Jeremy Harris

The font is Lucida Calligraphy, approximately 180pt, or around 50mm high for the capital "M". I have the artwork as a pen and ink line drawing that my sister did for me that I've scanned and can either send a JPG or a print at the right scale. I think I've enough 20mm thick oak to make at least three blanks, but need to check, and it'll be a few days until I'm able to sort if out, as we're away for my mother's funeral much of next week. Thanks again.

That's exceptionally good of you, Mike. What sort of file is best? Would a DXF be OK? I'll sort out the bits of oak and PM you.

That makes a lot of sense, and may well be why the estate agent mentioned getting one done beforehand, to save any delay (we've stressed that we want to sell the house quickly).

FWIW, We've lived in three houses with no foundations at all. Two just had slabs of stone buried around 200mm into the ground, with the stone walls built on that, one had brick walls with the foundations being two courses of corbelled bricks laid directly on to the ground. All three had been standing for well over 100 years with no sign of any problems at all. With one of them I needed to run a new water main inside the house (the old one ran up an outside wall and used to freeze) and only discovered the shallow stone foundation when I dug a hole outside to see how hard it would be to run a pipe in under the timber floor. To say I was a bit surprised to find the foundation was less than a spade's depth down was a bit of an understatement. There's a "London Effect" that I think has led to the belief that deep foundations are needed. The UK is dominated by what happens in London, and London has both horrible clay and suffers badly from high water abstraction that has caused that clay to settle. Consequently there were a lot of repairs to foundations with underpinning, that hit house insurers very hard, so as a consequence the rest of the country now has this view that deep foundations are absolutely necessary, even when it's obvious they are not from the surrounding houses.

Very many thanks, but I don't think my routing skills are up to that quality! I have the design sketched out, and having seen a CNC router working I'm sure it wouldn't take long to do. I probably have enough oak to do two or three, so could cope with one being screwed up. This is the design:

I had hoped to have my home-made CNC router built by now, but I've been too busy to put it all together and then learn how to drive it. It's first job was going to be making an oak house sign for the new house. I have the design drawn up in CAD, and also have a selection of oak boards, so I'm looking for someone who can rout out the design for me. The sign is about 500mm x 200mm, and includes text and a simple line graphic, that I'm hoping should be fairly easy to cut with a vee routing bit. All I can find online are people who make complete custom house signs, and they are expensive, as they include hand finishing, sealing etc, all stuff I'm happy to do myself. Does anyone know of someone with a small CNC router that could do this job for a reasonable fee, please?

Same here. I had to go and stay there for a week whilst doing some work at the base, and it struck me (no offence intended) as being at the arse end of nowhere. Everyone I was working with at the base said the same, and pointed out that they all lived out of town. You only need to drive a few miles out of Barrow to be in some really nice areas. Not really sure why Barrow itself is so run down, especially as the pay for those working at the base is probably higher than average.

No, there's no comeback if they get the RdSAP wildly in error. I produced a full SAP for our old house, and gave it and the worksheet to the agent, together with a CAD drawings of the room layouts (which I'd done ages ago when I installed a new kitchen and bathroom). Both the SAP and the CAD drawing were ignored, and the RdSAP they've produced is massively in error, as is the room layout drawing. I've printed off the correct room layout drawing and the correct SAP so that I can hand them to anyone that's interested. FWIW, no proper U value calcs are done for the RdSAP as far as I can see. The check list is generic "is there loft insulation? yes/no", "is there cavity wall insulation? yes/no" etc, with nothing about the type or thickness. We have 300mm of rockwool in the loft, in three 100mm overlapping layers, but we might as well just have 100mm as far as the assessment was concerned.

So it sounds like there's confusion on the part of the agent (doesn't surprise me!). It's 18 years since we sold a house, and practically every house we've bought or sold in the past 35 years was managed via my employers relocation scheme, so I never needed to get involved with anything other than answering questions on a form usually. The one sale and purchase we did ourselves was the nightmare one with the rubbish NHBC warranty and the lawyer that failed to find out that there was an outstanding planning enforcement notice on the house. It looks as if I'd be better just getting a gas safety cert, as that is most probably what would be needed. I almost certainly need an electrical installation chit as well, as the house has an old metal consumer unit with wired fuses and no RCD. I was tempted to swap the CU over for a new one, but the house is wired throughout with pre-harmonisation cable (including a couple of extra outlets I've fitted (using my "new old stock" cable...). The only exception to the cable colours is one run of cable from the isolating switch to the boiler, which the installer changed over for a new cable when the boiler was fitted. I think I'll spend an hour or so going around the house testing all the outlets, just to make sure there are no surprises, although with no RCD the testing will really just be to check that the rings aren't open anywhere, the neutrals aren't crossed and the earths are all good. The house only has two power rings plus a lighting ring and a cooker spur, so isn't exactly arduous to test. I've already ripped out the redundant electric shower and immersion spurs.

