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I could post dozens of pictures of projects I have used some recycled materials on but not always recycled from my own build as I am always on the lookout for materials from anywhere I can get them. Owl box made from off cuts of sarking board and a bird feeder made from old brake discs, chimney bird cover and whiskey barrel staves. If this thread runs dry I can add lots more projects………. If your interested ????

I built this with my father in law from pallet wood. The bridge was built from heavier concrete non returnable pallets. I have lots of projects planned with my remaining building material in 2022. A small shed is on the list. I had no skip for the self build, therefore it was down to me to process and take small amounts to the landfill when necessary, mainly small plastic waste. I estimate this to be ten or twelve sheep food bags for the entire build.

In these times of rising costs and shortages of supplies, I though it would be great to find out what people have achieved by recycling materials. I can kick-off with our storeroom floor made from the original roof trusses demolished to make way for the new attic trusses above our garage. It used up nearly all of it which struck me as being very jammy indeed ?

Ooh I do like a bit of scrap and skip diving! Rolling draw for steel offcuts: Sheet metal folder: Pallet buster: Tote from a cut down oil can: Pipe de-coiler: Solar thermal panel: Then there's the unfinished ones... Mini scissor lift: Electric wacker plate: Rotary converter:

A great thread, really inspiring. Am pleased to say, I won't go over two skips worth of rubbish for my entire build including demolishing two garages and building a 240sqm house. I separated all wood into sub 40cm sections and filled builders bulk bags which with larger bits and pallets all went relatively quickly on Freecycle and Facebook. All cardboard, drinks bottles, cans - put out with the neighbours fortnightly recycling collections - the rubbish collectors happily took up to 3 clear bin liners of recycling. Sold any excess materials - even managed to sell the attached for 99p, but the buyer demolished and collected it. One mans trash is another mans treasure! Another thing to note is not to have a skip on site if you can avoid it - as they fill up so quickly and so difficult to control, I only have bulk bags on site for rubbish, which really helps with recycling.

I also found a use for the roofing battens: So many nails! ?

Only one party is building a house. The simplest way would be for that party to buy the bit of garden from the neighbour and then just get on with it. I would suggest a fair price to pay for the bit of garden is half the value of a building plot, and there would be no overage clause or anything. Then the building family own the whole lot and take care of organising the build, CIL etc. Do an outline PP application first and once that is granted, buy the land. If you want to make it formal, make an offer to buy the land subject to PP being granted.

Here is my version of a pallet shed

Not mine but the nephew's pallet shed I helped with: Cladding, fascia etc is scrap from a log mill:

Cables shouldn’t be run in the cavity, the only exception is tails passing from the meter box to the consumer unit.

All the stuff is now moved to other locations, but my recycling centre during the build.

That would insulate but not really close the cavity, if I were having it done I would stuff the top of the cavity full of rockwool first as above.

Gosh I hate the text editor on the forum. It won't let me fix the bad formatting above. The missing reply to the above question says..

Google also found this but again Ive no experience of the provisions mentioned.. https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/any-answers/cgt-liability-for-armed-forces-personnel-without-o

Seek professional advice.. There is something called the Armed Forces Exemption but I'm not familiar with all the details. https://www.litrg.org.uk/tax-guides/savers-property-owners-and-other-tax-issues/capital-gains-tax/selling-your-home

That is what we have done but eventually (the sooner the better) the spare house will need to be sold to become part of the retirement pot. That has just deferred (and increased) the CGT bill that will eventually have to be paid.

Seems a simple way to control it. It should stop the HP doing something that is impossible, i.e. reach a fixed output temperature when the input temperature is extremely low.

All of the above, yes, kinda. Variable limits actually... I think Carel and whoever wrote the GUI show a bit more of the inner workings of these than some of the more mainstream consumer brands tbh and I'm pretty nosey The control system is modular with an internal ModBus between portions- Inverter, fan drive, analogue ins, EV stepper motors. The inverter and mainboard both have stored profiles for the compressor tying expected pressures vs power inputs etc, as an envelope that rest of the sensors and controls work within.

V2/R =3.61W Might be less as it's an inductive load on ac

I used Findr relay from CPC with a small plug in din rail base. I never measured the coil power consumption, but none seemed to get hot, certainly not 67 degrees hot. and they were less than £10 for relay and base.

