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Ah yes, it's weird how a car mag can provide an at least partial cure for man 'flu but you are so right!

Manflu is your body telling you that you have a lowered resistance due to stress and it's time to take a break. There, there, you will feel better soon. Right, that's that taken care of - now - as @newhome has already advised MTFU

So agree @Hecateh and @newhome.......manflu.........hot toddy, under a nice snuggly blanket in a comfy chair and latest car mag seems to sort it in our house! @recoveringacademic that is my prescription for you

Yep, I too feel your frustrations - our Joiner has been on site for just 13 days out of a possible 30 working days!! As a result, other trades are having to be put back and the time in our rental extended for another month. Electrician said he would be on site this week - failed to show thus far. Plumber won't come out until Kitchen is in. Kitchen can't go in until tiles are down. Tiler failed to show for past 3 working days despite saying he would. What can you do? I'm sure it will all come together over the next 2 -3 weeks but why does it have to be so blooming frustrating ?? I believe it is part and parcel of self building - I don't believe anyone said it was going to be easy !!

I'm going to say above the grp and under the block paving...sort of underlay...makes sense...possibly...

My neighbour has just built a large extension, his 11 year old has used the mini digger and was instrumental in the roofing as the neighbour decided the lad was safer up there, than he was as son is light, fearless and had great balance. He also uses all the power tools. This was all done with great supervision and builds the kid's confidence and respect. I was very impressed. This kid won't be a snowflake. He has skills, is confident and I am sure will be successful. Too many kids today are wrapped in cotton wool until the day they are given the keys to a car at 17 without ever learning that their actions have consequences and that, unlike their screen games, they don't get another life. I think, at 12, a kid is old enough to be responsible and not yet at an age where he thinks he knows everything and is invincible.

As we're "thinking out loud"... How about...EPDM then rubber mat: https://www.matsgrids.co.uk/rubber-grass-mats/65-16mm-rubber-grass-mats-150x100-5060423910770.html? Then blocks laid on sand / cement mix. I should point out I've just necked a large Cobra...

Oh totally! My sympathy level is evidenced by my second most favourite phrase at work SIUB or ‘suck it up buttercup’ ?.

Yes, in the link I gave earlier there's even one that will take gravel on top, from the look of it: http://www.duracomposites.com/industrial/fibreglass-grp-grating/micro-mesh-grating-drainage-grating-walkways-grating-catwalk-grating/ Mounts on pillars, too:

Hi all, I have learnt so much since i started reading this forum, such a great source of info! I thought it rude not to introduce myself and also would like to ask some questions specific to our situation and plans. So... We have a plot of land with planning permission for a house which has conditions on it to be made somewhere close to code 6 on the old sustainable houses code. Our plans are for a house with a ground floor footprint of 124m2 and an approx total of 270m2 over 3 floors. It is a five bedroom house which will house 2 adults and 4 children. In the plans we have an ASHP, PV panels, MVHR, Rainwater harvesting, Sewerage treatment plant. We are currently waiting for our amended plans to get approved by the council before hopefully starting work early next year. Whilst we wait we had hoped to set out a fairly accurate budget. 1. Does anyone have a good budget spreadsheet template for this that we can download and use? 2. Any recommendations for the renewable sources in the house? I have been reading good things about SUNAMP on this forum. 3. With 6 people using the house all the time which is the most effective way of getting enough hot water on demand? 4. I think we are going to need to look at effective ways to cool the house too. Any suggestions?

Properly filtered rainwater is OK for toilet flushing, but I'd not want to use UK rainwater for clothes washing, mainly because lots of wash cycles are too low a temperature to kill off the faecal coliforms that will be in the water from the inevitable bird poo that gets into it.

A Roballo slewing bearing is what you want. Let me make some enquiries and see if I can get one off a mate.

Well, give us a starter then. .... No shortage of both here.

