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Not complete . Glazing on sides to go in later - very happy with it so far .

This issue is common: so common that it has been discussed here several times. Here's one well-argued thread about the matter. In brief - ask for your PD Rights back. If they refuse, Appeal. If you appeal and they lose, you pay nothing. That is what I plan on doing when I'm slightly less busy. Good luck @Hilldes

I’d say magic but it’s not true ! . There’s a steel frame on the far side ( between tiled wall and stairs . They are effectively cantilevered . But each box rests on the previous so ultimately the ‘strain’ is taken from the big bottom step ( has a good chunk of timber and steel in it )

Yes permitted development rights will be removed, so you will need planning applications for anything would have been permitted rights previously. I would ask for clarification, or possibly better, don't and take the literal wording as a given - as the wording states 'extension' so you cannot extend. It doesn't mention garden room or shed or garage or heat pump etc. It just says extension.

Tomorrow I go back to work after 2 months off. Now I have totally wasted that time, so thought I better catch up with a little experiment I had in mind. With some old 9mm OSB, I made a 200mm deep beam. It is 2.26 m long, and held together with cheap PVA 'no nails' type adhesive (cost a quid a tube). The flange is 100mm wide. One flange is 2 layers of OSB, the other is 2 strips of timber, 20mm by 35mm holding the other flange in place. To test it I put a box on it and filled it with water. It basically only moved 6mm when I had put 52 kg of mass in the middle. Some of that will be because the whole thing became unstable on the trellises. The result is shown in the last picture. Going to be plenty strong enough to make a shed from, so may use cheaper, thinner ply and smaller battening timber. I think I will get @Gus Potter and @saveasteading work out the numbers, my moments if gryration were jumping out the way when the box of water fell.

Any risk of damp or condensation? Looks like a loft?

A agree with @DevilDamo it’s only house extensions restricted, not other things (garden room, shed). Their letter mentions green belt which is probably their reason for restrictions.

Will be fine as long as nothing crushes/cuts it. Or unless you have a very strong electro magnetic field next to it.

Just went through it again, I was looking at volts drop instead of volts % drop. 10mm2.

I used the online calculator in the previously linked threads.

^ that's a rubber waste compression, not metal olive

Reolink argus eco. Pretty flawless. Apart from me breaking the solar panel mount. Don't need any subscriptions and can upload to your own FTP server.

They have only removed Class A and Class B. You can still carry out other PD works providing they meet the requirements. Because you’re in the Green Belt, don’t think that a re-instatement of your PD rights will be plain sailing.

Mine wouldn't connect to the internet correctly, so they are in the loft, mentally labelled a f'ing waste of money.

If he was alive he would be trolling us all here for our desire to put, in some cases, function over form.

We also did ours in DC - about 50m to the top of the field. We have 12 panels in all - 6.5kWp. The cable was a 4 core cable, so there are 2 groups of 6 feeding the 2 DC inputs on the inverter. The ground mounts are key clamp system with 16 1m poles whacked in the ground as the support. We also set the panels at about 45degs because at the optimum angle (30deg ish) we'd get massive summer output and low winter output. 45degs gives us lower summer output and higher winter output. We're just about getting the maximum out of them about now. Simon

Do the long run as DC cable, with the inverter very much closer to the meter box. As you rightly say, voltage drop (rise) on the ac side will lead to the inverter tripping. Voltage drop on the dc side will just be a tiny % of power lost as the inverter is very flexible about input voltages.

That’s what this forum is all about, sharing the knowledge, only too glad to help where I can 😎.

the skip was totally full, flat to the top, and yes the masks and suits all went in wrapped the same. Chances are that there wasn't much asbestos in the sheets, but we decided to do it properly. Skip lorry took 2 attempts to lift. Although since then we have dug up quite a few small bits that we have been able to take to the tip, about a bucket full in total when we dug out, only about 2 inches down though, good soil under that, not sure where they came from as couldn't be seen until we dug. It's funny, it's not until looking that those pictures that I remember the roof was curved. We're supposed to replicate the shape with the new green roof, that will be a challenge, it we decide to try, but not on our drawings so probably won't. The quotes we had were for about 6 - 8 k so did it for 10%. Except one quote for £500, but we just didn't fancy finding it a week later in one of our ditches.

Need a good quality ripper if that's the case. My one is fine at taking out brand new coppers.

we removed ours and hired a skip. All double wrapped and skip wrapped and covered, total cost of 8m * 6m was £800 All suits disposed off after use.

