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do you work in management then?

Short of winning the Lotto and being able to give up work to do the house without compromise then yes I'm going to live with it. I've more projects here than years left on this Earth tbh.

It's a pity you're in Kent, were it Manchester i'd have jumped at the chance. Never miss an opportunity to blindly criticise something i couldn't have done better myself anyway!!

I've a £99 Lidl generator. Supposedly 1200W. Dunno but runs my 500 or 600 W sanders, etc, just fine. Haven't really kept track but probably done between 10 and 20 hours so far. I've also got a 1200 1500W, 12V inverter which I run off my van batteries. That needs the van engine ticking over, though, which was fine when I just needed it for 10 minutes at a time to do some drilling (using a 230V drill in a drill stand) but didn't feel right when I was doing more extended sanding.

Christ some people need to get a life.

Not at all. I live on a cul de sac and all the other neighbours (3) objected on exactly those grounds. That there would be mess on the road and that during the build their access would be restricted at times. Thrown out as being not relevant to planning. Which was reiterated many many times during the build phase when they kept phoning the council to complain. However, 10 months later they *the neighbours* are still being 'stupid'. During the very heavy rain last week the drain, which prevents water running onto their drive was not draining. This drain has been cleaned by the council since the main building activity was finished but since then the electricity board has dug it up twice. The 2 most difficult neighbours spent some time clearing it. (I have sympathy for this but there is nothing I could have done to prevent it). Everything they removed from the drain was dumped on my drive. (I don't have an issue with this and am quite happy to dispose of it). However I'm not sure they realise that from my lounge I can see them looking and pointing. I had my kitchen delivered today. None of the neighbours (vehicles) were in. One came back about 5 minutes before the delivery ended. He left his car in the road blocking the delivery vehicle. Luckily his neighbour in crime wasn't home, so when the van needed to leave he meekly removed his car, without objection. However, had the other, more belligerent, guy have been home there would have been a stupid standoff. Which I would have left them to sort out with the deliverers as, it appears, me being there only inflates the situation and these drivers were professionals - unlike my original builders who inflamed the situation. 2 out of 3 of these neighbours had no objections when I spoke to them originally (didn't have the opportunity to talk to the 3rd) but, talking amongst themselves afterwards, built up resentment. Don't expect people to be reasonable, but try to build on it when they are, really try to get them onside when you get the opportunity to do so. AND at least until the build is finished, bite your tongue when they are being arseholes less than than agreeable.

I agree with the above; that it isn't necessary. However, if you do want to mitigate responsibility maybe look into obtaining independent indemnity. Not expensive if it clearly isn't enforceable and everyone's mind is put at rest without lining your solicitor's pockets (in reward for him using scare tactics)

@Nickfromwales Solid state failure (esp Chinese cr@p) will fail unseen and has no physical indication of either failure or actuation. They are also single pole and leave the neutral in place so cannot be deemed to completely isolate the circuit. Given it’s likely that these will change over at significantly low frequency, the need to use an SSR that is designed for high speed and high frequency changeover, usually driven at logic level, then the argument for using them is drastically diminished .... your turn .... ?

Hi Vivienz, Last place I contacted was https://firedoors.co.uk/ and they basically said if I sent them a picture of the door I wanted, they could replicate it with a matching fire door. Vijay

I use gyazo for all my screen captures. It comes with a program for capturing small gif files also, if you subscribe you can view all your captures. If not, its the last 10 or so (i think). 1 click, drag & capture - opens in webpage, save to PC.