I agree with him, GRP would make the detailing around the awkward areas at the edges and upstands a lot simpler to implement, and likely be significantly more reliable in the long term. I also think that the idea of a galvanised steel subframe, that's free draining and which supports the pavers is a good one. You can then just ensure that the GRP "bathtub" underneath is properly drained, so water runs off easily, so reducing the risk of any water getting close to the junction of the roof lights and the top of their upstands. At a guess, standard walk way galvanised grating, like this, may well do the job, fitted to stand off legs with load spreading plates underneath them: https://www.themetalstore.co.uk/products/galvanised-steel-walkway You could opt to just leave the grating exposed, even, or go for a GRP grating like this stuff: http://www.duracomposites.com/industrial/fibreglass-grp-grating/

Well I could be sympathetic or honest or brutal Instead, I’ll use one of my favourite phrases from work and say MTFU! Hope you feel better soon ????

+1 My understanding is that the regs require either a step or a fall not both.

Ah, ok. If I wasn't going to use it as a garage, i'd keep it level. If/when you ever come to sell, i doubt the lack of the slope would be a deal breaker for anyone. We bought a house where the double garage had been converted into 4 "cat-rooms" complete with (electric) UFH and cat-flaps punched through the exterior walls to caged cat pens.

Nothing .... there is 100mm of PIR over the top but nothing more Ground is sand around here - very dusty in the bottom of the pit and no real sign of damp. Temperature has stayed a static 9-10c which is ideal for wine ..!

It’s quite obscene the amount of wasted space a residential dwelling can create. A basement adds, up to, an entire floor so why would you not? You’ve paid top dollar for your plot, you need foundations, so just make them very long, deep foundations and bingo. Get a trap door for the 4 kids and “sorted!”.

I also have a screwfix gun - did jam up after a period of storage (with the foam on). I was able to strip it down and clean with isopropyl alcohol and a bit of poking about with a paperclip / nail - if you're using PU foam you should invest in a litre bottle of this as it's the only thing I've found will clean wet and dry foam from hands, clothes and other surfaces.

I got one from Screwfix that has the bendy attachment. Attachment is long gone. The gun itself is great, still going strong after over a year. As nod said, leave can on the gun, if not in use for a while then spray a bit of foam every week or two just to make sure it's not seized up inside. Clean end with wonder wipes every few mins minimum, if stubborn then get acetone or gun cleaner and spray on to wonder wipe and clean gun end with the wipe. I find the wipes to be strong and course to clean the gun quite well. I use the flexible low expanding foam (blue) from Soudal. I use an old serated small kitchen knife to trim the foam.

My Fischer one lasted 14 months and had some serious abuse. Was probably one of the better ones but only £14 from Amazon I think Edited to add it was from eBay

There are some exspensive ones But in my exsperience they are all prone to blocking I’m using one that cost eight quid and it does the job Trick is Tirb the gun off when not in use and leave the can attached I never clean the gun Just salespeople the can when empty

Welcome, agree with Jack on RWH - good for garden but not for house. I built one with recycled IBCs (search BH for the thread) others have buried appropriate tanks but the ROI is not there and there are potential health issues using RW internally.

I doubt I could ever build a house without a basement tbh, as it’s such a waste of useful space. Even more so if this was my forever home.

Done this with the old garage pit and it basically cost a sheet of OSB and some reinforcing. Think the total size is 2600x900x1400 and I expect the door will cost about £60 and the steps will be from scrap 8x2....

Sorry I don’t get why your architect has no issue with using a compressible material between two layers of fixed concrete, but is not happy to use something rigid ..???! I am starting to think he’s designed something that can’t be built and he’s backing away from something of his own creation.

Didn't we have a discussion about using GRP for this some time ago? GRP certainly has a lot of advantages, especially when it comes to getting a really robust seal around those upstands, and at the more complex edge detailing, like that by the gate/entrance, but it does need dry weather, and ideally needs to be done when the air temperature is reasonably warm, and consistently so for the whole of the cure time. There's no doubt that a good GRP roof will be a lot tougher and take a fair bit more abuse than an EPDM roof, though, plus it's easier to patch repair any small areas that may get damaged.

Is he flexible in his approach ....

We have used fused connection units (FCU) with flex outlet plates for all our kitchen appliances. I don't know of any safety reasons why you shouldn't connect two cables to the flex outlet plate for the fridges, but I'm not an electrician.

Enough of this bollocks about buckets and cap ends ? Lizzie, a horizontal waterless trap will do the job. First off though, could you get a pic of the underside of the MVHR unit? I need to see how the trap connects to the MVHR unit if possible ? Ta.

