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For every 1 tidy tradesperson there are 10 piss-taking arseholes who own tools but don't know how to use them. My biggest frustration ( on the customers behalf ) is trades who have no concept of follow on trade to trade continuity, and whom just do the job to suit getting back in the van the quickest. Plumbers who clip pipes and fit sinks to untiled or even unplastered walls, electricians who run 25 vertical chases in a kitchen first fix so you can't even DREAM of fitting a wall bracket as the spark doesn't have any concept of 300 / 400 / 600 mm modular units and the safe bit in the middle, plasterer's who put more plaster at the edges and bottoms of the walls than is in the middle, just cos it's easier not to lay on evenly when bending or reaching, the list goes on. I feel for those who don't know what to ask or what signs to look out for in order to spot a wanker before they can do any more harm. I get VERY pissed off when I get called out to a £20k wetroom ( that's falling apart because it's been fitted by a blind, pissed psycho with a £15 B&Q degree ) and offer to redo the whole room, supply and fit, for less than £6k, and the husband ( accountant ) and the wife ( solicitor ) look at ME as if I'm trying to rob them, JUST BECAUSE THE LAST PRICK ACTUALLY DID ROB THEM, and send me packing. So yes, trades can be @@@@@ and your rant is with merit. Fill your boots lad, fill your boots.

I suspect you are wanting a timber framed house that behaves a bit like ours. Well insulated so heat loss is low. It takes a very long time to heat up or cool down in response to changes in outside temperature, days usually. Some may mistake this for "high thermal mass" but it is all down to the decrement delay of the insulation used, in our case a mixture of earthwool and wood fibre. Not a concrete block to be seen. As has been mentioned, plasterboard has quite a high heat capacity so helps a lot. I am already noticing a difference in how the building responds since we have plasterboarded the big room downstairs.

And my biggest problem is not being able to spot the pee-taking ar4eholes. On the contrary I seem to attract the feckers! If I do get someone competent I want to lock them in the house and prevent them from leaving until they've completed every job that needs doing

I completely agree it is an unregulated shambles BUT If it was all fully regulated with warranties on everything you wouldn’t want to pay the correct price. You would then then have a thread saying why is everything so expensive.

The building trade does not seem to be very professional. If it was regulated like banking, insurance or government procurement it would be so much better. Maybe that is where they come from.

Title says it all Try where ever possible to do it myself but not always feasible . ’Fixed price’ is a myth ‘ It’s a lot of work will take 3 days ‘ . So it either takes 1 day or 2 weeks to finish Corners that can’t be cut always are Cost is always insulting! Cost always starts at least twice as high as you estimate ‘Tradesman’ who has been doing it for 30 years , seems to sometimes know less than you Argument always happens over work and payment Usually ends in verbal confrontation or a fight . Perhaps i’m Just unlucky ; perhaps my avatar photo attracts the wrong crowd ? Apologies to fair and reasonable tradesmen on this site .

While I admire your bending skills I would have done that differently. Ditch the obsession with keeping both right hand pipes at the same level. I would have made the left hand one an inch taller coming out of the ceiling. That left hand pipe could then have crossed over above the right hand one and both taken a straight line to their destination with no crossover. I think you regard it more as an art form than a practical means to get water from A to B. Actually scrub that. If the right hand pipe had turned right as soon as it appeared at the bottom of the photo it could have gone to it's destination all on the same level without any crossovers. I suspect my obsession is keeping pipe runs, particularly HOT pipe runs as short as absolutely possible.

Ask @Nickfromwales about the power of moderators vs the power of admins.....

Me thinks the dragon snoozeth@

I'd keep your head down for the next 15 mins It all begins here.....

Interesting thread, speaking as an electrician. In all the time I have been a sole trader I have never had a falling out with a customer (falling out with another trade yes, that's another story) I think the lesson from this is seek personal recommendations. Almost all my work comes that way, I don't advertise now. And as has been mentioned before people will only recommend you if you are up to their standard. I don't "do" facebook or the like, but aparently I get recommended there a lot. Someone just asks "anyone know a good electrician" and someone pops up with my name. As for electricians and certificates, I always issue them and have never had an issue with building control not accepting them. Perhaps you need to retain the final payment until you have the certificate?

I appreciate that it is no help to you but my wife's got one of those but I still find ways of leaving the jobs around the house un done.???

