AliG

Hi, I have noticed quite often that the water from one of our kitchen mixer taps is not hot. I had put it down previously to maybe being a quirk of our circulating hot water system. But I noticed at the weekend that the other tap in the kitchen was hot and this one just lukewarm whilst running them at the same time, so now I realise there is probably an issue with the tap. It is a Blanco Culina S-Mini. The temperature starts cold when set to cold but only moves to maybe 30C when you move it to hot. Looking on line I found a video suggesting that you need to flush the pipes when you install the tap. Could it be that there is dirt in one of the pipes, or could something else be causing this issue? Thanks

Usually yes. Tesla uses Mercedes column mounted shifter.

Pictures as requested. There aren't actually any handles at all, there is just a metal channel and you pull the back of the doors to open things. Easy to clean than a handle, you can just run a wet cloth along the top edge of the door when it is open. Someone mentioned no dust on another thread about MVHR. I cannot see any dust anywhere in the house and I don't think someone has dusted everywhere. I always thought that most dust was due to dead skin, but in fact I think it is mostly atmospheric dust and pollen coming in from outside. In my flat in London the window sills literally turn grey from the dust from the road outside, I hate to think what it does to my lungs.

Will you have MVHR? As far as I can see, we basically have no dust in the house with MVHR. We have a handleless kitchen, no dust gets in the tracks where you pull the doors.

We have one stainless steel sink and one white Silestone sink. The Silestone sink stains easily and has to be cleaned with Barkeeper's Friend. I probably wouldn't get one again. We changed from 1.5 bowl sinks in the last house to single larger sinks. One thing was I wanted to get a whole oven tray or BBQ grill in the sink, previously they stuck out the side at an angle so you had to fill the sink right up to steep a flat item. Our SS sink is a Blanco Caron XL 60. We were limited in that it had to fit in a 600mm cabinet. If you do like to fill it to wash stuff in the sink it does take a long time to fill a bit sink. My parents have a very modern sink with very sharp corners and say it is very difficult to clean the corners. Undermounted is so much easier to push water and crumbs into the sink. I would also recommend some kind of flexible tap that allows you to move the water around and a waste disposal. As we don't wash much by hand we don't have a draining area as I noticed in previous house that the grooves in the granite got very dirty. This seems no problem at all, sometime we just put things on the flat surface.

I see them on here and on the internet, but I have never actually seen a beam and block floor in Scotland. Does anyone up here have one?

One of the reasons I wanted to move was to have a good sized triple garage as at some point my daughter will be driving and I hated shuffling around cars in front of the house when I was a teenager and noted it was a big issue with my next door neighbour's kids in our last house. However, I am now increasingly thinking that this is not a great long term idea as when self driving is sorted out the notion that you would have multiple cars seems unlikely. You may have one car that you use a lot, but could probably get by on just dialling up a second or third car as needed. I still do not really expect this to be a reality for a good few years, but it is worth thinking about when you consider the lifespan of a house. If this becomes the case if you have an internal garage you may want it to be set up to be easily converted to living space. We go through these same arguments on EVs etc all the time. Hydrogen has lost the argument and is a wasteful way of moving energy about. I guess if we were in a situation where electricity was close to free then the waste of creating hydrogen then turning it back into electricity in a car wouldn't matter, but I suspect that most cars will be battery powered by then. People also forget that battery technology continues to progress. Cost and density improve and charging speeds increase. I wouldn't be surprised to see something like a 1/3 reduction in battery cost and 1/3 improvement in energy density over the next 5 years, any solid state breakthroughs could beat this, but I think this can be done with continuous improvement. This means that 400mile range cars are quite doable with 90-100kWh battery packs. I do not see there being a good payoff on larger range than this. At this level of cost and utility, BEVs kill ICE vehicles for most applications. They won't replace ICE vehicles in every instance, but for the vast majority of uses they will be equal or better. We have had our Tesla for just over 2 years now, finest car we have ever had.TBF as things advance and I can afford to spend more money pretty much every car we have had is the best we have ever had. That's just progress. However, as mentioned, EVs are just better cars. I nipped into the local Porsche dealer the other day to see if they had a Taycan as I have basically stopped driving my 911 since getting a Tesla. A petrol engine just seems rough and annoying compared to an electric motor, a diesel engine seems positively agricultural. My 70+ parents, hardly at the forefront of technology would love their next car to be electric. Access to Charing in urban areas is difficult, but then 24% of households don't have a car. Most of these are probably in those same urban areas. Where I work in London, a lot of my fellow workers don't have cars. They are not worth the hassle in London. Again these areas will benefit from more availability of car sharing, self driving taxis etc. Only around 1% of trips are over 70 miles, we won't need as many chargers as people seem to think, charging at home will suffice for over 99% of trips. I have not once in two years made a trip where I needed to charge the car. There was one trip where we decided to take the train instead. Charging capacity really is not an issue, everyone will not get an electric car tomorrow. Even if they stopped selling ICE cars tomorrow it would take around 7 or 8 years for 50% of cars to be BEVs. There is ample time to manage the grid. The grid will also benefit immensely from the violability of ever cheaper batteries. The screen argument is exaggerated and anyway, it is nothing to do with electric cars, car manufacturers have just decided that this is what people want. What exactly do people do in their cars, how often do you touch controls other than the indicators? I set the AC to auto 22 and hardly ever touch it. We use voice control for sat nav and to pick songs, or just leave the radio on. The Tesla update I got yesterday allows you to control things such as the seat heaters and rear heated window using voice commands, I haven't tried it yet. But again I turn on the seat heater when I get in the car, or more likely using the phone app before I get in and don't touch it after that. Irrespective of how they work there shouldn't be a lot of messing around with you car, you should focus on driving it. The new Tesla update apparently also allows the car to read texts to you and you to reply using voice control. This is clearly for America where you would be amazed how many people think texting and driving is acceptable. Even without physically typing, concentrating on a text and a reply would be exceptionally distracting while driving and I don't think should be allowed.

