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@Russell griffiths Call the water supply company and tell them they have a burst supply pipe in your garden. Let them deal with the neighbour and turn off the supply. Then there will be no come back to you.

We're good friends with the successors in title to any covenants on our place, as they are our neighbours. The house next door is the old manor farm that dates back a couple of hundred years or so, and back in 1980 they sold off the land our house has been built on. I'm pretty sure that it's only the owners of that house that can have inherited any rights, as I know a fair bit of the history of the village, from the time when I was helping with the neighbourhood plan. One option, once I know what the covenants are, may be to see if the successors in title would be prepared to remove or amend the restrictions. That may well be possible, as the neighbour owes me a big favour - relating to support for a planning application he put in recently.

You may have seem pictures of the 'incident' in Hertfordshire today https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-45167570 Very bad news but a great way to see how a new house is built. I spent a few amusing minutes looking for evidence of the insulation. What do you make of it?

Thanks all for replies as I said this has been going on for the last 2 years. The water co are not really interested as they have been out at least a dozen times She has used up all the freebies insurance company are not interested as they have paid twice already to fix it. The wheels are in motion to get it replaced i was mainly concerned regarding the dirty water coming out of the ground. If we had children I would have gone and told her immediately and shut off her supply being its me and the wife I can live with it a bit for the next couple of weeks it may have actually done us a favour as we are insisting it is replaced in its entirety and removed from our property we have even offered to pay half. Bloody hell im a nice bloke.

I'd start with what YOU have touched or might have pulled. Worst case is probably a junction box under a laminate floor! Look for something loose on THAT circuit i.e the lights.

More Graven madness. you would think those in charge would just buy it back once complete and use it for the next set of plots. The fact they are not is just typical of the whole project.

I'll line 'em up, you knock 'em down!

If it’s fully scaffolded you would be looking at about £5 per mtr with some areas difficult to shift others easy

Concrete or aerated?

definitely the sort of thing you can do yourself or get a labourer to do. get a decent (not too heavy) drill with chisel and have a go - you might find some of it comes off pretty easy

HI @ultramods I have quotes from them and also Eco SIPS Homes and they are very similar, only difference is Eco Homes do the erection which may be an advantage. Will be interested to hear how you get on the the Angus Homes kit, it certainly looks the job and I'm having Nordan Windows through them as well. @Tin Soldier yeah if you have any pointers especially regarding the pouring of the foundations I'd be grateful of a hint ! @Nickfromwales yeah that boiler room originally needed space for a Pellet Boiler and Buffer Tank but as I think we will go the ASHP route it will free more room in there so may do some shifting of some walls !

I'll draw it out later and post it

I get the feeling that that digger is going to run away and chase some deer.

@PeterW is the queen of Wago blocks (or should that be king ?)

But that's a different scenario to what you described in your previous post ("then letting demand (and price) build up before they built a few more."). And some of the blame for what you're now describing has to sit with the LA for not stipulating a defined period in which a development should be completed.

I walk into the bathroom and look...then I walk back out again! 1st pocket is 377 to datum, pockets either side of shower both 380mm. I'd aimed for 378mm. I'm going to walk back in...

This is what the manual for the boiler says: In the event of a fault, the reset button will flash once per second and the blue mains indicator light will flash. 1. To reset the boiler press the reset button for approximately five seconds. When the boiler resets the reset button will no longer be illuminated. 2. The mains indicator will no longer be flashing. If the fault remains and cannot be cleared by pressing the reset button, contact Worcester, Bosch Group for assistance. Unless one of the experts here can think of something, I fear a service call might be required. There's a few YouTube videos with the same problem too. Here's one: Google "greenstar 24i flashing blue" to see more.

Does the light beside the flame symbol ever come on? That indicates the gas burner is on (I have a larger WB Greenstar boiler - beefier version of this). When you turn the timer so it should switch on, does it do anything to suggest its coming to life? Any noises? The spanner button is the service button but my user manual does not give any instructions for that - it must be in the secret manual only gas accredited folks get.

