, too, and that has added to our problems, rather than aid them. Another thing that has become clear from reviewing evidence is that almost all the deeply flawed evidence is produced by pharmaceutical company studies and trials. Even some work from apparently reputable sources has been found to be flawed, where that work has been sponsored by industry. The main issues seem to be reports of studies and trials that fail to include all the data; it seems very common for findings that don't support the objective of the sponsoring company to just be omitted from the reported evidence, and it's often not easy to find out details of those excluded findings. IMHO, this is a much more serious issue than the corruption within the VAG group over their doctoring emissions testing, yet it's one that receives relatively little publicity.

The right diet for a person can be determined by analysis of an individual's own DNA plus the DNA of their resident gut bacteria. There are some excellent TedX talks on the subject available on YouTube. My niece is in her second year studying Medical Science and loves to talk about all of this new science, customized gene specific medical treatment is where medicine is going. The human race is in an unhappy place right now, modern farming and food processing has supported a population explosion from 2.5 billion to 7 billion in just 70 years, unfortunately science is in catch-up mode trying to comprehend why the result is so many people with low grade chronic complaints.

Yes, do it all in 110mm. I would run it in the MOT layer as you look like you are already 1.5m below ground. Try and run as shallow as possible as it makes inspection, access etc simpler and safer.

I hear you and don’t propose that one “diet” fits all, however I believe that We will look back in the comming years and recognise that high carb / suger and dairy diets have been pretty unhelpful in regards to good health. Yes we all have individual requirments and any diet should take this into account but I would not be to quick to dismis the importance of a good diet and A healthy gut. I think people’s hackles go up when people talk about diet for a bunch of reasons..... there really is growing body of evidence that our old established food triangle is more upside down than right way up. Each to there own and all that but personally having benefited so greatly by changing the foods I eat (before becoming ill I scoffed at diets) I am now a total believer in how important It is to eat a diet targeted at individual needs.

We didn't use anything less than 110mm for through slab. For the island as example we used 110mm and will immediately cut to appropriate size above slab. All pipe goes into a swept 90 and straight out ie no T's under slab. It will be fun and games when we try and connect all these tails up outside......

ARe you prepared to have a mullion in the center of the opening? If so then you can get fully opening windows each pain 1200 wide, I have them. I have one window that is 2400 wide and 1800 high with 2 pains and a single mullion

We still aren't quite finished, creeping ever closer. Mostly working outside on retaining walls in the garden and finally they are installing the stone archway at the front door. A couple of pictures though. We love the way that the crystals in the WC light create a pattern on the walls. Feature brick wall with arches that my wife really wanted being installed.

Well done @Moira Niedzwiecka

Pictures as promised - The WC is not quite finished, but almost. The grout needs tidying up, and there are lights to go in the alcoves. We have 4 identical sinks like this, plus a double one on our bedroom. Part f the reason for ending up with 4 was that when we priced them up initially the sinks were only maybe £200 more than wall mounted ceramic sinks, much to my surprise. Months later they discovered that they had forgotten to include the cost of the quite substantial brackets.

I have now been on a strict KetoDiet for 9 months, i was severely ill with undiagnosed Chronic Fatigue Syndrome that had been bad and only got worse over a two year period. When your that ill nothing is going to be a silver bullet but within 4 weeks of being on the diet I started to improve and have been improving ever since. As well as being on a keto diet I am also on a Paleo diet and this removes all dairy and a bunch of other stuff, long story short..... dairy causes inflammation in a lot of people and inflammation causes an untold amount of diverse problems, I have suffered muscle pain all my life, not something that’s always there but as a hard working hard playing guy I always suffered after hard activity. Spent a fortune on massage and chiropractors. After giving up dairy 9 months ago the pain stopped, just like that. Now that I am getting better (so far 60% better) and am working hard again it’s amazing to be able to finish at the end of the day and not be in pain. If anyone needs more info on paleo keto diets I am happy to pm you details of further research and resources. As i said I have a pretty serious diet and take a lot of mostly natural supplements but also eat fermented foods daily. I will stop now but..... it’s a bloody miracle how changing my diet and taking some supplements has brought me back from what was being very very close to the end game.

We looked into something similar when doing mine and at the end just left it fully glazed. The only other choice was to divide the window up by 1/3 and have a fixed pane on the bottom 400mm and then a standard opening in the rest. In the end we just didn't like it that way so just ended up fully glazed.

What we are looking for are sliding windows, we had them in our last place but finding it hard to source here, very easy to restrict opening. The only thing would be that like a patio door you will end up with a fixed pain aprox half way across Another idea is a servery window, but again not common over here we think we are going to have to source our windows from Canada.

I think you may run into a problem with the regs, if they are the same as here, as they require first floor windows to be fitted with a device to limit the opening, so a child can't just open the window fully and fall out. Usually these restrictors can be unlatched, but it's a two handed job, deliberately so, to make it difficult for a small child to do. For that reason I doubt that you could get a bifold system to work, plus bifold doors are notorious for losing airtightness after a year or two, as the sealing force on the folding joint is pretty hard to maintain. 2400mm is too wide for a single side opening casement, too, although you might be able to find someone who would make custom top hinged frames; I'm not all sure how wide you can go with top hinges, but it'd be little different to a glazed door fitted on it's side. Restrictors would still be needed, but they can be fitted easily enough to top hinged glazing. One challenge to overcome is how to insulate the corner pillar to prevent a thermal bridge and the associated condensation risk, which may be difficult if you want a slim look in the corner with the windows open. Finally, how high above the floor is the lower edge of the first floor opening? I can't recall off the top of my head what the regs say about the minimum height for the lower edge of a fully opening aperture, but have a feeling it's around 1100mm above floor level. If the windows are 1500mm high, then unless the room has higher than average ceilings, you may run into problems there, too. Worth checking the regs that apply in NI, though, as they may well be different to those that apply here, so some of the points above may not be correct.

Please update when you’re working full time, the build is going wrong and you’ve run out of money. at the mo, you are 1) on holiday & 2) haven’t started

We are finally very close to being finished inside. We have been living in dust for two months. I have been trying really hard to avoid putting up pictures until it’s all done, but the stair is going in and looking beautiful. As there is another stair porn thread re glass balustrades I thought I’d join the party. Give it a few weeks and I’ll do a full photoshoot.

Murderer This is my old GP https://www.independent.co.uk/news/voices-in-doctors-head-told-him-to-kill-daughter-1574679.html

A rubbish drawing is worth a thousand words!

Ok. Called a few drainage channel suppliers and they said not to do this as it could flood the drainage channel. So! Shall I just have my down pipe go into my concrete 'base' and straight across the plot ? (i.e. down pipe into 45 deg then pipe across) Drainage channel as a separate thing i.e. down pipe not into it? ta!

They usually have no proper terminal boxes, leaving you to do really rubbish things like carve a hole in the plaster of the wall to allow you to drop some terminals in, and add to that most of them only have a very small area in contact with the wall leaving you not much room to devise and fit in said bodge. A triumph of appearance (if you like that sort of thing) over engineering. IF you know in advance this is the type of light to be used, then running the cable from the switch to the light in flex rather than twin and earth can avoid the need for terminals but still leaves you terminating the flex straight to the lamp holder with nowhere to lose the slack you need to do so.