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Good lord I done it! hung 2 concrete blocks off the side, & carefully mm by mm tapped it home them swinging away under the sink! not perfect but a total result from the position I was in! jesusHchrist I need a beer..

So get it close and then build up timber blocks both sides of the trolly, gently leaver up and put wedges in, lower back onto blocks and slide out trolly. Repeat process for lowering it to the ground. Lever up one side put in some smaller blocks and lower down. Work both sides down evenly in small increments. When your near the final floor level put a bunch of ice cubes under the block, lower it onto these. Scatter some ice cubes into the recess and slide the slab into position. Wait for the ice to melt. Job done.

Can you not cover the risk with indemnity insurance at the point of sale?

Some good luck. I have happened upon some amazing plumbers. Father and son team. Dad is gas safe registered and has loads of gas and heating engineering experience. Son has plumbing qualification and experience and they have been working as a team for the past few years. Came today at 11am to complete a couple of pipe runs, found all sorts of issues that my initial very very expensive plumber had missed or done wrong and eventually went home about 9pm. More quals and more experience than the sacked one and less for both of them on day rate than she charged just for her (and a cash in hand labourer with no experience). Amazingly (or maybe not) I found them through 'my builder', which is a scary place but has definitely worked for me. @Tyke2 They are local and brilliant - very much recommended if you need any gas/plumbing work.

The Timber Frame company has been on site today carrying out a final measure of my DIY insulated slab foundation, I got the impression they thought I couldn’t use a tape measure, mind you the foundation is L shaped and includes a sunken basement section with three sets of patio doors opening onto a sunken lawned area. Thankfully everything was in order and the frame goes into production next week, with errection starting in eight weeks. Best get the slates, render board, Cedral boards, gutters, windows etc ordered.

Quite a lot done in the last couple of months but nothing worth photographing. (Sometimes it's the little things that make the most impact.) many many traumas along the way - budget - what budget, but I am getting there.... Stud walls all done; UFH piping installed; (including screed in lower ground and battens, insulation, spreader plates and overboarding on entry level; first fix plumbing and electricity; door frames; insulation; insulation; insulation; (luckily my handyman says he is immune to the fibreglass and it doesn't bother him but I insisted, and he agreed, he goggled and masked when crawling in the confined loft space) AND today I got S.T.A.I.R.S woo hoo - starting to look like a house.

As the title says we’re getting into the nitty gritty now with so many things to make final decisions on. Kitchen is all finalised, David l Douglas have been fantastic so far, we’ve had four visits to them and two visits from their project manager to the site, we’ve got samples of sink, door handles, worktop and paint colour and their service so far cannot be faulted. We decided to source our own range and fridge freezer and had to send them a link to the exact model so everything is in place for October 1st. Elsewhere the work continues, however there are always little niggles that occur when you employ people to do jobs that you previously did yourself and they don’t seem to work in any order, they do a bit of this then move on to something else without completely finishing anything, they talk about doing something which you think means they’ll do it now but a few days go by and it doesn’t happen. We go along for a week or so quite happy then you notice something that’s not quite right and you have to go back to being not quite so nice to them to get it done properly. The tiler who wanted ready mix adhesive is no more and after a lot of detective work I managed to track down the tiler we had in 2007 for our last build and have brought him on board. You may be wondering why I am sourcing the trades of tiler, kitchen and plumber but this was the agreement with the builder as we wanted some control over some things and it has turned out to be the best way as we can dictate when certain things will happen and they must be ready for that to happen. So this morning I’m meaning to go pick light fittings but it’s a dreich morning and I feel it may not physically happen, maybe online? Oh and by the way I am fed up of ordering things online, getting an order confirmation but they never send an invoice, I spent last night going through all my online orders and checking invoices then emailing the offenders for invoices, ho hum!

Set up a watch list and you will get an email when new items are listed.

