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Just to close this off, by chance I was talking to a neighbour who happened to have a 4ft x 4ft home made CNC router in his workshop. So. rather than take up @MikeSharp01s kind offer, I decided to have a go myself, under the guidance of my neighbour, who clearly had a fair bit of experience of driving the software. I laminated up some of our left-over oak skirting boards, that were 120mm x 20mm, to make a double thickness board, with the joins offset and the grain as best matched as I could make it on the joins. I ran my router down each pair of boards to be edge glued just to make sure I got a tight joint. When epoxied together I ended up with a board about 40mm thick, 500mm long and 240mm high. We started off by playing around with the mayfly design to make it easier to route out - took a couple of ours of fiddling to simplify it and make it looks reasonable. Next, we took a thin skim of both side of the sign (it's double sided) to make sure it was dead flat. The routing out of the text and mayfly was pretty simple after that, we ran a test on a bit of MDF, which looked OK, then went for it with the oak. It came out pretty well, and I stained the oak with a dark oak wood stain, then sanded the flat surfaces to remove most of the stain, leaving the routed out bits much darker. Two coats of clear exterior finish and it looks like this, ready to go up on the gallows post I managed to get concreted in on Monday:

Please can whomever decides to try agile with a build invite me to their first sprint kick off ... I’ll even pay my own travel as to watch a brickie and a labourer with a set of sprint cards is going to be worth every penny ..!! ?

Well, that's the last viewer gone for today, and I'm bloody well knackered. Today, we've had another three who I reckon are probably very likely to make an offer, especially the couple that have just left. Two of those three have sold subject to contract, so in a reasonable position, one has sold and moved into temporary rented accommodation. Two of today's viewers are probably not interested, although having said that one from yesterday that I thought was a no-hoper has just booked a second viewing for Friday. Right now I think we're sitting with at least 5 realistic prospects, maybe 6. No viewing tomorrow as I've got to drive down to Cornwall to help sort out my late mother's stuff with my brother, but I'm going to have drive back here again in time for the first of Friday's viewers. Thankfully we've only got 4 booked for Friday (at the moment) all after lunch time, so I should get a bit of recovery time (unless we get more viewings booked tonight and tomorrow). I'm never, ever, going to sell a house again. It's a bloody awful process, as I hate trying to be a bloody salesman.

Another two viewings booked today, one for later today, one for Saturday. The advert stats are showing that the ad has now been viewed 6585 times, 6418 of those via RightMove (it's clear they are the market leader, I think) Out of those ad views there have been 1280 in-depth views or downloads of the house details, with 1236 of those coming from RightMove Our performance feedback as sellers is showing 4 (out of a possible 5) in all three categories, Presentation, Suitability and Price. All are dragged down by one review that marked us way down at 2 for everything (clearly didn't like us or the house), as most reviewers are scoring us at mainly 5's across the board. Quiet morning today, as all the viewings are this afternoon and evening. Makes a welcome change, TBH.

Funny Story. I visited a local quarry today with a sample of sand in a bucket. My building adviser, who is a sand connoisseur, said it was good stuff "on the sharp side of soft sand". Three blokes in the quarry office needed convincing it was their sand and so they started pawing it like a panel of judges on MasterChef. Still not satisfied the chap in rough site clothing tasted a sample and finally decreed my sand sample had originated from his quarry, "we've got some chalk grains in our sand at the moment". The white grains in my sand were chewable like chalk.

I bet 1000 of those are nosy build hubbers. Not me I hasten to add. I gave up looking at rightmove a long time ago. bet the bad review comes from a GBF****r ?

There is no question that's too basic to ask on BH is there? Thanks @Ian (Good screen name that, good name). The price difference is £3 per POSI. No brainer, then. Untreated. ?

@JSHarris What size is the unit you bought, and can you post a picture? @Dreadnaught In the end I decided to see how the house performed without fitting a duct heater / cooler as it would be easy enough to retrofit as a second zone on our pre-plumb ASHP system. I'm just drafting a blog entry at the moment covering how the system has performed over the course of 12 months. Should be able to post it later today or tomorrow morning.

