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I can only imagine how horrible it must be to have horrible neighbours, guess I have been and still very lucky to have good neighbours who look out for each other and help each other. What makes this thread even sadder to me is the OP is building a house, putting money, time, effort and probably his soul into this building, and by the sounds of it there is going to be a toxic relationship between him and these neighbours, definitely not a good situation for the present or the future.

Okay, I'm clearly in the minority here. Just very confusing how one is meant to deduce these things. I will do the right thing and speak to my builder (who was quite upset when i told him I was expecting him to pay this).

Sorry mate - I have to go with the flow here and say that all the bit for the window incl flashing will sit with you. As for you point on the floors, if fixings are silent, I would expect them to pick them up. As for the doors - if you are supplying doors, frames, handles etc - I would have thought that the hinges, latches and keeps would also be with you - supply frames, doors and door kits - same goes for the locks and bathroom kits.

No-one has said anything of the sort ..!! All the responses above give facts, house sizes and run costs. How about you quote the facts on your experience and it becomes more balanced ..?? @Moonshine ASHP isn’t for every scenario especially where there are high heat loads due to poor insulation etc. A lot of social housing had them fitted where previously they had storage heaters and the tenants saw significant increases in costs as they went from using electricity off peak to peak for heating when the ASHP was used during the day as a standard heating system with rads. It is most ideally suited to UFH as you can create a thermal store type load using the floor slab overnight (huge storage heater in effect) but rads do work. You get a lot of emotive type statements around the technology (look at this article for example https://utilityweek.co.uk/concerns-raised-over-headlong-rush-to-air-source-heat-pumps/) where if you read the first few paragraphs you find it’s not entirely true : “They have high maintenance costs; they have a lot of moving parts that can go wrong; they are external; they make a lot of noise,” OK - so, they aren’t high maintenance as there is very little to maintain. Cleaning the coils takes 5 minutes with an air line and that’s about it. Unlike a fuel boiler there are no combustion products to deal with so nothing to corrode. They have around the same or less number of moving parts to a gas boiler - modern gas boilers are complex beasts and have a lot of parts that are constantly high temperature cycled that causes fatigue. They are external is an odd statement and not sure why it’s a problem …! And they make “a lot” of noise…. A WB 30i Combi has a sound rating of 50dB, the Mitsubishi Ecodan 8.5kW has a sound power rating of 58dB and a sound pressure of 45dB at 1m…. There are a lot of badly installed heat pumps that do cause issues and it is this that causes most of the problems. Just by siting a heat pump at 90 degrees to a wall for example rather than facing a neighbours wall in a narrow gap between two houses can substantially reduce noise and there are other basic install issues that cause problems further down the line such as not using flexible hoses or under sizing the units that will create a lot noiser installation both internally and externally.

Is this Pax stuff ..? A lot was stuck on the Ever Given.

This is what we did... Arched lintels with brick slips. Pointed up after installation. Some windows.. One or two and front door were double arch..

Frame ties Skin the build with OSB and breather membrane, 25-50mm cavity then the stone. Frame ties screwed to the OSB and preferably the timber frame also.

Bit of 20mm conduit and a couple of bathroom/outdoor lights. Sorted.

Sorry missed that ?‍♂️ But, if you both want the fence then you will have to reach a compromise.

Not drunk enough ... Time to get really properly bladdered then. Cheaper in the end.

As I said above, the 'fence' is just some chicken wire that the neighbour put in to limit the passage of Deer. He weaved it around stuff and nailed it to whatever he could. It is by no means a reliable fence and hasn't prevented the Deer. We had planned to install a Jacksons Timber Palisade fence to divide the old new plots, adding the piece on that splits us from the neighbour discussed above for continuity. It's lovely fence, but really ought to be straight. I think I'm going to seek the fair compromise I mentioned above and hope that he accepts losing a few plants, just as we have to.

I run a tiling business and pay 22m2 and 3.50 m2 matting 1 charge 31m2 for planks They are site rates You may be up to 40m2 for a one man ban outfit I tiled our own in planks 158m2 It took me 5 days But don’t get on the tools as much as I did a few years back

Yep John The 45s are fine

get a copy of his deeds and see what boundary detail, if any, is marked on them. £12 from land reg.

