Leaderboard

Services As the existing bungalow already had services (phone, electricity, gas, water, main drainage) we expected that it should be easy to sort out the services for the new build. Well some were harder than others! Gas – to demolish we needed to first have the gas meter removed which was really easy. Then we needed the gas disconnected – it wasn’t too tricky but they were not too sure where it was on the verge. They looked carefully at the tarmac patches in the road and decided which one looked like theirs! And dug up the verge – bingo got it first time, and just to check they clamped the pipe and turned on the gas by the (non-existent) meter and nothing came out – really scientific that one. We are debating if we reconnect either of the new houses as we don’t expect to use much energy and the reconnection charge and standing charge, plus new boilers and periodic servicing make it hard to get a payback. Water – disconnection was simple: our demolition contractor dug down near the meter and pulled out the pipe, cut it and fitted a tap – job done! And a temporary supply into the bargain. Adding a new supply for the extra house looks reasonably painless (apart from the complex forms) and we will get both houses onto 32mm feeds. Fingers crossed. Phone – well we just cancelled the service and disconnected the overhead back to the pole – probably not squeaky clean but it worked. We have tried to register the site with BT but for some reason they don’t seem to respond. More effort is required on our side, and probably large amounts of money. We will see, but for now we don’t need phone or broadband on site. Electricity - We have an overhead supply that went to the bungalow gable so before we could demolish it had to go, and based on horror stories we decided to start early. In January we had a surveyor who said we could put up a temporary pole in the back garden and they would run the existing cable to it and down to a temporary meter cabinet. As long as we kept the existing cable length it was going to be simple! We had the quote and after we moved out of the bungalow we (foolishly) asked what sort of pole we needed to install prior to them moving the cable – this was met with ‘you cant do that – we have to install the pole’. So new surveyor and lots of head scratching and working out the best option for the final layout of the two houses they decided they would install a new pole for us (cue an extra £1000) and we duly paid the bill and thought it would be simple! Well after 4 attempts ( a long and boring story) the great pole day arrived and so did 5 vans and lots of electricity men. Lots of tea later they still hadn’t got the JCB and auger. Finally he arrives having driven 20 miles (the previous day he drove at 22mph 105 miles each way to a job so this was local for him). Then a few more calls and the pole arrived – so it was looking good (now seven vehicles on site!). Auger in place and poised to start they suddenly decided they needed a ‘services plan’, and because they didn’t have one they would all have to go away and come back another day! They called their boss and asked him to come out and supervise the job as they had an irate customer, to which he said “I’d rather not”. We were not irate but if throwing the toys out of the pram was what was needed then we would start screaming loudly. Well luck prevailed and no toys were thrown because the previous crew in the last failed attempt did have a ‘services plan’ (though not the right digger) so it was duly emailed and paperwork was dealt with and drilling commenced. From then on work was smooth and efficient and skilful, hole dug, pole in, old cable disconnected, new cable run down the new pole. They had some trainee linespersons who did the cable work and they were great. They even put my post in their hole and then screwed my cabinet to this and ran the cable in and terminated it to their fuse. Next step was a different crew to come and move the meter on another day. This was pretty smooth and they changed the meter to a digital but dumb meter which fitted better in the box than the old clockwork one. Finally our electrician came and put in the meter tails and we had temporary power on site, and a permanent pole for ever more – phew!!! Well actually not over yet because helpful folks on the forum advised on the vat side and it is impossible to claim this back so we are trying to get them to re-issue the invoice without the vat and give is a vat refund directly. They say this is in process but it may yet take a toy throwing session to achieve it! And we also need to switch to a low standing charge tariff for the duration of the build and prepare for the fun of getting two permanent supplies in place – we cant wait!!!! Main Drainage – this has been a real problem with the site – a main 150mm shared sewer runs down one side of the plot and then diagonally across it. We have had to design the entire layout around this and give a 6m exclusion zone around the route. The alternative is to re-route it and as its pretty deep our pockets would also need to be. So we will leave it where it is and add a new manhole and life should be easy – again fingers crossed. Our SE advised us to have a cctv survey of the existing sewer so we have evidence of the existing state and can’t be blamed for any pre-existing damage. In conclusion, as everyone says, services are a costly, lengthy and bureaucratic nightmare. Having an already serviced plot should make it easy, but I pity anyone with a Greenfield site as ours was a, still ongoing, nightmare. Advice is plan early and expect it to take ages and cost lots and you wont be far wrong