For the uninitiated, this is planning poker for estimating work. It should be along side the drill bits in every toolbox?

Ha ha, we have Kanban boards everywhere at work. During my build I had a gantt chart pinned up. Everyone ignored it including my husband . I soon tore it down

I can’t remeber what rain sounds like ?

I would be fascinated to see agile principles used in a building project. I was tempted myself, even just in my current design phase. But I have mostly shied away from deviating from the standard ways. I did choose my team (architect, etc.) while looking for evidence of at least some affinity for agile-style working practices. Even now I struggle to get anyone involved to value saturated communication. The culture is a million miles away form anything agile.

This discussion tangenting to lean agile, scrums etc made me chuckle. I work in an agile safe environment with fortnightly sprints, daily scrums etc and it works incredibly well for us delivering network functions in an application driven environment. The boys in other teams in work take the piss out of me and regularly ask if I have a Kanban board for the build. I don't think my trades would appreciate it.

That could work - I just need something soft for the water to hit that will stay in there.....

You can easily map it yourself. Fill a few buckets of water with a bright food gel dye mixed in. Open the manhole lids that you think it goes through and pour a bucket down. You will soon see if it is the same sewer pipe. If you need to find the exact location as it goes by your plot you can use a set of sewer rods and a CAT and mouse. On the plus side as the road is concrete it will be much cheaper and easier to reinstate than a asphalt/bitmac rd.

like this

Quia illa schola cotidie

@lizzie Thanks for the details, I've emailed them ?

I've a handy tester that can tell you the total length of the cable as well as the distance to a fault. They're pretty dear to buy but if you're stuck I could send it over for a try?

I did read the link that @lizzie posted and it seems as @newhome has mentioned that the grounds for refusal are different to mine. I don't intend to submit late, I'll be sure to do this as soon as completion certificate issued. Regarding the annexe and garage, these were indeed part of the initial planning application.

Perhaps worth remembering that of the 4 pairs you actually only need 2 to make an 10baseT connection. So if it turns out one or two pairs are broken half way along the cable the simple answer might be to wire up the remaining pairs.

+1 on the punch downs being a common problem. I'd look at that first and perhaps just remake or perhaps make up a dongle that puts a short or say 270R across one of the pairs and look for that from the other end just to check you have the right cable.

When I looked at fitting a wet duct heater / cooler, there were two problems. The first was the limited air flow in an MVHR system, and the second was the size of duct heater / cooler you would have to fit to get any meaningful heating / cooling. At best I found I was only going to be able to deliver around 0.5kWh worth of cooling (or heating) through the MVHR (based on the flow temps I would be working with from the ASHP). https://www.systemair.com/en-GB/UK/Products/Product-selector/Fans1/ Has a useful calculator that allows you to play around with input criteria - target air temp, air flow rate, flow temps etc to determine the size of unit you would need and how much kWh it will deliver. @JSHarris What size of duct cooler have you got? More discussion here:

I have a tester that I made up that tests using DC sent down each pair in turn, using a microcontroller to run a step pattern down the cable and a simple group of four LEDs on the end of a plug that checks the distant end. The way it works it to put DC down each pair for a couple of seconds, then switch to the next pair, then the next pair etc, so what you see at the receiving end is a moving light display, that shows if all pairs have continuity, or if they don't, which pair is dodgy. I found that the two or three problems I had were all down to bad punch downs by me. Hooking the duff wire out of the IDC and punching it down again always fixed the problem for me. Curiously, none of the flexible cables I made up had problems, yet it's far more fiddly to feed 8 wires in order into the back of a plug and crimp then down with the tool.

