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Today i had the steels delivered In the past I’ve manhandled them with a few mates This time due to the height (3000) and advancing years I hired a Genie 55 quid well spent with the help of the two steel guys we placed the steels on trestles under where they where going This allowed me to bolt them together and bolt Timbers in Unlikely previous times Once all the Timbers where bolted in It was a one man job to lift and drop them in position

This is the real problem with trades Figures quoted above are accurate But daywork seems to bring out the worst in people At £265 I would expect someone to get on with it Regardless of location

And do what ..?? Are you an expert ..?? What if the bottom 2 courses of an 8 course block wall aren’t to your liking ..? Are you wanting the whole lot taken down and redone and at who's cost ..?? Build a relationship and trust. Talk to them, explain they are building your dream and not just throwing up just another box. Buy the bacon cobs on a Friday morning, make a brew occasionally… pick up a brush and do some tidying … but above all, treat them like decent humans who are earning a living doing something you either can’t or don’t want to do … Finally … don’t assume they are all the same please, it will get you nowhere… trades talk, and if the builder thinks you’re an arsehole, then the local trades will all soon know too …

I notice with a lot of trades I meet on jobs, most of them are very "old school" in their working practice, at 10 O clock they go out and sit in their van for half an hour for a cup of tea, same at lunch time. Me, i just carry on and "graze" on the go. I would rather finish the job and be home sooner, rather than take a break and do nothing in that time.

Interesting observation as you have the same unit as me. Ours has been in use about 4 years now. I dutifully turn the unit off and withdraw the heat exchange modules from time to time and the filters are always in good shape. I take them off, give them a bit of a shake outside, give them a hoover to suck any dust out of them, then put them back. I guess one day they will need replacing, but not yet. We too are rural, there is not much population upwind of us, pretty much all the way down the Great Glen to Fort William.

The only way to do this properly is to strip and felt and batten but if it’s purely to stop dust/crap then staple plastic sheeting to the underside of the rafters but leave gaps top and bottom fir air circulation.

Just cover the stuff you have stored with dust sheets.

I've just ordered my windows. Cost is the reason for self installing. Period. Sizing is done of the drawings. There is 10mm clearance all round on most windows. For the 5m wide slider ther is more clearance, especially on the height as the opening could sag. Airtightness will be done according to the manufacturers recommendation, compriband etc... Aluminium sill extensions in my case are about 50mm ,just to cover the stone sill below. Moving windows... tractor , digger , dolly , sockets and manpower I expect.

Yes, 150x50 is a bit of 6"x2" timber

Scaffold poles are 48.3mm diameter. Buy a 50mm dia wood bit and drill up the middle of the 150x150 leg. Drill 100mm deep. Slip the 450mm length of scaffold up in the hole, you'll then have 350mm of pole sticking out from the bottom of the post. Forster bits are nice tools. You might be able to get a cheap, 50mm, flat wood bit instead. https://www.amazon.co.uk/6-50Mm-High-Carbon-Woodworking-Durable-Sets-45Mm/dp/B0849Y1Q83/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?

If you are using a builder, you know, do what he is used to, no paid for learning curve or expensive mess ups If he does block work go with that...

@Barryscotland Hi Barry. If the trap is holding water then the seal is maintained. But you may be getting vacuum in the system. This often happens when you flush the toilet or use another sink say. The "plug" of water either fills the pipe to full or nearly full bore and that sucks the water out the shower trap as it creates a vacuum behind it and thus the smell comes out. These types of shower trap often have a very shallow water seal depth. 40 - 50mm as opposed to a kitchen sink washing machine trap with a 75mm water seal. Look outside to see if you have a soil vent stack. Has the top come off and/or birds been nesting in this? Is it cranked and some bits have fallen off and it is now facing into the wind or on the leeward side say. Next try first filling the shower trap. Then go around each sink/s and toilet/s one at a time. Use them in the way you have been doing and get someone to listen to the shower trap, or smell. Sounds weird but the first objective is to look for the simple stupid. Don't rush this, be patient. Now some sinks have an anti syphon trap fitted. It may be that one of the anti syphon traps is sticky and not letting air into the drain to relieve the vacuum. The objective is to find the appliance or the thing that has changed in the system as it was working ok before. Working up you may have a 110mm drain line that is like a branch line in the house. It may have a 110mm air admittance valve, a bigger animal than the small valve on say a sink trap. That may be sticky. Try this and let us know how you get on.

