newhome

I thought I was really careful about this during the build as I never let trades order anything at all as all but 1 were labour only, but have since discovered that I probably have invoices that won't count because they say 'order', 'proforma invoice' etc. There are no doubt some other anomalies still to hit me too. Had I had the benefit of this forum at that time I probably wouldn't have made that mistake ...... I doubt that all of them can be corrected now due to the age of many of them.

You can always double up you know . 2 for 1 as it were .

That’s true but they don’t all understand the rules sadly so can range from wanting to charge you vat on the whole thing to charging you vat on the materials. And when they are employed on a labour only basis and say they will order in the materials you need sometimes they order in their own name meaning that you can’t reclaim the vat as it’s not your name on the invoice. There are so many different ways you can get caught out with the vat reclaim if you don’t understand all of the rules from the get go.

Aw, see you can be nice! Just Roland and Tufty who have to watch out chez @Onoff Definitely move it to a new place to avoid torching live critters as @Onoff says ????????

Won’t the hedging be wet too if it’s after rain? You want that dry really. A hosepipe nearby should help control things I imagine.

I’ve always aspired to be a pyromanic and if I lived closer I would be there but please don’t use petrol! I have memories of my father starting the bonfire night bonfire with petrol. A case of putting a flame in and running like crap as it went up like a rocket. Not to be recommended! As @Onoff says use an incinerator for smaller controllable burns or if you have a decent sized field away from all buildings and hedges you could do a larger bonfire but grass can catch light in dry weather too. Plus don’t forget the neighbours if you have any. You won’t be popular if you start a fire on a lovely day when they are relaxing in the garden.

Get the price in writing too! I renewed with BT at an agreed price only to be charged more when they started billing me! And I only get about 4 mbps!

Yep, I remember my mother’s ironing board having that too! I suspect it would have mostly contained cement or similar however so I don’t think you should be unduly concerned about it. When I was at secondary school we had asbestos strips at the back of the science benches that were used for anything hot / on fire. It’s something you can’t really stress about TBH. The past is past. All you can do is protect yourself in the future so people need to be aware of the risks and not take risks with asbestos, but we can’t change the fact that we may have been exposed in the past. So many old buildings, schools, hospitals etc etc contain asbestos it’s unavoidable. It’s only when it’s disturbed that it becomes dangerous, and then only in certain people.

Good luck with the build. There is a new thread on making tea so your first skill to perfect Dormant snowdrop are bulbs so good luck with locating them and replanting! Unless they still have some leaves you are a bit fecked lol. They also don’t like getting dry so you’ll need to have somewhere new to put them immediately after digging them up if you locate them!

In the UK regulations were introduced in 1931 but they only covered the manufacturing of asbestos, not workers subsequently using it. It was the increasing death rates from asbestosis, and mesothelioma that resulted in new regulations in 1969 that protected those working with it too, and there have been a stream of regulations since the 80s when its use started being banned. My hubby died from mesothelioma. It’s a death I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy!

It can take many decades for it to cause cancer, with most cases occurring between 20 and 50 years after exposure and some even later than that. It is believed however that there is a genetic predisposition to contracting mesothelioma, and that if you are susceptible it only takes one breath of the fibres to cause cancer decades later. Certainly there have been cases where more than one generation of the same family have contracted it. In one case I know of personally the father died, followed by the deaths of his 3 children years later, from, it is suspected, breathing in the fibres on their father’s work clothes. That said, the vast majority of people exposed will never develop cancer as a result but it’s such a bloody awful death with no possibility of surviving it currently, that strict health and safety procedures can only be a good thing. The UK has one of the highest mesothelioma rates in the world. Three quarters of schools still contain asbestos.

Johnstones Decorating Centres have a sale on from 21st May - 28th May. https://paint247.ppgnet.com/

Collared doves make the most annoying noise. My neighbours used to keep doves (aka manky pigeons) in a dovecote. They used to spend all day on my other neighbour’s roof and crap all over it. They were hoping that when we built our house they would use our roof instead but they never did lol. One day he got pissed off with them and threw a rock at them that missed and went through his bathroom window .

