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I've been on the phone to a few local hire centres and they are offering some great prices for plant and equipment hire over the Christmas shutdown. Basically I'm paying two days hire or weekend rate for hire between 20th Dec and 2nd January. 6m telehandler and 4m platform is costing £390 for nearly 2 weeks hire. Should be over £1k. If you are needing to hire a mini digger, telehandler, working platform, any tools, anytime etc in the near future, Then now is the time to call your local hire centre.

Hi everyone, I have been lurking on this site since November 2018 when we moved from our lovely house to a static caravan on site with a very run down bungalow. Fast forward 13 months and we have got all the drawings and planning signed off and about to (fingers crossed) get the self build mortgage from Ecology. Planning to start the build weather permitting in the New Year! Hoping to do a lot of the build myself so will probably be asking lots of questions along the way. The build will be a timber framed dormer style bungalow with 4 beds upstairs and opened planned living downstairs. We are going for an air source heat pump as well. I have got all the costings via the build aviator and trades quotes and hopefully we can stick to the budget and spreadsheet I have done! I have been busy this year with removing trees, putting up fences and putting in a sewage treatment plant oh and sorting out various sheds for storage, all of which went better than expected. There are four of us (2 adults and 2 children plus cat) living in the static caravan and we are loving it. Can't wait to get started now. We are based in West Sussex. Any questions just ask and I will try and answer them.

I had mine all bent and cut and fabricated into cages, I could not believe how cheap it was. I had allowed £3-4 grand for steel and it came in at about £1500. It all depends on how precious your time schedule is, I think to have bent all mine up would have been at least an extra 20 days work.

@Conor I'm doing this atm. Everyone thinks your mad when you do things yourself. Just a bunch of rich kids IMHO. It all depends how cheap you get the rebar =if you buy this for full steel stockholders price, they might even include bending as theres a fat healthy profit included in the price. I buy my rebar from scrapyard. Makes a massive difference but they obviously won't bend it for you. I m happy to take a day or two bending and wiring rebar for the sake of 1000£+x. A few here might disagree as they're on architects wages and rather work an hour to earn that kind of money than do some actual work ?

Is this it from the other angle?

GSR’d fitter required if the case you have to remove to get access to the duff part forms part of the air / flue / combustion chamber. Look for any notes in the MI’s that state any disturbed seals need to be replaced. I would concur that it’s a PCB fault as it sounds like a relay has gone grotty and is allowing voltage through when energised but not when in the ‘normal’ state.

They replaced all the poles around here last year and IIRC, in the orchard behind us, they used a Land Rover with outriggers and a lift on the back with chains which they wrapped round the pole.

What @ProDave said. If someone "supplies and fits" (eg provides materials and labour) both must be supplied at the lower of the two rates. If it's a new house labour is zero rated so the materials must be zero rated to you as well. This is in VAT 708. If the brickie charges you VAT on materials and you pay it in error you cannot reclaim the VAT from HMRC. If the brickie is VAT registered he can reclaim the VAT from HMRC so won't be out of pocket. If your builder is not VAT registered you should buy the materials yourself from the builders merchant and in that case you can reclaim the VAT. You need a VAT invoice in your name.

There is a simple rule of thumb for a new build: a. any contractor who is vat registered MUST invoice you with zero vat for all materials, labour, hire fees, etc.. b. For any contractor who is NOT vat registered then you MUST purchase, be invoiced for and pay for all materials including paying the vat on those invoices. At the end of the project you complete a vat return to claim back the vat element you have previously paid out but VAT on some charges is not recoverable, e..g on fees, hire charges, etc. If you organise your contracts carefully most of the irrecoverable VAT can be avoided. You do this by arranging for a vat registered contractor to contract and pay for fees, hire, etc. You then get invoiced with zero vat.

The joys of doing foundations in December, I have an unwanted swimming pool.

Perfect time to get some levelling stakes in. Today was the first day that I got some washing out on the line for weeks. It rained, now it is a 60 MPH storm.

I laid a load of drainage early on in the build, and it rained heavy overnight and it all floated out of the trenches.

So if I see Paul Clark telling me about another delicate ATM removal involving a telehandler in the Hollywood area I will know whose site it got borrowed from.