My advice is to either go for a low power element (not more than 150 W) or use a thermostatically controlled one, as I've found that the larger of our two towel rails can make that bathroom a bit too warm. We have the towel rails on a circuit switched by a time switch, so they are only on for a couple of hours in the morning and evening, and that helps. The other slight snag I've found with the wide, short, towel rail is that it doesn't heat up at the bottom properly. I have a suspicion that this may be due to the hot part of the element starting some way up from the base, so it doesn't create enough warm water low down to draw in cooler water from the very lowest rail in the thing. For standard elements, length is related to power output, starting with a relatively short (~300mm) 120 W element and going up to maybe 600mm for a 1 kW element (which would be way to big for pretty much any towel rail). This may affect choice, as sometimes there can be a length restriction imposed by the design of the rail (our long one won't accept an element over ~ 350mm long). One snag with fitting an element into a "dual fuel" towel rail is that you inevitably end up with a tee piece where the element fits, so that the element and the water connection can share the same port on the towel rail. These can look a bit clunky, but I'm not sure there's an easy way around this. Other than the above observations, I'd say that the elements themselves are all pretty much of a muchness, with the main difference being the style and finish of any control box they may include at the base, for setting temperature, on time delay, etc.

Just how is he going to get that boat out of his basement. IF he ever finishes it?

It is really a by-product of changing to CO2. From what I have read, the CO2 is kept in a super critical state, so basically relies on the energy levels of phase change. This allows more energy transfer by volume. CO2 does not like being a liquid. The move to CO2 is to reduce the global warming potential of gas leaks, not improving the efficiency of the unit per se.

Having been in a small plant room with @Nickfromwales for numerous hours I can tell you he will have NO problem with F Gas! Arse like a sewer ? ?

@zoothorn go shopping. Go out, go find something to do and come back at 3pm this afternoon. Let them get on with it and it will be fine

how much are we talking? We can crowd fund a set for @Nickfromwales in return for special favours forum discount servicing.

A reserved matters application is in effect another planning application with the same notifications and same window for people to raise objections. The only real difference is the principle that you can build has been agreed, so this is just to make sure the details are acceptable. Often with an outline application they try and influence your design, e.g. because our outline application said nothing about the roof material, they stuck in the condition it must be a slate roof. I did get that overturned by discussion with the planners and we agreed on a concrete tile that looked a bit like slate.

I took a Starrett arbour, removed the 1/4" pilot and drilled up the middle so it slipped over the the spindle after measuring the diameter of the spindle with a Vernier: It allowed me to then fit a hole saw and use the spindle in effect where the pilot drill was. Thus the hole drilled was perfectly concentric to the mixer: Thus the mixer fitted perfectly: Appeciate this was in Aqua Panel but you could do the same for drilling the tile but with a grit edged hole saw or ideally diamond edged one.

Demolition and Asbestos Very early on we had an asbestos survey done (which makes a real mess if you live in the house) and there were some nasties in the garage ceiling that were H&SE notifiable (i.e. not DIY!!!) and some rain goods that were pretty benign. So we decided to get one contractor to do both asbestos removal and demolition. Having the services disconnected first we then started and luckily we had a fantastic contractor: recycled 90% of the building, soft stripped and source separated on site, was neat, tidy and safety conscious and did a quick job. So quick in fact that we almost missed the final ‘push over’ and arrived on site just in time to see the final gable go over. We were fretting about site clearance and the jungle of a garden – amazing what a big digger can do! We arrived at 9:00 on the first day to find most of the vegetation stripped to ground level and loaded into a truck – perfect! Notice where the solar panels were – removed and carefully stored to go back on the new build . Having bought the bungalow with the intention of rebuild there were no regrets to see it as a pile of rubble – just relief that finally we were going ahead with no return path – a wonderful feeling. Having removed the bungalow the site looked huge – but the reality is that when it comes to building it is really tight with little room to manoeuvre.

I wonder - thinking aloud here... the drain next door may tie into a drain on the other side, previously, what sort of drive was it next door? Permeable or semi-permeable? and therefore water was just soaking away into the ground, so is the drain just doing its job at reducing ground water, the ground has then started to dry out causing shrinkage?

Puraflex 40 if you need to paint over it @Thedreamer I use that for my car restorations and love it - it's a brilliant, polyurethane based product that can be used to stick stuff on, seal things (inc. areas that will be subject to oil and fuel).

I went to my building merchant and the only colour they had in 825 was anthracite, which just so happens is what I'm intending to paint the sills. @Carrerahill thanks for this. ?

