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Maybe light a disposable BBQ in there and smoke the little bugger out. Weve got Capt. McChirpface on the gutter at around 05:00 everyday waking everyone up. He'll be getting a cricket bat around the ear if he doesn't shut his little beak up.

I am posting this in case it is helpful to anyone on this site now or in the future. We have just had the last bit of asbestos removed from our 1960s bungalow and demolition is now able to commence. If you have asbestos it needs to be removed and disposed of appropriately. Some asbestos is not as bad (chrysotile for example) and can be dampened, double bagged in heavy duty polythene and taken to a tip that accepts asbestos (many don't). But if you have the bad stuff (we had amosite) it has to be put in sealed containers and shipped out properly and the work has to be done by licenced contractors. The Health & Safety Executive needs to be informed 14 days prior to work commencing. Our contractors did that for us. We suspected asbestos so got a couple of samples tested a year ago. One was chrysotile, the other was amosite (asbestos insulating board used on our soffits). At that point our demolition costs went up by a factor of 6 ? You need an asbestos survey before demolition. These are invasive and leave your house with holes everywhere (ceilings / walls). They can repair the damage and allow you back in once it is done but most surveyors we spoke to didn't recommend it. We moved out permanently before getting our survey. Sadly our survey showed up even more asbestos than we knew about. We knew about the soffit boards and the roof edging strips and the artex ceilings. We didn't know that every vertical wall strut in the outer walls of our timber frame 1960s "flat pack from the NEC" would be lined with a strip of asbestos. Our asbestos contractors have been in for a week in April and then again for most of May (had to give an additional 14 days notice to HSE for the newly found asbestos). First a protective plastic "bubble" was fitted around the house, encasing the soffits. Extract fans were placed to filter the air before extracting it to the outside world. An airlock of plastic encased boxes was built to the front of the house. A shower unit was permanently on site for the guys when they de-suited each day. The soffits were removed, then the house was sealed from the inside so the internal asbestos could be removed. At all times, all the guys working wore masks and full protective suits. After all was removed, an asbestos analyst attended to ensure that the air was clean and the asbestos was removed and all areas appropriately cleaned. A certificate of reoccupation was then issued to officially allow people to go back into the house without all the suits and masks. A contractor has done all this for us and we are glad that we haven't attempted any of this ourselves. They finished yesterday (though the chrysotile roof edging is still in place and will be taken off with the tiles). Some photos attached. Hope this is helpful to someone else.

Collared doves make the most annoying noise. My neighbours used to keep doves (aka manky pigeons) in a dovecote. They used to spend all day on my other neighbour’s roof and crap all over it. They were hoping that when we built our house they would use our roof instead but they never did lol. One day he got pissed off with them and threw a rock at them that missed and went through his bathroom window .

As for Ubiquiti kit, you should have plenty of change from your budget. UniFi AC Lites cost about £80 each and you can pick them up on eBay second hand from time to time for about £50 or so. Suggest to buy 2x UniFi AC Lite's and nothing else. (Plus a laptop to do the setup remotely using the free Unifi software.) Regarding "2x or more", it depends on coverage areas and signal attenuation by thick walls. Suggest trial-and-error. Start with 2x and buy more if you need them. In a modern house, two did the whole house. In a big older house with brick internal walls, 3x were needed. If you need an weather-tight outside AP, they are available too from the "mesh" range (e.g. UAP-AC-M). Optional extra: a PoE ethernet switch (made by Ubiquitu or a third party, doesn't generally matter) so that PoE injectors, which are included in the box, are not needed at each access point. Initially you don't need a UniFi Cloud Key, which is for remote monitoring of your network and more commonly deployed for commercial installations.

