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But you are pushing sand up hill when you get obstacles like increased VAT rates and having to use an over priced MCS install if you want to claim the pittance of export payments that might be on offer at some point. The way I see it, any competent electrician should be able to install solar PV, with help from other trades re mounting the panels, at minimal cost and then anyone should be able to claim the export payment. It could even be made REALLY simple with no bureaucracy if these new fangled smart meters recorded your export and simply deducted the export (at the wholesale rate) off your bill. It would be really simple with no need for separate export payment contracts. Of course when half hourly billing is introduced, the smart meter would be clever enough to pay you a higher wholesale price for that you export at peak times. Until things like that happen, then uptake of renewables is being slowed by unnecessary expense and unnecessary complication.

So the clear winner is hard work and no reward. Just like marriage ?

We have had much the same problem. I spent a small fortune on top quality sieved and sterilised top soil, had a really good chap level the area for the lawn and turf it with good turf, and within a year it was lumpy and full of weeds. I'm constantly doing battle with weeds that look like some sort of thistle, the problem being that no matter how I deal with them they end up making holes in the lawn. I've found that the least problematic way to deal with them is to use the Bayer lawn weedkiller that @PeterStarck recommended some time ago. If I had my way I'd concrete the lot and cover it with Astroturf...

A very good point. Personally artifical grass just reminds me of pain playing hockey

Note of caution with artificial grass and dogs - make sure it's suitable, ie don't use sand underneath, or the grass that has latex backing. As both of those will hold urine smells and make being out there invariable! https://www.topdogturf.co.uk/ I hope to be able to afford artificial grass at the end of my project. (3 dogs). Though with improvements in robotic mowers I have been wondering if real grass might be bearable!

Don't understand why everyone has so many problems perhaps I've just been lucky. Let topsoil settle for 3 months or so before turning with good quality turf. Areated de thatched overseeded and fertilized each year jobs a goodun. Last lawn was quite heavily shaded too

leave the grass for now - its too late to put seed down now & turf will need a lot of water with the summer coming. Wait until mid August and then spray the lot off with glyphosate (buy on line and not in a garden centre). Mow to get rid of as much of the grass as poss after 2 weeks or so. lightly cultivate to create a tilth. Get hold of some dressed seed (to kill the leatherjackets) from an agric merchant and spread this by hand at ~ 500g/100m2. You may want to mix it with some sand to bulk it up a little - there's no harm in using more seed. wait for rain. Patience. It may be worth checking out soil pH - it should be about 6.5 for grass. You can apply a bit of Phosphate and potash fert if you like - the agric merchant will have some of that (its used in the autumn by arable farmers). Stick to fescue grass mixtures. We will follow the above this autumn - we want to see some wildlife in our garden & artificial grass won't tick that box.

I think your garden would look good with artificial turf @lizzie but you need to embrace the look of it and not constantly compare it to real grass because otherwise you can’t make it work for you.

Our neighbour has sandstone and has the same problem We are surrounded by trees

We had about 400m2 of our old back garden levelled, covered with topsoil that we'd piled up from earlier in the build and then turfed in October 2017. Quite wet that winter so the turf got well established but after the dry summer last year it's now very patchy. I've been over it twice with the electric rake to pull out the thatch and have just hired a petrol driven hollow spiked garden aerator for next week, the type that pulls plugs of earth out of the ground to let air and water in. Will see if it makes much difference - £85 to hire it for the day inc. delivery and VAT. Not sure if I should also treat with some builders sand (I have a jumbo bag going spare). May also do a scattering of seed in early autumn.

Fit a trace wire alongside the UFH pipes as you install them. That way you can just use a CAT to trace exactly where the pipes are later. The trace cable will need to come up out of the floor with the UFH pipe, so that the trace signal generator can be connected to it.

Have you considered radiators? ?

Run some very hot water through them and look with an IR camera.

Drill bits usually find them fairly fast. ? But more seriously the cheapest way is either take lots of photos with lots of measurements. Or make an accurate plan for the stairs and avoid that area all together.

What you should have done was had some walk on glazing there so as to see the pipes... ? I all seriousness I reckon you're somewhat screwed if there's foil faced pir under there. What would sense through that?

I'd note that depending on how long you intend to stick around, grass is one of the weirdest, arguably stupidest crops in the world, keeping it watered and maintained will, over time, certainly outpace your carbon footprint of some sturdy fake grass...

