epsilonGreedy

I think this was @ToughButterCup's submission for the 2022 Booker Prize in the short creative story category but he posted it here by mistake. The Booker panel is going to be very confused when they open Ian's competition entry and find a question about revising a self builders VAT claim.

The BBC will want to use your home to film a period drama.

I am typing with one finger. Re. Growing firewood there are some established calcs on kwh that can be harvested annually from an acre. You won't heat the whole house from an acre of coppice woodland but the contribution will be useful. After totting up your first hear of oil deliveries you will have an idea about annual space heating Kwh.

See my new thread on nail size for fixing roofing battens. Would be interested in your opinion.

Enhance with caution, old properties need to breath and shed moisture so don't smother it with modern exterior paint or go down the insulated plasterboard route before you understand how the structure behaves. Give yourself a year to settle in, review your options and also acclimatise. Your grandparents thought it normal to wake up in the morning to a 10 degree bedroom and then go downstairs to build a fire. Could you acquire an acre or two to start a coppicing rotation to grow firewood? That would halve your annual fuel bill.

That sounds about right, 1800 litres to get you through the coldest 5 months of the winter plus another 600 for the rest of the year. You need to insulate with PIR foam insulated plasterboard and also get used to cold bedrooms. However wait a year before going down the insulated plasterboard route because you need to understand how dry your walls are as this affects your fixing options. Following the adventures of Charlie DIYte on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYTbMi2Jgfk

When fixing my first few roofing battens I dutifully followed industry guidance and fixed the battens with 65mm x 3.5 nails driven in with a hand hammer. This did not feel right and I was concerned about splitting the battens at the ends. I quick stopped fixing battens within 300mm of a batten end to give me time to reconsider. When visiting a large national chain of roofing supplies I asked what nails do the pros buy to fix battens. The unequivocal answer was "they all buy those 65mm x 2.65mm bags". Then a voice piped up in the queue behind me and pro customer chipped in advising never nail roofing battens with 3.5mm thick nails because they will split. He also advised blunting the nails by tapping them against a stone because the nails will then tear their way into the batten rather than the nail point levering open the wood grain thus triggering a split. How come published sources all claim roofing battens should be fitted with stonking great wood splitting nails and a national chain of roofing merchants does not even stock such a nail for that purpose!

I have a 1kg bag of 30mm long copper clout nails for my new roofing project. Given 25mm thick roofing battens and 5mm thick slates and the fact at the point of fixing the new slate is resting on its downhill buddy slates in the course below then a 30mm long fixing nail will stop within the batten wood and so no risk of the nail puncturing the underlay membrane. However an eave course slate rests directly on the first roofing batten. In this case there is a risk of fixing nails punching through into the membrane. In view of this concern should I fix the eave course slates with shorter clout nails, say 25mm long?

Ok lots of food for thought in this thread, thanks chaps. In reverse thread order: I can see the sense in this, i.e. breaking up wind driven horizontal laminar flow. I don't want a mini tsunami building up against the hip rafter capping and sneaking under. The riven edge to each slate creates a small gully even when the slates were tightly abutted but I can see that an extra 2mm forms a better gully. Yup can see that, also if my nailed slates wiggle a bit in a strong wind a 2 or 3mm gap stops the adjoining slate edges clatting each other. Nope, I require only positive self builder vibes this week. ? Good to get the science behind my original thermal concern. My first intuitive trial layout of 16 slates indoors yesterday featured 1mm gaps and given the other concerns I am erring towards a 2mm gap so well beyond the thermal expansion risk. Your US link also mentions that a larger gap allows a poorly cut oversized slate to be fitted without throwing out the overall bond pattern. The US article linked to earlier mentions that a larger gap facilitates future repairs with slate hooks. Another vote for a 2mm minimum gap. Capillary action never crossed my mind. My reading of this is that any water sneaking upwards under the lap will be constrained to a single tile because the capillary action will be broken at the 2mm to 3mm side gap. Re sizing the gap with nails, this was not done while laying slates on the roof. After dark yesterday I arranged my builder trestles indoors with two 4.5m roofing battens running cross them and then did a trial positioning of 16 slates to get an idea of the eave course. My first intuitive positioning attempt resulted in 1mm gaps. I then tried again with roofing nails as spacing pegs to see what 2.6mm looked like. At this point I thought 3mm gaps they must be joking hence this thread. My confidence in published industry standard practice was knocked last week after a visit to a specialist roofing merchant, that deserves a separate thread.