Suckered, is, I think, the word you're looking for. I have a feeling he may well have started spending some of the money he was expecting from the sale before they had exchanged contracts, too. One thing I learned from this is that developers are absolute bastards, of the first order. They always seem to play the long game, to maximise their gain. We had a conversation with one young couple who came to view our house who had made the same observation. They had been going around the local new developments and had quickly worked out that the developers were very deliberately throttling the supply of houses by stopping work after they finished a handful, then letting demand (and price) build up before they built a few more.

Nice windfall for the neighbour! Let us hope he feels a generosity of spirit towards his departing neighbour and does what they want to sort the sale for you. Fingers crossed.

Does central heating work ? If so that eliminates; fan gas valve air switch and part eliminates the PCB. If no central heating and no hot water then first check is; does the fan spin and blow air out of the flue? Remeber you'll have to reset the boiler every time to check operation and as it is a stinking WB you'll have to wait a long time for it to do self-diagnostic each time. Give me a Baxi or a Vaillant any day.

Not necessarily a plumber only job - could just need reset for example. Why did it stop working is the question - it may just have gone into lock-out. The light on these will usually flash a sequence or colour to indicate the fault and display a letter or number in the temp gauge like F1 or something. I have seen this boilers bigger brother go into lockout for a low pressure issue - cycling the main power with a 30 second pause sorted it, other issues can be high pressure, over temp, flue issues etc. If the manual is in the front panel then the faults should be listed.

Thats a bit different to Jeremy's neighbour having the benefit of the covenant. The type of 1950's developer covenant you mention is very insurable and cheap to do. Chancel is not the same thing. Church tentacles reach far and chancel became almost a standard for conveyancers to recommend on most property until the stop date came in. We had land that once belonged to Church of England, we did not have a chancel liability however the Diocesan solicitor that we had to deal with on covenants was non other than the man who caused the Chancel debacle cascade through his war with the Wallbank family in Aston Cantlow. That is just a few miles from us we knew the case very well and the property. It made history and is a precedent, through all the appeals and misery We were at the auction when the Wallbank family finally sold the property after settling with the Diocese after many many years of legal wrangling and untold tens of thousands in legal fees.

If the beneficiary agrees to the changes then it's pretty easy, just a deed of release for the old covenant and an equivalent variation to add a new covenant, both done via the Land Registry and both can be finalised after completion, as long as there is a legal agreement in place between the beneficiary, ourselves and the purchasers to make the covenant changes. Probably a couple of hundred pounds or so, all told, so well worth doing if we can. Changing to another buyer now will set us back more than this in sunk legal costs, I'm sure, plus we may well have to accept a lower offer price for the house, so all told it seems worth trying to salvage this deal if I can. Starting again with another buyer will also add at least two or three weeks to the process, depending on who the buyer is and how quickly their solicitor/conveyancer can get their act together.

I have the joy of having a concrete plant 3 miles from site and it’s a family run business. They called to say they were running early so could drop earlier than planned and also sent their brand new rig on its first day out ... Made life very easy overall and are always easy to work with. In contrast I’ve done a job with a large firm and they left 2 hours between loads, and even lied about the drops as the wagon driver told me he had been diverted elsewhere between drops..! Never again..!

Hi onoff.. yes that was my plan too: neater, & units of course will cover these offcuts nr floor. I need to cover, primarily only for mice! Whole morning to do pb1.. damn heavy & difficult alone. Not perfect, but as good as I'd hoped..

I know the feeling with finishing off before the concrete lorry arrived, we stepped off the slab when the concrete lorry was reversing in in to the pump..... Thankfully we got a little help from the concrete guys (8 guys arrived at 7am, lorry 8am) with tie wrapping the last of the pipe or we would not have made it! Everything went smooth after that.

@russ_fae_fyvie Hi Russ. I got on pretty well to be honest looking back, still miles away from being finished but trying to do a lot myself, whilst having three kids under 6 and a million things to do is proving challenging laid 300mm of eps70 insulation no bother at all, took a couple of days, Working with the steel mess and upstands I didn't like so much, and the UFH loops were more time consuming than you would think - was still doing it at midgnight 7 hours before concrete pour. so if you want to test it, best give yourself plenty time. happy to answer any questions you have, or give you pointers to some cheap trades if you need I like your plans , very nice

Especially if you use a digger to remove them!