If it's your solicitor pushing for it, push back, for sure. I'd use the arguments above, and encourage him to forward them to the buyer. If the buyer doesn't need a mortgage, then there's no third party compelling them to get this insurance. You're therefore effectively being asked to pay a premium for an optional, and probably valueless, insurance policy that would in any event only benefit the other party. They might as well ask you to pay their mortgage application fee, imo. We have various covenants on our property from the early 50s. Stuff like no circuses or shooting galleries, no lived-in caravans, the requirement to maintain a hedge between points B and C on the plan (but there's no B or C shown on any version of the plan we've been able to find). We were told that the mortgage provider required us to pay for covenant insurance directed to covenant that said the original 1952 seller had to approve the appearance of any dwelling house built onsite. This clearly dated to the time when the surrounding land was subdivided (it was a farm and then a quarry), and the seller clearly couldn't suffer any damage from us technically breaching one interpretation of the language by knocking down the original dwelling and redeveloping the site 60 years later. It was going to cost ~£800, from memory. It was mentioned once before the mortgage was finalised, but it somehow didn't get raised again until weeks after we'd moved in. I ignored the solicitor's reminder around that time, because as far as I was concerned, if it was a requirement of the mortgage, they shouldn't have given us the money without it. In the end, we never heard about it again..

That's different. Tell him, he should be looking after YOUR interests, not the buyers. If your buyer has not yet got wind of this "offering" I would keep quiet and instruct your solicitor it is not necessary and importantly not to even mention it to the buyers solicitor. When selling our old house down south, our buyer asked for indemnity insurance due to possible breaching a "no building without permission" covenant (which I think was worded so as not be unenforceable) Because it was the buyer that had spotted the issue and wanted the policy, I was happy to pay for it to keep the deal going.

I used Omnie to do my renovation job. I used the torfloor system which is just chipboard flooring routed out to accept a 12mm pipe, but they do all the normal screed systems etc. The price seemed reasonable, but hard to compare as everything has to be quoted for and its priced as an lump sum. Was delivered within the week tho which was great....excepts its all be sat in my living room for 4 weeks now.

Yes, as far as I know. I've only seen one for real and that was a Willis made one, and it looked to me as if the element was a standard one with a 2 1/4" BSP thread.

