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For everyone who has been asking, I gave Jeremy a call yesterday. The good news is he has recovered from his injury and having to take rather unpleasant medication alongside that. On the Buildhub front, Jeremy was undertaking a lot of the day to day background admin work of the forum prior to his injury. Having been away from it, he has been less inclined to get back involved and has various other interests which occupy his time. His missing blog is simply down to the EU domain being shut down. Unfortunately, that's where his back up was hosted as well so what's here on Buildhub is it, unless he can dig out a hard back up copy (which he thinks he has). That's all there is. Hopefully he will return at some point in the future.

Hot water pipe in (passing through as it were) a built-in wardrobe on its way to the hot taps in the sink and bath in the ensuite. Top temperature in a heat wave 60. @Temp , you must be a very nice man, a very very nice man. Subtlty - in West Lancashire - come and visit sometime?

Assume this is better . Nothing fixed yet . Guessing these geberit pipes go here ?

I think I may have found the issue , neighbour has a raised flower bed which is directly on the corner I have the issue .

It sounds like you want what I did in the utility room. Starting with a bare floor (in my case chipboard then ply glued and screwed) I went round the edges with tanking tape which goes about 2" up the wall all round. I then tiled the floor, making sure the grouting was good and all joints fully filled, and a tiled skirting made from strips cut from the same tiles, again all fully grouted. This is to ensure if there is a minor spill or leak from the washing machine, it can't get down any gaps at the edge of the room and under the floor. But it is not a proper wet room and in the event of a serious leak it would run out under the door into the hall.

So in the MIs it states the following : Go back to Panasonic, quote their own MIs and say this did not require a buffer as over 50 litres. Give them the exact reference above and then ask them when they would like to send their engineer ....

(But it’s not finished yet or had you not noticed?)

Haha.. I don’t have the strength.

May well also be referring to water regulations and the requirements for Part G that all appropriate hot water pipework should be insulated for min 1m.

Well, we'll wait and see. There will be a lot of disruption no matter what happens, need to see how much of it is still there in 12 months. Boris is potentially in a pickle either way I think, but I'm pretty convinced he's going to bugger off in the spring anyway due to covid / parenthood / boredom / better pay knocking out a weekly Telegraph column / etc..

Try a foam roller first.

Right 2nd time ( hopefully ) ??

It might also be possible to replace the relays if they have numbers on them.

You could replace the quadrant with a decorative plaster cornice to cover the error:

And this is why you back roll sprayed surfaces.

Think I'd be running a scalpel around the damaged area to define an "edge" beyond which is guaranteed stuck down paint.

Just do that and move on, you won’t notice the paint with that dodgy little square tile visible.

Because I ripped some beading off that had a line of Mastik stuck to the paint .

So just finely sand the torn paint back to good I.e stuck paint ? Then fine roller ? . I could set the sprayer up just for this bit if I really really have to !! Photo to help place issue

From the installation instruction manual for my 5kW Aquarea model (WH-MDC05F3E5): I interpret this as suggesting a buffer tank is not required. I believe there's a small internal buffer in the unit, hence the use of "additional" here. And the troubleshooting section says this: I assume "is used" is a typo for "if used", which again suggests that a buffer tank is not compulsory. As an aside, the (Panasonic-authorised) engineer who fixed mine suggested that a buffer tank was desirable irrespective of what the manual said.

Tanking would seem like an over the top solution for a bathroom floor. It is more for areas that are constantly getting wet. Simply tiling it and sealing around the edges with silicone would suffice to stop large splashes getting into the ceiling.. TBH though vinyl is waterproof, you could just seal the edges with silicone until you plan to redo the whole room as to do it properly you would need to remove the WC and basin pedestal. You are right about guests. We stayed in an Airbnb while our house was being built. We had not issues, but friends came to stay and flooded the bathroom floor which was not sealed so it went through the ceiling to the flat downstairs.

Blackout curtains and very dark sunglasses, and pull the lighting circuit fuse. Or ask Steve Wonder.

External wall becoming internal? No vertical dpc?

External levels look too high

I have to question rising damp there. Looks like the render has go over the top of the DPC with no break in it. That left hand wall looks very damp also, paint peeling etc. How wet is the ground around there? Digging a trench next to the wall and filling with pea gravel may help, but i'd say a DPC bridge is going to be an even bigger issue.

Perfectly normal, there is a strip of foam under the tiles there to stop them rattling during high winds

Not every proposal goes to the planning committee (unless this is mandatory in wherever you live). So if you are lucky this may not even happen in your project. Being on extra-good terms with all potential neighbours before submission would also help minimise objections and hence over-complicating the case and hence the planning committee. (requires some legwork, minimal budget and a lot of sucking up). With regards to discharge of conditions, we paid our PM on an hourly basis to discharge these. Probably because we just could not be bothered to fight with him any further. IN essence, he could not care less, and I ended up chasing the planning officer, producing the required evidence of compliance, doing basic drawings etc. Totally doable. Our PM claimed he could not get hold of the officer for 3 weeks - I picked up the phone and got throught in 5 min.... In essence all discharge of conditions is about proving that you've taken the necessary steps. E.g., you must present evidence that your side windows are obscured (send them the paperwork from your window people and some pick), that your ground has been checked for contamination (send them the relevant report), that your fancy new fence is in line with the street vernacular (take a few pics and send). Not really worth paying someone a heap of buck to do this for you.

If you want to save money ditch the zinc roof eye watering costs, and lots of alternatives out there. this is mine. If that’s the sort of thing your after. Ignore all the white bits I was hacking a window reveal about.

