Jeremy Harris

I second the above from @TerryE, as we had a major boundary problem, that took nearly a year to resolve before we could complete the purchase of our plot. The LR were pretty hopeless, as they just said that their title plans are only indicative and don't represent where the boundaries exist on the ground. We ended up getting the vendor of our plot to pay to have the errors in the LR plans and titles corrected, which involved our neighbours and their solicitor having to agree with the vendor that the existing fence was the boundary and that the scaled title plans that applied to their house and the plot were in error. I was glad we picked this up when doing a rough check of the positions of the boundaries pre-purchase, as had we left it as it was the house could not have been built on the plot, despite there being planning permission in place.

Do you know what the surrounding houses have in the way of foul drainage? The older places most probably just have porous septic tanks, without proper land drains, as that was a pretty common way of doing things in that part of the world. Our last house in Cornwall had an old (roughly 1920s/1930's) septic tank right in the corner of the garden, with lanes either side of it and no drainage field at all. It was built the same way as a lot of them dating back a few decades, with missing bricks in the walls to allow effluent to seep out, not something that would be countenanced today, I suspect. The same construction technique was used for the old septic tank at my mother's farm down there, too, with that tank being in the middle of the yard, surrounded by farm buildings and the house itself and no drains leading out to any of the fields. A treatment plant does offer a bit more flexibility in terms of how to dispose of the effluent, and the general guidance on the distance from boundaries, roads etc can be flexible if the plot is restricted, I found. For example, our treatment plant is only about 2m from the road, and was allowed because there was nowhere else we could site it. There are options to use soakaways or drainage mounds with a treatment plant, but there will almost certainly be a requirement to get approval from the Environment Agency, whatever you choose to do. They were helpful when I obtained a permit to discharge, but that may be just that I happened to deal with a helpful individual.

Why not just get the map from the OS themselves? I bought an OS licence for a large scale map to use for the site and location plans, and, as it was available in .dxf format it was really useful, as I could import it into Autocad and so tie all the drawings to a common map baseline.

I fitted one of these: https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/CGMSF100.html with an 80 A fuse, so if there is a major fault that fuse will (hopefully) blow before the 100 A DNO fuse (I hope it never does!).

Nice to have the FIFO buffer, as serial comms, particularly receive, can be pretty clunky without one. I've been faffing around getting my new EVSE to work, so that it preferentially uses excess PV generation to charge the car, rather than grid power (made more complex because of the way J1772/IEC61851 protocol works, with its minimum 6 A charge rate). Working around the delays caused by waiting for serial data (my main power monitoring unit broadcasts the import/export true power via a 433 MHz wireless link) has been the most time consuming bit.

I'd agree with the above, as I had a workshop on a concrete raft, built alongside a house with conventional deep foundations, on very shrinkable clay. The workshop moved up and down relative to the house a fair bit. The garage will need to meet the fire resistance requirements, but a timber frame is OK, just needs to meet the internal spread of fire requirements in Part B, which aren't hard to comply with.

Many thanks, I'd just been looking at the Screwfix one, seems to be the same as the Qualcast, and a Spear and Jackson, so it looks like there is a fair bit of badge engineering going on. My local Screwfix have one in stock, and it seems to have a lot of reasonably OK reviews, so I think I'll just pop in and get one.

I planted some native trees/shrubs as a hedge around our garden about three years ago, and they are now at the stage where some of the larger trees need cutting back (mainly the wild cherry and field maple, but some of the hawthorns need a trim too). The waste from these would all be woody, with stems up to around 20mm in diameter. I'd like to be able to shred these and use the waste as mulch, but thought it might be useful to consult the forum hive mind before choosing what to buy. This shredder would only get used once or twice a year, and only then for a relatively small amount of waste, so I'm reluctant to invest a small fortune in a professional machine. Noise isn't really a problem, given the relatively short time it would get used. For convenience I'd prefer an electric unit, rather than an engine drive unit, but it does have to be man enough to handle woody stuff, not typical hedge trimmings.. Anyone got any recommendations, please?

Might this not present a problem when trying to bleed the air out of the pipes? The air normally finds it's way (eventually) up to the highest point in the top manifold, and then out the bleed valve, but with the manifold below the UFH pipes I suspect it might be a bit challenging to get all the air out. @Nickfromwales would be able to give the definitive answer, but if it were me then I'd fit the manifold above the upstairs floor and just run the flow and return down to the plant room.

The real question is: How many long rips are you likely to need to make in a typical self-build? At a guess, I'd say there were less than a couple of dozen times when I needed to cut long rips in boards, and most of those were flooring, where a guide on the saw made far more sense than trying to set up a rail..

