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Electricity usage is about 18% down on normal, so I can't see power cuts due to excess demand. Power cuts due to storm damage might be an issue, but you would expect the network operators to be "essential services" and at least have staff on call to repair damage in the normal timescales. It sounds like a headline to sell newspapers to me.

That would depend on if you use the Australian government guide to showers while I was over there they sent to every household an egg timer with a rubber suction cup to stick to the shower door, you flip it around as you get in and take a 3 minute shower. We had two girlfriends of my wifes staying and they asked what the egg timer was for, I explained and the said how do you expect us to have a shower in 3 minutes. I thought of how to explain and did a little demonstration that went something like. Armpit, armpit, fanny, bum and now your done. I don’t know if it was the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc or what but they where all rolling around the floor.

When we moved in to our old house on site, we found 1500 unused imperial bricks from the 1960s stacked up. I cleaned them and put on pallets. Called the local reclaim merchant and he said that sadly there was no market for them, just to use for hardcore on site. His view was that there had been industrialised hand demolition of old brick buildings in eastern europe and the market was flooded with very cheap vintage bricks. You may be local in finding a local buyer if they're unique to the area but its a trade off of your time in hand salvaging materials and storing safely vs smacking the whole lot down. Quite a bit of demolition 'cost' is the removal of spoil. This is inevitably crushed and you buy it back as Type 1, paying twice. One load we had was full of pipes, wiring, taps etc so had obviously come straight from another building site. That said, I looked into crusher hire and to get a decent size machine that wouldn't jam easily was not that cheap either.

We had several quotes for the asbestos removal which ranged from £4400 to well over double that and it cost us less to have the concrete crushed on site and reused than to be taken away and new sub-base brought in. This was all done a couple of years ago. I put an entry on my blog about it.

Hi All Posting this in case it’s of interest. The NHBC have launched a number of free webinars. From what I can work out it’s open to all. http://www.nhbc.co.uk/Builders/Productsandservices/Training/Webinars/?utm_source=Shortlink&utm_medium=Shortlink&utm_campaign=Webinars_shortlink What better way to use up your period of self isolation by acquainting yourself with building knowledge and regs. Wow we’re a boring bunch ? No idea if they’ll be any good.

Oh yeah. And the dust.

I would not count an office as habitable space (but I may be proved wrong) I have a wall heater in my garage Wired into a fused spur, but it does not mean my garage is habitable (not by a long shot). see. https://www.planningportal.co.uk/directory_record/275/habitable_rooms

The normal rule is that if energy is used to 'condition the indoor climate' then the building needs to meet Part L of the regs, whether or not the heating (or cooling) is fixed. There are additional requirements for installing fixed services, particularly covering commissioning (if applicable). But maybe there's an exception that I'm not aware of.

Looks impressive and should definitely keep you busy! I think you ought to get some windows in there at the planning stage though, this does not look like a temporary structure and it'll make it so much more useable in the both the short and long term imho.

My take is if you want it to be permanent habitable space you need building regs. Home office / studio / garden room you will not. If you have any fixed heating you would need regs.

start looking to buy second hand, gumtree, ebay and facebook are your friends now, well, will be in the future. ex display bathrooms and kitchens or places like kitchen exchange.

Typically things like the cost of a visiting site manager, providing WC, site accommodation & storage, hardstandings, skips for waste, keeping the site tidy, incidental plant & equipment, maybe scaffolding, maybe the provision of water & electricity...

I got given a massive load of timer 5 months ago, mostly 8x2 and 4x2 so have plenty to keep me going. I also buy materials when I can afford them and in some cases this will be two or more years in advance..... seems crazy but I am very thankful of this policy now as I literally have loads of stock that will keep me busy for at Least 3 months.

I put noggins in the walls and also had to put some in the ceilings between the metal web joists where the stud wall walls joined the ceiling for the plasterboard to be fixed to.