I think there's no real merit in using SIPs, even MgO clad ones, as you're paying a lot extra for structural strength and certification that isn't needed, as the portal frame is bearing the loads. If you are OK with the wall thickness build up, then you could just clad the steel portal frame with insulation and then use a cement board outer skin, which could be rendered, clad or have brick slips fitted. I'm not convinced it would be cost effective though, as others have tried to bring the advantages of a steel frame to domestic scale buildings without much success. There was a chap on Grand Designs who ran a steel fabrication company who opted to build a modular steel prefabricated house, which looked like a good idea in principle, but it was clear that his design had thermal bridging through the steel and AFAIK the idea never really took off. I think that, in part, that may have been because modular, fast assembly, timber frame panel houses are cheaper and just as quick to erect on site, and most of any possible cost saving came from the speed of on site assembly. Labour is far and away the biggest variable cost in a build, and is a cost that is impacted by our weather, very much so for the early stages, before the house is up and watertight. Anything that speeds up the foundation and house erection to the watertight stage is potentially good, as long as it doesn't introduce compromises. With a steel portal frame there would be a lot of details to get right, including how to stop the foundations for the steel frame becoming big thermal bridges to the ground beneath. Putting the steel frame outside the insulated envelope would get around that problem, but then you add another problem, which is how to stop the structural penetrations that come through the shell to the steel frame becoming thermal bridges, which would also require some careful detailing. All in I think it would be getting the details right that would be the challenge, and could well absorb a lot of design time to get right, plus, I suspect, more than a little aggravation from everyone from building control, through contractors working on the build to insurance and warranty companies over the non-standard construction.

Only if the roof itself is a vacuum chamber - otherwise it's the surface of the inside of the panels you need to worry about. There is also conduction through the silica foam used to provide the structure of the panel. So essentially you have a very small number divided by virtually zero, which means what response there is will be very rapid - but the insulation should be good enough that the actual power transmitted will be quite low. This means that the relevant thermal mass is more that of the whole building than of the roof insulation itself. In a well insulated, high decrement factor wall the heat transmission across it will be low and it will take a long time to measure any change in external temperature. For a well insulated, low decrement factor wall the heat transmission across it will be low but it will take very little time to measure changes in external temperature. If heat transmission is low, however, this isn't such a big deal - the roof temperature might for example drop by half a degree over the course of 20 minutes rather than 12 hours. Provided there is a reasonable amount of thermal inertia elsewhere in the system (a concrete floor for instance) it should be no big deal - if the concrete is at close to equilibrium with the air, even small changes are self-correcting as the rate of heat transfer will rapidly increase as the air temperature drops. The key is keeping power demand small - temperature swing will be directly proportional to power. Personally, I wouldn't ever have an unpumped/unpumpable vacuum system at home - I spent the first 10 years of my career as a vacuum engineer, much of which was finding new ways to find obscure leaks. The idea of the insulation relying on nobody puncturing a foil bag on a building site just causes my mind to boggle a bit - I'm used to systems being assembled in clean rooms and a single scratch or fingerprint being enough to trash the system. Admittedly I was working on ultra-high vacuum systems, but still...

'Turning' the T piece is going to be a pain later - cant you tweak the design so the incoming h2o for both hot an cold comes in on the vertical and then both existing and proposed feeds come in on a horizontal run. When you upgrade - cut through the old supply and connect to the new one. Will sketch a pic if necessary tomorrow.

If you are into machine tools you can often get 3 phase machines cheaper . You may pay a higher standing charge for a 3 phase supply and it may limit some of your options like economy 7 Of you install solar PV, self usage may be less effective if your domestic load is split. Installation cost will be more, possibly a lot more, depending on what infrastructure is near you (e.g. we are on the end of a mile long single phase 11KV overhead line, imagine the cost if I wanted 3 phase)

Thought I'd update this thread with our experience to date. So far this month we've had 15 virtually cloudless days (out of 21) including a run of 8 consecutive such days. We've left the Sageglass in auto mode and it has worked extremely well in restricting the solar gain and effectively regulating the indoor temperature. Granted, the sun is relatively high in the sky now and approx 25% of the south-facing glass is shaded by our 50cm soffit overhang, but I'm pretty confident the Sageglass would cope even if we'd had such a run of cloudless days earlier in the year. So far, to coin an old Honda marketing strapline, it just works! Edit to add: by the way, the privacy element is fine during daytime when the glass tints as it reflects like a black mirror when viewed from outside, but is far less effective at night when light are on inside. Suffice to say we now have blinds at the bedroom windows!