How about this one https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F352454254568

Also be aware a lot of the cheaper units aren’t ErP certified so may not pass building regs if they check closely...

Lots out there - depends on budget you have and the heat need. This is an example.

This may be of use https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/grand-designs-live/

Me too.

And it all takes so much time! Fiddly, faffy, tiddly details that are for tiny things and take 80% of the time. Drives me nuts, but it's often this level of attention to detail that makes the finished build look like a quality job.

You could potentially use something filled with air sacrificially. A couple or inner tubes from a bike with the valves forward of the edge, and snip them off afterwards? Though ice would be a cool way to do it. F

No, the inverter will just take less current from the panels so their voltage will rise. The inverter will always be able to withstand the full open-circuit voltage of the panels in any half-competently designed system so no harm will be done. The extra power will just be dissipated as heat in the panels, something like the panels being 14% efficient rather than 18% efficient so instead of 82% of the sunlight turning into heat it'll be 86%. Considering that the panels are quite safe in sunshine with nothing connected to the output so 100% of the sunlight becoming heat this isn't a problem. Yeah, OK, some of the sunlight is reflected. Depending on how the system is configured you might not have the option to use extra power between 3.8 kW and a peak of, say, 5 kW in the house anyway. Normally inverter limiting will be on the output of the inverter itself. I'm a bit behind the times on this sort of thing so maybe there are inverters which have a current clamp on the meter tails which limits the house export but you'd need to check with the DNO that they're OK with that. Direct limiting totally within the inverter is quite robust but having a bit of wire trailing down to the meter tails is a bit more fragile and they frowned a bit on that, or used to. The point of having more panels than the inverter can deal with is that most of the time the panels are not producing nominal power anyway. Even with a 3.8 kW inverter and 5 kW of panels you'll only be losing power for a few hours around midday on a few dozen summer days. Days you'll be producing lots of energy anyway so the loss doesn't really matter.

If you've read of my experience with a Warranty provider, or to be accurate, the Inspector and his boss, then tread carefully if your build is anything but mainstream (mine made clear for example, that SIPs were an wildly unknown quantity to them and have questioned everything to the 'nth degree, making me contact various firms to ask if their products were compatible - even where it was embarrassing for me to have to ask as it was so obvious) slowing the build by weeks and weeks) and make sure the Inspections you get will be by someone who has worked with that system before. Obviously if your doing a mainstream type build it shouldn't be an issue.

Nothing. The inverter will limit the current taken from the panels. The panels will only transfer power if they are connected to a load. If the panels aren't connected to anything they will produce a voltage at their terminals, but if there is no load to take current they will produce no power. That's what the inverter will do, it will not take all the current that the panels are capable of delivering.

The self build policy is a structural warranty (limited) and you cant cover that via an indemnity as far as I know plus no mortgage lender would take it. There is the retrospective option as @newhomesaid but that is more limited and very expensive. I understand there is a new player in the field now to replace CLT....CWT or something like that........Can check if you want. I would bite the bullet take a policy with buildzone or one of the other mainstream providers. Its a very small cost in percentage terms of your build and if you do need to sell or take a mortgage further down the line then you are covered. I know there are others on here that do not believe in warranty insurance, its up to you, personally I would take it. An architects cert is a different animal and does not provide the same cover.

I hear you’ve just got a load of private messages!

How about ‘wondered if you would reconsider the cost for what amounted to x hours, so £80 per hour, and some of the work I have had to have reworked’. £80 is plainly ridiculous. And didn’t she say that it was mates rates? Some mate!!

This would be good if you could. I sold a property lately and there were a couple of non issues thrown up be the searches. both covered off by indemnity policy. I suppose its how they could quantify the risk to arrive at a premium.

You can buy one retrospectively I understand. Costs more supposedly but if you aren’t thinking of moving anyway you may decide that the risk is low enough not to be too worried about that. I bought one. Probably wouldn’t if I did it again.