Go to the pub. Talk. Both walk the boundary together, sledge hammer and 2 by 2 stakes. Agree each marker. Hammer each one in while visualising Anti-Vaxers, and every trades person who didn't do what they said they would do. Hit each one once more thinking about Donald Trump. Arrive home tired, pissed, happy and giggling. No longer sure what the issue was....

just a bit of your UFH pipe crimped flat at the end will do

See the lone, 16mm, pex-al-pex pipe with the taped over end, thats where my floor probe runs to: Peter gave it to me years ago...it's still not connected to anything but then neither is the UFH!

That sounds like a reasonable compromise on your part, let’s hope your neighbour is as reasonable (but tell your neighbour you will go for the OS line if he does not agree ?).

I would put together a report and cover letter and email it to your planning officer. Me being me I would probably also go and knock on the neighbours door for a friendly little chat.

Yes. The PCSO got flustered when I started taking notes and asked for the name of Sergeant she reported to. After a strongly worded letter was sent to my local police station I received a telephone call from the said Sergeant who complimented me on my writing style and the clarity of my letter. He then said "what can I do to help".

Sounds to me like jealous neighbours that have nothing better to do than sit and watch what your doing. I had one of those quite a while back, so I used to sit in the garden with binoculars and stare back at them, and wave , it worked (some). ?

the kitchen isn't fitted out yet and the valve is hanging from the duct in the ceiling (it's for an Island hood) with a large bag taped over it. The bag never fully inflates or deflates and as I said only extremely rarely with unusual wind directions will the flap clunk. I should add that I've the MVHR set towards positive pressure to safely deal with the not-yet fitted boiler stove, and that would make the valve even more sensitive... this kinda thinghttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Klimapartner-100-line-Backdraught-Extractor/dp/B011INHF5A/ref=sr_1_14?dchild=1&keywords=passive+flap&qid=1627639391&rnid=1642204031&s=diy&sr=1-14 but with a thin smear of silicone over the central pivot.

Agree with getting a formal refusal - all reasons are then down in writing and they also need to reference the planning policy and also acknowledge any community objections. We were rejected first time, resubmitted a new application (on the free go) where we addressed the majority of issued. LA were minded to reject that too for trifling reasons until our planning consultant (ex LA) called their bluff and said that if refused, both schemes would got to appeal. They folded.

Only way to fix that is get up there and scrape it clean, jet wash it then paint the whole thing with one of the Desmapol type products from end to end and up onto the top of the gutter. You would be best plugging any deep gaps with epoxy concrete to make it a bit smoother but it should be fine as long as it’s not full of big holes.

I put a nice rubber-sealed gravity flap in and I can only think of a couple of occasions on a really windy day where it's attempted to lift off it's seal. Otherwise it sits there and isn't affecting airtightness markedly.

Boring.

The fan I used didn't. I just had a flap damper which was useless. If I was doing it again I'd go for an actuated damper. At that point I'd ask my spark to figure it out and wire it up for me ?

It is just @Dave Jones trolling again.

Most of the guys doing the private work are not the guys that you want building your house Just listening to the BBC news 2 million people still on Furlough

@Pochlin For example, looking at the RIDBA 2021 awards shortlist, amongst the cow sheds and warehouses there is a residential building: https://www.ridba.org.uk/ridba-building-awards-shortlist-2021/ Which looks like it could be a single story steel frame that someone has then wrapped in a conventional wall and roof construction, perhaps with a low block wall that the windows are resting on. From what I've seen, most steel frame in UK is now barn conversions, probably under class Q, rather than new build. Not least because of the planning issues with doing any new build in the countryside. I don't have the examples I've seen before to hand, but having a quick check now on The Modern House: https://www.themodernhouse.com/past-sales/southborough/ Looks like a steel frame cunningly concealed Bit of 60s glulam https://www.themodernhouse.com/past-sales/clayton-windmills/ and the mega https://www.themodernhouse.com/past-sales/hapsford-stables/ Which seems a mix of stone wall and steel frame - with concrete encased steel columns I think