Start buying them up, once you own them extend the garden!

Yes, word of warning you cannot disable all the lights (link activity etc) so ensure it is somewhere where the blinking won't be an issue.

If you want a fanless PoE switch teh UniFi 8 port ones are fanless and you can then leave out the injectors.

Thanks for the advice I have done just this!

I agree their noise is soooo irritating. They nest (well pil a few twigs) behind the Sky Dish, Had three lots of babies lat year, even though I removed the nest between times. This year they have had one baby, I removed the nest straight after it fledged, (about a month ago) and no sign of them since. As I'm selling they aren't going to get chance to build another this year.

If it’s a collared dove you can shoot it provided you can prove damage to crops. Or make like Cromwell and use a pike. if the head stays embedded in a rafter you get instant tradition.

At least it isn’t a peacock.

Bravo. The worst is behind you. The finish is the most pleasant. Good luck

In plain speak, just like N-glazed windows, the decrement delay is tiny -- effectively zero. That means what whilst the aggregate U value might be small, there is little or no lag in that thermal leak passing through the roof. If you want to integrate up / average out the heat then the simple way is to add some mass above the roof, but rather than concrete, why not go for a green roof? This will also give you shade and some evaporative cooling as well as looking a lot nicer than most other finishing surfaces.

Just check ‘he’ hasn’t already included in his quote to flash this .... if he’s looked at the job to quote you already i imagine either he’s taking responsibility for it or he’ll have looked you in the eye and made you aware of what you’d need to provide him so he can achieve a waterproof roof .

I seem to remember that there are large trees surrounding your proposed build so the roof will probably be shaded significantly. I'm not sure how much of an effect decrement delay will have. If decrement delay was a significant factor then I would be thinking along the lines of a combination of a concrete slab and a layer of aerogel.

Well my particular examples are absolutely silent, even with the driver sitting against the radio in the kitchen that is bothered by our current MR16s.

It all depends on your budget, and what performance you require!! Simple plug in Wi-Fi boosters will give you coverage as the cost of performance because to get signal from your router to the booster you are eating up performance for the router Wi-Fi and every additional (from router) and subsequent (from previous booster) will also sap performance but it is simple. Next is to utilise an old/spare router as an access point (and switch) it will take in a copper feed from your main router and just push out it's own SSID (Wi-Fi logon name), devices should transfer between the two, though not seamlessly! Best performance (highest price) is a unified (central control) system where all the access points have the same SSID and your devices seamlessly roam between them, all the manufacturers do them (enterprise grade equipment) and their performance far exceeds the general consumer equipment but a certain amount of effort and know how is required. I have two Ubiquity UniFy systems, in the house we have just finished there is a DrayTek Modem (turn ADSL/VDSL into computer) a gateway router, two switches (1 x 48 and 1 x 24 (PoE)) and 4 access points, 420m2 spread over 2 floors with 350mm of concrete/screen between floors. In the other house a simple router/8 port switch and access point that covers the whole house. Ubiquity UniFy system is easy to use and fairly intuitive.

My own little build has worked out at just a fraction over £40k for a 43m2 (net) single storey house, price includes all services, fees, access, interior fit out, but it was about 99% DIY labour which obviously kept the cost down. Creating the access and installing the sewerage and other services took almost half of that budget. On a flat site with mains drainage the project would have been significantly cheaper. I could also have cut back on the spec, e.g. no alu clad 3G windows, no plaster skim, budget kitchen, and saved a few thousand that way.

Hurrah - Power has been connected Now to arrange meters - I didn't dare do it earlier having cancelled twice

Agreed. The SA cooler units are, iirc, 6 / 9 / 12kW or thereabouts before the loss of the HP, so I think a freezer based design may be ok for a room, but whole of house will just inundate it and run it to an early grave. If you live near a recycling centre it may be ok as you'll have a good source of replacement freezers . Not the way I'd envisage a modern solution to look I wonder how much heat the unit would give off whilst 'cooling' ?

How the Dickens do you tile a soffit?