We do 10Gb OM3 between Core switch and the edge cabs these days to provide A 10Gb backbone, but then it’s copper to the desktop

Bugger. Was just about to merge this with the amputated toe thread ☹️

What can I do to increase the thermal mass in a timber frame home? The only high density material we will have within the inside of the house is some concrete blocks round the stove which is in centre of the house and in front of some south facing glazing. My idea was that this would act as a battery, storing heat during the day and gradually releasing this heat during the evening. Are there particular blocks that you can buy that would work well here? Presumably dense ones. Are there other materials we can utilise that would improve the thermal mass in the house? We are having a suspended timber floor, so no concrete slab/screed. We have two young children, so our house is occupied during the day, but this will become less when they are both in school.

Heat Capacity is the term you want (Specific Heat Capacity x Mass), which has units of Joules per Kelvin (i.e. the amount of energy absorbed by the material for every degree increase in temperature). It isn't a terribly useful term however - the rate at which that heat is released again (a function of surface area, thermal conductivity, emissivity of the surface, etc.) is critically important. Combined that gives you the time constant of the system, which should be matched to the time constant of the building as a whole (too short and you'll get overheating followed by no heat at all, too long and it won't do any good).

Well I am a “ mass” advocate, my caravan that I have been living in on and off fir two years cools down very quickly but heats up quickly. My new build is block and brick ( not thermalite as I don’t like them) 200mm full fill cavity insulation ( rock wall). Ever since the doors and windows were installed people entering the build assumed the UFH was working and on, but it was not, and that was not warm weather. During this warm spell the inside remains cool and there is very little in the way of temperature swing. I am not saying there are not other ways of copying a heavy construction but mine works very well and I could not be more pleased with it. ( also I can hang anything I want from the walls) p.S. I also have a wood stove in a heavyweight fireplace centrally within the house. Role on Christmas ?

NEVER!

Why do men have dirty minds? They have to because fanny is a term of endearment...

What happened to just using light to transmit data around the house. Seem to remember you could get LED bulbs that also sent the signal. Then you just have an IR device where you want to get the signal.

It is called pultruded angle and I got mine from All Propped Up in Rickmansworth.

Back to tradesmen. I did the wiring for a major refurb of a derelict bungalow last year. It was a complete gut and replace everything so the owner employed a lot of all sorts of trades directly to achieve the end result. At the end she said something rather interesting to me (bearing in mind my location and she was Scottish). Of all the trades she had on site, she would hapilly employ all the English ones again on another job, but would only employ ONE of the Scottish tradesmen again on another job. Draw your own conclusion. P.S. Please keep the thread clean, this is a respectable forum.

What, with naked men on the bog. That is your local called 'The Cottager' Bit of timeshifting here to avoid trouble Looks like you will be using The Glory Hole now

So @PeterW are you immortal? Can you see my destiny and fate ? TBH ; I can see most of it ? This place is like the pub without the pub

It is like the old newspaper thing. Times Readers' run the country etc. Moderators think they are gods. Admins *are* gods.

My grammar mug was hidden!

Me because this is a family friendly forum ....

I was told that if you have one, or are one, you can use it. So I am OK. (now how long will this stay up)

That is exactly How I did mine and then sat my 12m run of Internorm windows on top of that angle. Quite a bit of work but the thermal bridge is minimal.

Cos the F word is off limits but cock is presumably more socially acceptable here . I don't mind either personally but like many women it's the C word that I don't use, although at work the ones who come from t'other side of the Forth seem to use it more .

@Alexphd1 watch the vid.

If you look at this vid @Vijay you will need to watch about 3/4 through Charlie has a fibreglass angle fixed to his slab, any views on this. Some of that fancy insulation from the green store is eye watering expensive.

If you want to shower your builder then perhaps a chat about his personal hygiene should be further up your list . I have never done, or rather been asked to do, a bespoke glass panel that swings....such as @ProDave's planned arrangement. They've always been manufacturer supplied to suit other than wetroom panels. If the glass Co weren't up for fitting the hinges to the glass I'd never even start the process, as when they cut and drill the glass it's yours, right or wrong, if you've given them the dimensions / templates etc. That just cost me £160 for a bespoke mirror where I held the tape measure at 100mm from the beginning ( to get an accurate mm perfect measurement thus discounting the wobbly metal tape measure end bit ) but then forgot to take the 100mm back off in my drawing. Feck. Yes, all panels otherwise get clear CT1'd to the floor / tray intersection which normally suffices. Most tray / glass combos direct from the manufacturer will instruct you to do the same, or they will give you a small chromed horse-shoe shaped retainer that gets screwed to the floor or tray and stops the end of the glass from moving. In this situation I'd go for a fixed panel about 600-700mm and a hinged door off the end opposite the shower, or an 800mm panel and a 300mm flapper panel. These were essentially bifold flappers, and joined with a magnetic strip to form a cubicle. Been in two years with no complaints, and that shower gets used about 6-8 times a day, every day. Or to be more precise, anything cheap and unfit for purpose . The glass bifolds in that pic were £500 a side and you could tell. Rock solid, accurate rise and fall hinges that positively 'parked' in the open and closed position etc etc. If you want to go cheap, do it elsewhere. The shower and the cubicles take an unrelenting beating all of their life. Don't buy some Chinese crap and then go crying about it .

