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Lay them out both ways and stand back and see what suits your eye best. Then ask the wife to have a look and then talk it over and then do it the way she wants.

Glastonbury

Caffeine anxiety is nothing compared to self build anxiety!

In the nicest possible way, do you have enough fingertips remaining for them to be reliable advisors?

No particular order. insulate, airtight, ventilate right. Assume and (prepare to) optimize for an all-green grid: batteries, car charger, ASHP, induction hob, solar PV, demand-side response etc etc. Minimize concrete use If (re)developing property in groups or blocks, consider district heating or shared ground-source loops and shared water recycling plan. Choose location to minimize commute/travel needs. Can be the hardest thing of all in plot-finding. Be Awesome. Contribute to, and benefit from a fantastic online resource that aids and educates others looking to do all of the above.

^ +1 Larch is really hard on blades, definitely need carbide ones.

i would get the ransom strip legal stuff done and paid for before getting planning, assuming the ransom strip price isnt onerous. I know its a risk in case you dont get planning, but once you do, and he takes advice from any ofspring who will inherit his estate, you may find the price goes up. a lot.

Another +1 for De Longhi - I treated myself to a Prima Donna bean to cup, frothy milk etc 11 years ago and it's still going strong - I've only had to replace an internal O ring in all that time. Easy to get spares for also. I don't really use the milk jug much myself but visitors tend to like it. You do need to give it a good clean every month or so - I found that the internal 'brewer' unit needed treating with food safe lubricant after cleaning as it had a tendency to jam up - there's a telescoping element that adjusts for different brew strengths. I limit myself to two nice large americano's a day, both before 12pm. Kids have just realised that they can make their own decaf iced coffee and save the £££ they were wasting at Costa

I'll say it again - it costs nothing to put SAP friendly elements in your design and pre-build analysis to get the mortgage approval from Ecology (other than the SAP consultant's time if you're using one). They DO NOT require you to follow through with them, however if you don't achieve the expected SAP requirement then you miss out on their post build discount for the remaining term of the mortgage. It's then a budgetary decision as your build progresses and you can weigh up the relative install costs vs mge discount impact.

he paid me a compliment : and that made me listen harder than normal. Not that I was fishing or anything ... He was very complimentary about the windows and doors ( @craig ! ) and he politely winced at the cost, looked harder still at the front door and muttered quietly about the cost of high quality kit. He looked round the house and was very complimentary about how neat and tidy we kept it. What he didn't know was that I had spent about two days preparing for his visit. Two whole bloody days: clutter around the site, picking up nameless waste bits of this and nameless bits of that. Scraping smuts of mortar, screed, parge coat off the floor, cleaning the windows, door thresholds, blocks of timber in one pile, tools all away in boxes, and the boxes in one corner. It took for ever. If we'd had internal doors, the tops of the doors would have been cleaned. A few years in the army gets you like that. Bullshooshoo baffles brains. This time it might have worked but.... what worried me was the 'Next Visit' part of the conversation. "I can see you're well organised : I'll see you next at completion." Really? I mean Really? I was pleased enough not to check at the time. Just glad to get the inspection over. My finger-tips are telling me that there's lots of room for error here. Maybe the only thing I can do is document what we do with a bit of care - and make sure I know the relevant bits of the Regs.

brushless. So much smoother...

No, we must have the result and the coffee wars can begin...

This is a minefield. Or maybe a minefield would be a better idea :rubchin:

Try having both!

Despite having my own grinder and a decent espresso machine, I'm slowly winding back the amount of caffeinated coffee I drink. I'm at about 50/50 caffeinated/decaf and expect to be caffeine free within a week or two. I'll see how it goes - I do love good coffee, but if I can adjust to just drinking decaf, I think I'll be better off given how sensitive I am to caffeine's effects. My missus seems completely immune to caffeine, so she'll continue to inhale it for both of us.

I'm off coffee for years bar the occasional, once in a blue moon.one in meetings where that's all there is. Went off tea a while back when ill and haven't got the taste for it back. Was on various fruit teas but keep needing the loo. Plain old H2O now run through the filter. I sleep better and wake up sharper without needing that morning cup of whatever. Discussing with a mate the other day when you go cold turkey after being a tea/coffee/coke drinker. Caffeine withdrawal is a real thing!