@Pochlin We are using a steel frame, though not a portal, as a) it had to be monopitch for planning reasons, b) needed a concrete first floor. Our frame, erection, cladding all provided by an experienced shed-basher from the list at https://www.ridba.org.uk/ The frame aspect is pretty standard (apart from the thermal breaks), but the cladding ... not so much. We chose to try using standard Kingspan KS1000RW quadcore insulated cladding as it seemed a neat idea. Turns out it is fiendishly complicated to get this to the airtightness + thermal bridge-free levels we wanted, mainly due to difficultly sorting out how the windows sit in the cladding. This is partly because no-one really does this, so everything is worked out from scratch. If you were going for standard airtightness and thermal bridging it might be easier though. One big advantage of this approach is you can put rooflights anywhere you want easily - as long as you are happy with the standard kingspan plastic ones (i.e. that you can't see out of). In that, a different cladding/wall approach might be better - but you've still got to support the insulation and windows somehow. One day when it's all done I'll be able to give a better post-mortem on the approach, but suffice to say, right now in the midst of things, there are quite a few challenges which make me wonder whether another method would have been better. A wooden portal frame e.g. glulam, would avoid a lot of the thermal bridging issues and mean you could probably have the insulation layer in-line with the frame, rather than fully outboard or in-board. However, the main advantages of a 'big frame' approach inc. portal is you can get huge open spans as you would want in a barn or industrial space. If you aren't going to use these spans in a residential building, then it's perhaps better to consider a more conventional method. Resale may also be a consideration, anything non-standard and/or industrial looking could be a bit problematic, if resale matters to you. I certainly wouldn't want to put anyone off considering it, but just to flag up there are complexities. One might say the near total lack of steel-frame residential buildings is a bad sign for the method, but I suspect it's largely to do with a) the potentially 'modern' industrial look of the resulting building (which many people would not like or not be feasible from planning POV), b) bad reputation from terribly designed mid-century steel frame houses, c) huge conservatism in UK house building.

This is a no dig driveway, which we had to put in because our plot has loads of trees too. We’ve yet to backfill one side of it, which is handy as you can see what it entails. The tarmac is permeable. It meets the requirements for tree root protection, etc. Trees were a nightmare for our build, but we worked round that problem. Literally.

I feel for you, sounds much worse than the bats! You might be surprised how much can be flexible if you explain your predicament and look for solutions together.

Bit more disappointment to throw on the Moralt bombfire this week 1/ The final air-test came back at 0.6ACH. Borderline for Passive house but still bloody excellent for a retrofit like us, but down on the 0.5 we had before 1st fix. The new leaks are the shitty-smelling low profile ground floor shower trap, and the threshold of the damn Moralt door 2/ Final BC sign off is delayed because of... 2 issues with the Moralt door: no auto-closer, and no intumescent strips. Now, the fact it's PH certified airtight _should_ make the intumescent redundant, but UK BC don't know that, our plans called for intumescent strips, and my contractor has misplaced the manufacturer manuals/certs that might have stated otherwise. 3/ A friend pointed out that a lot of house insurance small print require a deadlock from house to garage. The silly lock mech in the Moral door is latch only, absolutely no way to deadlock it. Yeah it's all very liveable/solvable, but having spent so much on this damn door it's sad to be repeatedly so disappointed by it.

Anything can be turned against you. Within 20 minutes of my elderly neighbour receiving my registered letter I knocked at the door of her younger sister-in-law who lives in the same village and explained the letter, then suggested my elderly neighbour who seems to be loosing her sight might need family assistance to understand the letter. This act of compassion was apparently outrageous, so much so that the elderly neighbour's daughter had to body block her mother from advancing towards me filled with venom while I was standing on the public road.

Absolutely, don't go near them or say anything or do any boundary maintenance near the area of dispute. After becoming the victim of assault following a boundary dispute which led to my assailant acquiring a criminal record, I sent a registered letter to the neighbour stating that in future I would only talk to her at a pre arranged meeting with additional witnesses present. Two days later a PCSO knocked at my door wanting to discuss my "threatening behaviour".

Cornwall Council seem to think that everything must be geared to tourism and hospitality, or less that 15% of the counties economy (this number varies slightly, will be higher this year). The last working mine, South Croft, stopped producing anything of note in the late 1980s. There has been talk about reopening it ever since, but the council keep putting obstacles in the way. Now SC is next to the Hartlands World Heritage Site, as if we needed yet another mining museum with 10 quid sandwiches.