Yes they are an important component. The standard wall starter kits Catnic / Sabre fix mostly work in horizontal shear. In other words when you build an extension with the extension wall at right angles to say the back wall of the existing house they stop the wall from moving horizontally in the plane of the existing back wall. They don't contribute much to stop the extension wall from moving away (tension effect) from the existing house wall and leaving a gap. This can happen due to a little settlement of the new wall, shrinking (concrete blocks shrink mainly) and swelling (clay bricks) as it ages, moves season to season with temperature changes. The same roughly applies to what @johnannik has. The starter kits are intended to primarily stop the new wall from moving horizontally at the junction between the old wall and new one. You have some pretty solid looking walls there, particularly the new one, laid block on the flat? Give your SE a call and see if the new bit of wall will work as a stand alone column or something to that effect. then all you need to do is deal with the shrinkage / swelling between the old brick and concrete block. It may be that all you need to do is to put a couple of plaster stop beads on the outside to create a movement joint in the external render.

A large part of the South West water company's bill is for cleaning up sewage and road drains before the water is discharged to the sea. Then the council comes along and encouraged dogs to shut on the beach, probably 3 million if them a year. My new slogan for Cornwall is. "Penzance, not as much dig shir as St. Ives".

BWT AC002200 Combi Care, or Combi mate. both work the same way AquaDial Combi-Care works by introducing a very small amount of food grade polyphosphate into the water feed, sequestering the calcium in the water and preventing it from forming scale on the heat exchanger. Offers protection from both limescale and corrosion Suitable for whole house and single appliance protection Flow rates up to 54 litres per minute Easy change cartridge Cartridges have a 12 month life Can be used in soft water areas as a corrosion inhibitor Width: 120mm, Length: 215mm Max Flow Rate: 0.9 l/s

Oh, twas a picture, I'll have another go

My experience is of a similar ballpark to @joth's analysis. Yes, the MVHR uses less than 1 kWh / day which is 1 kWh more than trickle vents. But we have a 3 storey detached house built to roughly passive-class standards. We are all electric and haven't installed an ASHP yet because I can't make a payback case. Instead we use a Willis to heat our UFH mainly on E7 cheap tariff over the winter months. Last year we used just over 11,000 kWh electricity in total (over 70% cheap tariff), so yes the MVHR accounts for maybe 3% of our total energy use, but the heat recovery is around 95% and without this our heating requirement would be around 50% higher, so this one is a no brainer for us. Not to mention fantastic air quality throughout the house and free drying room. @JohnMo We do the annual service ourselves and bulk buy the filters, so the maintenance cost is small beer.

Encase it in concrete.

Take a photo from your phone & upload them? Could be anywhere from £3000 - 3500 + VAT is my wild stab in the dark based on too little info.

The frames have a purpose installed metal rail where the pan tightens back to the wall covering. The idea being all of the compression happens there. The cement board should be against that if the studs have been installed correctly, and there should be, ideally, a small bead of Sikaflex adhesive bonding the cement board to the frame to marry the two together. 12mm cement board is bloody solid stuff, but that is a problem as much as an attribute, as it will hold off from the frame until you tile and fit the pan, and then, due to the high point pressure applied, the tiles will either crack on the day or a few weeks down the line. There should be zero movement, certainly none that a person could detect by physically pressing / pushing the board. Take it off, put a straight edge across the horizontal frame members and the studs at each side and locate the issue before moving on from here. You can install the pan bolts after the bonding has been done and the CB refitted, and use the nuts and washers to put this under compression whilst the adhesive goes off ( 24hrs ). If it moves after that, put the house up for sale.