You will convince yourself that the more you spend, the better the coffee is. You don't want Buyer's Regret.

That is what a proper washing machine should look like. I suspect that they learned a lesson a decade so back. If I had room, I would have separate dryer. If I put a dryer in, I would loose 8.75% of my kitchen. Actually I could live quite happily without a dryer. I just hang things on hangers from the curtain rail. Open the window and let the draft do its stuff. I never understand why people dry clothes on dedicated dryers in the middle of the house.

I don't like tea either. I'll drink tea or coffee if out visiting but never at home. I am partial to a hot chocolate occasionally especially the dark ones.

Sorry, I spoke a bit soon on this. It lifted the first brick I did but that particular brick was a bit sparse on mortar but the others were fine (solid engineering bricks). Wall plate seems solid, have chiselled sections that were slightly high. Think this thread is all wrapped-up. Thanks to anyone that helped.

£260 from IKEA: https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/matmaessig-induction-hob-black-30368822/

Just follow your first thoughts and don’t tell anyone ???

I don't like the stuff.

The best rate you can get from Ecology (passive house certified) post completion is 3.4%. If you are SAP A it's 3.19% and SAP B is 4.15%. below that is the SVR of 4.65% First Direct currently have a 1.59% 2 year fix with £490 fees so you'll always be better off going back to high st lenders as soon as you've cleared the redemption period. To be clear, I'm not advocating fiddling the Ecology application system as I highly respect them as a lender and had a great experience. I'm just being clear that you're not contractually committed to achieve the predicted SAP / PHPP (and the associated spend) if it does not make financial sense for you.

No not me, all my pipes are in a warm loft so not an issue, although I did get a little condensation on the incoming flexible pipe and just wrapped it in rockwall which has done the trick.

In relation to a mortgage, there may be some benefit to owning a plot of land in respect of money borrowed. But anyone giving you money against the value of land will extract their price. Each company will have different conditions. The best one can say is that a builder is likely to need less money overall. But consider this: have you surveyed the land; do you know what the soil profile is; are there any hidden services; is the land brown-field; in other words how well does your plot of land lend itself to the building process? Costly, or cheap?

I have a general principle that if a company doesn't advertise the price of its products, or make the prices readily available, then I don't bother looking any further at them. Hidden pricing is, more often than not, a way of being able to cover up charging way too much for something. The sales tactic is to get customers hooked on the product features to the point where they are committed to buy it, then charge whatever you think you can get away with. It was traditionally the sales technique used by high-end luxury brands (like Rolls Royce, "if you need to ask the price you cannot afford it") but has been copied endlessly by other companies now, even companies selling complete tat (not suggesting that applies to this company, BTW).

I drink around 12 cups of coffee per day (sometimes more) and Mrs NSS drinks one. At your 'usual' £2.40 per cup it would take less than a month to cover the cost of my £750 B2C machine ?

Not bean to cup, but we have a Senseo coffee maker - it uses teabag-like pouches of coffee rather then the aluminium pots. You can also get empty bags to fill with your ground of choice, albeit a bit fiddly... The machine itself is quite convenient and easy to clean.

Fabric first. It lasts for the life of the build, saving energy sun, rain or snow.

They get tea in my house, they don't come back, not even the Jehovahs.

Hope you guys had a good time away (while the rest of us plough on)?

The hot air goes down in my Bora which has the extractor integrated into the hob......its quite fun to watch when there is nothing on TV?

That looks pretty dire for just 13 months use. Makes me wish I'd taken our old Sunamp PV heating element out after three years to see what it looked like. Harvey softeners are pretty slim and look fairly neat. We have one and it seems to work very well. They are sold under a few different names, as I think Harvey has licenced the core technology. We have this model: https://www.uk-water-softeners.co.uk/product/dimensions/

It really bugs me when people comment on how much these tradesmen are charging how much do you lot earn a self employed bloke has to take every opportunity to earn as much as they possibly can. You need to step back and think of all the days they don’t earn anything not a penny wet days no work no pay chrismas holidays bank holidays the four weeks annual leave you all get no sick pay having to pay all your own pension contributions add that lot up and take it away from their daily charge and you will see that there is not a lot left £17 a metre for block work, how many m a day, take off tax,public liability insurance, tools, running a van,ppe in my time running my buisness i had a lot of young lads pass through my door, but today I would not encourage any of them to go self employed.