I'm using JJI I beams for the studs in the gable ends of my A-frame house for the same reason as you: depth of insulation. The house designer, structural engineer, building control and JJI distributor technical/sales chap all happy with that. The one gotcha though is the choice of depth of the beams. I picked 235 mm off their list of available depths just because that was what I needed for my intended U-value. The distributor did warn me that that was uncommon (245 mm being the nearest standard one) so there'd be a bit more lead time. I didn't want to change at that point - the structural engineer had signed off and was being a bit uncommunicative then (been much better later) - so decided I could put up with ordering a few weeks early. I got most of the beams needed for the roof (two packs of 33) fine. However, when I came to order the last few I needed for the roof and the ones for the ends there was a problem: I wanted fewer than 20 (can't remember the exact number) but JJI only supply in packs of 33. For the common sizes the distributor would have been happy to split a pack as they'd sell the rest to somebody else quickly enough but for 235s they didn't want them hanging around. In the end they found a pile of 235s of various lengths and widths in their Glasgow depot which they supplied. They were a bit tatty and needed sanding but were OK for my purposes. Moral of this tale: pick the depth required carefully. As to length, they seem very flexible. I asked for 8 metre lengths and they didn't blink. The extras came in various lengths, the longest being 10m IIRC. If you want just over 2.4m then maybe it'd be best to ask for 5m lengths and cut them in two.

Sorry to hear this Jeremy. I hope that it can be resolved. Personally I think it’s nonsensical that covenants can be added to property or land that someone is selling. Selling should mean relinquishing the rights to that land in my view unless it relates to an existing access or similar. Change of use, pets, caravans, trailers etc should be none of anyone’s business as long as they are lawful eg have planning permission etc.

That sounds very positive Jeremy. Good luck. If you have your title docs from your bank you should be able to find it there. Some years back the Land Registry did away with 'title deeds' and now just issue a certificate and that has all the extracts on it. Its no substitute for the actual deeds especially historic ones and if you have those they are worth keeping and handing on to a purchaser. In your bank bundle you hopefully will have a document named Epitome of Title which is is the tree and gives the root of your title. You can trace from that. If your covenants are so recent it should be easy to spot.

The trouble with safe zones, is the appear to be an official secret, and nobody else apart from electricians knows about them. So Joe public does as above, as it just looks right if you hang the picture exactly on the centreline of the switch.

Luck! If the pipe is iron it could be rusty as & held together by a wing and a prayer! My trials and tribulations on a 60 year old main: Assuming the original pipe is in good order then you can get iron to MDPE fittings so you can tee off for a site supply. Turn off the water. Dig down & expose. Determine the existing pipe size with a Vernier and get couplers to suit. Cut with a mini grinder and de-burr. Swear and curse as you struggle to bend the short length of New MDPE with the tee on in there. The longer the bit cut out the easier it will be! Plasson fittings btw are better than the ones from Screwfix etc imo. They tend to cope with different pipe diameters too. One side might be 25mm for the MDPE and the other varying e.g. https://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/Plasson-25mm-x-20mm-27mm-other-pipe-universal-coupling-Plass4-MDPE-UTC/391116810730?

I like the sizes of the rooms and the layout, but why the huge 'boiler room' and why don't you use some of that space to give yourself a shower ensuite ? Seems a strange use of that considerable floor space. Please do have a good read here about battery systems and their current longevity / RoI as there still seems a lot to discuss prior to investing a lot of capital into that endeavour. Nowt wrong with cabling for it in anticipation btw. ? With that amount of PV you'll find there isn't that much left for battery charging, after DHW / driving a heat pump, plus plug in loads / general / self consumption etc, so look at what ( excess ) you can produce before looking at what electric-dependant equipment / devices you'll consider installing . I'd focus on DHW first, and then look at how you'll manage space heating eg an ASHP used in the day to heat up the slab and then just a Willis heater to maintain / top-up the overnight temp, if required. If your at or around PH standards you may well be ok to go all-electric and do away with the heat pump.

