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I will have a couple of water butts off the garage for the garden. I have my car washed every 2 weeks for £5. It means I can leave the car with the Albanian lads while I do my shopping & don't have to pay to park. No brainer for me.

PS I love this forum - from Kwikstage to cancer in about a dozen posts!

Get ready then for multiple, numpty, tanking and tiling questions!

Either make/buy 3 of these. One each end and the other in the middle. https://www.diy.com/departments/softwood-3-step-riser-l-813mm/66169_BQ.prd You will end up with this look. https://www.diy.com/departments/step-deck-stair-kit/566193_BQ.prd

This Aqua Panel has been the biggest pita for a while. Learning curve too, you can't treat it like pb it's just not as flexible or forgiving.

Rainwater for car cleaning and gardening is far better, I plan to use a big tank that I have to collect rainwater from my garage for this.

There's actually been next to no wind! Have had a couple of day sails though, already used the boat more than in the whole of last year. First review is now online, five stars, onto our third lot of guests and so far all looking good. We've only got one space left for the months we have opened up for bookings. Breathing a big sigh of relief here

You can install a rainwater storage system reasonably cheaply if you shop around. IBCs hold 1000 litres each and can be picked from places like Smiths (http://www.smithsofthedean.co.uk/ ) reasonably cheaply, together with all the fittings needed. @Bitpipe has a storage system that uses IBCs:

Sorry, its rainwater I want to harvest isn't it not the grey water as I have already paid for that on the input side and will get charged for it on the output side anyway so only advantage is the re-use bit and you only get one shot. I need to reduce input side so rain water sounds like a good idea. Anyway a tank will cost around £1500 and assuming install costs another £500, pipework, muckaway etc we into the game for around £2000 (plus labour). Looking at our diversity, toilet flushing / showing / washing / Washing up / Dishwasher / Baths only the toilet flushing bit is recoverable from the input side through straight rainwater harvesting. Our overall demand is a 60000l/pa of which toilet flushing will be 32000l/pa (32m3) we pay £1.7166 m3 for water and £2.39m3 for sewerage at the rate of 92.5% of delivered water. So toilets cost us £(32x1.7166)+((.925x32)x2.39) = £125.6752. Given this the simple, no allowance for NPV or such, payback time will be, wait for it £2000/£125.6752 = 15.9 years (or there abouts). So I think I can forget it on those grounds at least and given your comments above I think I will. Thanks all. 32

“I’m smarter than the average bear Boo Boo” (the game isn’t over until it’s over )

Fill the gaps with the tile adhesive, you'll be tanking it anyway so theres no need to blow any extra £££ on posh gap filling goop.

I forgot to come back and say we chose engineered Oak in the end for the whole room. In fact I collected it earlier in the week, all 700Kg of it a full trailer and car load but done in one trip. Room is plastered and painted, UFH to go down soon, then we start flooring.

Same ones I used for a few. Still going strong. Used the 15mm ones here but couldn't find them in warm white. And a single 10w warm IP65 behind the bath. All on their own switches so they could just backlight the bath when having a soak. The bath spot and the main spots dimmable, and the vanity mirror lights and pockets were on dimmers.

Not the best quality but should be good fir grinding sharp edges if required.

It's not at all good to run excess water through a treatment plant, as it will dilute the nutrient concentration which will then dilute the aerobic bacteria population, meaning that when a flush of nutrient enters the tank there may be insufficient bacteria to quickly consume it. If fresh water then flushes through the tank it could very easily end up washing partially-digested material through the outlet. If that outlet is running to a watercourse, then there is a significant risk that discharging high biological oxygen demand waste could have an adverse impact on the watercourse.

Are you sure it wasn't LSD (or some modern equivalent)?

Just run the rainwater to the pond ?

Vitamin D helps strengthen bones even in us oldies, it won't repair damage though. My sister (who has never been more than a size 10) needed a hip replacement in her late 50s. doing the recommended physio exercises delayed the need for the op BUT more importantly really supported the joint after her op and got her fully mobile agin very quickly. She was Scottish dancing again withing 6 weeks. She has just been back for exrays on her other hip and they are amazed she has only just started having pain as her hip is shot. Lesson being whilst hip breakdown cannot be repaired without surgery, strong supporting muscles really makes a difference.

The archway is finished so we can use the front door again. They do need to finish the front face. We can now finish the render off. Our fitted bookcases are in, we have to choose one of those three door finishes.

Morning All! OK - the block, sand, cement and lintels are outside, the slab is ready (felled a couple of small tree's and gave the others a trim back) I gave it a good clean to ensure good mortar adhesion and I am waiting for my neighbour who is a bricklayer. Don't laugh but I am sitting on ACAD just now tweaking the front door design. The garage is 4800mm wide, I must come in about 1000mm from the left to avoid tree's further along I don't want to remove but I am now not sure if I should go 3000mm wide or 2500mm etc... I have spoken to a roller door company and cannot remember what they said about maximum width, I don't want the block built then find I have gone too big! Also, don't need to think about this for a couple of hours but need to choose my window height! I will upload photos later/tomorrow/Monday.

Out of interest, why?

Update: planning officer has just left after doing her site visit, she says I can call on Friday and get a verbal with the letter going out soon after. The garage has had half the roof removed so half of it can be demolished this weekend - I will slice the walls down with the angle grinder and a diamond blade where the temporary stud/OSB wall is and pull it over with the excavator which shall be delivered on Saturday morning. I have ordered some hardcore for the garage slab area, top soil, fence posts and rails to build some "edging" which I will then fill up to the top of with good excavated soil to make the new level of the lawn - don't worry it will only be 200mm high. I was just going to form a little slope off at the end of the garden but I decided I would just edge it and finish it off square, I will then fill the other side with some bark around the trunks of the tree's there and that should look smart. By Sunday night I would like to have completed the following stages: 1. Edge lawn on 3 sides with posts and rails to raise it to current patio height. 2. Dig a hole in the middle of the lawn about 3m x 3m down to about clay layer. 3. Pull half of the side wall of garage down and the two small sections of wall either side of the car door. 4. Scrape garage site of poor gravelly top soil. 5. Chuck the wall and poor gravel contaminated top soil into the hole in the lawn (should I lay some pipe down to this area to create a soakaway of sorts?) 6. Fill in the hole compacting as we go. 7. Scrape the whole lawn site of all grass and turn it over and roughly level it. 8. Scrape the garage site of all the good top soil (and it is good stuff) using all or some of it to back fill the lawn site up to the edge of the new edging. 9. I may go right down to clay on the garage site if it's not just going to be an excessive depth and vast amounts of hardcore but on this site I think clay is only 300mm down. 10. Level the lawn site. At this point I will go and get a cold beer and with any luck light the BBQ for my *cough* workers *cough* - ahem family/friends. Probably a lot to try and do in a day but I think we can do it. Sunday morning assuming I have done all the above in a day I will scrape the front drive nearest the house of all the pebbles and a thin layer of poor soil in prep for a new front lawn. To get rid of this gravel I will maybe chuck it on the garage site. Spread the hardcore over the garage site. At that I think I am done. Additional work I may do if time and spare soil permits is remove a row of slabs adjacent to the new lawn to make it a little longer, if I have even more time and there is plenty of soil I may even move 3/4 columns of slabs and churn that up a bit, dig a trench for a small retaining wall to make a small raised bed along the side of the garden and then a strip of lawn. Wish me luck - will I post photos?

You know why already surely? Cos it’s an art form for @Onoff

Touch and go whether it arrives before I get the tiles on...