This is the key phrase, the Council enforcement office cannot hand down a criminal conviction I assume. It would be interesting to know what proportion of enforcement actions end up with the CPS and how many of those are dropped.

Ok but it does sound similar to the situation of a motorist caught by a police speed trap complaining to the traffic officer roadside by saying why don'y you go and arrest some real criminals. An enforcement officer at a council will be painfully aware of how many cases were dropped due to insufficient legal or financial resources. Challenging them on the limited resources point risks provoking them.

It works very well. I get about 4 no-change emails a year and received a valid alert within a few working days of a valid change I had initiated via a solicitor.

There must be a strong Norman lineage in your DNA, we Anglo-Saxons use a difference moral compass. This is not really the case, for centuries physical Deeds were proof of property title and ownership coupled with the principal of a Freeholder. Then the emerging Big State decided to get its money grabbing paws on the whole process of property ownership transactions which lead to the Land Registry and ultimately electronic Deeds. We now live in a society where a freeholder can be dispossessed overnight due to a design error in the bureaucratic processes of the big state and when the Freeholder appeals to another branch of the state to uphold the principal of property ownership the paid retinues in service to the State slink away saying its complicated. We may as well wind the clock right back to the Norman Yoke and decree all land is owned by the state and granted on the whim of state employees as a grace & favour. In the political circles I move in there is a theory about the "New Feudalism" descending on our society because of declining social mobility. Our parents lived in a meritocracy but we live in some other social order. Now that property ownership and freeholder are ephemeral rights in your New World Order I fear the New Feudalism has arrived.

Your case about their mal administration is convincing hence it can only be counter productive to throw in the extra fluff and trivia I just quoted above. Speculating about the council's capacity and motivation to challenge your actions will just prompt them to think "go on punk make my day".

What an astonishing perspective, though I am not surprised in your case. Respecting property ownership is a fundamental principal of our society that goes back centuries but not any more according to you. Owner A was clearly the rightful owner and since he never sold the house he must still be the owner by any normal sense of decency. Owner B is either the victim of a huge fraud or an accomplice in an elaborate scam, either way he should be forced out. Buyer beware and all that.

I think this is a reference to the recent news that some branches of the nation state declined to intervene in the case of whole house theft through land registry fraud, yet another branch of the state is willing to criminalize a householder over a dispute about dormer window cladding.

Sure but I have never read any thread that examines the likely timeline of a worst case enforcement action. Presumably after many further letters from the Council they will report a matter to local police who will visit the property owner for a chat. Then the police would have to submit a file to the Crown Prosecution Service and given press reports about the performance of that branch of government, 3 years later the CPS would probably decide to drop the case.

I will be fixing some (350) natural slates this week to cover a 30 degree pitch hipped roof. While creating a gauging measure stick to see how many slate and a halves I would need where the slates meet the hip I was surprised how excessively far apart the slates appear with a 2.65mm gap (which is less than the regulation 3mm gap). I dropped two 30mm x 2.65mm copper nails between each slate to space them out closer to the regulation gap. It feels counter intuitive to lay slates with such a large spacing. What factor drives the 3mm spacing standard, or put another way what downsides might there be to laying the slates a bit closer? My personal intuition is that a 1mm to 1.5mm space looks about right and should cope with thermal expansion. Mr FixMyRoof calls it the "slate abutment gap". https://www.fixmyroof.co.uk/videos-and-guides/pitched-roof/slate-a-roof/

Thanks. A bit of reading up on the appeals process clarifies that these typically take 3 months. Worst case is that the recipient of an enforcement notice has 4 months to effect a solution. The OP said the scaffolding had to be taken down which implies there is time to revise the cladding. I assume if a householder completely refused to comply with an enforcement notice after loosing an appeal many more months would elapse before a council appointed contractor would be appointed to enter and alter a property.

