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Good ol tinternet https://www.cef.co.uk/catalogue/products/1091072-3-5mm-re-threader?gclid=Cj0KCQjwhvf6BRCkARIsAGl1GGhjemXRVPLp3ej8jpD6Cp0_njRwbFpKBgxPGzd881tyG3pWM0-kzIwaAsyMEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds ?

Made up a frame out of 145x45. (The ladder frame came out a little twisted as the radial arm saw I went and borrowed to cut housings, well the timber bed it sits on is all warped, means the housing depth is different front to back. I really must fix my own saw for the sake of a capacitor!). Cut out the immediate rot and a bit beyond then smothered everything in Rustins Advanced Wood Preserver. I'll slip in a length of dpc along the front edge and sit the repair section on some of the removed broken paving slabs. I used the Ronseal deck reviver/cleaner. Going to finish in grey, non slip Cuprinol deck stain. Edit: I still need to get 3 lengths of decking!

It’s been a pleasure watching this unfold from start to end and you have done an amazing job, it’s a really great build, I love it’s simplicity and the way it fits into the landscape, your attention to detail and very orderly way it progressed. Give yourself a pat on the back. Bravo

A lot has happened on site in the last month. But nothing really seems to look different yet. We start with the soffit and fascia. A 15.1 metre run, in 4 pieces. Why the house grew that extra 100mm I don't know. I blame the boss and the architect! It can't possibly be anything to do with me! What a pain this was to get straight - the process was to cut the splines down to the right size, both at the edge and bottom (the 'alien' was good for this) and then insert some reinforcement timbers to allow the fascia to be nailed at 600mm centres top and bottom. I used a few shims to get it to come out right, but far fewer than I feared. The gable ends were a bit of fun. It took 3 of us to manoeuvre the snake-like soffit flat board and capping fascia in to place. Only six full lengths and four parts to do... Won't take long, honestly. Next we installed the felt support trays and over fascia vents for the first time. It turns out that my planning isn't infallible and I hadn't allowed for the correct thickness of slates at the bottom of the roof. Oh well, lesson learned. Testing a sample slate on the roof with the shim in place to demonstrate the loose eaves slate issue was actually fixed. Still waiting for slates. So let's look at fibreglass valley pieces... I have a few batten offcuts in place to stand on and hold on to in various useful places so I can reach to put up the supporting battens for the valley. I'm now hoping the other side lines up with this one! The first pallet of slates! A bit of a problem with delivery and quantities, so I had to collect them with my long suffering trailer. The wheels didn't fall off, but it was a close run thing. The slaves (or do I mean family?) hard at work grading slates. The table was a maths lesson on the Gaussian distribution later that day. Thankfully medium is most common. I really need to work on getting the junk pile sorted out too. I have no idea why I have an old toilet and radar antenna on site. Meanwhile I made a jig for cutting the eaves slates, using the thin slates. Tests have shown the grinder breaks fewer slates than trying to cut them by traditional methods. It looks like I need more practice, but not at current slate prices! The first few slates on the roof. It's going to take a fair while... Just over 10% done with this side now. Going to need more slates and more people to finish in anything like sensible time! I don't think it's looking too bad so far... Only 1850 more slates to go on the house.

Good to know for the future. I think for the moment the contents will be used as kindling for the odd bonfire to clear away all the garden waste that won't compost that is building up on site.

Hi All, Stumbled upon this forum whilst googling self builds and it would appear I've hit a great source of information. My wife and I are currently in the process of buying a plot with a very poorly kept bungalow on it in Surrey, we will be looking to eventually demolished and rebuild in a few years time. For the time being I'll be scouring these forums for valuable information. Very nice to meet you all!

Pour hot bitumen into the holes. End of problem.