That sounds sensible. Uplift/overage clauses tend to be about future change of use from commercial to housing, or demolishing one unit and building several: unlikely to apply here. But the clause will cost next to nothing to add, so don't fight it if suggested by the other party.

I wonder if the planning viability can be proven before expensive legal work. I think your Inlaws could apply for planning permission before the building plot is created as a legal entity. Think it best if your in-laws buy the other half of the plot at market value to establish clear access rights with some "uplift" clause in the Deeds to reflect the other party's ongoing interest in the proceeds of the final sale. I don't really know what an uplift clause is but folks here use the term in this context.

I turned our collapsed wall into minced (digger-crushed) Durisol (woodcrete) for adding to MoT1 : nice and soft - you could walk bare foot on it all the wasted insulation went to all-comers who wanted it for God Knows What and insulation for outdoor kennels Additionally my anger was re-purposed wherever possible as hard physical shovelling or parge-coating over-ordered cladding as internal boarding and a coat rack So far only 2 skips filled, and one more to go I think.

Came out amazingly well. He wrapped the pallet shed in a breathable felt part roll bought cheap. Then screwed the cladding onto battens (made from the same mill off cuts) with cheapo silver screws from SF. Paid no real attention to getting the screws in line etc. Hasn't particularly cracked or warped. It was pretty green when it went on too. Crecote over the top since. Tiles were freebies on the back. Someone's old front door, scrap windows. St/st hinges from me. Inside, more pallets:

We cleaned all the bricks, it was only soft lime mortar, and Freegled them along with the timber. I put a bit on here about it.

Or build that first, on a crushed brick foundation. Then move into the 'shed'.

In my opinion, yes, it may be a problem. Our easily reached, and cheap morgage lenders do not like anything that is not standard masonary. Others on here will say it does not matter, but it does. Pick a few morgage brokers close to you, and they will tell you the same as i am. The other thing that would concern me is is somebody has an existing morgage and wanted to port it over to your property......That could be a problem, and could put some purchasers off. My research is what put me off building a house from timber I-beams. In my opinion, there are tons of better ways to build house than masonary, but the lenders do not seem to have moved on.

You should also silicone the verticals on the tiles where the walls meet as they are a weak point.

This is a very important point. You will almost certainly find that the good trades are booked up and expensive. But having said that, some TF companies will arrange to do most of the initial work, and that is where the important thermal details are achieved. Apart from the nonsense about 'thermal mass', and we have loads of debates about it and the zombie refuses to die, all you are trying to achieve is an airtight box with low thermal conductivity. Not hard to achieve intellectually, just that detail and longevity of material interfaces can ruin it. Having said that, the Space Station has been floating about (actually constantly accelerating) for nearly a quarter of a century, and they keep adding extensions to it, but not by Bob the Builder.

If you skip to the "Tuning" section at the bottom of the page, this website gives instructions on how to tune a PID controller: https://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_id=9013

We’ve got a Wagner sprayer. Simple to clean out between coats and has been very reliable. Would happily recommend.

Shall we go for 100,000 signatures and get it outlawed by parliament ?

Would be quite easy to do - but would that make an airtight seal? P.S. I've been reading through Draughtbusters. Very useful info there. It also left me feeling angry that dot & dab isn't outlawed by now. All our previous properties were sand cement plastered but the builder of our current property pushed us hard to have drylining despite me asking for traditional plaster when I looked into this newfangled practice (23 years ago). I wish I had persisted but excuses about the length of time it would add to the build conned me into it. Conned, because they overran by 6 months anyway, and I have greatly regreted it ever since. Because of this experience, I specified that our recent garage extension be hard plastered where possible. But I wasn't able to control the installation of the specified insulation or detailing of air-tightness. More regrets.

There is a guy on here, from Wales, that refused point blank to try that. He gets upset that his ASHP is useless. Glad you got it sorted.

I've been looking at similar for my own roof. There seems a bit of a premium to pay over conventional rigid module on frame (or direct bracket mounted on to seam) We're you involved in this install.

