AliG

I have the gardener sorted out to do it if I need it done. He said he tends to dig a round hole so he can stand centrally in it and rotate. I explained the pipe is under pressure which is a safety issue. He was not concerned. He does a lot of work on large corporate sites. As we surveyed the plot we noted that many tree stumps seem to be directly above the water main. Probably will not pull them as was the original plan just in case.

I also have Rationel 3G windows. They seal extremely well. If noise is a concern I recommend laminated glass which adds a few percent to the cost and considerably reduces noise transmission. As mentioned tough I would also focus on the airtightness as a lot of the noise actually comes in around the frames and absolutely having MVHR and no trickle vents. Our windows got considerably quieter when we put mastic around the window plasterboard junction on the inside. If noise is a concern though I would also look at the design of the house as relates to wind. We have a couple of rooms with vaulted ceilings, they are considerably noisier when it is windy than the bedrooms with a loft above which are pretty much silent. Massive improvement on our old house though.

The interior dimensions are 6x6m which is a decent size. The door as shown however, is only 4.25m wide, 4.15 opening, which is 13'7. Nowhere near big enough if you ever wanted to put two cars in it. However, a bigger door would mean a bigger beam above it and add a bit to the cost. If you are thinking it will be half storage and half garage and you may want to have a toilet etc in there, it might be an idea to put a 2.5-3m door to one side and have the other side clear. Then you could even wall it off at some point. I looked at the cost difference between single and double skin. It wasn't that large by the time you take into account the need for piers etc. Meanwhile you have a much more robust and waterproof building. From memory I think you would save around £1500. If you are just having a single skin steel door, there is no point in insulating the walls. Would probably save around £500. Again though if you are considering spending more time in the garage, it is probably a good idea to have the insulation in there now as then you could actually build a room inside the garage later.

I priced one up a few months ago for my parents and got to similar numbers. I reckoned £22k with a flat roof, including electric door. The foundations in particular were expensive, I reckon you are looking at £5kish for a concrete base. If you are building a double garage, I would make the door bigger, it will be tight to get two cars through that door. We have changed to a car port, won't be that much cheaper, but you do save on the foundation in particular.

I have examined Scottish Water's policies and they suggest that no one can do any work above their pipes without their permission. It is not clear to me how enforceable this is and I need to consider the likelihood of upsetting them versus the speed of just getting it done. Every single person I have spoken to immediately says that they are the worst company to deal with once I mention who it is.

We know where the pipe is from a survey this morning to within maybe plus or minus 100mm. Considering it is 400mm wide we should hit it. But I think you are right on the 1m square hole. It might be easier to place the pipe with this size of hole. Off to investigate if I can get someone to do this.

Actually the biggest issue is that my wife complains if I spend too much time helping my parents. I am going to call the guy who does our garden and see if he knows someone, otherwise I will try the builder.

OK, but I was thinking more shovels than a pick axe!

I had genuinely never seen one but it seems pretty straightforward. Presumably digging a larger hole in the top solid then down with the post digger from there is the way to go.

It is a 16inch cast iron pipe with 1inch thick walls. It would seem very difficult to damage that digging by hand, but the method suggested by the water company suggests it is actually made of glass!

The ground report nearby describes it as 0.4m of topsoil then medium strength gravelly clay. There are no water table issues. I need to investigate how to use the digging spoons.

Hi, I had a guy out this morning to locate the pipes that I may have mentioned on a previous thread. The pipes are as shown on our title map which is approx 1-1.5m away from where they show on the utility map. As I was almost certain this was where they were due to the map plus the position of markers above ground I have worked on a solution to get around this. The guy was also able to tell me that the top of the pipe is just over 1m deep. Would it be doable to get a couple of guys out to dig a hole this deep by hand to locate the exact top of the pipe? I am going to need to know the exact position as even 100mm will make a difference.

Sorry cannot help on groundworks, was all organised by my builder. I do have a good place for a soil survey if you haven't already had that done.

Welcome, I may have some contacts, always happy to help

Seems like a good idea. We have a lot of stone coping stones and they soak up too much water, I need to seal them this year when it dries up. What I do notice is that water tends to run through the joints, so even if the porcelain is not porous you need to watch for what happens at the joints. One tip for a roof terrace. We have a small area and the slabs on the terrace are set off the bassoon plastic feet to be level with the door that opens onto the terrace. The problem with this is they are set higher than the membrane and so water splashes onto the render on the walls. Thus if doing this I would recommend that the membrane runs to above the height of any surface on the terrace.

Fair, although they aren't supposed to be listening all the time. They'd be sick of hearing about Meghan and Harry if they are! I cannot believe how useful we find them though. We have various ones with screens as well as the one with a clock/timer and just plain ones. I thought the screens would be more useful, but those ones drive me crazy as they have worse microphones than the other ones. We have moved them next to beds as they are more likely to hear you. In the kitchen it is used constantly for timers, reminders, weight conversions and music. It gets used multiple times every day. Try doing a weight conversion from cups to mils when your hands are dirty. In the bedrooms they are used as glorified alarm clocks and to turn the lights off and on without putting in an extra switch next to the beds. In the cinema room I have connected it to my Harmony remote and we can use it to turn the screen off and on and pause as well as turn the lights off and on. In the gym we use it for music and to set timers. They can turn the lights off and on and playing music in most of the house. Other unexpected uses include answering random general knowledge questions, like if you cannot remember someone's age. It is quite variable as to whether you get an answer. One of my favourites is adding up long lists of numbers. You are almost certain to mistype one on a calculator/phone. Also things like how many days until Easter. What I find is the more you just see if it can do something and it can the more useful it becomes. Oh and we use them as an internal intercom system.