Toolstation and Screwfix also do the tools. Just Google "box rethreader". Or buy an M3.5mm HSS tap off of eBay much cheaper and use with a small tap wrench or epoxy glue into a bit of broom handle. Google "back box lugs" for a multitude of little clip on things for when it's completely stripped and won't rethread. I've often, in the past just rethreaded to M4.

Yep meant heating water in general - DHW and UFH. Nothing If it’s not connected to the heating system as it’s classed as a domestic appliance. Would be interesting to see how the SAP was done for it as the insulation levels would have to be pretty high.

The little holes won’t or shouldn’t go right through the slab, 55mm deep should do and then water wouldn’t come up them

Hydrostatic pressure would have to be pretty powerful as it would need to break the cement bond. As both @joe90 and @ToughButterCup said - French drain 300mm all round the outside with a perforated pipe in it will keep the water table low.

i second that, we have a high water table, almost ground level in winter. We created a French drain around the outside (by back filling the foundation trench outside the blocks with 50mm stone) and a pipe to a ditch, it’s worked very well and no sign of ground water near the house. Did the same with our detached garage.

If there is a slight fall across the site, build a simple French drain to a spot lower than the foundation .... ? Cheap, quick, permanent.

went for RAL 7033 which was supposed to be cement grey and looked grey on the screen, they arrived as a green window. we like them and have been asked by a few people about them. retuned the screen colouration and it now matches. get a sample in your hand prior to ordering.

We manufacture windows on a large scale and 7016 / anthracite is now more than 50% of everything people buy. Personally I prefer black (anthracite has a very blue-y tint) but you need the right house design as Russell mentioned. Can look quite stark when you have bright white wall finishes, woodwork, soffits, e.t.c. Black looks great with more rustic or industrial colour schemes where you're combining it with concrete/mid-greys or earthy tones. The safe thing about White, Black & Anthracite is that you'll get them at a lower cost than a bespoke colour. You'll possibly be paying a one-off setup charge if you want a specific RAL colour and If something gets damaged on site and you need to re-make a window later down the line, you'll pay the setup charge all over again as well as waiting weeks for custom powder coating. I see it happen very often - people don't realise how easily other trades destroy windows once they are fitted.

Watch out with mixing the same RAL colour on different materials as they will all be slightly different. And black can be really bad for not matching.

I am also bored of grey. I have gone for black on the current property and will do white on the next development. Colours can look really crappy unless very carefully selected and muted.

My last place was just standard black, very nice and easy to touch up without too much hassle, I would have gone black again but gutter is grey and so is roof.

Sadly doesn't help, our plot is fairly mature, so you can't see anything much apart from trees/bushes. I'm going to rely on a friendly chat, just wanted to know the legal position if it comes to that. It would be almost impossible for anyone to age the fence I think, so cannot see how she could successfully claim rights to it. Thanks for your help.

Inward T on plan - get them off land registry 3 quid

We had our final inspection yesterday and building control were happy with the house. Just awaiting on an EPC certificate and we should have our completion certificate next week. We had a little tidy up before the inspector arrived so probably the ideal time to upload a few pictures. Landing and upstairs - not posted much here as this was covered in a earlier blog entry. Considering we put in outline planning in 2009 when we were 23 it's been a long time coming and a great relief to know it's nearly all over. I intend to post a couple more entries with the last bits of outside work and one about the costing/finance. Thanks for all those who commented over the years and answered odd queries, much appreciated. The to do list of actual jobs is getting short now. Proper downpipes – ordered Gravel - ordered, coming on Monday

Looks great. Sitting out on that deck will be cracking with the view .....apart from the midges no doubt!

Beautiful and the views aren't that bad either?. Cracking job - hope you feel proud of what you have achieved?

The content of hoover bags can go in the compost heap aiui.

we have the screwfix one and the wet function is great . It is very efficient , almost like a pump. It does take a while to dry the filter but there is a different one for dry function. The dry bags are expensive but they are large . we did empty one and reuse when we did not have a spare

I have the large one from Screwfix... Titan I think. Great job. Tool function and also wet function. Not used the wet function yet.

