Roger440

Agree.

Sadly, thats not been installed with any thought to insulating. Many are too clodse together. If you are expecting the plumber to do it, i fear you will be disappointed. Id be very surprised if there werent gaps all over the place. Rather defeating the point. Bit like builders do with insulation...............................

Not in the south east they dont. Bugger all chance of that. That concept seems limited to the rather less economically well off areas, like cornwall. Where, it seems to be a thing.

Correct. I built a 70sqm garage without planning. Dont even think about planning for extraction. Dont give the council a sniff of your plans. Wont happen in a domestic setting. For my paining i put a filter on the outlet so there is zero overspray. If you need to eliminate the smell, add a charcol filter to the output. Not cheap, but, trust me, much better than what will happen if you go down the planning route. Tell nobody anything.

30sqm has nothing to do with it. The 50% of garden does. You are confusing two entirely seperate subjects. You can build right up to the boundary if you want, though that does invoke a 2.5m height limit as opposed to 4. Its all in the link posted earlier. The reason most stuff is under 30sqm is to avoid the need to get tangled up in buiding control and the large increase in costs that invariably follow. I say again. planning and building control are disctinctly seperate things.

You apppear to be fixated on 30sqm. This has NOTHING to do with planning. This is for building regilations approval. Planning is entirely seperate. Providing you stay within the permitted development rules (someone else posted the link), no planning is required at all. But building regs is aplicable over 30sqm. Undersaand the 2 are not related in any way.

Jeeeez, what is all that for!!!!?!!

My apprenticeship was bloody fantastic. Simply nothing like it available to someone leaving schiool today.

Thats an issue too. But being skilled doesnt necessarily mean you take pride in your work. Its clear many dont. In some respects thats worse. Ie, you know how to do it properly, but you just cant be bothered, as opposed to being so ignorant of the task, you dont know you are doing it wrong.

No qualifications are required to work on motor vehicles. Literally, anyone can have a go. And do. Motor trade is just as bad as building. I should know!

The level of "tech" involved in modern building methods left most builders behind a long time ago Espically the concept of insulation. That appears to be a complete mystery.

Its why, for almost everything, i just do it myself now. Its easier and less stessfull Cant even be worrying about building control anymore. That hopeless too. I can do it right and have no cert, or i can have it done wrong, but get a cert. Lots to do at the new place. Will continue on a DIY basis on almost everything. The lack of pride in your work is the real issue. No one cares anymore. A sad state of affairs.

Where does it say they do? Nowhere is the answer. They can, and do, sign off stuff without seeing it. If they werent, that makes it even worse, ie they have inspected a non compliant job, and STILL signed it off. (my garage foundation prep was done by photos. No inspection took place) Indeed, under the new system, alledgedly to stop developrs only having the first house inspected, they now have to submit photos to the BCO. Why do you think that would be. Either way, lots of new build and additions to existing houses gets signed off when its blatently non compliant. (see OP's house (and thousands of others) So, you would agree, they either didnt look at it, or they signed it off knowing it to be non compliant. And there nothing the homeowner can do about it.

For what?

They dont need to carry out ANY inspections if they dont want to. They can (and obviously in some cases do) sign it all off from the comfort of their armchair. As the OP is finding out, out in the real world, there is no recourse against BCO failings, be it private or LA. Which as i said before, renders it completely pointless. So the summary is, no recourse through bco, and most builders just dont care. If they did, they wouldnt do acrap job in the first place. Someone else will buy the house. No need to worry about your reputation when its already in the gutter.

More independant, probably. But equally useless. See my previous posts.

Stick with what you have. Aside from oil, its the cheapest option in your situation.

It will never happen, because it physically impossible to do. There are not enough BCO's. Given the woeful standard of the people building said estates, you would need as many BCO's as people doing actual work. It cant happen, and wont happen. As long as there are private BCO's it definitely cant happen. And there is zero possibility of the council taking up the slack. Mind you, they are just as bad. They signed off the extension and associated works on my last place. 2 increased size houses plus rainwater were all feeding a pre exsisting cesspit. Which had a hole punched in the side to let the water out. All signed off by the council BCO. Fortunately we picked this up on the suevey, negotiated accordingly and replaced with compliant treatment plant. Mind you, the same guy turned up to sign that off. Tried to give me a lecture on the discharge pipe not having concrete round it at the end. I pointed out it was lot better than the last installation he signed off. He was gone sharpish, sign off came in the post a few days later. As before, system is broken and pointless.

As i understand it, for england and wales, they only to need to inspect the first of any specific design. So if 4 designs on the development, 4 houses get inspected. Rest are self certify. I understand that loop hole is, or is about to be closed. They will now have to submit photos of each house. No scope for fiddling that at all !!!!

Never going to happen is it. At best, all you can hope for is that insulation is there. No one is going to check that its all sealed up and air cant get behind it. No BCO is ever going to do that. The builders know that, and the above is the result. And good luck with finding a builder that even grasps that basic concept. Only today a video popped up on facebook, of a builder doing a short tutorial video on wall construction, cavity with PIR boards. Made a point about saying you need to tape the joints, whilst clearly showing significant gaps between the boards just taped over! The system of building regs is broken and utterly pointless.

A easy and noble position to take. Until they propose to put an actual pylon in your own garden. Ask me how i know..................................

I have no doubt it "could" be cheaper, but we both know it wont be. Especially being linked to oil price. I may have missed it but i see no concrete proposal to change that. Nor will there be i suspect. Lots of money to be made under the current arrangement.

I think this last round of posts just proves how much vested interest there is in the status quo. Good like trying to break that. Now, i must get back to pondering my heating challenges. Current favourite looks like a pair of oil boilers. The clock is ticking.

Id love to see what they consist of. Being at gradute level wasnt really what i meant, nor did myself. There was bugger all chance of me achieving A level maths, barely managed O level. So by that, id have been excluded and consigned to the scrapheap from day 1. Fortunately for me, the country had not reached that level of daft at the time i was in school.

Its one of mine too! The good news is, out in the real world, the penny is starting to drop. Plenty of youngsters doing degrees coming out of university, saddled with debt and unable to find a worthwhile job. While there school mates are a few years ahead, earning good money and have no debt because they chose to lean a skill. In a lot of cases those with debt and later into the jobs market will never recover that gap. Thats not going unnoticed for them However, nothing changed that i can see in the mantra, "degree is good" everything else is bad message from government and education types. Thats before we consider the diminished vale of a degree as a consequence of the past 20 years or so. It was so obvious what has happened would happen. But it seems those making the rules seem to be totally incapable of imagning he effects of the changes they make. I dont know why, because its not hard. Which brings us back on track, because Jamespa doesnt seem to be able to grasp the motivation element that inevitably going to be required for the various paties involved with his proposals. As a wise person said to me a long time ago, people will respond to the motivations they recieve, motivate people to do the wrong thing, and they will do just that. Low profit/ high risk jobs will not motivate the kind of people you need. Ie, competent people with real long term businesses with reputations. Protest to the contrary are just deluding oneself.