Agreed with above comments - we put our windows into our TF before the external skin went up - Just a pointer though and I'm sure you won't make the same mistake as I did - make sure the windows protrude from the frame sufficiently as to allow the fire batons to work - I initially had them set flush - which was the mistake! See images below for how they should look.

^ same as @Thedreamer here.

I would say that is fairly typical of bays, house will have very minor footings, bay will have even less, ground shrinks, bay drops walk along the road and look at all the others to see if you spot any more like it. I would keep very quiet at the moment until you do some more homework @ProDave if you get your insurance co involved in a subsidence claim it could go on for years, leaving the home owner unable to sell whilst a claim is being processed, you then have to sell a property with a subsidence loss against it. I would be very careful before I called them.

The regs don't actually stipulate that fire resistant enclosures have to be made of metal, it seems that the manufacturers have decided that's the easiest (cheapest?) option. You can get fire resistant non-metallic enclosures, I believe, but they are usually intended for commercial applications and just a bit expensive. I have wondered how fire resistant a standard composite meter enclosure is. Not very, I suspect.

Landscaping a lake at the moment I would have thought.

ah yes correct. A niche was built for the sole purpose of housing the full height units which only protrude 30mm from the wall face with a frame around the doors. As a result of that and the lighting behind the protruding frame they appear to float off the wall.

Re cylinder heat loss. I think a lot of people don't insulate the pipes leading to the cylinder very well. You need to insulate them ALL. Even the over pressure / temp discharge pipe from mine is insulated, otherwise it was warm (by conduction from the cylinder) and losing heat. The room the cylinder is in never seems any hotter than the other bedrooms so the loss from the cylinder cannot be very great.

Relax man, concrete will go off under water, chemical action. Why do you think the floor is 9” too low?, they have not built it yet! Just confirm with your builder that it’s level with your existing floor. If not why not?

Height to eaves, pitch, tile or slate, how long is the ridge, any hips and valleys? How long is a piece of string? FYI - My garage roof is 39m - it cost me about £330 in concrete tiles, £50 in ridge tiles, £80 in dry verge units, £80 for a roll of membrane, £60 for roofing battens, £30 for a dry ridge kit - took me a couple of weekends on my own.

Finished but I had to go off- so stressed. The ammount of rain was huge/ relentless, & now.. total calm/ light skies. I mean WhyTF couldn't it have been shifted!! its absurd & left me feeling very anxious not only today but for the whole job, & onward. There seems to have been only 12" poured, with 2" of water alrerady in the trench.. & what looks like 3" or more maybe now just sitting ontop. I am very upset with this. I can't understand: Why so little? why not piped in (in the digger 2' bucket swung round > emptied??) why is the floor gonna be 9" too low? how on earth can this what only looks like a moat full of brown water be right?

Yes, that is what I'm after. I will look out for that, Silicone EB25 is basically a better version? Also would you put a bead down and then get it as flat as possible so goes a bit beyond the joint?

I assume you have a joint in a sill, and as is typical moisture will pass down through mortar so a waterproof seal is what you seek? I would use Silicone 825 or EB25.

Not sure why you would be sealing the joint. Either the mortar is ok and keeping the water out, or it needs raking out and repointing

Most folk are wanting to get wind and water tight ASAP. On ours self build the outer skin blockwork and cladding were done after the windows went in. Also windows were in before slates were on the roof. My blog on here might be of interest to you.

Refrigeration change is the single biggest technology mitigation to climate change on drowdown so it's likely we'll see a number of changes in heatpump tech in coming years. https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank My mind does spin a bit at using CO2 to reduce GWP but it does make sense. I imagine a monobloc ASHP has much less GWP impact than any split systems so I won't let this dominate my decision process. Being able to bring sunamp back into the mix as a viable option is of some interest, except I finally got back numbers for the heatloss of a 300L tank with 100mm of insulation and it's really not that much worse than a sunamp Uniq12 -- 1.3 vs 0.9 kWh/day. If we keep the cylinder at 50°C and don't have it fully charged all the time I think we might actually achieve lower heat loss with the cylinder than with the sunamp (nice thing with the mixergy tank is comprehensive feedback on how much charge it's holding, vs none on the sunamp). Removing heat loss from the equation, it comes to cost and reliability vs space; as we have enough space for the cylinder I think the decision will be made for me.

Erm ! The steel beams are indeed powder coated I believe . The installer supplied bolts etc. - it was a custom job so I did nothing ?. I can later get a photo underneath so you can see the bolts - from memory there’s no sign of corrosion..... yet !