So I plugged in my SIM router without and aerial or anything and got 105Mbps down and 13 up. Brilliant results ! Faster than my fibre

You can, you just need to get the 'Pro' (free) downloadable version: https://www.google.co.uk/earth/download/gep/agree.html

Hopefully it was less than 10 years ago. See if there is any evidence on Google maps. I think you can look back at old sat images.

>Cleaning dreams? Avoid the need for cleaning by designing-out sources of dirt. e.g. design an airtight house with MVHR that filters incoming air, to remove a lot of dust issues. The more urban the house the more the benefit. No open fireplace, or any combustion source in the house. Clear and easy to use storage place for shoes and outside coats, and comfortable inviting place to remove them. If you have pets, a pet-designated area without them needing to roam the whole house. Ideally in an MVHR 'extract' zone so their smells and fur doesn't travel around the rest of the house. What other sources of dirt can be designed out? then removing dirt that does get in: design floor areas to support a robotic vacuum cleaner. Carpets are sub-optimal, as are uneven thresholds between rooms. Reduce number of stepped levels. Look to industrial catering and hospitals. Stainless steel kitchen and pantry, "wet room" toilets etc designed to allow periodic deep steam cleaning. There's probably clear design guidance/standards for these, but I can't find it. Then, if you're like us and can't abide cleaning, what about design elements that simplify hiring a professional cleaner? no ideas come to mind other than clear storage for cleaning equipment and a big sink for them to use. maybe a door lock and security system (inc. a safe?) that makes it comfortable letting them in even when not at home (a distant memory, but it may yet happen again).

Have you checked _both_ title plans from the land registry and compared them with the OS map? Ideally you want both title plans to agree you are right. Unfortunately title plans are not really definitive unless they show the boundary in relation to a fixed feature like a building or old tree. I'm not so sure about that. If the neighbour hasn't formally claimed it yet then I don't think he can do so now because the law on adverse possession was changed a few years back. These days the real owner is notified of any claim and has two years to object before they loose it. If I'm wrong then you can scupper his plans by offering to sell it to him for "a nominal £1 subject to contract". Ask him to accept in writing then immediately back out of the deal. Any subsequent claim for adverse possession fails because by accepting your offer he has accidentally agreed you own it. Regardless of the ownership issue he may have obtained a right of way/passage over some of the land.

Why is it awkward, do you want to pay £20-30,000 over so you can feel comfortable having a drink with them. You should keep business and social life separate, if you socialise with them I wouldn’t even have asked for a quote, i guarantee you will feel more awkward 4 months in when you start arguing over silly things. I would get two more quotes from completely different sources.

That's £3000 per square metre so yes I would say that is steep. Time for a second or third quote?

Didn’t have any Cu sulphate so when I was up near the roof yesterday I sprayed some generic roundup as far as I could reach. Will this be any use? (there does seem to be a lot of moss around the east facing, out of the sun most of the day, ground floor veluxes)

We had a moss problem on the concrete tiles on our last house. The moss would grow so thick that rain water would pool behind it in heavy rain, then make its way between/under tiles around a chimney breast. The water level would briefly overtop the lead flashing and trickle in, I think. I cleared the moss but within a couple of years it was back again, so I tried spraying the roof with a concentrated copper sulphate solution. This was extremely effective, and left enough of a residue in the textured surface of the tiles to dissuade moss from growing back for several years. Very well worth doing, IMHO. I just bought a couple of kg of copper sulphate pentahydrate (about £15 from eBay), made a saturated solution in a pressure sprayer and sprayed that all over the roof. Not only does it stop moss growing, but it will kill any moss that you can't easily reach, and it will then dry and fall off.

I went to our local B&Q the other day. It's in a bit of a rough area. The guy on the door asked me if I wanted decking. Luckily I got the first punch in.... I'll get my coat...