It’s nothing to do with pipe, it’s to do with all of your outlets getting calcified up because of the hardness. It’s not so bad inside the pipes etc, but very problematic where the water dries in the atmosphere and leaves all the residual crud behind. Ask someone who lives in an aggressively hard water area to show you inside their kettle….

I can provide some update here. We discussed our situation with a commercial AC company. They have looked at ducting and it's insulation condition. They think a ducted AC unit can work in our situation. We are going to get it installed next month and see how well it performs. We are getting this unit to replace Johnson & Starley Aquair (with Grant Oil Boiler) https://www.orionairsales.co.uk/mitsubishi-heavy-industries-air-conditioning-fdum140vh-ducted-ceiling-concealed-14kw48000btu-r32-a-15031-p.asp AC Company will make some custom Plenum to connect to existing Warm Air ducting. This will also provide option to add some fresh air.

Yup, one of the major benefits. That job had semi-pedestals at each basin so more of a pita to get at them later. The other major benefit is being able to leave rooms isolated if they haven't yet been first fixed and then bringing them online, one feed at a time, to check for leaks / commission. Very handy in a part-complete build as you don't have to keep draining down and interrupting the water supply to already connected outlets. There was another 2-port manifold at the bottom of that pic ( yet to be fitted at the time iirc ) which serviced non-softened water. One to the boiler filling loop, and one to the kitchen sink cold tap ( for filtered water tap & cooking quality water ) plus it also tee'd off at the kitchen sink and supplied the outside tap. In an installation with a softener and an accumulator, the point where you tee the outside tap off from is of critical importance. It needs to be directly after the incoming cold stopcock and before the non-return valve of the accumulator**, or multi-block of an UVC arrangement. The outside tap should be before any pressure reducing measures so it influences the cold pressure to the house as little as possible. **You don't want the outside tap to be using stored energy from the accumulators,

This is the best 'zoom-able' pic I can find. The rails are supported by the pipe work which is held in place with brass Munson rings. Copper to irons on each end, and as a belt n braces job I created a ring so the manifolds got fed from both ends. I did that as the cold manifold was very long and could have suffered loss of flow and I just then carried that across to the hot manifold to as it was easy enough to do. The remit on that job was to be able to use all the showers at the same time and still have some useable flow / pressure elsewhere so went to town on this one. If you zoom in you'll see opaque / white plastic spacers in between the manifolds ( 3 to the long run ). These iirc were 28mm Talon pipe clips which held the rails with near spot on results. Another way to do this, if only feeding from just one end, would be a clip on the input pipe work and then a stub of pipe made off and cap ended ( or a DOC ) the other side, with enough pipe to get a second clip on.