Yeah , but thank heavens for that @joe90 There are some many things within the building regulations that conflict with each other, great to have them onboard and trying to work out solutions with you. I have had some great debates with BCO's over the years.

Another example of no consistency with building control.

Do you mean fire board, or fibre board? @Mr Punter says fire board, but your message says fibre. I suggest you make sure the bco is ok with the fire board method before committing....maybe you have already. I say this having once had a right barney with the bco, who wouldn't accept that timber was non flammable when protected by cement board. (His argument was that timber is a flammable material....end of argument) He did eventually and very reluctantly give way (4 storeys of timber stairs didn't have to be replaced). Best agreed early.

Thanks. Lets us know which solution you go with. And pictures of course.

Get a cover over the isolators so they aren’t accidentally switched off, a simple wooden box or something?? Assuming your alert system works on float switches? go to the Shelly website and buy a Wi-Fi flood sensor for £30 and peace of mind. you can of course run a hose into the tank and get the pumps to pump in hand this clean water to flush the system slightly, add some hot water to the tanks afterwards with some degreaser or washing up liquid, let it sit for a while, rinse and repeat. it’s generally the build up of crud that causes problems. Maintenance companies exist for these things, they will lift pumps, clean, check for blockages. So unless you want to do this yourself worth the money. I have 4 small sites on a maintenance contract with Kingspan anything spend preventing a disaster involving dirty water/sewerage is worth it, compared to the hassle and time involved in clean up afterwards. good luck

>>> Tea, medals. Nice idea re the medals - you have campaign ribbons and all? I just finished 70 m^2 of ecogrid 30 for pedestrian use. Fairly pleased although it's not cheap. The company that sells it was dodgy over delivery though. Paid for 'next day' and it turned up on day 3/4 (I forget). Asked them to sort less than 7.5T truck as we live on a narrow lane. Arrived in a van after the truck decided he couldn't be bothered (we get 7.5s regularly). Had to unload an entire van full by hand rather than with a hiab. A kind of couldn't-be-ar5ed attitude.

I honestly think you've got that the wrong way round. Anyone over 50 with an ounce of DIY mentality and a heart that still beats was probably cutting their teeth in the decades that saw a massive boom in accessible tech like 8-bit home computers. The available tech then was approachable to non-specialists and hence a softer introduction to the arcane complexities of today's systems. It seems to me that my cohort (in their 60's) are the ones most likely to embrace the latest coolness (and its quirks). On the other hand, anyone starting out fresh today can be forgiven for bouncing off the current complexities and regarding it all as black magic. In our household it's the youngest family member who regularly rolls his eyes at the tech when it falls over or fails us for the want of a simple wall switch. He's right of course... so put in standard wiring. Then fit something nerdy in the standard modular format that will likely be available in years to come as a drop-in replacement (when each new iteration comes around).

In my book (white male, <50 years old), you have this the wrong way around. Wired switches are always going to be more reliable and long lasting than wireless, however something digital ("smart") will allow a pair of wires to each switch to have infinite uses, and be software reprogrammable if needs change, without need for a wire per light Like others here I use Loxone, but other options like Rako exist. All that said Lutron have gone wireless only and it is the trend with other tech (ZigBee Zwave Bluetooth and Matter) so maybe I'm the luddite. I just hate wireless tech when a wired option is possible

What's the plan for banister/handrail? Or are you getting Stanna in for a stairlift?

That is very heavy, especially when wet. Then it might snow. Have you thought about making your own RAAC /aircrete planks? Cement plus soapy water and a whisk.

