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I think I would send your LPA a very polite but formal letter describing the exact situation with names, dates, appended docs etc. Ask them whether they are planning on issuing an official enforcement notice or are they just making a request. Tell them that stopping your contractor will involve you in significant cost (get your contractor to write a letter with a cost estimate for the delay) and that you will look to the LPA for damages and re-reimbursement of costs for any unnecessary delays they cause. Suggest that your neighbour (name him) doesn't understand the rules correctly. Copy to the head of planning if you're feeling bolshy. Likewise, send a copy to your neighbour - there's nothing like a bit of transparency to shake people up. I expect you will receive official withdrawal and go-ahead within a day, maybe two.

The three year time limit is to start not finish which he has proof he has done.

+1. They are being idiots. Foundations are commencement. You don't need a LDC. Just carry on.

Hi all, we moved into our self build with the basement still not complete and would like to finish it off. As cash is tight, I'm planning to do the work myself, so ideally would be looking at a solution that is possible for the experienced DIYer. The floors are currently rough screed over UFH and I need to decide how to complete the floor, ideally, before taking the project further. The rooms are: 1. A fitness studio. Ideally this would be a spring wood floor but I don't think this would work well with the UFH. My initial thought would be to pour an initial self leveling latex screed and then finish with either laminate or karndean, if funds and experience allow. 2. A den/cinema room. This is also rough screened with the added complexity that there are two large manholes in the room for the basement sump pumps. So I would have to create an access hatch for these,i guess. Again, I think that a laminate initially would privacy be easiest and cheapest here, but open to suggestions. You might see from the photos that the screed doesn't come up to the wall in many places but to insulation boards, and I'm not sure quite how to deal with these. Should the insulation be cut back level with the existing screed, or should I foam any gaps and bring the screed up to the level of the foam? One particular corner has an elevated concrete block, which is a bit of a pain Ideally I'd have a completely level floor for whatever surface goes on to of it. I'd love to hear any suggestions or experiences with something similar. I'm lacking in experience and confidence and don't really want to make an expensive blunder. Many thanks!!

Thanks to the relatively mild weather this winter i decided to start chipping away at the bathroom project, which is being extended into part of the extension which was finished over a year ago. This gave me the opportunity to install the bath, sink and toilet in the new bit, at which time I’d totally disconnected the old bathroom allowing me to strip it out and that’s worked really well for my as I struggle to do more than 4hours in a single day so I could keep doing a bit and stopping when I’d had enough. didn’t fancy tackling the ceiling for plastering in the new bit so got a pro in to do this bit for me, all done in a couple of hours which was nice. and made the most of the space and got the painting done after putting a layer of 10mm marmox board down ready to accept the underfloor heating mat Next job was to start making a frame to hold the toilet frame and the sink and cabinet Decided on making my own cabinet rather than paying silly money for an MFC one, got pine furniture boards, a pocket hole jig and a new router and came out with this which I’m pretty happy with that all got painted and the sink installed, wall mounted tap and the wet room panels that I’m using both for this and for the walk in shower area all installed. got to work cutting the OSB backing and wet room panel for the toilet in prep for the final big push to disconnect the old and commission the new, that was a hard days work! And then bath and toilet all installed once the shower area is complete the bath will be disconnected again to lay the underfloor heating, self leveller and the flooring before being put back in place, and eventually building the wall and plastering it. Made a start on stripping the old bathroom out Next job is to patch up the loft insulation where the old spotlights were, new wiring in place for a single light fitting this time, airtight membrane adhered to the walls and then battens before reboarding it ready for plastering. Floor is coming up also to be replaced with 22mm chipboard to match new bit.

Just googled it and it sounds expensive but interesting. Will call em next week. Have you used their products? I went to the NEC self build show and when I shared our situation the two companies who weren’t just all out salesy types quickly identified that they would not be able to offer a sips based solution. Do peeps erect SIP kits themselves? Agreed. However our house sale will take rather longer.

Are you sure it isn't just different drying times for different edges/gaps? All those stains seems suspiciously close to the edges!

Yes washing the shingle is the right thing to do, if you replaced it with bigger, round stone it will drain faster. I don’t see the point In the membrane.