My wife and daughter were very against having Alexas in the house. Once we started to use them we ended up with more and more of them. We have 7 now. If anyone really cared what was said in our house they would no doubt bug it or tap into our phone calls and messages. I am not worried. Pretty much everything you do on the internet is already tracked. I do agree though, I don't need a mart immersion heater, oven or dishwasher. The only useful thing I can think of is that we do have Heatmiser which means you can turn off the hot water when you go on holiday and turn it back on so it is warm for a shower as soon as you get home.

I am not sure that you have as much room as you think upstairs once you account for reduced headlight areas, but it is hard to tell from the render. Main issue downstairs is having the stair open to the kitchen. That is an issue for fire regs and I would move the kitchen door to the other side of it. As here seems to be space in the upstairs landing I would have a half landing and turn the stair back on itself so it does not create a pinch point on the way into the kitchen. This would also widen the hall beside the stairs upstairs which is very narrow especially when it is such a big hall. Further winder staircases are difficult to use and only normally used when people lack space, you have plenty of space for a proper half landing. I would be tempted to do away with that study downstairs and have a proper cupboard and larger WC. I know people like the idea of pantries, but I don't really see the point, how much food would you realistically keep in the house. If you really want one then fair enough. Not sure about the utility room. I certainly wouldn't spend the money on it having 4 windows. They also get in the way of being able to use the wall space. Why not put a study off the back of the kitchen if you need two studies and make the utility room smaller. We have a large laundry room and the units are arranged in an L. I think units across from each other with lots of opening doors facing each other would get in the way. You would be better putting them all along one side. I would consider reconfiguring it so the boot room is larger and opens into the kitchen without going through the utility room. As you have a laundry room upstairs, what is the utility room actually for? We have the same arrangement and made the downstairs utility much smaller, it just has storage for cleaning supplies and a sink. On the other hand depending on what goes in there the plant room may be a little tight. I like upstairs, bed 4 might be better with the bed against the side wall and losing the wall in the room as the bed is a bit tight to the window. Similarly if you did the same in bed 1 you could have room for some seats in as well. Those walls are normally used when the dressing or ensuite is behind them but in your case are eating into the space. Unless you really want to face the windows for a view?

I wouldn't think so. Unless you were increasing the size to be able to export more than 4kW

Two current issues - 1. It looks like the local AC voltage rises above 253V in the middle of the day causing inverters to cut out. If this is the case I can ask the DNO to adjust voltage. 2. We had two inverters replaced. It appears that one of the replacement inverters is no working.

I had to do all that at my last place. As it was a like for like swap on the inverters they literally had to just take them down and plug the same connectors back in. As I have been up to the loft about 20 times today trying to isolate the problem I am confident I can swap it out myself if required now. As I have two the same and one seems broken I am going to swap the panels and AC connections over just to check it isn't something else.

It was replaced by the original MCS installer who are based about an hour away. They appeared to charge me for the time required to come to my house then drive somewhere to get the meter then drive back. So a 15 minute job had hours of labour. I was not pleased. I am thinking I might try switching the cables over to see if it is definitely the inverter, but I suspect it is.

Thanks, already checked that. They are configured for the UK, which is a maximum 253V. It seems like over high voltage is not an unusual problem so I will give it a couple of days to check then speak to the DNO. They are Solis inverters, no idea why one seems to be broken again, will wait to get an idea of the voltage issue before pursuing this. My parents will be at the other end of the street. As well as my issues they have a flat roof, so whilst I saved money on tiles the architect wanted to specify a specific flat roof system for PV. This increased the cost of the roof making what I think would be a 3kW system uneconomical. I also couldn't get away from a niggling feeling that drilling holes through your flat roof to mount PV is a recipe for leaks at some point in the future. The electrician felt that generation meters might be lower quality.

I created a thread asking about this the other day. My entire ground floor is at ground level. The DPC rises above the ground in a similar way to that shown above. It must be possible, think of all the Grand Designs type houses where they have seamless movement onto terraces level with the inside floors.

In my last houe we had solar panels installed under the old high FIT rate. After around 18 months the generation meter broke. I didn't notice for 6 months as I was not regularly checking it. So I lost around £600 of FIT payments and had to pay a couple of hundred for a new generation meter to be installed. It was also a hassle requiring considerable paperwork to get the FIT transferred over when I moved. It took months after we moved. A few months ago we had a massive lightning storm in Edinburgh. Apparently PV systems are not normally protected from lightning. 2 of our 3 inverters broke. Luckily the manufacturer agreed to replace them under warranty. So again after £300 of bills to figure out what was wrong with the system and replace the inverters we were back up and running. That's probably about the value of one year's electricity savings as we aren't on a FIT now. We also cannot get paid for export electricity as we are on three phase and it is still almost impossible to get a three phase smart meter. I did ask the electricians if they regularly have to fix systems and they said yes and that the generation meter was the thing most likely to break. Anyway over Christmas it seemed like we were generating very little PV. I thought it was just the weather, but now it is sunnier I checked it out today. One of the three inverters seems to be broken. it trips the RCD or sends the AC voltage up over 350V when it is on. The other two are not able to generate much electricity as the local grid voltage, which has always been high, keeps drifting over 253V, the point at which they stop exporting and reset. I have two of them running again current voltage is around 245V. I will see what happens at lunchtime tomorrow when everybody is generating. I suspect they will trip out again as the voltage rises with more PV hitting the network. If so I will have to contact the DNO re reducing the voltage. The result of this is I cancelled any plans to put PV on my parents' house as it simply isn't worth the hassle especially when they don't have room for as many panels. I thought it would be pretty much a fit and forget system!