Having vented my spleen about the DNO and AJ, its wayleave officer, it's time to move on to more interesting things, like the puzzle of getting my roofing done, amongst other things. For my sins, whilst our house is an interesting design and has quite a few twiddly bits, they have proved to be less than straightforward to actually get built. For a start, the house has a combination of pitched and flat roof sections, there will be an in-roof solar PV system up there and the parapet that extends above the level of the ground floor ceiling also needs to be lined. In addition to this, there are the balustrades that need to go on the balconies, leading to a chicken and egg scenario - balcony covering first, or balustrade? Thanks to the helpful comments of both my flat roofers and @Bitpipe I was able to stop the parapets getting covered over before the balustrade went in and thus making life (more) difficult and (more) expensive for myself than necessary. The flat roofing guys suggested that it would be better to get the balustrade installed into the cavity in the parapet, then they could wrap the membrane over and around and seal it against the supports of the glass panels of the balustrade. Before they could get started, though, they had to correct a problem that arose from the architect's plans that had an error in them. My balconies and the drainage plan is such that the water needs to run off to the outer corners. For some reason, however, the architect's plans show the fall of the balconies going inward and to the centre, and that's exactly how MBC constructed the firring pieces on the decks. I guess I should have spotted it earlier, but can only claim that I was working on the assumption that I'm the ignorant one in this building process and that everyone else had it right. Being me, however, I can never entirely accept that I'm wrong and I couldn't figure out how the devil any water was actually going to flow off the balconies unless the architect had some super sneaky clever plan that I wasn't aware of. I rang the architect and it turned out that they didn't have a super sneaky plan and they had indicated the fall incorrectly on the balconies. Bugger! Flat roof guys to the rescue - before they started on the first balcony, I asked them if they could just lift up the firring pieces and reverse them to point the flow to the outer corners. We'd worked out a labour rate for a few other things I needed doing, so it's all being corrected and I won't end up with a pool of water lapping against the centre of the windows onto the deck. I have to add that the flat roofers have been great. They, along with seemingly every other person involved in construction right now, are fully booked for weeks to come and when I first got my quote from them, the earliest they could schedule my job was the end of October. Oh god, I thought, my building will have drowned by then and I'll loose my next MBC slot for the airtest, and so on. Despair. So I wallowed for a few hours and then rang them back and put my best grovelling voice on. It's getting lots of practice at the moment. Anyhow, I asked them whether by splitting the job up into smaller chunks, they could squeeze me in between other jobs. The single largest area that needs doing is the garage but the least important in terms of time constraints as it's outside the thermal and airtight envelope so doesn't need to be done for when MBC return on 8th October. The splendid people at County Flat Roofing Ltd agreed that I was grovelling so nicely and had come to them by recommendation, they would get the decks, parapets and flat roof over the stairwell done for me over the next few weeks. They are currently due back for a couple of days next week and I can get the area over the stairwell done, which will be a great relief as there's an awful lot of water coming in through there right now. My pitched roof sections aren't straight forward, either. Because I'm having an in-roof solar PV system, the PV guys need an eaves course put in so that they have something to rest the trays on. They have also asked that the velux windows are in, but this isn't so much about having the windows in as being able to avoid a clash of flashing (their own and that for the velux). Cue my trusty roofer, Dylan Faber of Dylan Faber Roofing Ltd. His firm is very local to me, just the next small town along, and he has been really helpful already. I met 3 in total, the other two being either arrogant or disinterested, so Dylan got the job. He's more than happy to work around the PV guys and knows what their requirements are. He's also helped to overcome a potential problem with the roof tiles, which were originally going to be Marley Eternit, birkdale for the pitch and vertigo for the cladding on the first floor. It turns out that there's a bit of a lead time on the birkdale for the pitch and the vertigo ones need to be manufactured to order in France. Mince, alors! We're now going to use tiles by SVK that are barely a shade different to the Marley ones - I put the two samples side by side and they are close enough to be the same. Even better, the SVK ones are cheaper and can be used for the vertical cladding as well. Phew, another bump in the road traversed. Next up were the balustrade people. I rang around for prices and to chat about what I needed. Whilst the architect's photoshop concept of the property shows a frameless system for the balustrade, these generally sit in a rail or shoe and that won't work with my parapet. I need to keep the parapet cavity clear to allow airflow through it to keep the cold roof of the balcony suitably ventilated; the shoe or rail would block the cavity and so it was a non-starter. Additionally, the balustrade people advised that it wouldn't meet safety regulations, so that was the end of the frameless sytem. In truth, I much prefer the idea of a hand rail as leaning on the edge of a pane of even toughened glass somehow doesn't appeal. I'm using Balustrade UK Ltd, who are based in Dudley in the West Midlands. They are fabricators and so make most of the components themselves and are very knowledgeable and helpful. I will admit to having a soft spot as I'm Birmingham born and bred as well as working in manufacturing myself, so it's nice to be able to support a British manufacturer and one that's close to my old stamping ground. The final balustrade won't be as elegant or clean looking as a frameless system, without a doubt, but it's a compromise I'm happy to live with to make the whole balcony thing work and keep the build moving along. Finally, MBC need to send someone down for a quick bit of snagging before the glazing arrives on Tuesday. I felt at the time that they left the site a little too quickly after the last session and this was the case. There's nothing major but the reveals of some of the windows don't have the outer membrane continuing into the reveal as they are meant to - this was actually picked up by the glazing installations manager when he came out for a site visit earlier this week. The internal service battens also could do with putting up before the 8th October as although first fix can't start until the airtest has been done, the battens are needed to clip bits of MVHR and things to in order to keep them out of the way for when they do return. All in all, it's been a quiet week. Or at least, quiet on site, but with lots going on in lining up the next load of activity. Next week, all hell breaks loose with lots of trades on site and I need to make sure that everything is properly co-ordinated and happening in the right order if I'm going to successfully pull it off, but it looks okay so far. I just hope the house doesn't suffer too much in the gales that are due at the weekend and that the chemical toilet is still upright on Monday. Brace yourselves, winter is coming.

