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+1. Big fan here of the heavy duty detergent bottle!

Living quite too much of my life in hotels with unusably complex automation systems I was determined to have as little as possible in the house. A light switch by the door of every room and a couple of mechanism timers. ( I lie, we have a robot vacuum too) In good news I went to the dump today and found this fine article someone had disposed of. Not too often you find a fully working entire "central heating" system for free!!! Gotta love low energy demand houses😁

Ok folks, at last our build is getting real. After hassle upon hassle with the Local Authority for over a year, we finally have planning and are about to submit our building warrant through Fleming Homes. Now it's time to get suppliers and installers sorted out. So, does anyone have recommendations for the following please? We are in Central Scotland. Air source pump supply/install. Solar Panel supply/install Underfloor heating supply/Installer. Top premium Spanish slate suppliers. Staircase supplier. Any other advice welcome at this, pre breaking ground, stage.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/265164100337 fits on a G9 threaded converter. other option is an E12 to E14 SES adapter then you have lots of standard bulb options.

As above Five with traditional screed But will lift with liquid screed For what it costs I would add some staples

our liquid screeder said the egg crate type system for ufh pipes is notorious for pipes lifting up. I would suggest that those pipes will be lifted up with the screed and would need to be held down somehow.

Yes, that’s fine. Where you show the vent, I assume you realise that will need to be an inspection chamber?

Thanks for the replies. I should probably have said Northern Ireland. We’re on the Ards peninsula. We could probably get some kind of mortgage, once it’s legally ours. For now, it’s still my mother-in-law’s. so we can do what we like, but not being legal owners until we inherit, I doubt we’d get any form of finance. And to be honest, I’d rather not owe anyone anything if at all possible. The whole row of bungalows has been replaced with block and render (we’re the last timber) and a couple of huge modernist mansions, so I’m pretty confident precedent has been established should we require planning permission. That said, I was surprised at how lenient the local planning is. Building regs is another matter, but I presume that things like removing asbestos and replacing like-for-like timber is fine. As far as I’m aware, there’s nothing to say we can’t occupy it full time — no covenant or anything like that, it’s just that traditionally my mother-in-law has only used it in the Summer. As far as I’m aware the asbestos is behind the old range, on the lean-to roof that covers the toilet, and the old chimney. I’m not touching that myself, so whatever it costs we’ll just have to pay. Photo attached. You can see the dodgy chimney, asbestos roof leading to the toilet, and my lovely outside shower that needs to be an inside shower before November.

Size the rads for a flow of 45 deg and you’ll be future proofing yourself. As I said, irrespective of what you use to generate the heat, do try and do a heat loss calc and rad sizing exercise. It’s well worth an hour with a tape measure and half an hour in front of excel.

If its a cold roof (insulation between/below rafters) the top edge should be ventilated. Is that why they left gaps under the lead? Not the best/correct solution. Google Abutment ventilation or roof ti wall ventilation. Example ventilation system.. https://www.wienerberger.co.uk/products/roof/systems-and-accessories/top-abutment-ventilation.html

Get 3g pcv windows. When we were looking for Windows we saw some pvc windows with nice minimal profiles and in a massive range of colours and looked great. About 50% less than aluclad and the same performance. Cheap wooden windows would be the last thing I'd buy.

This is the way I will go….

Good quality uPVC for me. Twice the performance at half the cost. Enjoy the next 30 years.

Im hoping a £2k boiler can last me till 2032 then i'll consider it.🤣

We’re dropping 2g next year, just won’t be available from us.

If you win the lottery have a look at Copper guttering. Looks great but £.

You can take smooth changes to the going (we have them on our staircases which have smooth 90° turns), but even the smallest variation in rise is a real trip hazard:

I agree with everything said but fir heavens sake get your SE to site to check it, if it is wrong and it fails, his insurance won’t be covering it and no insurance can cure injuries or death! This is way too serious to make assumptions.

I wonder why the webbing was cut away so much more than necessary to mate the two beams together? I just Increased the exposure of this photo to get a better look... Taken to extremes (for the purposes of visualising the issue) if the notch had gone all the way down the web then the only element that would resist bending is the flat plate forming the bottom of the "ɪ"

Steel plates are fine, padstones exellent, the concrete ‘lump’ between the two steels in the first two pics is horrid. And the notch is in my view unacceptable. I used to make a slot in the web of the steel with the plate on it such that it perfectly fitted over the web. engineer now needs to sign off the notch

Why don't you just let the digger make its own hole?