A simple macerator would be a lot cheaper and simpler, typically they sit behind the WC pan. Whatever you choose I would regard this shed loo as being for No 1's only. Take a walk to the house if you need a No 2. Trust me you don't want to be fishing a failed pump out of a raw sewage pumping station that has been used for "all functions" In all cases the output pipe is a smaller bore and it goes uphill under pressure from the pump. It would typically discharge into an inspection chamber in your case close to the road so the final bit can drain by gravity to the sewer.

I installed this pumping station in a similar situation, from Drainstore. It's been in a year and works fine so far. Completely silent. Single Sewage Pumping Station - 610mm x 1000mm 292 Litres - up to 10m head plus 2 year warranty on pump - Include High Level Alarm

No, I keep it fairly low. It's mainly - in conjunction with a HVAC - to avoid condensation/damp. That said, I don't want to put something that will block even that low level of heat. Being underground, it keeps a fairly consistent temperature, being slightly warmer in winter and cooler in summer.

I would hazard a guess, where the paving has been stored, something has been spilt on them , it seems a little to sporadic for a whacker etc to leak like that looking at your pics

GRP it.

You’re worried about UFH with underlay but do you actually need the heating on in the basement? Especially in a gym! Would’ve thought you want to keep the gym cool for exercising in personally.

I did what @saveasteading describes. Filled the I with PIR in my case. I used expanding foam to reach the bits I couldn’t get into. Then faced with thin insulated cement board then the airtight membrane taped and sealed. I had a similar problem to you in that mine was fitted then closed. Fortunately I was able to open it back up again easily enough giving me access to most of it.

Not sure about that. I'm either ticking away in WC mode or batch charging. WC mode you really don't need more thermal storage. Have about 60Te. Batch charging will last just fine between E7 periods, so no added value. Think we have a total of 670m of pipe and 7 loops in around 195m of 100mm concrete with pipe clipped to 200mm of insulation. Works fine and dandy. You can stuff pipes at 100mm centres, but even at that I wouldn't be able to flow any lower temps, because the floor is at 22 to 24 and the heat pump runs at 5dT and requires a dT of between 6 and 8 to restart after a heat cycle. So if I flow at 25 to 26, the heat pump runs once than cannot decrease return temperature enough to get a restart permission. So min practical flow temp is 28-29.

Ok the beam is annoying but not a huge issue. I think you are aiming for Eps Blown beads anyway. Box out the beam EXTERNALLY leaving at least 50mm at all sides of it to at least 1m long outside the door, longer is better. Blow it full of EPS beads. Something else of concern is the door placement. It looks to be entirely within the external leaf, am I seeing this correctly? It really should be sitting in the cavity for best thermal performance.

But I for one don’t want a nanny state.(any more than it is!!,!)

Because we live in a free country where you can buy and sell a house in any condition. Would you rather more rules on what we can and can not do? Make your appropriate choice on 4th July.

Great shame you never came on this forum earlier. My advice would be DO NOT remove the slate DPC, it is about the best you can get. We had similar issues in a previous 1930's house, there the issue was nothing to do with the DPC but failed rendering low down that was bridging the DPC. Removing the lower render and re doing the bottom with it finishing just above the DPC cured all the problems. The render should have a proper bell cast drip bead at the bottom which should be sturdy, it should not just be resting on plastic DPC.

I'm not really sure what the detail is. Is this beam outside, forming a porch sort of space? I'd avoid expanding foam except for any small inaccessible spaces. Instead, fill the I section with rockwool. The rigid type used in cavity walls which is also waterproof. Or pir. Cut to shape and pressed into the spaces in the beam. Fix some more to the underside. Then box around the beam in cement board. Obv the hole in the wall need to be filled and insulated too. Do deal with it. It matters even if some people don't understand it

We had to have one protrude out to support an overhang, and I just wrapped it tight in insulation, expanding foam, etc etc outside. Inside we then just insulated it as best we could behind the plasterboard. With enough expanding foam you can fix anything! 😁 Do the best you can, accept a compromise, and move on! Double up on something else you can access to soften the tiny tiny tiny bit of loss in thermal performance. Worse things have happened, and 90% of home owners wouldn't know what a cold bridge is... Let alone give a shit.

