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Well done @AliG, you’re a star, this will make a massive difference to his life, bereavement is awful, I know, and seeing your way forward is not easy. 👍

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/oct/21/cracked-tiles-wonky-gutters-leaning-walls-why-are-britains-new-houses-so-rubbish

Best to fit 2 single sockets for washing machine/TD. To prevent overloading of the double socket…

I would get something like a Greenwood CV2GIP dMEV Extractor Fan, cheap as chips on eBay, almost silent, leave at a low rate all the time, with boost at needed, with its built in humidity sensor. Three wires and your done.

As with all extractor fans with a run on timer, you’ll need a permanent live, as well as a switched live supply. Both from the same lighting circuit obviously

Not a direct answer to your question, but I used to live in a city centre apartment near noisy pubs and clubs - a converted 100 year old post office. Massive 2m high original single glazed wooden sash windows. we installed secondary single glazing and the sound reduction was remarkable. The secondary glazing Sat about 3-4” from the sashes. If you’re looking at establishing the effectiveness of secondary glazing for sound insulation I’d say if used in tandem with good quality double glazing you ought to get a great outcome. our secondary was from Everest, don’t know if they still do it or not.

Sadly in the summer, my brother's wife died very suddenly and unexpectedly. She had been something of a hoarder and none of the family had been to visit them for some years. They would only come to us. When we went to his flat we found it was a mess. We had professional cleaners in and then I arranged to have it totally refurbished, so that it would be easier for him to look after once he moved back in. He has been staying with my parents for the last few months. We were very worried about his health, but he is doing much better now. The flat actually smelled like someone smoked even though they don't and I think the air quality affected their health. They purchased the flat when they got married 22 years ago and it had not been touched since then. Further they refused to open any vents and properly use extractor fans so they had a big mould problem. We replaced the kitchen and an en suite, replaced all the flooring with hardwood and have had the whole place redecorated. Hardwood was expensive, but will be a lot easier to look after. The previous carpets were stuck to the floor beneath them. When the flat was built the woodwork was painted cream eggshell, it looks awful as it is so similar to the magnolia walls, that you would think someone had emulsion the woodwork. Took three coats to get it white. As well as organising everything, I did the new kitchen design and put up the light fittings. I reckon spending just a few pounds on lights massively elevates a place. The kitchen and en suite floors had to be replaced as they had started to rot due to water leaks. I also luckily discovered a leaking soil pipe just before the new kitchen went in. Just need to order some new furniture now and put up some curtains. Found a small building company to work with who were very good. Very impressed with DIY Kitchens. The original kitchen had bizarrely been installed around 50mm into the room to avoid cutting the pipes into the back of the units with the oven jutting out a further 150mm due to the soil stack. I fixed this in the new design. It was quite a bit of space to lose in a room basically only 3m square. I think the before and after pictures are pretty obvious. The before pictures are after the professional cleaning.

No. I studied automotive engineering, then renewable energy, then environmental science, then climate science and threw in a PGCE, as well as a photography and sign language course for a laugh. My RE course was mostly taught by physicists and I found I had an affinity to thermodynamics and statistics. Ended up teaching statistics, if nothing else, it helps one spot bullshit pretty quickly. I am moving away from Excel and onto LibreOffice Calc. It is no where near as good, but I am too tight to pay for MS Office. Much of it will be to do with the auctioning system. Some producers will have a mix of fixed price, variable price and half hour future price. There will be times it is not worth them switching off a generator, as they know they have to supply in an hour or two, so it works out cheaper, for them, to pay to have it taken away. I believe the price of non delivery is very high, so they try to avoid that at all costs. I am starting to think that the current auction system may not be the best method in the future, mainly because we will have cheaper storage and better management. Octopus is really playing an interesting game, but at a tiny scale that has no real impact on prices or emissions at the moment. If all the major power resellers did it, then the system would collapse both technically and financially. The idea system is a steady state generation from the lowest polluting systems, at an affordable price, then storage systems deal with the variations at a volatile price. We are a long way from that at the moment.

Once again many thanks x

Good work! All the best with your family.

