ragg987

I prefer a small contrast between tile and grout. White jars, mid grey is trying to blend in but fails, grey seems more spectacular failure to blend, silver grey is"just right". IMO.

Internal recirculators here as well. Zero rated as supply and fit.

They have accountants? I guess if they do it once just do the same for every item they sell, would only be a problem if HMRC changed the rules a lot. I think more of a problem for sole traders - my plumber told me he did not volunteer VAT breaks to customer as he then had more work to do.

Yes, becomes S&F of extractor so zero-rate at source.

As @lizzie, if supply only you can reclaim VAT. Extractors are claimable, other appliances are not. However, if supply and fit you need to get supplier to zero the VAT as you cannot subsequently reclaim it. Your worktop should be zero-rated at source as they fit, cabinetry I cannot tell as they do not mention fitting.

I started finding about the ecology / survey part and was astonished at the high costs of overnight / early morning surveys, plus they can only do it at particular times of the year. On the off-chance I rang my council and they arranged, for about £50, for an inspection. Friendly chap poked around the roofspace with his torch and declared we were in the clear - there were signs of bats but nothing recent so he was happy to issue a letter saying so. Phew!

In our case there is a gap between render board and soffit, approx 15mm, which has a insect screen. My builder mocked the soffit line with strips of board and this was used to board and render to. After render complete the soffit was fitted. Worked well in most places, but the renderer messed up in a few areas.

I left the end straight and open, did not bother with the funnel thingy. It is about 1or 2 inches above the plastic grill. Noise exists but is not intrusive. No splashing onto walls.

That seems pretty clear to me. I am talking a few years ago so maybe the guidance has updated.

When I had some heating changes in my old house, the plumber did it as one job (one invoice) but showed VAT at different rates depending on which aspect. So the "energy saving features" - e.g. radiator thermostatic valves - were charged at the lower rate and the rest at the higher one. He asked VATman for guidance on how much labour to charge at the lower rate and was told it needed to represent the labour for the 5% elements.

Have you considered usng the slopes to your advantage rather than flattening it? Our site sloped back-to-front and left-to-right, the previous bungalow was on a single level. Our architect was able to incorporate the compound slope into the design and I think it has created some very interesting spaces. Our house is essentially on 4 half-levels plus a basement. It also meant we were able to keep the skyline consistent with the other houses in the street. You can see this effect in my profile picture - the right side is about 1m higher than the left. Our basement is ICF and our grondworks contractor picked it up from scratch having never done it before. It took them quite a bit longer than they had expected, it seems there are some complexities e.g. when pouring the concrete. Oh and welcome!

Oh, another thought, if you have CAT5 to the barn and not a BT cable you could also consider VOIP. A single VOIP connection supports multiple telephone numbers - in our case up to 4.

The main line that Openreach supply to your property can support 2 or 4 telephone connections (there may be more options). We asked them to supply us with 4 as I intended to use 2 from day 1. So a single incoming cable can be split within the house to provide multiple lines. I see no reason why the barn is any different from an internal connection, you would just connect up the appropriate wires to the barn leg and get BT to connect it at the exchange and give you a number. I would suggest you keep the BT line to the barn in a separate duct and away from any potential interference especially from mains cables. Do check what spec of cable you need to have if you are laying this, else leave a rope in the duct until the time comes.

After we sold our old house (to raise the capital to complete our build), we rented a flat that was just the other side of that image. Lovely bit of morning shade! Now about 3 miles away as the crow flies, happy with that and perfect for aiming at!

I have a similar arrangement with a Bucks wireless provider called Rapid Rural. They put a small receiver dish with PoE, aimed at the tallest building in Aylesbury which connects to the "mains". I get unlimited broadband with around 90Mbps down and 40Mbps up. Rolling 1 month and no contract, £35 + VAT. Generally reliable (much more so that BT FTTC), speeds do come down in the evenings when everyone is on the system. Also, it is quite different from other ISPs in that our side of the network is double-NATted - essentially like a corporate network. What this means is that I cannot allow access from the outside world into my network e.g. by configuring certain ports on the router. So I could not host my own web server at home, for example. I gues this also improves security at my end, but if this is important to you do check before you commit.