Any chance that the pipe can be re-routed by stealth? I was thinking along the lines of putting the new pipe run in, excavating where the connection points need to be for the old pipe, getting everything ready and then waiting for them to go out. It would probably only take half an hour or so to make the new connections and cut the old pipe out. With luck they may be none the wiser as to what you've done. For safety's sake it would be best to connect the new pipe at the incoming supply side first, flush it through, then connect it to their supply pipe, that way there's much less chance of any muck getting washed in to their pipe.

Pipe layout ? . How long have you know me @Onoff - you *know* there isn’t one . How can there be with ‘guessworks’ in action , Ah f it ! . That will do . Get prepared at a later date a post asking the best way to fix penetrated ufh pipes ? I loves you Jon Snow ?

Thanks Peter that's good to know and the blog post is very helpful. They look decent as well.

You sound like my wife and me 355 metres I’ll be like Popeye when I finish Though wife has her eye on a trolly for moving them

That’s a good amount of paving, that will be one of our next jobs, hubby has holidays in June so will be doing it then around 200m2, luckily I cannot get holidays at the same time so won’t be labouring!

Use your imagination. Glass half landings...

Thats a lot of paving!

Or disgarded woollen carpets with a flax backing to smother the unwelcomed guests in the garden. Natural fibre capets kill off weeds etc and biodegrade naturally and you can cover the carpets with sedum so no mowing. Pity you don't live in Scotland I could supply the carpets and sedum free of charge! All our swirly-patterned carpets have to go as soon as the extension is built.

Gravel gets my vote. I rather like the clean lines of a Zen garden, and it's what I wanted to do where we have our small lawn. I was overruled, though.

Gravel then !

An accurate drawing or photos, or both of the pipe layout is best. Cover meter? I've used one to find RSJs under an existing concrete roof for which there were no structural drawings. ...ground penetrating radar...see @tonyrobinson ? Why not, where the base of the spine lands leave a hole in the screed or glue a base plate down.

I think we were "lucky" that the year we seeded the lawn it was cool and wet for a while so no need for a sprinkler. This year has been very dry so it would not have been so easy. Our garden is split in two by the burn. The "south" garden is just what was there. We have not done anything, not levelled it, and not seeded it. We just strimmered it and then mowed it into submission and from a distance it looks reasonable. But it is quite lumpy with lots of hollows. We have a pile of soil still to use up that eventually will get spread over that to level it more. I like a large garden (1/3 acre in total) but I wish there was less lawn to mow. Eventually I will get a small ride on mower, but until I build a decent bridge over the burn to take it, it would be a waste as it would be stuck one side.

My garden is like the Somme and I know it will take a lot of work to make a decent lawn, once the patio is laid and I have a level to work off I will have to build up the soil up to two feet in places. It will then take rotovating and rolling to get level but I know it will settle and need it again. We live in a very rural location so I know weeds will be an ongoing problem but that’s the price you pay for living in the countryside. I would not use Astro turf but I can understand it in a town with a small postage stamp lawn that gets little sunshine.

I would have used AstroTurf again but the OH wanted grass. It’s me who has to look after it now though. I don’t mind the mowing too much, it’s the weeds I have an issue with really.

I'm very moderrn :-))

Did I mention that I HATE trying to keep lawns looking neat and tidy? I've been outvoted at home, but I would far rather have a garden that had no grass at all, especially as our garden is (deliberately) not very large.

I got turf laid but I don’t think it’s the best. 3 years since it’s been laid but it’s quite weedy and some of the grass is quite coarse so I don’t think it was the best to begin with. I tried to reseed a few bits of it last year but I clearly didn’t do it right as none of the seed germinated. Might have been the seed I used I guess ... I think that artificial grass looks ok in the right setting, especially with a very modern house.

I had artificial grass at my previous house. It was trouble free compared to how long it takes to mow the lawn and keep weed free. Much more practical for my dogs too, especially in winter. Bees are attracted by plants IME. I have plenty of bees here but buzzing round certain plants, not the lawn.

Oh no, not artificial grass... it is not trouble free. What about the bees? Why not try the "alternative" clover lawn. Clover is fantastic for bees. In the days of Yor grass seeds used to contain a certain amount of clover because it adds nitrogen to the soil then a certain weedkiller/lawn feed came on the market which knocked out everything except grass - good news for the company suppling the grass seeds because that meant the lawns have to be fertilized with one of their products etc. What's more clover is pretty when it flowers, provides nitrogen so no need to waste money on fertilisers and it does not need cutting much more than a few times a year :)) If you are going to the SEC Ideal Homes on the same day as I am I will bring you two types of sedum as a starter for a green corner. Alas, that is slow growing compared to grass but it is much prettier than plastic grass and you can buy it by the square metre or propagate it from the +/- 100 cuttings I will pass on to you! Google this: Growth in artificial lawns poses threat to British wildlife...