Pondering heating systems can be like pondering how to climb Everest from base camp for self builders. Its impossible to know the exact best route without first knowing the best route. I gave nights upon nights considering this. I came to the conclusion that there is no two houses alike and even if there were, no two sets of occupants would behave the same. Calculations and modelling only go so far. Objective data is impossible to find, every consumer with a novel system thinks their own goose a swan. Every installer is prejudiced by familiarity and margin on installation. Every salesman only wants to pander their wears. I got so fed up with all this going around in circles I decided not to install any heating at all. Bold, rash, stupid, maybe, but if we were going to part with heaps of our cash I wanted to be sure. We built to passive house standards, a little beyond in theory. Put a direct UVC for DHW on night rate electricity. I borrowed a 2kW electric heater, plugged it in in the hall, and got to work regularly recording the electricity meter and feeding the results into a spreadsheet. Over a few months it was possible to isolate the DHW usage and now I'm working on the space heating. By March I'll have a full year of data of exactly our usage, to the kWh. No guesswork, no modelling estimates, just two numbers. DHW and space heating. So far DHW 10kWh/day for 2 adults and 2 small children. Space heating is broadly in line with PHPP, maybe slightly more. I must get a thermal imaging camera to check for any weak thermal spots. Also it's been very dull. I'll know more soon. I have aims for an A2A heat pump and solar PV. When I have my exact usage I'll be able to estimate if they're worth it. In hindsight I think we should have installed UFH pipes and run them from a Willis heater. While my current radiator was free, anything that I'd actually like to look at in the house permanently certainly isn't. Also , half our heating is on expensive day rate electricity. With UFH and a willis heater we could shift it all to cheap night rate with the slab as a storage heater, like @TerryE It wouldn't have been much hardship to get an UVC with a heat pump coil to futureproof also. TLDR: 1. Pathologically minimise your heating demand in design and construction stage. 2. Install UFH + willis heater and a heat pump compatible UVC. 3. Run your house for a year on E7. 4. Use the data to make the best decision.

The ONLY thing these fancy internet connected thermostats offer is the ability to change the settings or turn it on and off from a remote location. e,g, if you go away for 2 weeks in winter, then a day or 2 before your return you can turn the heating back on. If you don't want that function then indeed they are a waste of money. To be honest it costs so little to heat our house, I would just leave it on while away.

Over 1 year since my last update and some 2.5 years since we started this process - UK Power have today finally removed the overheads! I'm not sure if this length of time is normal (covid, etc) but I thought it worth an update for anyone about to embark on something similar.

This is worth a read. I will start now, but suspect the deniers will be too busy to do the same.https://opr.ca.gov/facts/common-denier-arguments.html here is the first extract I clicked on “Scientists are out for personal gain, publishing alarmist studies to capture research grants.” There is no evidence to support this argument. Scientists who participate in the IPCC climate assessments are not paid, nor are those who participate in panels for the National Academy of Sciences. Career advancement in the sciences is not based on holding popular views, but on publishing original research. By contrast, many deniers have received funding from entities with a financial stake in fossil fuel-based energy system.

Believers: Do remember on your self-build to put in bigger gutters, drains and soakaways, as now necessary (and required by the Building Regulations) to deal with increased storm-water. Non-believers, do as you please: doesn't affect me. It is interesting to note that the rainfall risk applies much more to England and Southern Scotland, than northern lands. I only recently noted that Inverness has the same rainfall as Tunbridge Wells, but spread over more days, and thence without the flash floods that have recently stricken TW.

Reinstate the fence with chainlink. Satisfies the agreement to reinstate a fence, removes your worry about the wall not being able to breathe, and all your lovely bricks are still exposed for their viewing pleasure.

Just tell them they missed their change to engage with you so if they don't like how it looks now then tough. How it looks is what you got permission for and that's how it's going to stay. Stop being nice to people who aren't nice to you.

Always studs first

‘The finest form of defence is attack’ clauswitz A neighbour declared total war on me over an application I submitted. I did everything right, he repeatedly lied. Then he died of a heart attack. oh dear what a pity never mind. then our architect got everything we had taken out to placate him put back in and we built out and sold on. next………

I built in bricks and blocks (I hate render and love bricks) and got a good airtightness test, yes trades were easier to find and this particular “zombie” likes a “heavy” house ?

we used Corvum pre-split for our windows. Easy to use and sticks like sh*t to a blanket.

Oi ! Why you installing technical stuff ? . You’s a plumber !