How a billion dogs, including our pets, are laying waste to wildlife There is growing evidence that feral dogs and their domestic cousins have a big ecological impact, from hunting and spooking wildlife to poisoning plants and spreading disease to endangered species ENVIRONMENT 27 April 2022 By Aisling Irwin It looks like harmless fun, but dogs do ecological damage chasing shorebirds Shutterstock/Alexei tm IT WAS shocking,” says biologist Galo Zapata-Ríos, recalling what he saw when he viewed footage from his camera traps. Placed in the Andes, across 2000 square kilometres of forests, grasses and shrublands in Ecuador, these were intended to capture the movements of striped hog-nosed skunks, mountain coatis and other wildlife. Instead, in frame after frame, he saw something he hadn’t anticipated: dogs. “There were so many dogs that I decided to switch my topic,” says Zapata-Ríos, who works for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Ecuador programme, and now studies the ecological impacts of dogs. It isn’t just the Andes: dogs are everywhere. They live on every continent except Antarctica, and inhabit high mountains, tropical rainforests, islands and nature reserves that would otherwise be considered pristine. One calculation put their numbers at a billion, making them the most common carnivore on Earth. That was in 2013 and there are surely more today. India alone has seen an estimated increase of 20 million – to around 80 million – partly because of legislation passed in 2001 forbidding the relocation or killing of street dogs. Meanwhile, during pandemic lockdowns, dog ownership soared in some countries including the UK where there are now some 13 million pet dogs. At a time when nature is under pressure like never before, there is growing evidence that dogs – both free-roaming and home-based – are killing, eating, terrifying and competing with other animals. They pollute watercourses, over-fertilise soils and endanger plants. Such is their impact that some ecologists call them an invasive alien species. They may be our best friends, but some say we need to take dogs in hand. From chihuahua influencers to savvy street canines, all dogs belong to the same species. They may have been living alongside humans as early as 30,000 years ago and accompanied us around the world, reaching Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East at least 10,000 years ago, Australia between 3500 and 5000 years ago and Amazonia and some islands within the past few centuries. Today, only around a quarter of dogs are home-living companion animals, although many more are owned or affiliated in some way with a household or village. Few are truly feral, says Abi Vanak at India’s Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation. They are almost always dependent on humans – if only for the occasional night garbage raid. Street mutts in Varanasi, India, are among the billion or so dogs on Earth Bhatia/EyeEm/Getty Images The animals caught by Zapata-Rís’s camera traps were a mix of feral and free-roaming village dogs. What he wanted to know was whether they were pushing out the wild carnivores or muddling along happily with them. The answer was unequivocal: the presence of dogs predicted the absence of pumas, bears, foxes and skunks more powerfully than habitat loss or fragmentation did. “The results suggest that the impact of feral dogs on wildlife in the Ecuadorean highlands are widespread and that free-ranging dogs are a significant threat,” he says. Zapata-Rís went on to discover that, in Ecuador’s Cayambe Coca Ecological Reserve, several mammals have altered their foraging times, apparently to avoid dogs. This will have knock-on effects. Animals usually active in the daytime that are forced to venture out at night experience increased fear and stress. “That is going to decrease fertility rates, and that’s going to affect population levels,” he says. “I really think there is a threat to survival.” Free-roaming dogs, it is emerging, wander through protected reserves in many parts of the world including Iran, Brazil and Italy. They inhabit giant panda reserves in the Qinling mountains of central China, and in India’s tiger reserves they outnumber the tigers, according to Vanak. Many studies show that the presence of dogs correlates with decreases in native fauna and flora – although some, for example in North America, have found no link. Careful research is needed to establish whether dogs are to blame, but the list of possible mechanisms is long. Dogs may kill to eat or to eliminate competition. They destroy eggs. They scavenge, which might seem harmless, but can deprive other animals of a meal. And, as in Cayambe Coca, dogs create fear. The effects of fear are insidious: stress dampens the immune system, constantly fleeing and returning uses up energy and no-go zones reduce the amount of usable habitat. All these pressures can end up slashing populations of wild animals. What’s more, the problem isn’t confined to remote reserves and free-roaming dogs. For a pet