If your boards span edge to edge you don’t need to stagger for the sake of it But if they don’t Then stagger You will be surprised how solid the walls feel once they have tiles on

When I’m adding strength to MF Bathrooms or otherwise I just have a pack of 12.5 delivered to site direct from the saw mil Usually works out around £8 a sheet If the water was to get as far as the ply You are stuffed even if it is marine ply Once over most our jobs involved MP Wouldn’t like to think what price it is now

@Eileen I have checked and as my house is a replacement dwelling (policy h10) and a one for one replacement, as such there is no CIL apparently. Also there is no CIL in Wrexham county. I queried it back to my planning consultant and he didn't provide an explanation but said I needed to do nothing more, being a cautious type I checked with the planning also (just in case) and they provided an explanation on where some "development contribution" levies apply but not CIL. All seems a bit confused but I have it in writing so am going to go off and worry about other things now. Thanks for prompting me though as it would have been a sorry state of affairs if I stumbled across it later.

Eyeing up an old bit of 12 by 2 for a stairs stringer. As twisted as a propeller....

I ordered some stuff from toolstation 2 days ago. All in stock when I hit the button. Expected it to arrive today. Instead an email telling me delivery is postponed because one item is out of stock. Warehouses getting empty and supply chain issues. Shame the email did not come 5 minutes earlier before I placed an order with CPC.

Ours was dwanged to take the internal stud wall, using timber of the same thickness as the service void (38mm).

I would have jusat used the tigerseal as the lubricant and sealer all in one go -not just applied a bead to outer edge as you seem to have done as long as it works

Just checking...

Yeah I already planned to add a joint later

That sounds like a "submariner's shower". They had a water rationing, so adopted a similar technique. I actually measured the length of time that the shower ran for, for about a week, to get an average. The shortest time was me, about 6 minutes, longest was one when my wife washed her hair, about 15 minutes.

I've heard this mentioned a few times, and believed it to be true until I did some measurements at our old house to test it. We had a pretty average shower there, which used about 10 litres/min of water at 38°C. For anyone with a more powerful shower, say a rainfall type head, the flow rate will almost certainly be higher than 10 litres/minute. I measured the bath and it held about 80 litres of water at about the same temperature. I also measured the time that the shower ran for, varied a lot, but the average was around 10 minutes actual shower running time, so about 100 litres. Unless you have a large bath, it looks like taking a bath may well use less water than running a shower, perhaps by around 20% or so.

Design the house with low temperature heating, e.g UFH, and a large DHW tank e.g 300L with a heat pump input coil. Then fit the oil boiler. If oil goes through the roof in years to come, swap it out for an ASHP.

It says.. So appears to excluded mortgages.

did it with gabions, took ages but was very cheap, 10 3/4 tonne bags of quarry waste at 20 quid a bag. chucked a few blocks in each basket as well and got enough facing quality stone from the quarry waste to face about 1 1/2 gabions per bag. rear gabion wall is 2M high but only 0.5M deep to reduce digging into rock, had to use vertical steels in concrete to make them more stable. All works fine; cheap but slow and hard work.

When and ONLY when your tiling is done! Push the flush pipe into the wall and make a mark level with the tiles: Put the flush pipe into the pan connector then into the pan with a bit of silicone spray: Mark flush with the back of the pan: The measurement between the two marks is how much you cut off the flush pipe, about 85mm in my case: Cut it off the non ribbed end and emery off the hairy bits: Ditto the poo pipe. I found a plastic bag used like this helped when swapping between the poo pipe and yellow bung as I was into a "live" drain. The yellow bung sat in a bucket of Dettol: Marking the poo pipe level with the back of the pan: Ott to cut the poo pipe down once I knew how much to trim off:

Use a bandage

But the main question on my mind mr @pocster is HAVE YOU BLOODY WELL SWEPT UP YET. ?????????

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Use it for a ‘feature’ As materials run low I do take this opportunity to remind people I have a surplus of walk on glazing .

Very economical and practical. However the other 99% stand under the shower for as long as they like. My teenage son is a prime offender, I've now taken to going into plant room and killing the hot water supply so he gets a blast of cold to remind him to get out.