Theory is it cuts litle and often, so you let the clippings drop onto the lawn. I cannot see them after a mow. Our model has a 45 min run and 30 min charge cycle. I have programmed approx 4 hrs operational per weekday. It is a tiny electric motor and yes can be heard when you are about 10m away and in clear sight, but should not disturb neighbours through walls or open windows. Measure your boundary. Ours came with 200m (and sufficient pegs), I went to screwfix to get an additional single-core copper cable and used the 3m waterproof connectors supplied to join them. Note they do not like tall or wet grass. Ours has a rain sensor that stops it when wet. I have programmed a delay of 90 mins so after sensor gives the all-clear it gives the grass a chance to dry before it comes out.

Yes, I paid about £570 for mine. A good Honda petrol mower gets close to this plus you need to man it every time you want to cut the lawn. It made a lot of sense at that price.

I took the plunge on one of these. Momo is now part of the family and has been providing sterling service for 2 months so far. I love it! Some input: The boundary wire installation needs careful planning. our whole lawn area (front, back and sides) is one contiguous area so this worked well for us. route it around obstacles like beds make sure you allow for a permanent docking station with electical supply. Ours is on the side of the garage do not bury the wire initially, you will need to adjust layout as you fine-tune the installation hard obstacles like trees, vent stacks can be ignored if taller than about 100mm - the mower will bump, reverse and keep moving be careful of rapidly growing hedges, weeds etc creeping over the mowing area. they will stop the mower from working lanw area needs to be kept clear of toys, clothes, dropped fruit from trees etc. Momo chewed a sock that fell off the washing line, then sulked mower cannot take care of edges - i use a battery strimmer to do this I went with a Worx Landroid 106, suitable for our lawn area of approx 400m2. Good balance of features and price and some nice reviews, has a edge-trim function which makes the mower follow the boundary wire and get as clean an edge as is possible with this type of mower. These have app control so you can monitor and set your timers (need wi-fi in the garden). The app also permits multi-zone setup, I have not tried it. Momo has covered 100km since start and it is nice to come home to a trimmed lawn - I tend to work away from home so in the past we would go from knee high to cut and short and straggly - we now have farily even and well managed areas. I have not buried the wire so beware cutting too low as this will cut the wire and then mower stops. I have set it to about 45 mm and that suits us. Also be aware that the cutting is based on the robot wandering over the lawn at random, so some areas might get missed. If you extend the frequency and time every area should eventually get cut. No stripe effect possible. We send Momo out very day, though on weekends we reduce his working time. I purchased from here - they offered the best prices, a 5-year warranty and 30-day money back guarantee. Nothing to lose. https://www.myrobotcenter.co.uk/en_gb/lawn-and-pool-robots/lawn-mowing-robots?countryswitch=2&mrc_data_area_rasenmaehroboter=82

Have no experience of either, however do check that you have someone locally who can service the one you choose. I went with a hitachi and am struggling with that aspect - and the 5 year warranty is useless without a service.

But if the builder is "supply and fit" this does not matter as the builder should zero-VAT the materials to you.

Might depend on the ICF spec. We used Integraspec and were told it was suitable for direct plaster or render application. However we used batten and board to create a services cavity internally. Externally we rendered direct.

I have a wi-fi router with 4 antennae. I have oriented these from vertical to horizontal, progressively, as well as placed it as centrral in the house as I can. This gives me coverage all through my 3-level house though weak in a couple of spots. I am toying with a 9dBi antenna, not pulled the trigger on this yet.

I suspect people on this forum build to a better standard as we are not willing to put up with the quality most new builds have, so I would say of little, or no relevance. My target was to exceed most of the above.

£1,500 should be achievable, if the circumstances are right. Beware plots on sloping ground, with no services, demolitions with asbestos or bat surveys. We only had a fixed price on the timber frame, the rest we used local builders or specialist trades. And purchase your own materials rather than supply by builder, I found they pop into the local BM and pick whatever they need at a higher price than I could usually find.

Or take a flyer if the new brick is close to the original - these tyes of conditions seem normal and I understand they are to prevent people from having bright and garish external finishes. Too late for you now, but for my discharge I refused to supply actual samples and either pointed to specific web pages from manufacturer catalog (e.g. for the roof tiles) or kept it suitably vague (e.g. "soft-white" for the render or "mid-grey" for glazing and soffits). Planning said they normally expect to view actual samples on site but accepted my document and discharged the conditions. I also supplied a specific link to brick-slips but then swapped it on build, QT, though replacement was not far different..