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It was waiting in the garage when I got home from work yesterday. Was tempted to sleep in it.

Is there a reason you have gone with a private company i have been very very impressed with the good service I have received from our local council bco.

Guess what? My complaint seemed to work. I've no idea at all what they did; they didn't do any work to the cabling close to the house, that's for sure, but we're now getting a fairly solid 24 Mb/s, rather than the 4 to 5 Mb/s we used to get. I can now upload at around 10 Mb/s too, which is a heck of a difference when posting photos.

I didn’t think that this summer could be as busy as 2017 It looks like there is no sign of slowing down Ive enough work for myself and five others till December now Thogh it’s nearly all site work It’s bound to have a knock effect for self building Its well worth getting everyone booked as most are happy to price from drawings I was chatting to a friend who runs a Groundworks business He selfbuilt back in 2008 as the recession started and managed to build a five bed house for £120000 Due to cheap labour and heavily discounted materials I wish

That's the importance of sitting customers down before fitting things, and stating clearly the pros and cons, so they make the choice not you. Has saved me a thousand arguments.

We are on 48 hrs notice for a visit from our private BCO who is also doing the structural warrenty work. We have only had the excavation visit so far but the pipework fall / air test coming up. I did plan that for past Monday on the previous Thursday based on a just in time basis but we broke the dumper truck and so had to postpone. Learned my lesson there - Get the job finished then call the BCO and get on with other work.

They will be mounted on a 2 degree slant for run off . Fully bonded units . As I said think of a shoe box lid over its box that’s how they sit on my upstands.

I've just purchased some Quinetic gear after confirming something that had been bugging me for a while but I've now figured. The Quinetic 2-gang wireless dimmer switch (QUD12W) bumpf says it needs to be paired with the appropriate dimming receiver (QUR301). It DOESN'T. The dimmer switch will operate the standard 6A receiver (QUR303) to give on / off, no dimming function. I went into TLC earlier and they didn't know but were happy to open boxes and we wired it up on the bench. So it works that one gang of the dimmer will control / dim the downlights via the dimmer receiver. The other gang of the dimmer will do the ambient, non dimmable lighting, LED strip and Bluetooth receiver via a standard 6A receiver. Guessing they just assume you will want to use dimmable kit with a dimmer switch so highlight the need for a dimmer receiver and don't mention it will also work with the standard receiver.

Progress! Topsoil stripped off most of the site today, and much of it good to reuse. Full plans have gone in to BC so as son as TF guy confirms our baseworks drawings, we're good to dig footings. In the meantime there's land drain to do and crushed rubble to lay.

It was a bit of a saga really. We got our completion certificate on 28/2/18 and we sent all the paperwork off to BuildZone on 8/3/18. Their surveyor made his final visit a week later and then we heard nothing for two months. I contacted them and apparently they had a new computer system and had lost my paperwork. So it was all sent again and I finally got the warranty on 15/5/18. I would certainly chase them.

They make a concrete block using whatever stone and dye they need and make it 225*200*450 and split it in 2. They where used here everywhere around 2000-2005.

10% off eBay purchases until 8pm tonight using the code PERFECTTEN Valid on many categories including DIY by the looks of things. Minimum spend £20 maximum discount £50. https://www.ebay.co.uk/rpp/perfect-10?_trkparms=%26clkid%3D4466854449037586000

From what's been posted before I think the issue is that the plot was refused PP for a dwelling, but the owners may be living there, with the foundations down for a "stable block", which it seems is very likely to be a dwelling in disguise in due course. I think there's probably enough evidence to suggest that the landowners are intent on living there, by hook or by crook, without going through the planning system. Given the extreme hassle that @recoveringacademic had in gaining planning consent, and all the ludicrous hoops he had to jump through to get it, I can fully understand the frustration at seeing a neighbour just flout the law and seem to be getting away with it. I'd feel much the same in that position. The problem is really one of getting the law applied equally in the same area, together with the apparent unwillingness of the local authority to enforce its own decisions.

And I get that, but it's important to decide whether something is important enough to you personally to invest time and energy in, because you never get that investment back. I assume from your comment that RA can see the caravan from the scaffolding? It didn't come across in the previous posts where the caravan was located. I would point out that scaffolding comes down though so unless you can see the offending structure from your house, or it's very close by, or might impact the price of your property then it's a walk away decision in my view.

The Wickes one I have is the weapon of choice for quick tasks where power isn't needed as much. It's plenty powerful enough for sticking plugs and screws into walls and is light enough to put into a pocket Best advice is find your local Wickes and go pick them up. Also don't be afraid to ask Screwfix to let you open the boxes - ironically that's how I found out my saw was missing a part before I bought it...

Go for 500 as you can run a bigger TS slightly cooler. Also, more volume to store PV down the line.

I was researching this when we were building and was horrified at how expensive this type of light was, in the end I found these; https://www.ledkia.com/uk/buy-apliques-b/464-randy-led-step-light-with-a-white-finish.html Which now we have them installed I love, they give off enough light that we hardly ever need to have the main ones on.

Just on the Baxi Megaflo- they seem to have a much better QC process than a few of the others as we recently had a main board fail and couldn’t get one for 2 weeks as Baxi had rejected the previous batches and binned the supplier due to poor quality. Basically every supplier in the UK then went to back order..!! They were failing at the 3-4 year point and Baxi said that was unacceptable. I know of other brands with the same issue (and same board....) and they are still failing ... The difference is that Baxi have a real set of people to talk to, and understand customer service.

Can I just ask what the problem is here? What is making you try to enforce planning rules when you’re not a council planner?