An even more aggressive advert on the "self charging hybrid" from Lexus(Toyota). https://youtu.be/2MVooknqpgY?list=PL8Lc2mT_BJcwrc8RgQrZwxCIF3S8olx2D Apparently it has two sources of power "petrol and electric". It really is quite galling.

Looking at that last picture, is there any flashing between the flat roof and the side of either house? It doesn't look like it which would make me more concerned about where the water might go. It could start to pool and run into the house wall. The roof also looks in pretty poor condition, I would be considering whether to replace the whole thing whilst work is being done anyway. I guess though the builder might have mentioned this if he thought it needed done. This seems a bit of a thing in the south east, people seem happy to put lots of mismatched extension onto houses, but really it won't look great with a little piece of flat roofed area jutting up on just one side. I think I'd actually be more concerned with this that next door converting the back of their garage. Raising the entire roof on both garages would probably be best, but looking at your neighbour's house versus yours and the lack of gutter, it wouldn't seem like they will be in a hurry to contribute to anything. Depending on the current set up of your drain BC may not want you to connect a rainwater drain to a wastewater drain.

I think it is hard for people to put it in context without a full ground floor plan. As I doubt you'd be blocking the front door, I assume that is a rear door to the garden at the moment and you enter the house at the other side. In that case, it would seem that the space will rarely be used. An en suite would work, but another suggestion might be to make it a study area, otherwise if it is just a rear hall I doubt you will get the benefit of the double height.

I wouldn't recommend UFH for this kind of project. 1. UFH doesn't work well in retrofit situations. It can be done but it is much less efficient on timber floors than solid floors. The ground floor may be a more workable job. I would just stick with radiators upstairs. 2. UFH is designed for a modest low heat output. Unless you can considerably improve the insulation you will have problems. Not only may you not be able to get a high enough heat output to warm the house, but it could see large temperature variations depending on the outside temperature that UFH will not cope well with. Hopefully someone can give you some help on insulating the solid stone walls. I do know that without insulation they have awful u-values, worse than a double glazed window.

Someone bought the house and refurbished it. They then sold it minus part of the garden which they had obtained permission to build a house on. The new owners were the only people who objected to the single storey house even though we already gave permission to build a two storey house. Apparently they cited that it would hurt the value of their house which was ignored.

No CIL here thankfully. We can certainly start work to lock in the existing permission but any redesign would be too much to be a variation.

Thanks No chance of me giving up, it's just age will catch up with mum and dad. Luckily I am not constrained by cash. We can always build the approved house, it's just that my parents don't like it and it doesn't have a downstairs bedroom. At some point we will have to make some kind of start to lock in the permission. It seems to me that the planning system would actually be more efficient if planners were more willing to engage in discussion with people to let them know what was and was not acceptable. Of course it may all be fine, the lack of knowing what is going on really makes the planning process quite frustrating. If a site already has permission for a house and you want a different design that doesn't break any planning rules then I would think it is pretty straight forward, I would love some comments if anyone has experience of this.