I bought some second hand scaffold. Asked round the local pub and found a local who worked for a scaffold company. He erected it it stayed in place for about 10 months. I dismantled it and sold it later. All in all i made £280 on the whole deal. But obviously all the risk sat with me.

Well it took a while but I do finally have stairs woop woop

I built a pallet shed too. Mine was a bit bigger - 4.5m by 2.5m. I got the doors off Ebay for £12 and the roofing sheets came from there too for £90. Decking boards were £100 if I remember correctly. There was a huge window inside that came from a skip - it was south facing so let in lots of light and heat. It was at a place I was renting so sadly I don't have access to it since we moved.

hi I used an internal skin of thermalite blocks with a 50mm cavity. This was a few years back and was ok from a buildingregs point of view. The house is nice and warm as it has a reasonably high thermal mass and is 100% free of any damp too. This method is not the best from a space point of view though. But it does give you a solid interior shell to seat your floor joists on. if you need space you could look at lining the internal walls with a breathable waterproof membrane, fixing insulation to this and batteing out for fixing insulated plasternoard to. You would need to seat your joists on joist hangars fixed to a structural ring beam fixed to teh internal wall. Or I believe thatthere are structural timber/steel lining products avaialble - of which I have not seen in use. Picture is what I started with.

This is similar to the willingness of many in the trades to modify scaffolding when its current layout doesn't suit them for some reason. Despite asking people not to touch it, we had boards moved/removed, heights adjusted, horizontal poles moved further from walls, etc.

+1 to asking if BCO is involved. That'll shiver the timbers if they're doing this "off the radar". Stop them now and tell them if the soil doesn't come out you'll be taking action against them for damages. Get photos, lots of them, and put your foot down. Are you on ok talking terms with them? The soil CANNOT stay in there. Idiots. If the top is then open to the elements it should be capped and lead flashed to promote natural run-off for any rainwater.

@newhome The bell cast is usually fitted level with the DPC. All the white render is above DPC so will be nice and dry. The grey render underneath is below the DPC. So it WILL get damp and often the render will blow. This seems to be a very Scottish thing. When I was down south, nobody rendered below dpc, they did that bit in nicely pointed bricks and left it bare. I had a problem with my 1930's house where it had been rendered bridging the dpc and that was causing damp in the house, solved by hacking off the render below dpc and pointing the brickwork. So when I came to Scotland I was frankly horified that they render below the DPC. I have even seen some houses (one I wired 2 years ago) where the white wet dash just goes straight down to the ground bridging the DPC. In your case I would say the scratch coat has far too much sand, not enough cement. On my new build I have left the block work bare below DPC and to make it look nicer, painted it with masonry paint.

They can't do that. The permitted development limit applies to the original building and does not get added to once you have extended. Any further extension wouldneed planning permission. Regardless of planning, they WILL need building control, even for a permitted development extension. A site layout sketch would help understanding. So this is not your house or house extension wall. Either way, make sure building control know what is going on. THEY will have something to say about them filling the gap with soil and will take an interest in that drain they appear to be building over.

It has been replaced by effervescence on her party decking with a view ?

If anyone needs to do this, I found this company- http://www.steel-fire-paint.co.uk You give them the size of each beam and they come back ad tell you how thick the paint needs to be and then how much paint you need to buy. A really excellent service, ordering from them and the builder will do the painting on a per hour rate. Should save a good 6-7000.

Not to detract ftom zoot's thread but snapped the humerous off the elbow and broken the elbow as well. Pre existing brittle bones and circulatory issues. Fingers crossed....not that he can!

Bigger problems with my old man at the mo!

I think I am going to have to go in a bit harder than that. Some of the work the men did was just improvement and different people have different ideas how to do things, I know that. BUT her work didn't even meet building regs in that she had not vented anything or made any provision for doing so. She was here 15 hours in total with a labourer for about 5 of them. The 2 men have also done 15 hours each to complete the job she was supposed to do.