Columnist and Technology Our priorities are all wrong when it comes to new technologies We can't get life-saving drugs, but we can get dubious self-driving taxis, says Annalee Newitz By Annalee Newitz 30 August 2023 A member of Safe Street Rebel places a cone on a self-driving robotaxi to disable it in San Francisco, California Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images AFTER dodging covid-19 for several years, I finally tested positive for one of the leading causes of death where I live in the US. I’m vaccinated, but also in a statistically vulnerable group: I’m over 50, and I used to smoke. For people like me, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends treatments including the new drug Paxlovid. Studies show it reduces the viral load in your cells, preventing hospitalisations, long covid and severe symptoms. So I wanted to get it as soon as possible. After staring blankly at my positive test, I went online and requested a late-night video chat with my healthcare provider, One Medical, which was recently bought by Amazon. Let that sink in for a minute, my friends. Some of you may be navigating the difficulties of a national healthcare system, but for those of us in the good old USA, we get our healthcare from techno-capitalism. And no, the free market version doesn’t solve the problems of state-funded systems. My video call was routed to a random nurse somewhere in California, who told me there was no evidence Paxlovid was helpful against covid-19 because “there are so many new strains”. I said I had read articles saying it was, and he replied, “Oh, let me check.” It seemed as if he was doing a Google search. “No,” he said after a moment, “it only helped three strains ago. I can’t prescribe it for you. It would be off-label.” I felt like I was being gaslighted. Paxlovid was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for use against covid-19 in May. I was in a vulnerable group identified by our federal government. I knew this guy was wrong, but I was too sick to argue. So I made another video appointment online with a different random nurse for the next morning. She took a look at my chart, talked to me about my symptoms and history, and finally prescribed the drug. I was lucky. Friends of mine have had to go to the emergency room to get a prescription, while others have suffered through weeks of debilitating symptoms or months of long covid because nobody would prescribe it. None of this makes any sense. When the US made it available under an emergency authorisation in late 2021, Paxlovid was touted as the miracle drug we would all be taking for covid-19. But, as a recent survey found, doctors are leery of prescribing it. No one is quite sure why. There is no shortage of it and its main side-effects are pretty mild (a weird taste in your mouth, stomach upset). Yet I was denied a potentially life-saving treatment when I needed it – at least at first – for no good reason. So much for the idea that when an amazing new technology is available, we will all have access to it and our lives will be better. Instead, we get questionable technologies that nobody asked for. Case in point: As of this August, California has authorised two companies – Alphabet/Google-owned Waymo and General Motors-owned Cruise – to run fare-paying, self-driving taxi services around the clock across all of San Francisco. Before this, they had been allowed to test their cars in a limited way in the city for a few years. The vehicles have caused all kinds of mayhem. They have interfered with emergency vehicles, stopped in the middle of intersections, got stuck in wet cement, created bizarre traffic jams and even killed a dog. One autonomous car drove through caution tape around a major house fire, rolling over fire hoses and menacing people on the scene. To stop it, firefighters had to take an axe to the car windshield. Waymo and Cruise passengers use an app to call one of the cars, then jump into a vehicle whose steering wheel moves on its own over an empty driver’s seat. Within a week after rolling out autonomous taxis across the city, one was in a collision with a fire truck (the car’s human passenger was taken to hospital but had no major injuries). It seems like every day, we hear about another crash or traffic jam involving robo-taxis. A local activist group called Safe Street Rebel declared a “week of cone“, where it urged people to put road cones on the hoods of self-driving cars. Apparently this is one of the only foolproof ways to make the cars stop. In a TikTok video that went viral, activists showed people how to position the cones properly and urged cities to stop greenlighting autonomous cars and fund public transit instead. Meanwhile, Cruise is addressing problems by agreeing to halve the number of taxis it has on the streets. It isn’t clear how this will fix anything, since the issues have plagued autonomous cars for years. And yet the city’s train and bus systems, which once worked brilliantly, are underfunded and failing. I can’t get a widely-available drug that can mitigate a life-threatening illness without a fight, but I can easily hail a robo-taxi that may cause mayhem on the streets. The future is here, but it’s absurd.

'Creepy' bollards shaped like schoolchildren are stuff of nightmares | UK News | Metro News

Hi @ToughButterCup Don't worry. your not being picked on. YOU'RE NOT THE ONLY ONE! SMART is an acronym for Smart Meters Are Really Thick

Ours is about 100m no problems there. so I guess all the stuff they gave us for free wouldn’t add up to 3k that’s why they never seemed bothered.

Have you thought about getting 6 toddler outfits with welly boots, and putting a plastic bottle of red paint inside each one.. Hidden camera, easy £250

I’d say it’s piss easy to make them ! Paint them pink so they look like giant dildos - ain’t no man gonna touch them 😉

Oh God! I still haven't done it. BUT , work is scheduled for this October. Plan (cross section and plan will be posted here) in September.... I think, definitely, more than likely, probably. Yeah. Hmmmm....

My name's Ian and I'm 69 and eleven twelfths. I'm likely to die before anything new-fangled fails: so I wish I'd chosen to make a few really important lights and sockets to be hard-wired - and make the rest as sexy as I could get. I'm told that @SteamyTea controls many things in the house with his brain. And @pocster....