At this stage it would be a massive job to prop and take it out and redo it as per Architects drawing If the drawing is Vague or lacks detail Like most architectural drawings Ask the SE to do a drawing Anything else will annoy the hell out of you

Sounds like you are being advised by people you shouldn't really listen too. An ASHP on its own would do hot water and all the heating you need for the house. I would based on kids being in the house do a 300L heat pump cylinder. Then install a heat pump that can 6kW at your coldest temperature. Depending on manufacturer that will be a 6 to 8kW unit. That will give you 3 hrs to DHW on the coldest day. Anything else is too big. Design the system to run one flow temperature. Have electric heat mats and electric towel rail in upstairs bathrooms. Your system becomes very simple - ASHP, 3 port diverter valve. One side is connected to UFH manifold (no mixer or pump or actuators), and radiators (with rtv). The other side is connected to cylinder coil. Use the heat pump controller to control temperature. Gas boiler, if you already had one installed you could use it, but to pay an additional £1000 and have the additional complications makes no sense.

Repeated friction could wear the plastic coating off. The screeders shouldn't need to walk directly on it and the concrete or screed should flow ahead of them. If in doubt then put a plank down to spread the load. Once concrete is in, even the wet stuff will spread the load and form some cushion between pipe and rod. The use of the foam in the picture effectively forms a void in the concrete, which isn't ideal for a few reasons.

No, the planners are wrong, this can be helped, planners just need to get their act together. I have fought planners on a number of occasions and won as I did my homework and proved I was right. Don’t back down. This says it all…. You must start the work within 3 years, or the council will serve you with a notice declaring your plans of no effect, which means they are out of date. If this happens then you will need to submit a fresh application with the appropriate fees. However, once the work has started on site (within 3 years of submission of the application) there is no set time limit for completing the work, demand a meeting with the planner or his boss if not available and present your case and evidence and threaten to go to the press if they do not cooperate. ( I hate planners!!!!).

No more than 50% of the land around the original house should include extensions or outbuildings. Will the conservatory connect to the two storey side extension or will it be on the back of the original/as-built house only?

Irrespective of the heat source you have three different heating elements which, unless sized appropriately, potentially require different flow temperatures to operate at their optimum. That's a challenge whether you have an ashp, a gas boiler or an oil boiler. That's why I am a bit concerned that the architect may have specified it to look right, leaving it to 'others' to make it actually work, which the 'others' may or may not have considered 'in scope'. The obvious route in the ASHP case would be to design all three to work at the same flow temp by using sufficiently large rads, very large towel rails and maybe spacing the UFH out a bit more so it could run a bit higher than 35 (but not too much higher otherwise you burn your feet!). Alternatively match the flow temps for rads and UFH (by using large rads) and treat the towel rails as a separate zone like DHW, to be turned on only when needed and diverting heat from the rest of the house. OP reports something that the architect said which suggests that this might be the intent. You could potentially mix flow with the return from rads to create the flow temp required for UFH. But it wouldn't be reliable if the rads were on a different 'schedule' to the UFH. Not sure how you could mix down from towel rad flow temp if the design means that they do require a high FT. I get the impression the house is low loss, possibly even close to passive. If so maybe that the idea is that the rads upstairs are secondary, and most of the (small amount of) heating is from the UFH downstairs. This would work if its reasonably open plan, several on here have reported houses where the principal (or only) source of heat is downstairs. In this scenario the towel rails are only for heating towels and potenitally everything could be run at 35C. But that's not consistent with what the architect appears to have told the plumber. A poor option is to run it all at HT and put thermostats on the UFH and rads. The Heat Geek guy seems to have ruled that out/advised against it, but it would be consistent with what the architect appears to have said. Running it all at say 55 wouldn't be too bad from an efficiency point of view (although a bit of a shame given UFH, but if its a low loss house not so important in absolute terms). I'm not sure whether this would be too hot for the UFH. Modulated and sufficiently deep in the slab it could well be OK. What is clear is that it needs thoughtful design to work at all, and very thoughtful design to work efficiently. Whats not clear is whether that thoughtful design has actually taken place. Schematics and heat loss calcs needed!

The issue is this... The planners are only allowed to issue legally binding decisions using official documents. So for example if they just wrote you a letter saying your PP is till valid that would not be legally binding on them, they could in theory change their mind. So if you want a legally binding ruling on the status of your PP then you would have to apply for an LDC. If you are confident that you can prove your PP is still valid you could just carry on. I think what I would do is carry on working AND apply for an LDC on the grounds that work started before PP expired. Its extremely unlikely the planners would start any kind of enforcement knowing an application for an LDC has been filed.

I am not happy with the draconian socialist ambitions of the Scottish government and will be doing my part at every chance to vote for an alternative.

Everyone likes a private Jim