So the application eventually went in at the end of November. We have a comment deadline of 27 December. As of today we have 15 objections and I expect more to come in. The currently approved house on the plot had 14 objections. We have 28 supporting comments mainly from friends and family. The planning officer has spoken to the planning consultant and said that he will visit the site after the New Year. This at least is good news as we had no contact from him at all previously. The situation is very frustrating as my mum and dad are not getting any younger and they really cannot afford years of back and forward. It is well over a year since we bought the plot. It seems absurd that we were asked to withdraw a proposal that only had one objection and put in a proposal that will probably end up with around 20 objections. The majority of the objections come from people who objected to the already approved house on the site. As this house is in the same place with windows facing in the same direction etc this seems quite unreasonable that they are getting a second bite at the cherry. It is not clear to me if the precedent of existing permission nullifies the objections to any extent. I have a funny feeling that we might need a third design to get somewhere. The thing is I just don't know if my parents have the stomach for the extra time. It feels like age discrimination to have such a slow moving and vague process that older people really do not have time for. I don't mind playing the long game though.

I can't believe someone would build something like that without insulating the roof. It clearly would have failed building regs if that is the case. Fixing the roof should be your first job before doing anything else. If you want to keep the windows then you'll need to replace them with something with a much better U-Value or do away with them as suggested. But most of the area is roof so really fixing that is the most important job. I think you may as well open it up and see what you are dealing with. You need to know how it is constructed to know the best way to insulate it. Even with a better insulated roof if that is older poor U-value double glazing in the sides it is unlikely that it will be easy to heat in the winter, but it might stop you losing enormous amounts of heat. I would also look at draught proofing the interior doors. We had a conservatory in our old house and while we were working on it a few years ago removed the internal doors. Our gas bill absolutely skyrocketed.

Instead of putting a switch on the door why don't you just wire a PIR between the lights and the switch, leave the switch on and the lights will go off and on automatically when you go into the garage.

If you want a Miele induction hob then this is a great price. Arguably this is because they start off overpriced, but this is not bad for a high end brand name £880 for a 6 zone 80cm wide hob. https://www.costco.co.uk/Appliances/Cooking-Appliances/Hob/Miele-KM6367-1-6-Zone-Induction-Hob-in-Black/p/316592

I wouldn't worry about warping. We had shaker painted timber in our last house and I was terrified that water would get into the joins and swell the wood. It didn't happen in the few years before we moved. Now we have a lacquered high gloss kitchen. I believe that it is more waterproof and easier to clean. I think though any modest differences in durability are not enough to sway you from getting the kitchen that you like and most suits your house. The individual doors can always be replaced if there are any issues.

I too was wondering this. I don't see how it can be legal for the rule to discriminate between mother and father.

If you want a warm and soft feeling floor I would recommend Amtico or similar also. It does get small surface scratches in it, but even with my usual OCDness these weren't too annoying to me. Not sure how it got scratched in a bathroom as generally you need to drag something hard across it to scratch it like grit in a suitcase wheel. The other alternative is wood effect tiles. We have some Porcelanosa wooden tiles. They have a nice surface grain and really look like wood, they come in plank like strips. No issues with scratching, dirt etc, but obv harder and less warm than wood.

There is no harm in it, although this kind of incident is pretty rare nowadays. It is most likely when things at first set up if something is not connected properly. TBH day to day wear on a wood floor in a kitchen will be worse than any damage from a very rare flooding incident.

Good spot @ProDave I was assuming that @Jilly meant resin bound. Resin bonded is indeed a far inferior product which is thin and wears out quickly. Bonded isn't porous I would assume that the architect meant resin bound, but best to make sure that the right type is specified to suppliers.

We have it. It has been down for a year and so far it appears to be the finest driveway I have ever seen. No sign of cracking whatsoever, no weeds and water drains away no matter how heavily it rains. If built properly it should last a long time. This involves a layer of well compacted type one, we kept topping this up as the build went on so by the time we came to do the driveway it had been compacted by two years of trucks driving over it. Then a layer of tarmac and the bonded gravel on top. It is very expensive as basically you are laying a tarmac driveway and then another gravel driveway on top of it, it the gravel all has to be laid in one day to avoid joins. I think we paid £92 a square metre but this was for 270 square metres. Generally I would expect tp pay around £100 a square metre to have it done properly.

As with all these things you have to decide will you actually use the features. Almost every room in our house has one set of smart lights. A couple of two and some have none. All these lights are dimmable, no one ever seems to dim them, they just switch them off and on. None of them are colour changing. I personally cannot imagine any scenario where I would want colour changing lights but other people may love the idea. My family for some reason hate if I dim the lights, they like them either on or off. The point is don't pay for stuff unless you actually plan to use it. If you just plan to switch the lights on and off get a switch. Once I had time I did programme our system to turn off all the smart lights at 8am and at 10pm. Thus when my family turn on lights before the school run or go to bed, lights are not left on all day. This seemed to reduce our electricity consumption. I have also got the system working with Alexa which is quite cool, but again I am the only person who uses it.