Hi Pocster, Looking at your photo, have you used anodised alu channel for the frameless balustrade and was it bolted into galvanised steel? If so, what sort of bolts did you use and were you able to take any precautions against galvanic corrosion?

Water - water !. You lot don’t know the meaning . When we poured the slab in the subterranean mansion it hammered down . Water had no where to run so just sat there . Means the concrete will cure slower and be rock ‘ard ! ?

OK, sounds like he goes belt and braces, which is likely no bad idea, since some of the windows when done will likely weigh nearly 200kg. Does he weld the plate onto the angle, or can you buy them like that?

We went to Grand Designs live a couple of times: once about 6 years ago and again about 3 years ago. Even over that time the difference was palpable. We were done within an hour the second time - it was just stall after stall of tat, with very few exhibitors that I'd even consider to be in the building trade.

Their installer should have checked tge flow rate before recommending and installing a mains pressure system. The problem could be the size of their supply pipe from the road to their house. However check that their stopcock(s) are fully open and no other restrictions or undersize pipes somewhere in the house. An accumulator helps when you have good static pressure but low flow rate. It works by filling slowly with water at whatever rate the main can deliver, then releasing it suddenly/more rapidly when you open a tap/shower. It needs to be correctly sized (bigger is better) or it may run out and revert to low flow, perhaps when a second person wants a shower immediately after the first. Check if it would be cheaper to have the main supply upgraded to a larger diameter pipe than fitting an accumulator - although I suspect not.

Our door and window firm recommended upgrading the opening from the architect's 950mm to 1000mm, They apparently always recommend this rather than anything narrower where possible, to ensure an acceptable clear opening.

The company I dealt with supposedly went into administration but are still trading and no longer have an account with Internorm. If you want further info pls feel free to PM

It's been mentioned before but the problem with a pocket door is they take longer to open and close. We have one but it's on a door that's not used frequently. The door and opening may also need to be wider because the handle doesn't disappear into the pocket. Can't even come close as it may trap your hand between handle and frame. Go play with one in a show room.

I think @Mr Punteryou have your measurements wrong 450mm min height or 450mm min width, not 450 x450 has to be something like 0.33 m squared or something like that. Just sorting mine now and was reading it last night. 450x450 would be a very small hole.

Blimey! Like we said, shut up about the rain on the concrete already!

Good time to bury annoying neighbours under the concrete.....

I start our roofing tommorow. We have mesh to install as per @Visti describes, although I have no eaves foam fillers, just a closure piece to allow a ventilation gap.

Take a look at any building sites near you They won’t cover anything up

The rain won’t bother the concrete The water will settle on top and can easily be pumped out before bricklaying starts

Scaffolding coming down next week

With the rough casting having completed its two month cleansing period, I was keen to get painting. I started with a roller but found it to be ineffective in getting into all the nooks and crannies, therefore this was going to be a brush job. Most of the time was spend dealing with the edges near windows, cladding and soffits. The use of insulation sheets provided a good screen to any paint gone in the wind. I concentrated on the gables first and was able to use trestles to paint the rest. A good few weekends, evenings and days off later we were able to take down the remaining scaffolding. I have a bit more to do but will have the levels brought up around the house first. Tiring but satisfying work and it was good to see how the white contrasts with the cladding and windows. The next external job will be fitting the treatment plant and bringing up the levels. A separate entry will deal with our progress inside.

'Forever house' will mean different things to different people. Me - I'm 36 and have lived at 21 different addresses (counting only those 6+ mths) and have never known a 'family home'. This is what I'm trying to create for my family, time will tell how it goes. Moving is a chore and I've done way too much of it now, and at 8 & 9, the kids have already racked up 5 house moves - no more!

My fault, I should have reversed the digger up to the container doors. The CSI came round pronto - said it could have been much much worse. Police came round, said it could have been much worse. PCSO came round and said it could have been much worse. Son (a local detective) said it could have been much worse. Thats Ok then, I feel much better now. Properly insured - but my last run in with a Loss Adjuster makes me absoultely determined to get the details bang on right. So thats me office-bound for the next few days, compiling a list of what I have and have not got left. I know, I know, I should get a proper problem and stop fussing about details. Its only tools. Advice given: Get a Screamer inside the house Get some PIR lights Dont challenge them, ring 999 and say "Burglary in progress." Hey Ho! Cant take a joke? Don't use power tools.