DavidFrancis

As per the title. Is there a sealant that would seal this hole satisfactorily? Tried a few searches on Google and could find nothing useful. Thanks in advance for any advice.

Thanks Nick. I seem to remember on Ebuild you talked about measuring your incoming water temperature. Are the figures above water temperature or do you have a sensor under the house?

I've been thinking about some internal wall insulation for our house, which is 19th century rubble stone with a largish 1970s flat roof extension. Last week I was wondering about cost vs benefit and thought I'd try Jeremy Harris's spreadsheet to see what we might save. I know roughly how much energy we use for heating on a month-by-month basis and tried to fit the spreadsheet to our usage using some fairly wild guesses on the u-values for walls/windows/roof/floors. I got reasonably close but one problem was the floor losses which assume a stable year-round underfloor temperature of 8C. This assumption messes with the summer figures. I checked our incoming water temperature (after having run the tap for a while) and this was about 18C. We have a well /cistern that sits partly under a small extension and the water in this was 16.5C. We get the water out using a hand pump and I think the bottom of the extract pipe is 1.5-2.0m below ground level. So it seems that the ground around our house is quite a bit warmer than 8C at the moment. Does any one know of some actual data for ground underneath houses (as opposed to surrounding houses) on a seasonal basis? Admins please note: I think there is also a mistake in the calculation for floor losses in Jeremy's spreadsheet. Cell B36 (floor heat loss power) uses the difference between room temperature (B3) and outside temperature (B2), rather than room temperature (B3) and under slab soil temperature (B4)

THe BM I use sells brown treated fencing boards (and these come from East Lothian). Used some on a shed and after three years in a very shaded position they've turned a nice-enough honey colour. I used feather edge board & it's only £4.80/sq m

This might be a stupid question, but why do you need 50x50 horizontal battens? What's wrong with more 50x25?

I'd have thought that pressure-treated feather-edge fencing boards would be one of the cheapest options. Install horizontally with screws and if the bottom ones start to rot just replace. I clad a shed like this three years ago. No problems so far and I think it now looks good (although the shed is in a very shaded spot). Hoping for a least a 20 year life due to treatment and detailing. Other options, but no idea on cost: Corten steel Tiles/slates Galvanised steel sheets (a craft centre near us has some walls clad in corrugated sheet & I think they look good) Glass? (seen a self-build TV programme where part of the cladding was dark reflective glass) Shower panels??? (plenty of variations!)

Not used it myself, but Osmo oil gets a very good rating on Amazon. Don't know how it compares in price.

It's not an area I have much experience in, but what about starting with a 6mm bit, then expand the hole with a 10mm, and finish off with the 14mm?

"You and Yours" are having a few items on self-building this week. Today's item was on government supported self-build in Holland (go to one place, select a plot, select one of many designs, select a builder, select some financing etc, and all at a fixed price). Sounds well-organised and apparently about a third of new Dutch houses are now self-build. Available here, about 22 minutes in. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07lfkj9

I'm using Firefox on Windows 7 and don't get it. Just in case you've overlooked the bleeding obvious (which I often do), have you tried setting the drop-down in that pop-up/window?

In my experience solicitors regularly make mistakes and quite often don't know what they're doing. Conveyancing matters often seem to be dealt with by "para-legals" and secretaries. I'd double-check everything.

I'd like to see the lot!

Think it may have been mentioned on Ebuild, but the Screwfix no-nonsense stuff is made by Soudal (see the safety data sheet).

Really like the look of the garage. Also the traditional feel to the house and that rustic finish to the render. Why do the downpipes all finish 4 ft short of the ground? Did you run out of pipe?

Try ringing your water company - they might find it for you and even fix it for you if you're lucky. Last week Unitied Utilities offered to try to find a bit of buried garden pipe for the in-laws for nowt.

250 or 275 mm of EPS. A difference of maybe just over 0.01 in your u-value for one element of your build. Would that affect your heating bill by more than a couple of quid per annum?

Having gently knocked out the rest of the glass I can see it didn't "explode" before as this time the glass also went all over the place. And yes, Nick, it was a framed pane. This would be a right pain in the butt (perhaps in more than one sense) if it happened whilst you were in the shower and there was no one else around. You'd have to try to make a path out with, probably, not much to clear the path with.

We had a pane of glass "explode" in the night. Explode is almost the right word as there was glass in the far corner of the room, about 8 ft away. Any one come across this before? There's stuff on the web, but it mostly looks to be on US web sites. Oddly, neither of us heard anything - must have both been well asleep. Now need to divine who made the shower enclosure as there's no markings on it (and it was fitted before our time).

Don't know if this will work with BT, but we're on Plusnet and I used one of MoneySavingExpert's "instant dial" override numbers to call Ireland a couple of months ago and the calls cost nothing. See http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/cheap-overseas-calls?_ga=1.15863486.924813942.1413575109 May not work with 0800 numbers. Never tried it. Edit: we have free UK calls as part of our package.