dog, there is little as exciting as pounding, unleashed, across a seashore driving hundreds of birds into an airborne cascade. At Holkham National Nature Reserve in Norfolk, UK, where shorebird numbers have dropped by 60 per cent in the past two decades, Jake Fiennes, its director, knows the havoc this can cause. In 2019, the reserve attracted 800,000 visitors – and 300,000 dogs. But in spring 2020, a covid-19 lockdown meant the birds had the beach to themselves. “Seeing 10,000 shorebirds merrily feeding away because there’s no disturbance was very emotional,” says Fiennes. That ended abruptly in June when 35,000 stir-crazy visitors escaped to the beach over a single weekend. It was peak breeding season with a lot of nests on the shore. “The impacts were devastating,” says Fiennes. Birds, it turns out, seem to be particularly sensitised to dogs – even on leads. In woodlands outside Sydney, for example, a study found that people walking leashed dogs caused a “dramatic” reduction in the diversity and abundance of birds – more than double that caused by the same number of people walking without pets. These birds didn’t become habituated to the presence of these dogs – possibly because the occasional off-lead dog regularly resensitises them, the authors speculated. Some birds are more easily disturbed than others. Another study found that the space required by different species before they are disturbed varies from 500 metres to a mere 40 metres. Ecological paw print Even the least scary dog can leave a footprint. This was accidentally but vividly demonstrated in a nature reserve in Kent, UK, where a fence that bisects a pond confines dogs to one half. On the undisturbed side, aquatic plants, including the critically endangered three-lobed crowfoot, flourish. On the other, enthusiastic dogs have churned up the sediment, destroying almost every plant – and thus banishing the aquatic animals that shelter in them. Turbidity isn’t the only thing dogs leave in their wake. Their excreta can be a problem on moorlands and fens, deep inside some woods and even on road verges. That is because the plants in these habitats need soils low in nutrients to survive, says Pieter De Frennes at Ghent University, Belgium. In February, he published calculations of the amount of nitrogen (from faeces and urine) and phosphorus (from faeces) that dogs were depositing into four popular nature reserves around Ghent. Assuming that owners scooped half the faeces, it came to 8 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare per year and more than 1 kilogram of phosphorus. Whether this matters depends on an ecosystem’s critical deposition load – the amount of extra nutrients it can tolerate. In three of the reserves, the critical load for nitrogen is 20 kilograms per hectare, and that is already exceeded by the 22 kilograms per hectare being deposited from the atmosphere. So dog waste has “an important additional impact”, says de Frennes. “The presence of dogs in these reserves will certainly delay restoration goals.” He suspects that the problem may be widespread. The critical loads of nitrogen and phosphorus on moorlands and fens, for example, are much lower, so it doesn’t take many dogs to stress these ecosystems. Wherever dogs make their deposits, there is also the risk of passing infections to wild animals. In 2015, in Ethiopia’s Wollo highlands, rabies killed seven endangered Ethiopian wolves from a small pack of 13. A rabid dog found dead nearby indicated the source of the infection. Conservationists managed to track down and vaccinate two of the surviving wolves – but within two months, one had died from canine distemper virus. Again, a dog was implicated. Dogs have even been linked to waves of lion deaths in India and in Tanzania’s Serengeti national park. In the Alps, both companion dogs and free-roaming shepherd dogs appear to be spreading a cocktail of diseases, including canine distemper, to local wildlife. Even when dogs don’t infect wildlife directly in this way, they can act as reservoirs for pathogenic microbes. The key is the presence of many dogs, says Matthew Gompper at New Mexico State University. They can then transmit pathogens repeatedly across the species barrier. Without this, the diseases would probably fade away. In affluent countries, another worry is the chemicals administered to dogs to combat ticks, fleas and parasites. In the UK, these include a parasiticide that is banned in agriculture, but is nevertheless applied to dogs’ coats. Recent research found widespread contamination in rivers with this and another parasiticide also applied to dog coats, leading to fears that they are killing aquatic wildlife. Just bathing a treated dog at home may release the chemicals into rivers via sewage plants. The evidence seems overwhelming: our hunting, defecating, bird-chasing, pond-paddling, infectious best friends are harming some ecosystems. This may put some people off owning a dog (see “Is it fair to keep a dog?