Yes, we lived in our house as soon as it was habitable but still far from complete and had to get a special ‘building work in progress’ insurance policy after the self build policy ran out. Interestingly though my neighbours bought their ‘completed’ new house from the builder who I bought my plot from and they were totally unaware that their house hadn’t been signed off. So they’ve been living in it for 10 years, have a mortgage on it and a standard insurance policy that has probably been invalid all this time. The council never once wrote to them asking what their plans were to achieve sign off that leads me to believe that they actually don’t care whether a house is signed off or not. So they are now taking legal action against their solicitor as the completion certificate was one of the key requirements of the sale. In order to get the completion certificate that they received earlier this month they’ve had to carry out remedial work to address some of the things that the council weren’t happy with, and rip out a shower that they had installed as it didn’t conform to building regs for some reason. Plus I imagine they may have trouble selling the house as they have no warranty and the 10 years starts from this month, not 10 years ago when they moved in.

What does it mean in relation to a completion certificate though? That they can’t impose any penalty if you live in the house before the completion certificate is issued, or something else? Presumably they will withhold a completion certificate if you don’t meet the standards in the rest of the list?

I have one and it works fine. Wifi upstairs was pretty poor but with the plug-in range extender it's fine (well as fine as sloooow wifi ever gets).

After they’ve been archived? My local council couldn’t even locate the first PP for the site (2003) in their archives. My build was however covered by the second PP and HMRC asked me to send them the email from the Council saying that the 2003 PP couldn’t be found.

Check out all of the rules around the vat claim. For a new build all labour and materials supplied by the builder should be zero rated. Anything you buy yourself will need to be vat paid and part of your vat claim once the house is finished. Don’t let builders purchase materials on your behalf with their name on the invoice as you cannot reclaim the vat. And don’t let builders charge you vat. Definitely worth reading up on the sometimes quirky rules as vat can add up to quite a lot so reclaiming as much as you can is important to manage your costs. If you purchase materials yourself be aware that you will need extra money to pay the vat on top of your build costs although it can be reclaimed at the end (but HMRC are very slow).

Mine had long disappeared from the planning website so I asked the council to send me pdf files that I printed A3 and sent. I’ve got through that part of the process as they wrote to me to say that my claim would now be processed (eventually .......).

We went for a 22mm thick board as it was to be laid over joists upstairs but also because the 6mm wear layer meant it could be sanded down a few times if needed. A 2 or 3mm wear layer can be sanded too of course but probably less times than 6mm. If longevity is important I would choose a thicker wear layer otherwise you might be down to the ply if you sand it say 2 or 3 times. But personally I would go for tiles but choose carefully.

I have a sprayer that’s quite useful for all sorts of spraying jobs in the garden as it has lots of different concentration settings. Unfortunately it has an American fitting that I didn’t realise until I tried to use it and it leaked everywhere. A quick Google search identified that the UK uses BSP thread and the US uses GHT. It never leaked when the OH set it up so I imagine he did something to address that but I’m not sure what. So I thought that I would buy an adaptor but it’s not that easy to find what I’m looking for. Best I’ve found is the first item in the link but I don’t know if that’s the right thing. http://www.abp-accessories.co.uk/product.php?cat=52 So can someone please point me at an adaptor that will work, or suggest a different solution please.

Not a technical comment, just an observational one. I have tiles in the kitchen / family room, and the hall and they’ve been down since 2009. They are not scratched at all. I would say that engineered oak is much more easy to scratch as I have it everywhere else. A 6mm wear layer is pretty essential in high traffic areas I think. My friend has a kitchen family room and she has tiles in the kitchen area and wood in the family area and it looks pretty good as the join is done really well. The tiles are cream however so a complete contrast to the wood. As a different sort of option I had Karndean Da Vinci wood effect in my last house and it still looked amazing after 10 years. Again we went for the thickest wear layer as we have dogs. We looked at lots of engineered wood flooring and had loads of samples everywhere. In the end Jewson gave us a great price on an Atkinson and Kirby 22mm oak board so we went with that.

No huskys. You can’t let the damn things off lead or they disappear. Cycling doesn’t work too well on the beach so I’ll stick to walking dogs

Ah bless you for being such a great husband! Wasn’t this the same woman who doesn’t like heights hence your plan to work on the roof next? ? As an aside, it’s 8.20 and I’m sitting on a beach in Scotland mid dog walk. Weather is amazing. Dogs are great exercise machines! Well for those who don’t have allergies anyway.

Yeah I can deal with that approach too but sadly too many snowflakes around these days who don’t want to hear straight talk. Clearly there is a time and a place however as you would hopefully not tell a terminally ill cancer patient that they will die a horrible death even when typically that’s what does happen, but telling someone who smokes that they might die a horrible death if they don’t give up, well that’s fair game really I think.