There is no logic it is just the way you word it At the end of the day you are probably talking about £60 so don’t sweat it and be thankful you can claim any of it.

Mid Grey was decided upon. Mid grouting a voice cackled "Actually I don't mind it that dark!" Not being sure if she was referring to the grout colour or the Jason Derulo video on the telly I carried on. Clarification came seconds later with "I suppose it'll dry a bit lighter!" So it's grouted save for a "polish with a soft dry cloth". I think I'm quite happy with it. That fall line looks nicely defined: One faux pas is I missed two bits! One on the diagonal fall line and the other slightly below and left. Tbh I only noticed as I was out the door. (Dehydration I think played a large part. Guessing problems with the cauldron). I figured then it was better to leave these missed bits to dry fully before infilling rather than overly disturb the drying grout either side of the voids. Whether I did right...

That's what I had been using until today, but there are problems with them, as some sites have started putting up flags saying "we've noticed you're using an ad blocker and this may affect some of the functionality of this site" and one or two sites just refuse to work unless the ad blocker is turned off, I've found. Pi-Hole is massively faster, and web sites don't seem to know that you're blocking ads - one site that always puts the "we've noticed you're using an ad blocker..." no longer puts the banner up now (although I had to disable the ad blocker first). The big bonus is that site loads times are massively faster. Some of the really heavily ad-infested websites load in around 1/4 of the time that they used to take with the ad blocker installed.

Aye, still fine. You’d know if it wasn’t cos the voodoo doll would be working its magic ?

Keeping him alive and making him pay, daily, for his indiscretions is much more fun, plus he would still be around to do all the blue jobs. Death by 1000 cuts ? ?

First off, let's see some pics. If the grout is rammed into the corners and sponged back nicely you may not need any silicone. My current job has none and is looking much the better for it. No silicone anywhere, just CT1 under the glass.

That’s a boys’ toy not a light girlie one! Bet it weighs twice as much as the one I bought!

I’ve got one and a cordless mower. I couldn’t start the bloody petrol things on my own and struggled to lift them so I replaced with these. They are both light and easy to use. Slide the battery in and press the button. Slide the battery out when finished or need to swap it over. It’s useful if you have 2 batteries for when one runs out. This duo comes with 2 but you may want to buy a second battery if you just buy a strimmer. It doesn’t cut through really tough shrubs etc but I imagine that’s the way with most general purpose strimmers tbh. It’s a grass / weed strimmer not a brush cutter. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Qualcast-Cordless-Lawnmower-Grass-Trimmer/dp/B01CTUMJAM

What is it with blokes? Work hard to get the right outcome and feck it up at the final hurdle. Use the silver. Put all thoughts out of your mind re introducing a new variable / colour and autonomously deciding that it’s the way forward. Take the small victory, be happy with the silver that looks absolutely fine, and keep quiet about it being a victory or you’ll never hear the end of it! You know it makes sense! Trust me on this one!!

Don't know if this will help, but there's this article on dry rot on the buildingconservation.com web site: http://www.buildingconservation.com/articles/dry-rot/dry-rot.htm

You sure all you’re doing is sleeping?

@David B Hi David, Try Peter Cox Ltd. Damp & Timber specialists. They are Nationwide, & have been around a long time (used to be Terminex Ltd)

Thanks, @PeterStarck, it's nice to have confirmation that you found the model as sensitive to local climate data as I did. The main problem I had was not having any reasonably accurate data for the local conditions before we started building the house. I certainly didn't anticipate the fairly large reductions in wind speed experienced in our "hole in the valley", nor the higher overall temperatures. Building the house has itself changed the conditions very locally to a marked degree. Our neighbour has a vegetable plot immediately to the East of our house, and keeps telling me how grateful she is for the improvement in growing conditions building our house has created. She tried growing raspberries, starting last year, never having had much success in the past. She's had a superb crop, some of which I finished off this morning on my breakfast!