“), but, as Gompper points out, our feelings for them run deep. Even street dogs have advocates who feed and care for them, says Vanak. And dogs come with all sorts of benefits including fun, protection, love, exercise and – paradoxically – exposure to nature. So, what to do? Gompper suggests that before getting too anxious, we should assess where dogs are having a population-level effect on a wild species, and where they are just part of the rough and tumble of red and toothy nature. “There’s a general sense that we need to address issues raised by the presence of dogs everywhere and I’m not sure that’s always necessary,” he says. Dogs are most damaging ecologically where they are recent arrivals, because these ecosystems can be defenceless against them: on islands in places such as Hawaii and New Zealand, and in regions like South America, Australia and southern Africa. There is also little doubt that dogs cause great harm to certain animals, particularly vultures in India, shorebirds everywhere and marine turtles when their nests are raided. Even in these cases, Gompper argues for pragmatism. There is no point intervening where there is little hope of success – for example, if it will be impossible to vaccinate enough dogs to achieve herd immunity against the diseases they can carry – or where cultural norms mean that people will never accept the curbs necessary to make a difference. Where action is urgent, it is likely that it can only succeed if it reconciles the needs of dogs, owners, welfarists and wildlife. This isn’t happening in Indian cities, says Vanak, where “dog wars” pit people focused on animal welfare against conservationists and those concerned about the human toll from attacks and disease. Elsewhere, owners may feel that letting their dog off the leash is a healthy and natural thing to do – and see dog bans, or off-leash bans, as unwarranted interference. “Such is their impact, some ecologists call dogs an invasive alien species” Nevertheless, there are things you can do to limit the ecological footprint of your pet (see “How to be an eco-friendly dog owner“). And there are things that conservationists can do to help you. Working together is key, as Fiennes discovered. The disastrous impact of dogs on breeding birds at Holkham in 2020 inspired him to consult widely about acceptable changes and then implement a zoning system: “no dogs”, “dogs on leads April to August” and “dogs off leads”. Signposting is clear, frequent and educational, and friendly stewards – and their dogs – wander the beach. A year later, nesting and fledging rates of little terns, oystercatchers and ringed plovers have increased. “It’s trying to balance the need to get people more engaged with our natural environment, but also to ensure that they are well informed of the potential impacts that they can have,” he says. Is it fair to keep a dog? We have all read stories about mistreated dogs, overcrowded puppy farms and the maladaptive traits that cause suffering in various breeds. Add to that the carbon footprint of dogs and the ecological damage they can wreak (see main story), and you might be left wondering whether we should keep them as pets. Marc Bekoff at the University of Colorado, Boulder, points out that dogs co-evolved with us over thousands of years, and have developed behavioural, neural, anatomical and physiological adaptations to living with humans. Besides, pet dogs lead safer, more comfortable, hunger-free lives than they would in the wild. Bekoff believes that it is fine to keep pooches, provided you develop an instinct for what they need. “Make the walk for them,” he says. “Give them sniff time.” He also advises giving your dog time to hang out with you, to have rough-and-tumble play with other dogs and the opportunity to resolve its own doggie conflicts. “Let dogs be dogs,” he says. How to be an eco-friendly dog owner The mere presence of dogs – even on leads – can reduce biodiversity Shutterstock/Lopolo Read signs and posters and follow the advice: there may be reasons you haven’t thought of why dogs could damage the surrounding ecology. Always keep your dog to paths on dunes to minimise erosion, bird disturbance and trampling of plants. Keep dogs out of ponds, especially small ones, which are easily disturbed, and those in nature reserves and national parks, which often harbour rare and threatened species. During bird-breeding seasons, ensure your dog doesn’t disturb nests, particularly on dunes, beaches, moorland and heath, where ground-nesting specialists are found. Train your dog to return to a call and not to stray out of sight in ecologically sensitive areas. Always pick up faeces. Much of the countryside could do without the extra fertiliser and it may carry diseases or contain medications that kill insects and arachnids. To further prevent toxic chemicals entering waterways, consider reducing your dog’s prophylactic treatments with flea, tick and worm tablets. Regularly washing bedding and checking for fleas instead can reduce the risk of infection. The mere presence of dogs – even on leads – can reduce biodiversity