I'd go with the borehole, but up the budgetary estimate for it to around £10k, as my experience has been that the true cost is a fair bit more than the drilling cost. If going for a borehole, then it's very well worth doing a (free) search of the borehole records held by the BGS, here: http://www.bgs.ac.uk/data/boreholescans/home.html This will show local boreholes to your plot and give you a feel for the depth needed to get to a viable aquifer. If it looks like a borehole may be viable, then it's relatively cheap (around £300 or so) to get a hydrogeological survey done, that will give you details of the geology under your plot, plus a borehole drilling specification. If you go down this route then I can recommend a good hydrogeologist, the chap that did our survey. Drilling costs will be around £60 to £80/m, screen and casing will be around £40/m, packing media and grout around £200 to £400, pump around £1k installed (excluding electrical work) plus a couple of hundred for the chamber at the top of the borehole. On top of this you have to budget for the electrical work, pressure vessel, switch, any filtration needed plus a UV disinfection unit. These costs can vary a great deal depending on the quality of the water you find.

I just use a long length of 50mm x 8mm aluminium bar as a straight edge. Had it for years and use it for everything where I need some sort of cutting guide, from guiding a knife when scoring PB to use as a general marking out or saw guide. Clamped to a bit of board it's easy to just run a circular saw along it, with the base plate pushed up to the edge. Only thing to watch is the height of the clamps. I made up some low profile ones from some 1" aluminium bar, as the clamps need to be able to duck under the saw motor.

I've always cut PB with a Stanley knife and straight edge, and noticed that the guys boarding our house out did the same. Just score the board, snap it, then run the knife down the paper on the remaining side. Quick, easy, very little mess and relatively clean edges.

We didn't have any water on site when our pipes were laid, so we didn't bother pressurising them. It didn't cause any problems.

I had problems with getting firm details for window vertical and horizontal joints on our glazed gable. That has four vertical window-to-window joints, plus one horizontal joint (5 windows plus a glazed door, all joined together. I don't know if there's a universal answer, as all I managed to glean in the end (after a lot of unsatisfactory correspondence with the window supplier) was that the vertical joints would use a slim aluminium cover piece, that would be integrated into one of the windows and then sealed during installation to its neighbour. The horizontal joint used a stacking cill, the details of which were never made clear prior to installation, best I got was a very scruffy faxed (!) drawing that turned out to be completely wrong anyway.

Worth remembering that there is a presumption that any planning application will be approved unless there are sound planning policy reasons to refuse. Local authorities are getting more cautious about refusing planning applications where there is no good reason to do so, as the costs of losing an appeal fall to them, and can be substantial. As long as an application doesn't breach any planning policy then it should be approved, and if it's not then there are probably good grounds to appeal.

Just a small pipe leading from the attenuation tank that drains it away and that can't flow at more than the stipulated rate, I expect.

This is in France, so it may well not have a PRedV, and I think the "white cap" may well be the French version of a tundish. I've seen something similar installed in the garage of a friend's place in France, a pressurised hot water heater, which looks like it's made from enamelled steel. I've seen them stocked in French DIY stores, so suspect they are fairly common, and they don't look like anything we usually have here.

You can get generation data from the inverter, but if you want to control something like a immersion heater you need net export data from the incoming supply cable, hence the reason for either using a current transformer around one of the meter tails or taking the data from an extra meter fitted in line. Getting data from the suppliers meter is possible, but usually only to a resolution of about 1 Wh from the flashing LED, as meters like the Elster A100C, with it's handy data output, don't seem to be in common use by suppliers.

The tails are only done up hand-tight, usually, so maybe one has loosened slightly? To tighten it may mean slacking off the pipe fitting where it attaches, in order to make it free to turn without twisting the flexible pipe.

I doubt the Gault goes down that far, as I believe the deepest layer in the UK is only around 100m deep, and where you are it's probably around the same depth as here, about 40m or so. We have Gault under our house (we built on the top of the layer) and found that it's about 40m deep, with about 12m of Lower Greensand underneath it (where our water comes from) and the Wealden Group underneath that (we could tell when our driller hit that, as it's as hard as hell, and the drill pretty much stopped going anywhere).

We have one tap with exactly that type of fixing, and I can understand your frustration, as I've had to tighten it back up twice so far, and it's a complete PITA to get at, even with a deep socket and extension. Our kitchen tap, OTOH, has a brilliant fixing, a deep (around 150mm) hollow nut, around 30mm in diameter, that projects down far enough that you can see it. It was a doddle to install, and made me wonder why more tap manufacturers don't use something like this. Mind you, it was Dutch, so may be they like to make life easier for installers.

Ours is 100mm deep, with a 200mm deep ring beam around the edges and under the two structural internal walls. There are additional steels running around the ring beam, tied in to the fabric in the slab.

I used 100mm underground ducting, worked fine, even when I dragged a length of 25mm three core SWA through a few metres of it, up through our slab. Cheap as well, IIRC, as I had to buy loads of it when putting in cables etc around the plot. The DNO insisted (in writing) that their cable be run in black 100mm duct, then changed their mind when they turned up, and decided they wanted the duct taken out and their cable directly buried (damned good job we hadn't filled the trench when they turned up...).

Worth noting that the main issues with the Sunamp UniQ seem to be isolated to the electrically heated versions; those heated by hot water seem to be OK, I believe.