newhome

We paid for our windows up front (supply only) but a friend had an issue with theirs (not Internorm) and held off paying the remainder but it was so little that the company in question couldn't be bothered to come and address the issues, and refused to provide the guarantee as full payment had not been made. I would want to withhold 10% at least until you've had a chance to check that they don't leak etc. so suggest a final invoice with 30 days to pay maybe? A decent company will want to address the issues anyway. I don't think witholding money for 3 months is appropriate TBH. Where else would you get away with that? Research online reviews of the company, look for their trading history, and ask to pay £100 by credit card as a partial deposit as this should provide some protection for you in the event that there is an issue with either the delivery of the goods, or a quality issue later.

That’s pretty abrasive given that you don’t know any of the background! I am not an idiot, I am fully aware that you need a building warrant. I did have a building warrant and the council wanted it on the original one as an amendment but ran into a process issue with the SER certificate because the original SE left the scheme and disappeared off the face of the earth. Council wanted a new form Q to cover the entire building warrant scope including next door that had been occupied for several years. The new SE wouldn’t agree to cover the whole development due to liability issues (plus he wanted to dig up next door!) so there was a stand off between the SE and the council. Eventually the council suggested that it could be a new and separate building warrant as a compromise that got round the need for a new form Q. My point is the same however. I knew what it cost to build and the council didn’t accept that I could build it for that.

I hate the way they do this in Scotland. My extension had a retrospective building warrant due to a weird process issue I won’t bore people with. That meant that I had completed the work already when the building warrant was applied for and knew exactly how much it cost. I applied for it on that basis but was told that they didn’t accept the cost and charged me more for the building warrant than the value of the work. When I tried to reason with them I was told that they had a calculator based on size and that was that. My extension consisted of just a single new wall and roof as 3 existing walls made up the rest and it used existing openings (as it was all designed to be added once the main house was built). Clearly that’s a lot cheaper than building something the same size that needs 3 walls but it’s one size fits all according to the council.

Seem to be similar prices here: https://www.doorsofdistinction.co.uk/interior_doors/internal-oak-grooved_doors/salerno-grooved-oak_doors.html

For those commenting your post says Serino but your link takes you to Salerno.

I think it lacks balance, like the front entrance has been tacked on the front as an afterthought. Could you do something to bring out the whole of the left hand side? Something like this? Not with the garage clearly.

My bedroom is only ever 16 / 17 degrees and I'm from daan saaf (originally). Clearly as the outside temperatures are lower up here we appreciate 16 degrees far more than you guys living in the south

+1. There is too much money at stake to take a punt.

Welcome! The options available are extensive for sure but there are people with experience in just about everything here who are always happy to help. A good starting point would be to post a copy of the plans.

Welcome. Nice looking house!

No shit huh! Hmm, that's nice and er, busy . Inside or outside - at least you won't see all the tat on the window cill with the blind pulled down if it's on the outside

I deal with fixed price contracts a lot at work and they are far from fixed if anything changes that's not explicitly catered for in the contract. If you have a more detailed breakdown why don't you provide that and ask if all of the things on your list are included. And then you need to validate all of the assumptions that have been made - both yours and theirs. So your assumption might be that weather conditions will not impact the cost and ask them to validate that, and so on. We came a bit unstuck with one of the jobs we had expected to come under the fixed price for the timber frame kit and that was fixing the sarking to the roof which is standard practice in Scotland. It came as part of the timber frame kit so we had expected it to come under that quote. The guys putting up the TF said no it came under roofing (the TF team was doing the trusses) but the roofers said no it didn't so we ended up paying the TF team extra for that. That's just an example of something that due to our naivety ended up costing us more. One of the biggest causes of a change to a fixed price contract where I work is when something happens that is outside their control. So when someone else fails to deliver on time or to the quality needed for example. That's when we generally hit change request territory fairly rapidly but if your guys deal with it all then you should be covered to a degree. If however you are ordering the materials and something doesn't turn up on time they can argue that you caused a delay so do be careful to manage supplies carefully if you go down that route. If one of the guys isn't VAT registered you will want to order the materials yourself however in order to reclaim the VAT but it needs careful management. I think the moral of the story is to expect that jobs will take longer and cost more, and to expect the unexpected despite how much due diligence you think you've done.

Do you meet deadlines at work? If so how do you strike a balance between speed and compromise, or are you forever conflicted? And surely there must be a bathroom version of that colour paint in another make? What colour is it?

Some sort of noise at a frequency that only the dogs can hear and humans can’t? Does the dog still freak when everything is switched off? Of course that might not help narrow it down as once dogs have been conditioned to be fearful in a situation they can remain fearful even when the negative stimulus has been removed, but that does tend to improve over time. So he can either freeze now to test the theory by having stuff switched off lol, leave the dog scared until the weather improves and the UFH is switched off anyway, or the dog might just get used to it ?

Looks good! What's the next job? After the grouting that is.

Some people don't have the sense they are born with I'm sure!

Is that in your contract then? Thou shalt not use any alternative sources of heat to the ones officially supplied'

They'll go and buy a 3kw heater and let that run at full pelt alongside the rads lol

Mine actively avoid lying on the warm bits. One prefers the sofa anyway

I'm on a sllighty different tariff and get 18 hours off peak so I don't need to have it on overnight although that would be a good plan if I was on Economy 7. It's mostly in the evening when I want the heat TBH. I'm either not here during the day or rushing about during the week. I do have slightly different settings at weekends though.

Not building related as such but there are a number of tech folk on here who may wish to refresh their skills (or people who might want to learn). Udemy are running a few free online courses currently. They seem to be rolling out different ones daily so best to sign up asap to get the course for free as I imagine they will be time limited offers. I'm not recommending them as I haven't looked at any of them yet but might be worth signing up while they are free if any grab your interest. If I find any others later I will add them to this post. The Complete HTML 5 Course - use code FREEHTML5 Photoshop CC for Beginners with CC 2019 Updates - Use code FREEFORFRIENDS2018 Scrum Certification Prep +Scrum Master+ Agile Scrum Training - Use code PWRSCRMFREE Data Analysis with Pandas and Python - Use code APRILMAGIC Excel VBA Programming - The Complete Guide - Use code GAUNTLET SQL Masterclass: SQL for Data Analytics - Use code SQLMASTERCLASS Total Beginners' Guide: How to use an Android Smartphone - no code needed Microsoft Excel Masterclass: Complete and Concise - Use code HAPPYNEWYEAR The Complete Front-End Web Development Course! - Use code FBFREE18 The Complete C Programming Tutorial - Use code ALLFREEE

Cool - thanks!

Sounds like @vfrdave got the brush off from the CEO then. That's pretty disappointing. And they should just make the manual available on the web like 99% of suppliers these days.

I'm probably overthinking this but I've thought about it so I'll ask . I tend to have the UFH come on once a day in the evening during the week. Currently I set all rooms that I want to heat to come on at the same time a couple of hours before I arrive home from work regardless of size. The smallest room (utility) gets up to temperature pretty quickly but the largest room (kitchen / family) take 2+ hours so I wondered whether it would be more efficient to set the larger rooms to come on first and the smaller rooms a bit later. Or is that a crap idea and it would make no difference?

I have 4 2 upstairs and 2 down. They do the left hand and right hand sides of the house respectively. No idea if that’s a good idea or not and the additional parts will add a bit to the cost I imagine.