I couldn't agree more. The builder concerned is one of the better known timber frame companies that advertise at the Swindon centre and promote themselves as being "eco house" builders.

The original installation cert is 9 years old now, and the annual inspection is over due by around 9 months, and is only identified by a sticker on the boiler. It was the estate agent that advised that the buyers solicitor would almost certainly ask for evidence that the boiler was safe, so as it's over due for a service I thought it worth doing, just for peace of mind. That's the sort of figure that I remember from the old chap that used to do ours, and you're right, it is money for old rope for a relatively modern boiler. He'd spend more time having a chat and a cup of tea than doing anything worthwhile, as apart from the gas pressure check and the flue gas check (which it passed every time) the only other thing he did was a visual inspection plus a check that it fired up when a hot tap was opened or the programmer/thermostat was switched to call for heat.

On the small development of five houses that we went to see, there was evidence that they do fail. The chap who was adding more airtightness tape whilst we were there told me that the house had failed twice, and he was adding more tape in the hope that it would pass on the third test. The remaining four houses were not going to be air tested, according to him, so one can only guess what they were like.

The daft thing is that our, essentially airtight, frame was erected in 4 1/2 days. The door and windows were fitted in one day, then the frame team came back for another three days to fit all the internal vapour control boarding and service void battens,put in all the insulation, fit airtightness tape to all junctions and around all doors and windows and get the company in to do the air test. From a concrete foundation slab to a house with an air test result that was better than the PassivHaus standard took a total of 8 1/2 days. Add in four days the week before to lay the passive slab foundation and the total from bare ground to airtight and weathertight house with all doors and windows fitted was 12 1/2 days. That's for a 130m² detached 1 1/2 storey house. It's pretty clear that there is no need to spend days on getting a house airtight and well insulated if it's designed to be so from the outset.

I have a feeling I'm being taken for a ride. The chap we've used for around 15 years or so to service our boiler retired a year or so ago, and now the house is up for sale I've been advised that I need to provide evidence of an up-to-date service, which is fair enough. I've witnessed every service on this boiler, and on average it's taken under an hour, and has essentially been a visual inspection inside the boiler, a flue gas check, gas pressure check and a quick test to make sure the controls are working. If asked the chap would also have checked and cleaned the Magnaclean and topped up the inhibitor, but I usually do that every year anyway, so that's never been included. I can't remember what we used to pay, but I'm pretty sure it was well under £100. I asked around last week to try and find someone to come out and do a service and check, and those that have come back so far are looking for well North of £200. I reckon this is OTT, but maybe I've just been getting a good deal from the chap I've been using for years. The boiler in question is a wall mounted and easy to access Vaillant EcoTec Plus 831, with just a single wired programmable thermostat. Everything is easy to access, and nothing needs to be moved to get at either the boiler or the Magnaclean, which is mounted on the wall next to it. Am I just out of touch with boiler servicing costs?

I doubt it. My guess is that they could claim that the air test is like an MOT and only valid on the day it was done. Proving that nothing had been done after the air test to cause the house to be leaky wouldn't be easy, I think, as all the airtightness stuff is hidden from view. I think that the fact that it's relatively hard to prove that a house doesn't comply with Part L1A is what all these rogues rely on. Even all the newly built houses that I went around and did thermal surveys on, just to prove that they had large areas of missing insulation and poor thermal detailing around doors and windows, have had no remedial work done yet.

Certainly our senior BCO emailed me as soon as they'd received the hard copy of the air test certificate telling me that it was the lowest he'd ever seen, It's a bit sad, really, as it suggests they are used to seeing results that only just scrape through the building regs limit. That in itself suggests that there's a lot of fiddling going on, as I'd expect a few houses to be a lot lower than the building regs limit if the test result distributions is normal.

I turned one down yesterday - if anyone wants one I will be in there again later next week and can grab one.