A fast flowing bath and one shower running simultaneously should be possible, as long as your cold mains flow will support that of course. 20+ kW to the bath and maybe 10kW should be your worst case scenario TBH, so for that reason I wouldn't go less than 35kW for the boiler. Remembering also that space heating may be drawn at the same time too, so in order to match demand ( so no drop in DHW performance, which nobody wants after forking out for a new system ) your better off safe than sorry. An 18kW boiler would just about support the bath filling, or even fail at that if it's a big bath and good flow rates at the taps. A 35kW boiler will modulate down to less than 10kW, even lower with better makes, so you absolutely will not be wasting gas if that's a worry. As for makes, I prefer a Vaillant TBH, but WB have a guarantee, not a warranty, for 10 years. You have to adhere to their installation criteria ( their filter their controls and an accredited WB fitter ) so check out the small print ( speak to them directly prob best ) and see which has the most appeal. WB have got a good reputation, Vaillant similarly so, but for an excellent daily driver I would easily recommend the cheaper but afaic fit and forget Baxi Megaflow. First two are the Mercedes, the Baxi is your VW golf. . Never ever had issues or comebacks with the Baxis, an excellent boiler.

35 kw

You might find the coil in the tank has a rating - ours was 18kw max so there isnt much point massively exceeding that.

Not really a problem - essentially you just need to size the boiler for the hot water load plus probably the standing losses of the cylinder, and your heating losses will probably come out in the wash. I'm assuming the thermal store is sized such that everyone can have a shower/bath at the same time before it's recharged? 500 litres translates to about 25 kWh to heat it up, so your maximum hot water heating power required is more or less 25 divided by the minimum number of hours between everyone using up all the hot water (8 hours for a 3kW load?). DHW is only the dominant heat consumer in a Passiv or near-Passiv house because the heating demand is so low - in absolute terms it isn't actually all that big. If you go for a big storage tank plus a large boiler, you're essentially ensuring that you can have unlimited hot water twice - a big tank and small boiler or small tank and big boiler would both be absolutely fine to do what you want. No reason that the heat load formulae wouldn't work for sizing the heating fraction of the total demand - you still need the same amount of heat to keep the place warm, it's just being delivered by a different route at a lower temperature.

I’ve just bought a Greenstar Cdi and 250 ltr cylinder yesterday That’s to run 155 mtrs of UFH and radiators for five beds three baths

Passivhaus has a heating load 10W (0.01 kW) per square metre at the design heating condition, so if you're a bit off then you probably need 0.02-0.03 kW per square metre for heating. As for hot water, you get about 20 litres of hot water for a kWh of heat (a bit less in winter, a bit more in summer - depends on the starting temperature) so a 35kW boiler should be able to give you about 700 litres per hour of hot water. As a cross-check, a 35kW combi is rated at about 15 litres per minute (870 litres per hour). So unless you actually want to get rid of the thermal store and run the place off a combi, 35kW is absurdly oversized - you want the smallest boiler you can get your hands on (probably 12kW) as otherwise you'll end up with short-cycling nightmares.

I'm trying to think why guys have stronger wrists

I love ex display and pre-loved stuff. Champagne tastes on lemonade money Enjoy your bath! Sounds gorgeous ....

Ah, my teenage years .........

With a timber frame that is being clad (with block) it is usual to use Kwikstage or Cuplock and hang a few Hop Up's on the inside for the frame erection, then remove them as the brickies build up. With my own build and my own scaffold, I didn't have any hop ups. So when it came time to clad it and the scaffold was a little to close, I moved it in place. A gentle tap on each foot with a sledge hammer moves it about half an inch. Just keep moving up and down the run half an inch at a time and it's not long before you have moved a complete scaffold over 6 inches. Probably not official advice "don't do this at home" but if you are as stupid as me and try it, make sure EVERYTHING is removed from the scaffold and you wear a hard hat.

Definitely A good one normally will only recommend someone that they are pretty sure about

I had no idea they had come down so much in price. I detest cutting the grass, even though it's only a small area, so one of these looks ideal. Years ago I had a go at making one, which wasn't intelligent, it just used a microcontroller to make pre-programmed turns if it either detected the very low frequency RF from the boundary wire, or if one of the bump switches detected an obstacle. I used a small motor driving a blade that had two Stanley knife blades fitted to it as the mower part, and it only had enough cutting power to gently trim the tallest blades of grass. Mine was solar powered, and programmed to turn on and start ambling about the lawn as soon as there was more than a set battery charge current coming from the solar panel on the top, and shut down when the battery voltage dropped to a critical level, and not start again until the battery voltage was at the fully charged level. It worked OK, and never really left any noticeable grass cuttings behind, but the lawn at the house we lived in then (this was around 1998) was too big, and the mower was just too slow. It was OK during long spells of dry weather, but just couldn't cope with the spurt of growth from the lawn after a few days of rain. What I did learn was that the "little and often" approach works exceptionally well at both keeping the grass looking good and controlling weeds. The near-constant topping off of weed shoots seemed to be a very good way of killing them off and letting the grass dominate.

This sentence applies to 90% of my purchases I think including the handbag I bought today .

Hey Peter problem is the rubber is all is all over it . I’d end up cutting it . Could do that and patch it ???? Lol - I just texted my wife so was in ‘wife’ mode . At the end of the above message I put kisses . I promptly deleted them ! . Back in buildhub mode ?

Cat 5E will happily drive 1Gb at house scales. That's what I used, and that's what I get when the device NICs support it. Maybe I will be kicking myself in 10 years time, but it works fine for me.

Nope. No drainage. Only drainage it to deal with surface run off. Got to make those edges SUPER tight ! ?