We have a Panasonic Aquarea T-Cap. Not sure how different it is to yours, or whether this is any help, but we had this fault and it was the water pump (it had seized). Unit was circa 2.5 years old at the time (4.5 years old now) and Panasonic supplied replacement without even needing to see the faulty one (which suggests it wasn't the first) and paid a fixed fee to our installer to replace.

Yer the trim is a nice touch, but is required due to them advising to leave the 5mm gap all the way around to ensure a plumb fit. My Dolle one replaced a young mans one and it is waaaaaaaaay better.

We are paying £350 a month on a campsite 4 miles from home which includes water, electric and two half full calor gas bottles (we have purchased two more since arriving in June). We negotiated a long lease and Covid helped as campsites couldn't open. With us both working from here during lockdown it's been stressful and not particularly comfortable to be honest - too hot, too cold, damp etc. If you have anyone local who has an Airbnb/holiday home it is worth contacting them to see if you can do a long let. Living on site wasn't an open as getting a static on our site wouldn't have worked and we didn't want to move into 'proper rented' with bills on too of a minimum of £600 a month rent for a bedsit/flat.

Just to follow up with this I opted for the ubiquity lite access point. Used the WiFi analyser app mentioned above and took readings in each room using my current talk talk router. These ranged from 59mb in the kitchen to 3mb in the farthest bedroom. Set up the new access point in the same location and ran all the same tests. Was an improvement in each room. Moved the access point to the first floor landing approximately in the middle of the house to find the sweet spot. Now the slowest I get in the farthest room is 45mb with some rooms touching 70mb. It's fair to say I'm well impressed with the range and speeds im getting with this access point. Using the ubiquity app on my phone setup took 5 mins. Was able to change the SSID and password to the same as was previously used on the talk talk router so nothing need changed on any device.

Sad that Jeremy is not about, he always struck me as a very decent human being. The amount of effort he would put into even the most basic question was impressive, occasionally overwhelming but always appreciated by me.

He posted me a box of lights and fittings he had spare for free at his expense when I was new to the forum some 5 years ago I used them and the lights still shine at the hut One of the good guys he's is, in my camp

sorry but I disagree with you on this one, he was sometimes misquoted and some didn’t like his sticking to his guns regarding his answers. Frankly his knowledge on all things was extensive.

I bought mine from a local van park (was too tired for them to rent out anymore) £1700 plus £500 delivery to site and positioning in back garden from their local mover. Was a two bed, two bath 40ft x 12ft. Moved in Easter 2015 with wife, two junior school kids and cat. Moved out Aug 2016 to new build. Was a bit nippy during winter (even with the gas fire) until we got a tip from a friend to run a dehumidifier round the clock which removed residual moisture and pumped out a bit of heat. Perfectly comfortable after that. The prob with gas fires is that they emit lots of water vapour which then condensed out at night and makes the floor a bit damp and therefore cool in mornings. Bigger issue was summer heat, no easy way to get rid of that apart from keeping blinds down until east sun has passed overhead in mornings. Tried to sell it on to other local self builders with no luck. Sold it back to caravan mover for £1000 and he took it to a fruit farmer somewhere. Net cost of accommodation for 18 months was £1200, or £122/month. Electricity bill was a bit higher than usual due to de-humidifier but we would have been spending £2000+/month for a local 2/3 bed rental - so an additional £35000 to spend on the build. Also huge advantage to being on site during build from a security pov, see whats going on and also being there when trades need to check something or a delivery arrives. Did we enjoy it? Not particularly. Was it unbearably awful? Not particularly. Was it worth it? Absolutely.

@pocster has experience of cutting them out with a dremmel. So maybe ask him how not to do it?!?

No fecking way I’m heading down that rabbit hole again!

I think that one's gone. According to historians, the Colisseum was finished in 8 years. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/colosseum/qanda/#:~:text=Answer%3A Between seven and eight,said to have been slaughtered. @Onoff's boudoir took longer already.

OK. If the lintel is basically sound, I'd repoint the bit you've done before you rake out any more mortar, and then do a bit at a time until it's complete. I see what you mean about cleaning up the stone. I'd probably re-point and paint it white first, and then if I didn't like it, render it and re-paint. And why are the curtains closed? You working naked again?? ?

Go (expletive deleted) one then ! . I let you enter my perfect humble hole and you just leave a grubby deposit .

It will never be finished . I mean (expletive deleted) me still no heating in there - assume you meant @Onoff ?????

Go on ! It’s like War and Peace - but even more boring . I’d also like to point out in the time it took @Onoff to do his bathroom I built an entire house ; so I’m ninja fast !!

You've time to re do that one with the double hole in then! ?

be careful then.

I’m in the same boat, have a quick look at prices, I think some must be made with gold particles glued together by a unicorn. Im also looking at siniat aqua board.

Suck the paint up in a straw and blow it back out, altering your amount of puff to change the spray pattern. Works a treat, have used this ol trick to get me out of loads of situations. ??

Alcatraz ?

We had a large touring caravan already so this became the hubby and dogs’ home for 9 months. I had a rental apartment 2 mins from the office but I went back to the site at weekends. I couldn’t have coped personally with living full time in the caravan whilst trying to get ready for the office each day, but my hubby wanted to be on site plus we would have struggled to get a rental with pets. Hubby used to drive me back to the rental on a Sunday night, have a decent bath instead of the poxy little caravan shower, and then we would have a meal out or go to the cinema for a bit of normality. The touring caravan wasn’t that cold. We had blown air heating, a gas fire and electric blankets. I was however grateful for the rental apartment when the weather was like this!

For the last time, he did not come out as a woman and move in with Joiner.