Leaderboard

OK, the board was rather more damaged than I feared. Here are the before and after with the new connector fitted. The two RH pins below had got so hot that the through-hole liners very damaged and partially delaminated from the PCB, as had the RH trace. This is why I bulked up the track between the connector and the next through-hole component (this was the common a.k.a. AC neutral) The image below shows the refitted unit with is working OK. @JSHarris Note the crimped ferrule connectors I've got a DS18B20 taped to the replacement connector to see if I have any thermal issues, but it does seem to be working fine. PS. The 2nd pin (the 240V phase line to the heater) is getting rather warm. I think that this is because this track is probably also lifting near the pin. I will probably need to do the same trick and expose the track to the relay and bulk it up with solder. What I really need is a replacement board.

Yay, I've taken down the remaining scaffolding. ? Big effort the last month painting the roughcasting to get this away for good, satisfying to see the house standing proud by itself for the first time. Next job will be tidying the site and emptying storage container to get this gone as well.

Milton is only a 2% bleach (sodium hypochlorite) solution, so weaker than needed to disinfect a water system. You can make "Milton" by just diluting plain domestic bleach with water and maybe adding some salt to it. The reason for needing a stronger hypochlorite concentration when disinfecting a water system is really to do with the limited contact time. Milton works because stuff is kept in contact with it for a fairly long time, but with disinfecting a water system you really just want to flush it through with a strong enough solution to pretty much guarantee killing stuff off in a minute or two.

Morning! Ask the SE for a fee proposal to design a way of solving your problem using micro piles. Ask her to recommend three micro-piling companies who in her view are well qualified and competent Make contact and ask for a site meeting with all of those companies and listen hard. Agree / negotiate the fee with the SE. Ask three other SEs for their price to do the same work perhaps? Get a Cost Consultant (Quantity Surveyor) to price the job. Ask three other QSs for their price to do the same work perhaps? Wait for the QS estimate Decide. Which? Haven't or can't? Insert that super-useful word yet and you get out of jail free. Why haven't you explored demolition and the associated permission yet? Dont tell me, you don't want the bad news of how much that will cost. Join the club. It may or may not be mad to get a timber frame house: but don't do so before you know why you haven't chosen other options. Simply put, you need to pay for well qualified professional advice before proceeding . 'That process felt really uncomfortable for us - at the same stage as you are, what did we have to show for all the money we spent - nothing: except clarity. We're four years in to our project: I've lost count of the times I've been very grateful for the advice we solicited. Knowing why you are not doing what you might reasonably be expected to do is worth many worry-free nights sleep.

Don't use a metal tape measure when you check. ?

You need an impact driver. Once you have one you'll wonder how you managed without it

I would move the door to the bathroom up, and that to the study down, so that by moving the door to the top bedroom down by 1m there will be the option of a second posh master suite like the one downstairs. Gives your parents similar suites upstairs and downstairs including the bathroom as a wardrobe should they want it. Not sure if that will help them, but gives a more flexible design. As to bathroom, one option we worked out for somebody else was put plumbing in behind walls, and use it for now as whatever you want ... of which above I give one example.

You need to compare apples with apples im having window quotes at the moment. £15,000 cheapest, £30,000 dearest. They are definitely not the same quality, you can get anything cheaper if you look around but it will definitely not be the same standard.

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Check inclusions and exclusions, I bet that figure does not include ground works and foundations.

I think you're right to be concerned about getting this right. I too think that's a good plan. My floors will be similar: 150 x 19 or 22 mm [¹] sarking boards under the joists, full fill with mineral wool, VCL over then 22m chipboard and finish floor. The warrant specifies a membrane across the bottom and in the middle of the mineral wool to prevent wind washing and support the mineral wool. I'm having second thoughts, though and may well just use 25mm EPS sheets taped at the edge. Given the reduction in the amount of mineral wool required it works out cost neutral and gives slightly better insulation and will be a little less fiddly to install, I think. I'll run that by the BCO when he comes to peer at my timber before I start adding insulation. [¹] It varies. I started with 19mm but for the last batch I bought the timber place didn't have 19 to hand so I got 22.

Anna hat ✔️

I have just about completed a partial refurb of my house which has taken 1 year of me working in my time off work i work a 2on 3off rota so plenty of time, i have a ~1880 concrete "croft" house i have stripped out the livingroom/ kitchen, bathroom and utility room, i have fitted new insulation to the walls downstairs (75mm PIR) and built new walls not touched the floor its partial suspended timber and partial solid concrete, the house has had a complete rewire (at mates rates) and i have replumbed it completely myself, i have had an ASHP installed at a cost of £10k as its an MCS install, new kitchen was £7.3k, spent about £1500 on bathroom stuff about £1200 on new external waste pipes and new water main (they were all in the wrong place) I think my total will be about 30k and that is with me doing all the labour myself as i am a time served joiner i was able to call in lots of favours from tradesmen friends as well as using my mates trade accounts at the local builders merchants , which has saved me £££. Personally if you are going to do a refurb you either go full on and start with bare walls or save your money and just do the bare minimum to make it habitable. I am really mad with myself that i didnt just bite the bullet and redo the floor, i could have had UFH instead of the fan assisted rads but im happy enough with what i have