This has been discussed extensively before. My view is that the stair angle is one of the best ways of making your house feel more luxurious than usual, and really helps more frail or elderly people. I reckon it gave my mum 5 extra years in the family house. I say make it about 33-35 degrees unless there is a really good reason to make it steeper. This is one thread, with my comments copied below: If I am correct, I think you are a doing a Prime Contractor build on a dreamy site outside London? It deserves a sumptuous staircase. ? Ferdinand ------------------------------------- A staircase with a shallow slope is one of the great hidden luxuries that makes a house feel sumptuous imo, even at the cost of an extra square metre of space (or two). It is like getting the orientation right - people who instinctively like the house may have trouble noticing why. And it makes a significant difference to whether people can keep going upstairs easily when old; we reckoned our parents found it convenient for an extra 5 years+. And far better for the fat people we are all becoming. I lived with the one below for several decades. It is a magnificent bruiser of a thing - Jacobean oak and pine with a gallery but sooooo comfortable. The shallow angle allowed my parents to keep going upstairs comfortably for a few extra years. Originally it had about 28 layers of paint from the Victorians onwards and we had two slaves architectural students who spent a whole summer restoring it. There were 18 steps between floors, which were a little shallower than usual and I think the angle was under 35 degrees. Suggest go for roughly that. And a generous half landing with a window seat, or space for a resting chair, is good :-). But that is more difficult in a modern setting. My other favourite is generously shallow and wide open well circular staircases. Suspect also that when falling down shallow staircases less damage is done as you go down less height for a given length of horizontal travel, as do half landings and curves (you stop quicker hitting the wall or floor less hard). That is just me guesstimating but feels about right. Looking at Jack's numbers, I think I might try for something like 165-70 rising and his 270 going if the house could take it.

Welcome to Buildhub! One minor suggestion would be to drop those questions into the relevant sub-forums. Some people only browse the sub-forums they're interested in, and mightn't pick up your questions in an intro thread. Also, it helps others find answers in the future. I will say that rainwater harvesting (beyond basic harvesting for the garden) rarely makes economic sense. I was all for it, but even the most ardent greenies we spoke to in the sustainable building world thought it was a waste of money.

@lizzie This is quite common when connecting EU to UK wastes and just needs an EU/UK 40mm waste adapter.

Morning, welcome! All of us, every Man-Jack (Woman Jackie ?) one of us here is working towards conscious competence : well, almost all. The unconsciously competent will be along in a minnit. Welsh plumbers, weapons experts, computer whizkids, people who know how to keep smoke inside wires, the odd planner, some poachers turned gamekeeper, ex engineering lecturers, and modest lawyers. Theres even one special guy who really can make mud stick on a wall, I kid you not. My strength is ferreting. So, here's yer spreadsheet. The search engine on this site is good: not the best, but good.

Hi and welcome, if you have been reading around the forum you will know I can’t be much help on the tech things but there are some very helpful and clever people who can and I am sure they will be along soon to start answering your questions.

Agree with @ProDave bathrooms won't work like that. Consider putting the kitchen at the West side to keep all the plumbing in the same location, reduce length of hot water runs. Storage, where is the general junk storage (do you have attic space)? The windows, long gives you more light (summer overheating), but robs you of usable wall space, especially in bedrooms where a chest of drawers/desk fits neatly under a window. Airing cupboard/hot press, nowhere enough space in with DHW tank/SunAmp. Does the Master en-suite need a bath (mine does but I have 5 1/2 bath rooms). You may have fire regs problems with kitchen open to stairs. Front porch, enclose to isolate the whole house from the elements in winter with the front door open, also hides offset door then. Not sure how the stairs will work.

20A DP switch feeding an unswitched socket, fuse in plug top is common.

As a guide, I fitted unswitched outlets behind our built in ovens, but fitted a pair of isolating switches in the adjacent cupboard. Not hard to do. For the boiling water tap, where I wanted easy access to the switch, I made up an extension lead that runs behind the units (from the dishwasher double gang outlet that's accessed via a hole in the top rear of an adjacent unit) and that runs to a double pole switched fused connection unit in the cupboard under the sink (high up, near the front) that supplies the boiling water tap. This keeps things adequately accessible, whilst being relatively unobtrusive, and remains compliant with the regs. BTW, if you feel competent you can now legally modify an existing circuit in a kitchen, without needing a Part P sign off.

