Bob

 Im sure a policeman in each block would be great if they weren’t useless, glorified traffic wardens. They let kids riot in city centres and grooming gangs rape kids ffs. What good would your policeman per block be. k78 This comment shows you literally have no idea what your talking about, do you even know any police officers or do you base your ideas on what you read in the daily mail. Your ignorant !

That’s really good news, but Sods law if your drilling blind and you can hit a void cable pipe you will.

Reclaimed bricks usually 70p to £1 sometimes a little more depending what they need to match and the local availability 20 per hour ish for labor. The structure may need scaffolding which again increases the cost, it is allot of hard work repointing. I would get a few quotes from local builders and see how they compare. 3 mins to cut a damaged brick out is bloody fast if your using a grinder or not. Once you’ve cut it out you need to replace it and point round all in all it’s hard work. Then you need leave a few hours at the end of the day to wash every car in the street as the grinder will cover everything in dust.

I’m not sure if it’s possible but it may be that you could get someone else to dig the necessary trench and backfill apply for road closure etc if so that will save you a few grand, obvs first choice is to check why they can’t connect to the existing cable but as already mentioned it may be at capacity.

It’s good that you know there is a void would be better if you knew why. There are only a few reasons logically why the concrete wouldn’t have flowed to the bottom these being something is obstructing the void, a bit of durasol wood unevenly set concrete etc or the concrete couldn’t naturally flow down as there was a corner or something similar to flow round. Have a look above the void on the outside and inside of the wall for any obvious reasons why the concrete couldn’t flow. Is the void near the junctions between pours ? Dont inform any other agency until you are sure why there is a void like others have said you’ll open a massive can of worms. That camera might be a mixed blessing. Don’t turn your walls into a Swiss cheese looking for other voids

Plastering / Rendering in a normal house you’ll be putting miles of it on, materials are cheap and if you cock up its not going to kill anyone or cause massive damage unlike electrics or plumbing.

Epsilon greedy it is possible to build for £850 to £900 per sq meter less in some cases. Given a relatively ‘easy’ site the main increase in cost between £900 and £1500 is the deviation from a standard build. House builders pay no where near £1500 granted they have economies of scale but you can make up for some of that if you do it yourself. If I were in your position build the simplest structure I can it may feel simple on paper but when it starts going up there will still be a million decisions to make. Stay positive

I agree with nick from wales if the pipes move freely and are just touching the unit and the unit is attached to the wall properly then any further weight added is unlikely to cause the pipes to leak particularly as the fittings are compression.