@Russell griffiths , have you looked at this? https://www.greenbuildingstore.co.uk/products/compacfoam-200/

We have eps300 upstands on our slab and I wouldn't sit the sliders on them, far to much weight. Its a detail we should have investigated in more detail now the gaulhofer windows are half in, need to work out a solution now??

I cant speak for the new build yet but our supplier at home hassled me no end with letters, emails and then a phone call to my home line. I told them 'no' and then gave them a roasting for what I considered to be a marketing call and not to ring me again. Haven't heard from them since and still have power supply.

If you ever do try to drill through toughened glass, please video it for my sick pleasure .

The local glass company (Inverness Glass in this case) will cut the glass to size, drill the holes and toughen it. All I have to do is collect it from them, attach the hinges and hang it. I will be having a 1900mm tall by 900mm panel. The challenge for us was it needs to hinge both ways and be frameless. I only found one off the shelf solution and they would not post it.

I am about to make my own. A set of these hinges https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Di-Vapor-R-180-Degree-Wall-Mounted-Shower-Door-Glass-Hinge-Chrome-Plated-UK/122969345040?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649 And the glass will be coming from the local glass company. They will make it to any size I want, and this custom screen works out no more expensive than off the shelf offerings. (not to mention it's hard getting anyone to post a shower screen to the Highlands)

Added to say that I was worried about not leaving enough room to get round the screens and actually there is loads of room and I could easily have ordered larger screens.

I imagine that would work fine as you would have a 500 gap to step in with the swivel pushed open and then a 600 gap to get round the side before closing it. You could go to 800 for the screen probably if needed as long as your son is average build as that still leaves 400 to get in.

Like this? I have 2 shower rooms with screens (no panels) and gaps of 500 and 600. Lots of room. I also have a small sliding shower door in another shower room which when open is only 400 but it’s still easy to get in and out. Any smaller and you’d need to match the body size to the gap I imagine. The screen I use is 900 and I’ve never had water splash out.

SunAmp's official announcement of their UniQ range is nigh. Its next weekend at the Fully Charged Live show…

Ours is just over a year old now and it is looking good. The two or three tiny imperfections on the floor described above have all but disappeared and they don't show up unless you are looking for them. We have no white coating like you describe. Ours is usually coated in mud, as we use the space as a site hut, but when it dries I just brush it off and it looks as good as it did a few days after the pour. MOH is happy with the finish so we will do the same for the main house only this time densify / seal as you suggest to get the shinyer surface. Ours is RC25/30 so no more waterproof than that. Not sure I can be of any more help about the white stuff still emerging from your slab. One thing I have noticed is how optimistic I was about timing. "A few months behind" - my eyes how nieve was / am I.

When fitting new comms and data installs in secondary schools / university's etc, fibre only went between servers. Cant see you needing it in a residential dwelling anyvtime soon TBH.

In the architects office I work in Universities and hospitals are the only buildings I can think of where we regularly install fibre inside the building and even then its only between the comms/server rooms. Same principle to large office buildings with multiple server rooms. Can't think of anywhere else. Haven't had to install in any secondary schools or any industry/manufacturing building yet so can't imagine how you'd need it in a house. I'm all for future proofing though and putting in conduit / cable trays / access hatches / etc. to allow for future services. I put in a cable tray and have access hatches hidden in the ceiling of full height kitchen units so nothing will be seen but will allow future services to be pulled whatever that technology may be.

And make sure it's solid copper, not copper coated aluminium (CCA). Agree with everything above. If you're dead set on making provision for fiber, run some conduit (making sure you only use long, sweeping bends - perhaps look up minimum radius for fiber).

Whatever you install you should installed a wired CAT 6 network as well. That's what the conduit is for in that datalight system you linked to. Their face plates have two wired and two fiber ports. My guess is you will never use the fibre ports as everything these days is either wired or wifi. There are so few people with fibre in their house that I doubt anyone is making TV with a fibre port on it.

What you have there is section of contemporary industrial-style trellis, aged to a rich brown patina. Screw it to the fence and break out the clematis!

A picture paints a thousand words and is also a way to dodge @PeterW‘s profanity checker