TBH it is not clear from what I have looked at. I think probably not as a habitable room is considered a room that you use for living, sleeping or eating and a gym would not come under that. Studies are also considered habitable rooms and they have to be a room you would expect to spend an extended period in. Gyms would be a grey area. Also the rules are not that black and white and one habitable room at the side may not be enough to stop the building of a house close by anyway. My architect's view is usually that ground floor is not relevant as it can be mitigated by fences and planning only cares about upper floors. You are also not helped by your architect showing the gym as having the same wall depth as the garage. This suggested that it was not an insulated habitable room, irrespective of what was built. It is a shame as I suspect that you would have got permission for a study at the time with there not being anything to the side, but the actual room applied for appears to be an unheated gym within a garage. It suggests that the architect thought you wouldn't get permission for a habitual room so didn't apply for one. The planning acceptance says that it has to be built exactly as on the ground and first floor plan, see below. It also says that you need to do this to adhere to policy DM10 which includes consideration of neighbouring amenity. Interestingly they did not mention the ground floor window as affecting neighbouring amenity which suggest they don't think it is a habitable room, or think it is irrelevant as there is a fence there. However, that does not mean to say they were correct, nor is it clear if building according to the floorplan includes room usage or just the position of walls and windows. Unfortunately planning just isn't that prescriptive. The development hereby permitted shall not be carried out otherwise than in complete accordance with the submitted application details, as follows: Site Location Plan and Block Plan Drawing No. Lee-002 and Proposed Ground Floor Plan Drawing No. Lee-010 Revision B received by the local planning authority on 28 April 2017 and Proposed First Floor Plan Drawing No. Lee-011 Revision C and Proposed Elevations Drawing No. Lee-020 Revision C received by the local planning authority on 7 June 2017. Reason: To ensure a satisfactory appearance and impact of the development to accord with Policies DM1 and DM10 of the adopted Site Allocations and Development Management Policies Development Plan Document (2016). Impact upon neighbouring residential amenity 8.6. Policy DM10 of the adopted SADMP requires that development would not have a significant adverse effect on the privacy and amenity of nearby residents and occupiers of adjacent buildings. 8.7. By virtue of the position of the application dwelling between a club, a public house, a community centre and a church the proposed scheme would not have any significant adverse impacts on the privacy or amenity of the occupiers of any neighbouring residential properties. The proposed first floor side elevation windows in the existing dwelling would face only the adjacent club beer garden and parking areas. 8.8. The proposal would therefore be in accordance with Policy DM10 of the adopted SADMP. This is a popular misunderstand. Building control has nothing to do with planning. They can sign off a house as correctly built only for it to be knocked down due to being built in the wrong place. They never would check to see if it contravened planning. Again having building control approval is not relevant. You would not normally need planing for an internal wall, but as they said you have to build exactly to the plans then they could argue that in this case you do. The reason for this is that building that wall changes the side window from a secondary window to a primary window which affects your neighbours. In normal circumstances it would never come up and nobody would care. I don't think 5 years would make a difference. The statute of limitations for a breach of planning conditions is 10 years. Theoretically yes as it was a condition of your planning approval, in practice no one would have cared if this had not become a contentious issue. Overall because of the fact that you applied for what looks like an unheated gym within a garage, and there is a fence 1m from the gym window anyway, I think arguing about the gym is a waste of time. By far the best argument is that you overlook the proposed house from your upstairs side windows and they are not 12m from them.

Yeah, something like this; with a returning wall to the left of the tall unit, so I could secure the unit side to that too. The base units will stand-off the back wall by 100mm to allow for the W/M depth (using adjustable angle brackets to secure them to a length of 3x2 run across the rear wall which will also support the back of the worktop). I have some 6x2 offcuts from joists I ran a couple of weeks back, so could use those packed out to ~ 167mm height I need (150mm plinth + 17mm for tiles to get back up to FFL)

2 layers of 450g/m2 CSM would be normal, I would always recommend 3 layers. As a general rule, 1 layer of 450g/m2 matt is 1 mm thick and will take 900g of polyester resin. If going onto a very absorbent substrate like OSB, then the first layer will take more resin. Topcoat is around 350g/m2. This can vary quite a lot depending on the final usage i.e. aviation and walkways are treated very differently.

Certainly don't intent to sit the W/M on the plastic legs alone. Either build supports under the unit base to take the weight, or sit the W/M directly on the floor, but if I did the latter, I couldn't use the legs to raise and level the unit so would need to chock it up on wood, or similar and then figure out a way to attach the plinth across it. (As it's also the last unit in the row)

Plans started 4 years ago when we were going to get a big payment for GSHP . We also have a field with wet sand a meter or so down so near perfect conditions for GSHP. Also wanted all plant in the house, to make use of all 'waste' heat from machinery , and didn't want a big white box in the garden. My main concern now of GSHP over ASHP is avaliability of service and spares in the future. I hope my set up is there for the long term ground pipes 50+ years, heat pump 30 years? The digger to lay 600m of pipe( 3 x 200M runs) cost me £2,500.00 so not dear , laid pipe at 1.4m deep 1.2m apart in 6 trenches about 5 meters apart. When he had back filled the grass was still there where the spoil had been stacked ! Pipes and manifold cost on top of this so not cheap all together.

Siemens programmable room stat has been in for a week, 17 deg setback from 23:00-06:30, 21 the rest of the time. weather comp is 37@15, 47@0 Seems to sip electricity in this damp but not too cold weather and the residents haven’t frozen to death. UFH to get running in the extension now, currently just running a few rads and a couple of fan coils.

I would get some prices to make an informed decision. In 2020 in Ireland we had a borehole all done and dusted for about €4000. Similarly our council requires separate supplies for a farms and houses. A person in my locality was only granted planning on this condition although he owned an existing borehole 30m from the house. As to whether the second borehole got done in the end I couldn't possibly say but it was shown in the plans....

I don't know if this is helpful - but one of the founders was an Imperial College engineering professor that I know. The objective was to help insulate existing housing stock - particularity Victorian houses which often have timber floor on joists, then air gap, then ... earth. Insulating new houses is actually a fairly easy problem (!) compared to retrofit. He won't be hands on, but the original idea would have been sound. He has consulted for Rolls Royce, he started the design engineering department at Imperial etc etc.

It’s the rest that’s on the piss 🤣🤣🤣