Absolutely not. Re: spacing, there's planning guidance covering all aspects of overlooking, including what is considered reasonable spacing between, eg, rear elevations of properties. From memory, the distance is 21 or 22m. If you're over that, there's simply no basis for objection. As for devaluing their house, again, that isn't a planning consideration and will be ignored. Joe90 is dead right about the building site too - if inconvenience associated with building were a planning consideration, nothing would ever get built, as someone is nearly always inconvenienced by the construction process. Just bear in mind that things get built all the time, often (usually?) in situations where the surrounding properties are affected. The planning office will only consider valid planning objections, and on the face of it, your neighbours don't have any. Also bear in mind that it's very rare for a member of the general public to come up with a valid, reasonable basis for objection that won't already have been taken into account by the planning officer. The odds go up a bit if they engage a planning consultant, but most don't. In my opinion, the main risk associated with objections is that if you get a certain number of them (5 is common, I believe), that may be a trigger for the application to be brought before the council's planning committee. At that point, things can become more difficult, stressful, murky and unpredictable, because councillors rarely have the knowledge or experience to apply the law correctly. This can go your way, but can also go against you. You can always appeal, but that adds to the cost, time and stress of getting permission.

Ha, you cannot object to a building site otherwise nothing (including their house) would ever get built. I think if their gardens are that big and you are building dormer style to reduce mass (a word I used in my successful appeal) that shows you are being reasonable !

Our neighbour objected (to everything) one of his objections was our headlights shining in his window when we exited our drive at night. The appeal officer said they were way to far away to be affected. So yes, an objection does not mean refusal, it has to be reasonable.

Nicely done, glad it worked out so well. Well if they're the only objections you face, great! Why do so many people think not wanting to look at a house in the distance is a reasonable basis for objection? If that were a basis for objecting, there'd never be any new builds other than in remote areas.

Unlikely that the back of the pan is flat anyway from my experience. What’s it like from the level of the bolts to top pan height..?? Have you got the pan so you can have a look to see what happens when you offer it back ..?

Well done on doing it as I think it's probably the best way on getting people on side, or at least mitigate the negative feeling about the proposal. If I submit I will be looking to do the same Out of interest how long is it until you formally submit the planning application, also did you take drawings with you?

Well that's all the neighbours visited including the cul de sac opposite the site. Of around 10 houses, two have shown possible objections as their houses over look our site albeit along way away. However everyone of those houses I knocked on the door said thank you for letting them know what was happening and appreciated the call. I'm glad I've done it and think it has definitely reduced the amount of objections that could of been.

I have one (high quality ... complete sod to drill the bricks) house built in 1913 that came with service ducts from downstairs to upstairs, made from hollowed timber - one up the side of a chimney breast, the other up the side of a window. I would generally say keep the inter-floor runs concentrated if you can, but that there are other factors too. F

Taking time is good. Taking a dozen Christmases is frustrating ?.

I found that an off-the-shelf solution didn't seem available. I built our solar powered outside lighting, using two different battery systems, and two different types of lights, but with the same eBay PIR switches. They are shown working in this post: I can't see a problem with scaling up the same concept with a larger solar panel and battery and some LED strip lights. I've been really impressed with the bright 12 V LED strips (they are the ones I fitted into the drip groove on the stacking cill over our front door), and reckon they would work well in a garage (they were what I was originally going to use before I discovered modular, plug together, LED tubular lights). 30 minutes of lighting isn't a problem for a modest sized battery and PV panel, it's just finding an off-the-shelf system that will be the challenge.

Two thoughts - Given your locale I might go and look at boat equipment with some brighter LEDS assiking you are going for a low voltage (24V ish) then they will have complete systems. On the other hand you could install a mains based system that steps down to cage a battery and is then inverted back up from the battery to run some 240V stuff.

Most spares are available and storage heaters are a fairly easy fix. So mend the old one or replace with a new basic equivalent. Steer clear of the new patent expensive storage heater replacements... they're mostly snake oil with over complex controls. Hth Dee

Are you sure, are you positive, you know it makes sense