Does an enforcement action take effect from the day it is issued, or does the Council have to convince a Judge about the validity of its argument?

The 2nd and 3rd photos you uploaded are examples of well proportioned leg widths, they appear to be 250mm to 400mm wide. I called them cheeks in my post earlier but after looking at a diagram I understand the fireplace cheeks are not present in a purpose designed stove fireplace. Your later fireplace design that wraps the existing fireplace in a grander chimney breast make more sense and creates what you want for much less disruption.

It would be useful to see a photo of an example fireplace that you want to implement. Are you keeping the current stove? Do you want a feature brick lining of the new fireplace? Having spent many hours thinking about fireplace design I suggest that if you extend the fireplace inwards then incorporate wide cheeks in the design. One brick wide cheeks (100mm) look naff. Re. Depth I think a stove that projects 50mm forward of the chimney breast looks about right.

A reinforced concrete lintel 140mm high by 100mm wide will hold up the internal wall of the chimney breast across your desired 1.1m increased width. I cannot comment on the structural surgery required to transition to the new opening, my house was only 5ft High when I decided to demolish the chimney and widen it. Given the effort involved why stop at 1.1m? How wide is the room along the wall photoed?

It could be argued that humanity is already mid way through a planetary engineering experiment when looking at the gradient of the co2 ppm graph. I do agree with your main point that we still have a limited understanding of the whole climate model. Water vapour is the most influential atmospheric component that effects the earth's temperature, though few of the new-age me-too climatologists appreciate that fact. Western academia has descended into a Dark Age as the concept of freedom of inquiry has been purged. All climate scientists believe in global warming because it is now impossible to maintain employment in that role without outwardly subscribing to the new religion. The climate alarmists are also crafty with their interpretation of the collective expressed belief of climate scientists. If I was a climate scientist responding to proper survey I would answer as follows: Is anthropocentric global warming occurring now? Yes human activity has had an observable effect on the earth's climate for the past 10,000 years dating back to when agriculture was invented and caused a significant release of methane. Does the rise in atmospheric co2 ppm that is occurring now and the projected rise concern you? Yes atmospheric co2 ppm is a vital global statistic and human activity has caused this graph to go haywire to a degree which concerns me. There is only one earth and it is not equipped with lifeboats and so as a precautionary measure humanity should endeavour to bring co2 emissions under control promptly. Has human activity triggered a significant effect on the climate to-date? No. There is some recent data which indicates a hint of change but no observable effects give a cause for concern at this point in time. Some graphs that suggest otherwise are the product of statistical manipulation by those with a political agenda for example these graphs have selective start dates that coincide with global dips in temperature such as the Little Ice Age and the cold spell in the 1970s. Given current projections for the rise in co2 ppm will a worrying degree of global warming occur? In geological time for sure, we can trust the geologists on that one. Geologists are the only scientists with any demonstrable credibility on the subject of global temperature prediction. Human history of the past 10,000 years and the geological record of the past 200,000 years indicate the earth can warm a couple of degrees above the present level for 100's or 1000's of years without adverse effect on the climate or sea level, so I think we have more important things to worry about. What concerns you most about global warming? It is being adopted as a new 21st century religion which licences authoritarians to institute tyrannical population control. The equivalent has not been seen in Europe since the wars of religion 500 years ago. Of more concern is the fear being placed in the minds of the earth's children many of whom now suffer diagnoseable mental health problems over a worst case climate scenario that will not adversely affect human society for 200 or 2000 years.

By now most Britons are unable to distinguish weather from climate change because of the main stream media. Your philosophical alarmist mates in the main stream media attribute every flood, gale, snowstorm or black cloud to climate change. Anyhow you clearly consider yourself to be an expert on climate change. Why not enlighten us and describe what the climate will be like in 2100 if co2 ppm climbs to 500 over the next 80 years and the world only just achieves net zero by the end of the century.