Varies between 6 A and 32 A. My (home made) charge point can be switched to "solar mode" where it varies the max current available control pilot signal to the car so that the charge rate tries to match the amount of excess PV generation. It can't go below 6 A, because that's the minimum that the car will accept. The unit has a threshold for switch on, so it doesn't start charging the car until PV export exceeds 1500 W. It then maintains the charge to the car, allowing it to use more power if the PV system is still trying to export to the grid. It never gets as high as the 32 A maximum in this mode, as maximum from the PV system is only around 25 A or so. The unit can also be switched to fast charge mode (32 A) if I need to charge the car quickly and am not concerned about using excess PV. This fast charge mode can also be set on a timer, so that the car fast charges overnight, during the E7 off peak period.

Our system has 25 off black PV panels set into the roof using GSE Integration in-roof mounts. These are rated at 6.25 kWp and feed a 6 kW Aurora Power One inverter. Because the maximum power is over the 16 A per phase allowable for connection without consent, we had to get consent from the DNO (in our case SSE) to be able to install this system. I have a home made excess PV generation power diverter, that senses when we are exporting electricity and switches a variable amount of power to the water heating system. The water heating uses a Sunamp UniQ eHW 9, which uses phase change storage to allow up to about 10 kWh of heat to be stored in a small volume (roughly half the volume of a washing machine). The heating element in this system is very like an immersion heater, with the same power rating. The Sunamp controller determines when the Sunamp heating element can accept power, and the excess PV diverter can then just heat the element as required. In winter, when we have periods of several days with little or no useful PV generation, I have a boost time switch, which comes on in the early hours, during the E7 off-peak period, to charge the Sunamp if it hasn't been charged during the day. This ensures we always have hot water, even during cloudy periods. The Sunamp heats the hot water rather like a powerful combi boiler. It only heats water on demand, as it has an internal heat exchanger that can deliver over 30 kW to the incoming cold, mains pressure, hot water, delivering hot water at around 55°C. We have a TMV on the output to mix this down with cold water to about 45°C which we find is about right for hot water from the taps etc. Out of interest, here's the PVGIS plot for our 6.25 kW system, which faces SSW and is at 45° roof pitch (it delivers about 6,000 kWh/year):

We had quotes from Leroc and Bison on 300m2 of 150mm hollowcore, max 6m spans. Roughly £50/m2 and £57/m2, supply and fix, including passive fall arrest. Price does not include structural topping (to be supplied by others).

As above, I think I just used the wood blade, like this: BTW, I've found Saxton blades to be good value and better quality than the blades that came with my Bosch multitool.

I borrowed my sparky's Makita with whatever cutting tool he had on think it was about 50mm wide. The plastic on those plenums is relatively soft and easy to cut, I just plunged the cutter in and out in a circle, took a minute or two for each one. Again, doesn't matter if the cut is perfect as the ceiling fitting covers it up completely.

What gets me is a 20” Oregon bar and chain is £40....

Pete, you have guts. Real guts. Internorm entrance doors ......... phhhhhhhh.

We can all play that game.

Don't think a USB stick is easily do-able internally, but some of our systems have a CF card instead of an HDD something like this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Pin-bare-Laptop-44-Pin-Male-IDE-To-CF-Card-Adapter-U9B8/183751687229?epid=1443191047&hash=item2ac8743c3d:g:LdcAAOSwO2pcnL2I

+1 for multitool. TBH, as the cover fits over, doesn't matter if the cut is a touch rough. Only suggestion (too late for you) is to cut before skimming - I also did this after and would have had a smoother finish around them if I'd cut after boarding.

have a look at figure 2a here https://hhic.org.uk/uploads/5BD6D5A19764A.pdf

If it's any consolation I've also got holes this year, both where there were large weeds and where there was more Moss than grass. Some years it just seems worse than others. Have to cover reseeded patches with chicken wire or the rabbits that live in the churchyard next door come and dig holes.

Similar experience. Turfed 2 years ago but gets lumpier, patchier, mossier and weedier everyday. Planning to pro-actively weed and moss kill. Some point soon will need a scarifier to work it over. Load of top soil to try and fill some bumps Followed by some over seeding Autumn and Winter - much better leaf control Next spring do all of the above again Repeat for 2 years till a) I'm dead, b) the grass is dead