Get some more tiles on and then grout - it will look very different then. You could be in by Xmas 2018 if you get a wiggle on.....

Yes, there has to be an accessible switch or circuit breaker for built in appliances. It's widely ignored, but not hard to comply with. For our built in cooker and microwave I added switches in the cupboard next to them to turn them off. For the dishwasher, I cut a hole in the top rear of the adjacent cupboard to access the switch and socket. It's extremely useful to do this, as it makes any future electrical installation inspection a great deal less hassle. Anything that allows easy access to outlets and switches generally seems to make life a lot easier. As above, the requirement to have easy access to switches for all appliances is very commonly ignored, though. I've seen built in ovens fitted with a normal switched outlet tucked right behind it, with the oven screwed in to the unit preventing access. One has to wonder how the power is supposed to be turned off quickly in the event of a fault.

I am NOT taking any more off! No way, no how, never! It is a proper mission and the Aqua Panel behind doesn't like it. Chipped the tile to the left too I will live with my mistakes. Let them a be a lesson for others etc.

I had a Welsh friend once that kept saying "I can see the one that I want"

I never for one moment wished to give the impression @Nickfromwales had a stetson or a horse LOL....now sheep are a different matter being Welsh I know about those...and wellies!

Cheers guys , my name is Alex and an owner of an IVT Ecolane heat pump . I want to tell you that I've struggled at the beginning with the controller that was provided with this heat pump . After a while I've looked for a solution and I managed to find someone that built a controller for me with an Arduino and an esp8266 . I want to tell you that now I have heating , cooling and dhw as options in the menu . I can set a certain flow temperature and the heat pump will keep it , I have attached a 3 way valve for hot water and the cooling option is useless for me as I have radiators inside my house . I can attach a room thermostat to the controller , it can be wireless , smart or wired and I can change the settings of the heat pump from my phone which is connected to the wi-fi's local network and by opening a browser where I can access the settings . I'm not trying to sell you the controller , all I wanted you to know is that is possible to obtain the same results with this pump as you would with a more expensive one that you pay considerable more . Cheers

Well, @Sue B, and @Christine Walker there's life after self-build is there? Thats good to know. And we're all so nosey here on BH that we'll be following yours too. Ian

In our 2nd & 3rd bedrooms we used cheap as chips Howdens sliders and they are surprisingly good...I wanted a big mirror door too as smaller bedrooms so mirror good for bouncing the light but you can have any configuration of solid/mirror. I chose Oak finish to blend with our interior doors. We just built an extra bit of stud wall to create the alcove. No architraves clean line to plaster edge and floor runners are glued down to tiles so floor runs underneath. Carpenter made a good heavy weight shelf and we fitted rails under that. Even weight of my stuff is not going to make that collapse! Will fit out the other bits as and when, what we have done is vat reclaimable....I hope so anyway its gone in for the claim. I thought they would just be a stop gap solution but they look really good and very capacious.

The Welsh laser method works a treat, I'm sticking with it!

With unhelpful neighbours take comfort in the knowledge that karma always comes into play. At our last house (semi detached) our neighbours did daily DIY ..... for 4 years! Even when we asked nicely for the odd day of respite when my wife (a nurse) had been working a 12 hour nightshift and needed to sleep they declined and just kept going (he's retired so it wouldn't have been an issue to give us 1 day off) This guy used tools like no one else - to knock a nail in was bang (wait 5 seconds) bang (wait 5 seconds ) and so on - sawing was the same ! The suspense waiting for the next bang or saw action was part of the torture. Anyway, we sold up and don't actually have close neighbours now, and I had to laugh when I heard that the the guy we sold it to has all night parties and even plays loud music during the day such that it can be heard over100 metres away even *outside* - oh the irony ? . As they say ,"karmas a bitch" ?

Thanks @lizzie So the trap is part of the actual unit itself so can’t be replaced. It fits into a 40mm pushfit from the looks of it so it’s a relatively simple fix to put a Hep20 dry trap in the waste and let the u-bend dry out. It needs a slim plumber by the looks of it so @Nickfromwales your luck is out ..! ?