It was Total 70 in a charcoal grey colour supply & install price was £4,800 for 18.5 sq.m including a front door so £259 per sq.m Edit: for anyone interested in Rehau for 3G windows here's their spec for the glass that you need to achieve 0.8 'U' value using their standard Total 70 frame system. (I used something similar from Pilkington for my own windows) 0.8_5 chamber.pdf

Did he have one super-long fingernail like the cocaine dealers in 70’s films? :))

Looks great @JSHarris they are great machines aren't they.

Unless you will be at the far end of the sewer, it will be a public sewer as all sewers were adopted by the local water companies in 2011, whether or not they were mapped or are aware of them.

Take the units out and refit. Quicker and simpler and better finish.

The main combined sewer for our whole village showed it stopping about 100m from Severn Trent's own water treatment works. We needed to connect to the part that wasn't on their maps. They swore blind stopped where they had it mapped to in spite of us lifting the existing manhole & sending them photos. In the end they sent out a 'sewer investigation team'. It then took several weeks before they acknowledged that it existed.

Thanks @Nickfromwales. A soakaway could be squeezed in but the site is small and tight. But I am hopeful it wont be needed. There is good surface water sewer (diameter 300mm) in the road right next to the foul drain. I think it drains straight in to the river about 40m away.

I’m going to buck the trend here & say don’t bother with plastic bagged cement. In my experience,you have to cover it anyway as the chances of there not being a pin prick hole in the odd bag is zero,so any decent rainfall & you’ve got wasted (more expensive )bags. Spend a few quid on a couple of tarpaulins & get the bags dropped on pallets to keep them off the ground. Tarps will get used again & again as you go through your build,so a sound investment. Also,my experience of Rugby cement (albeit some years ago) was that it was horrible-tacky & very hard to do a clean job with. Might be worth doing a trial run in the footings just with one mix of your proposed superstructure mortar & get feedback from your brickie.

You can add strong backs if you want - pretty easy to do.

I'm not sure how payment for water and sewers works in England as in Scotland it's paid as part of council tax. Are the existing neighbors paying Anglian Water monthly for the sewer, if so you could maybe use that angle - why have they been paying for sewer service for x years when Anglian don't think they own it, could be a costly refund required by Anglian! You might struggle to get a contractor to connect to the sewer without permission from the owner. We are currently in a similar situation, sewer is owned by a developer who in in the process of transferring ownership to Scottish Water. However until Scottish Water own it we don't have permission to connect. Other thing to do it ask your local MP to investigate, my MSP wrote to the CEO of Scottish Water.

That was true @JSHarris when I was doing the specs - the difference only came in when I started to add the laminated or toughened glass and the other factor was the weight of the units affecting what the maximum openers were.

Last year quite a few of the uPVC suppliers were offering 3G for the same price as 2G, so I think that, on a like-for-like quality basis there is probable very little difference in price. Most of the cost in windows is in making the frames etc; the glazing unit isn't a massive cost element, so there really shouldn't be much of a price difference.

but that's the thing with an impact- your wrist doesn't feel the torque...

If I was a fella I might but I'll stick to buying expensive handbags

We're doing it nearly the same way @bissoejosh as you'll see below with battens and counter-battens give 100mm clearance between the frame and cladding to make space for our gutters. These will be continuous (no joints) extruded aluminium and likely from Guttercrest, but we've not started quoting yet so it could be an alternative supplier (always open to suggestions!) Key difference between our designs is the location of the corrugated material with yours being quite elevated relative to the frame. Is there a particular reason for doing so?

That's right bissoejosh, we've opted for the Dualchas design too. Our architect sold us on the premise of the two examples below after we made it clear that standing seam metal roofs were out of our price range (even when DIYing the Tata steel) We're currently planning to use steel sheets at 0.7mm (as Crofter) but with a mica coating as that has tested the most durable in our samples. These are supplied by Cladco at £12.75/m with an additional £2.5/m for the anti condensation. We'd not considered non-metal options but some samples of those Marley Eternit boards have just been ordered! Our 3D render is below. You'll notice the timber cladding comes past the roof edge to 'hide' the roof. Not as neat a finish as the Dualchas designs, but cheaper!