Our air test was done before boarding and first fix. All the things that needed to go outside were already in place (ducts through floors and walls etc) and were temporarily covered with tape for the test. Once cables, pipes etc were fed through the various ducts in the floor/wall etc they were sealed up again. In my case I used balls of chicken wire (with a pull wire) stuffed down around any remaining space in ducts (after the cables etc were in place), then filled the gap with slow expansion foam, then sealed the top with airtightness tape, after trimming the foam back flush to the top of the duct. In the case of smaller cable ducts, where I used 25mm plastic conduit through the wall, I sealed around the cables in those with silicone sealant. For the air test, the house shell has to be complete, with the doors and windows fitted, and will all the insulation in place. All our doors and windows are taped tightly to the inner vapour control board layer. Around the windows the plasterboard is bonded to that VCL board with pink grip, sandwiching the airtightness tape in place. The slight gaps around the outside of the door and window frames is filled with low expansion foam, and the outside of that was trimmed back and sealed with a bead of sealant. There is a 45mm deep service void on the internal side of all the external walls, with vertical 45 x 45 battens on 400mm centres, nailed through to the structural frame beneath the VCL board. The plasterboard is fixed to those 45mm battens after first fix, so all the plumbing and cabling runs inside that service void.

Spot on. This was EXACTLY the case with the well-known timber frame firm building the development of five houses that we went to see. They were struggling to get the first completed house to pass, and it was about to have it's third air test, so it is near certainty that the other 4 houses on the development came no where near to meeting Part L1A. They were putting a lot of work into taping up around windows and doors when we were there in order to get a pass, which suggests that they don't normally bother to use airtightness tape on most builds. Given that, even with a house just built to meet building regs most of the heat is likely to be lost via air leakage and drafts, then i think it's fair to say that few new builds come close to their certified energy performance.

The filters will work better at the bottom, rather than the top, as their losses will be slightly less.

I doubt you'd get problems with permission, and you may well get a grant to help with the work. Worth looking at, as it can be a very good and cost effective solution.

External Wall Insulation. It's a system of bonding and fastening insulation to the outside of a building and then giving it a smart rendered finish. It can be a DIY job (with the possible exception of the new render) and effectively wraps an insulated tea cosy around the old house. If the old walls can't get cold then they won't get damp, so it kills two birds with one stone.

Go for the simple solution every time, ideally one that's been proven. Lots of buildings have been fitted with EWI now and it's probably one of the better ways of upgrading an older solid wall house without increasing risk to the structure. Your example in Barrow is a good candidate for EWI IMHO. The only issue to overcome is the eaves overhang, but you only have the front and rear walls to do. The aesthetics of stepping out the front and rear wall by 100 to 150mm needs looking at, but overall I'd say EWI would be a good option. It also leaves you with all the warm internal structure as is, so minimal disruption to existing fittings. In terms of added value it's had to say, as Barrow is a low price area, and so this will restrain any uplift, but if you're not looking to make a quick profit, but enjoy a comfortable house with lower energy bills they go for it. There will be help forthcoming from here for sure, as I don't think we've seen a major EWI job documented her before.,

The heat loss model is here: http://www.mayfly.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Fabric-and-ventilation-heat-loss-calculator-Master.xls I may well be able to help you with some estimated U values to populate it if you let us know the wall, door, window, and ceiling/roof construction, with any insulation. If you list each in terms of material and thickness by layer (i.e., plaster, brick, cavity, brick, render outside) or similar, giving the materials and approximate thickness, I can have a stab at giving you estimated U values. Knowing the starting point is key, as the whole reason for creating this spreadsheet was to allow fairly easy "what if?" studies, so that people can get the best bang for their buck when deciding what to fit.

Welcome. The result would be a few problems. First off, pumping air behind the insulation may well result in the damp on the walls getting worse, rather than better, If the walls are cool, as they will be when you add internal wall insulation, then moisture in any ventilation air is more likely to condense on them. The effect of the insulation would be reduced, too, as cold air would be flowing behind it. Probably the best way to improve an older solid wall property is to fit external wall insulation, so the old walls are now inside the heated envelope. @Ian has already mentioned the usual reasons for damp, and my experience of renovating old stone cottages has been that 99% of damp problems can be resolved by fixing places where damp is penetrating (leaking pipes and gutters, high ground outside, etc). The very best fix for so-called "rising damp" is just to lower the effective ground level around the outside of the house, perhaps using a French drain and dimple membrane to ensure that the water level outside is always well below floor level.