That's the key issue: how you feel about it. Which leads me to the next question - where will you get your resilience from? Financial security? A short holiday? Improved blood sugar levels? All three? Even with a healthy bank balance you are going to need resilience. This building lark gets to every man-jack-one of us. It reaches down your throat, grabs your stomach and twists and turns - most often at 3:00a.m. All of us on BH have it, have had and are going to have more of it before the end of each damn month. It's a bastard. Stuff what the planner says. She couldn't give a damn about you, your plan or anything to do with the Local Plan. She just wants your problem off her desk. If she detects a hesitant, thoughtful vibe from you and she'll recognise the signs - easier to say no. Know what you want, why you want it, how you're going to get it and have an evidence base to support your opinion - you'll always get a more considered response. Maybe her answer would still have been no - but she'd have had to work at telling you. Ask a professional Planning Consultant to give you an initial - paid for - consultation. Choose the planner carefully. And when you have that first opinion, ask a different planning consultant - the one you really want working for you (NOT the first planner) for an opinion. That way, there's no conflict of interest. You may still decide not to proceed. This way, you will have evidenced why. And that's important because otherwise there'll always be a bit of you which niggles - well maybeeeeee we might have ............

Thanks all for your views, I've checked references from past jobs and have narrowed the scope so hopefully reducing any risk, which means I'll need to do a bit more myself, but hopefully I can find the right balance between these.

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That pattern is called "how to fold the lid of a cardboard box such that a small child cannot get back out". I am not sure what they are called, but I have a friend who gets his electronic goods delivered to his company in interlocking foldable wooden 4 sided collars with hinges at the corners, which turn into planters or compost heap holders just by stacking. I have yet to obtain more than about two, such is the demand. I quite like the "hinges for corners" technique. Ferdinand

This is an interesting discussion. Your typical 3 phase meter has just 1 dial used to take readings and produce your bill (talking ordinary meter here not smart meter) So I assume there are 3 current transformers and the electronics of 3 separate meters and they are summed to give the total reading. One would have thought in a modern meter, each sensor only meters and counts import. So if 1 phase was exporting, that would not reduce the import reading, it would just be ignored, just as it is on a single phase meter. The export might be stored in an internal register but not normally displayed on the meter.

The UFH isn't set up that way unfortunately. One thing I already fixed though is that a loop to the hall/WC runs through the room. The WC is the coldest room in the house (north facing, obscured glass and outside walls/roof) so we had to separate this loop from the hall thermostat and put a wireless thermostat into the WC. Somehow the wireless controller was confused and running every morning irrespective of the actual temperature. I fixed it in time honoured tradition by switching the controller off then on again. I had hoped that this would help but it made no discernible difference. The other thing I did was the heating installers insulated all their pipes, but the pool guys didn't, so I insulated the last 5m of pipe in the plant room hoping that this would cause less heating demand through these pipes. I have one other thing which I plan to try, which is tuning down the boiler. At the moment it runs at around 61C with the hot water tank set at around 57C. The boiler temperature drives the flow temperature to the pool and UFH manifolds, so if I can turn this down a bit I might reduce heat loss that occurs in the ceiling voids where these pipes run. I have been working on doing this without affecting the supply of hot water.

As soon as I see 'works like a refrigerator in reverse' I get annoyed. They work the exactly the same as a refrigerator, just that the cold bit is outside and the warm bit inside.

@Pretty Mouth where in the UK are you as different sewage providers have different rules. For Severn Trent you will need a build over agreement, and I would check your local provider as to what they need you to have first. In terms of rod access, you can put a sealed access point at the bottom of a stack but it’s a last resort. I would replace everything in the plot boundary possibly with uPVC and use swept entries to the runs - the far right gully I would make into a back access gully and put a long swept bend on it so you can rod or jet from there down the run. The rest, make them as short as possible with minimal turns and always use a 45 degree Y to connect.

Plumber husband, who worked on the sewage side of Anglian Water for 25 years, searching out many a rodding access, says this - You may have to have a "sealed manhole" within the house. The only other alternative is at the base of the soil stack. He would think that this might be acceptable depending on physical access etc.

Have you watched the grand design programme when they where trying to restore an old castle, when OH DEAR IT JUST FELL DOWN.

Pretty good example of how much money you can save by doing it yourself Sure your not going to be as quick as someone doing it each day Does it matter Well done ?

My feeling would be that it'd be unwise to seal up the bottom of your joists. Any water that gets into that area, for any reason, needs to get out as soon as possible.

Thanks. Its the North face of the house we are building. Nobody will ever look at it. ? Useful comment, though. Thanks