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If I was building it, I'd probably drop some posts onto pad foundations rather than bolt it to the neighbours house.

if it looks like he is doing it ask what type of fixings he proposes (as it’s your wall) then post it here for a view!

Cut sheet insulation into the open cavity , I closed off with plasterboard fully bonded to reveal then wet plastered the walls http://tonyshouse.readinguk.org/274-2/

Little by little it's getting there. Blingy lights awaited. Power socket and extract fan to be fitted though the holes are all there. More trim round the front doors etc. Not too shabby for what was scrap timber and free plastic:

At least get an electrician to do an EICR (Electrical Installation Condition Report) and fix all the immediate issues, like those redundant cables hanging about around the consumer unit.

I like recessed but my brickie did this (fir the whole outside of the house as well), a mixture of sand and lime to give an “old look

I did in part. but I'm glad I didn't have to pay for it! I missed a few of the presentations that I wanted to see but I should get a link to the recordings so can view them at a later date.

We’ve used cooling at work on some Panasonic ASHP. Works well with the fancoil rads we have, lovely cool breeze. You just have to be careful about condensation on the pipes Ours sweat a bit if we go below 15c water temp Obviously it’s not RHI compliant either! our main issue was with the Room thermostats. We ended up using some remote RF units where you can change the “Normally open” to “Normally closed” with a button click. Then we just set the stats at the max temp we want and if it gets warmer than that the system kicks in. We now have an Ecodan at home so may try it if it gets very warm but prob won’t need it as the house is stone built to tends to stay cool all summer.

3:00 am, bolt upright in bed: I didn't check the positions of the piles yesterday. Ahhhh: concreting tomorrow. Bugger. Why the panic? Read on. We have ground improvement stone columns (often misnamed piles) put in by these guys. (Town and Country Vibro ) They gave us a piling design, put in the piles, and a piling log, together with the test results. Spent £6500 putting in over 60 'piles'. I think that's bloody good value - £60 quid each for a stone column about 4m deep and 500 mm wide. All put in by a very very nice man called Jay. And tested to way over what is needed. Come to digging out time to lay the strip foundation and I see something suspicious: have a look at this The inset is from the piling design. All we could see (at the time) was that we had cut into the side of a pile, not the top of it (we thought it should be pile 40) which was way off the centre line (light green line) Cue panic. Cue phone calls to Architect and Tanners. Cue cup of tea. Outside, crowbar and shovel in hand dig around. And there minding its own business was pile 40: we had cut into the side of pile 39, as indeed we should have done. The colour of the stone in the stone columns is EXACTLY the same as the surrounding clay. Add a splash of water and you just can't see the pile. I won't forget pile 40 - ever. We'll be pouring concrete at 3:00 this afternoon - unless we lose another pile. (I've prodded each and every one: they're all there: thanks Jay). Ian

OK @swisscheese, to help you, I'll go into detail; Here are the calculation for the depths of the working platform thickness provided by TC Vibro (I'm working with Dan and John Ashton the Contract Manager) PilingMatCalcs.pdf The numbers which interest us are the Required Working Platform Thickness (bottom of page 1). There's one for 'raw' thickness of 0.48m and the other for a piling mat with Geosynthetic Reinforcement , 0.30m What constitutes a piling mat if you need new fill? Here's the answer - again from TC Vibro Specification for Upfill Materials.pdf Are there any guidelines for Piling mats? Of course there are. BR470t.pdf In preparation for this exercise we had a topographical survey done (5 locations) soil sampling 5 locations and a site visit done by Dan from TC Vibro. He asked me to dig a three meter hole in front of him so that he could hold the clay that I dug out. He needed that done in front of him so he could judge the water content. The charges for the rig set up are eye watering (£2.5k per visit) but after that each stone column of stone is relatively cheap. As I explain above -broadly- there's probably no need to get the mat tested. But on balance, why would I not demonstrate good faith to the company when they have visited me three times (Dan twice and the Contracts manager once) to make sure the risk of failure is as low as we can reasonably get? I also visited a site on which TC Vibro were working. In addition I have called out the water board to survey the water pipes (compulsory when piling within 15 meters of a water pipe here), but more honoured in the breach than the observance I think. Luckily, our pipes are cast iron, and a meter below ground level. Can I suggest a bit of care with the crushed concrete spec (see the Up-fill spec attached). Dan informally talked me through some of the poor practice that some contractors do in preparation for the piling mat: the end in mind is making sure the piler (or in our case the 'poker') can get through the mat and the substrate. If the area hasn't been dug to the correct depth, the risk increases. @John Ashton, you may want to comment on the above. @swisscheese, I'd be interested in a bit more detail if you can bear it.....

Most of us would be pushing up the daises before he had the foundations finished.

Bored with that...

And mean time back in the bathroom.........