Temp

Some membranes are approved for use in contact with sarking/insulation but not all. Check with the maker. I believe Kingspan do one that can be used in contact. The membrane should drape into the gutter so any rain blown under the tiles runs into the gutter. For this reason it is usually UV rated. Sometimes a plastic tray is used to support the edge of the membrane. The plastic tray goes under the membrane so again water runs down from the membrane onto the plastic tray and then into the gutter.

Shell... Is Macphersons (Crown) Vinyl matt washable? One of my regrets was not getting our painter to use washable paint. I forget what we did use but trying to remove any kind of mark with a damp cloth takes the paint off. Kids finger prints, squashed bugs are a pain. I'm now gradually repainting using Dulux Endurance. Fortunately there is an exact colour match with what we used originally.

Our nearest pole was about 20 yards down the road. My builder ran a cable underground to the bottom of the pole and Openreach happily connected it up once they got organised. We left enough cable in a coil at the bottom to reach the top with some spare. The main problem was Openreach disorganisation. Someone from BT/Openreach rang me once a week to tell me that they were "working on our connection" and that went on for a long time. Then one week they stopped calling. I rang them and the lady I spoke to insisted that the work had been done, which it clearly hadn't as I could still see the coil of wire. She was so convinced that the computer was right that the only solution was to agree with her that it must be faulty. The poor old fault engineer that arrived insisted on testing my line at the master socket before he would listen to me. Once he understood what the real problem was he made a few calls and things got sorted very quick. PS: I don't think we made BT/Openreach aware in advance that we would be putting in an underground cable to the pole. I think we just ordered a new connection that they were probably expecting to be an overhead. The engineers were happy to have an easier job than they were expecting.

Usually you can appoint another agent but will either pay a higher fee or more than one fee. Have you tried advertising it yourself?

+1 When you get your initial quotes they should be adjusted so they are on a like for like basis and checked/adjusted for omissions. Otherwise it's impossible to compare them.

You might recall that the government wanted to exempt developments of less than 10 houses but were challenged in court and lost. According to the Law Report in today's The Times the government has won its appeal. So if you are about to pay or sign an S106 affordable housing contribution perhaps worth holding off for awhile. More on this when I get back to my PC. I can't type much on this pesky tablet.

Hi Folks, New forum looks good. In theory we finished our self build in 2007 but one day it really will be finished. Regards Colin Watters (aka Temp).