Jeremy Harris

Yes.

Concrete tiles are the most susceptible to having their colour slightly changed, I think, based on my experience. I doubt that there would be any colour change at all on slate, as it seems pretty impermeable. Even the colour change on concrete tiles wasn't really noticeable; it didn't turn them blue, but just slightly lightened their original colour, which may well have been due to the copper sulphate just killing off stuff growing in the top surface of the tiles. The biggest problem I found at the old house is that it takes a few weeks for the copper sulphate to kill off the lichen and moss, and then over the next few months you have big chunks of dead moss falling off the roof. We had hedgehog brushes in the gutters, so the moss just rolled over the top and on to the drive, making a nasty mess.

I use the maximum strength you can get by using copper sulphate pentahydrate crystals, which you can always get right by just pouring crystals into a plastic container with warm water in (that you never want to use for anything else - it will get permanently stained, in all probability) until no more crystals will dissolve. If you end up with a thin layer of crystals in the bottom the strength is right, just take the blue liquid off the top. You can buy copper sulphate pentahydrate pretty cheaply from places like ebay, I bought a 25kg bag for around £50 years ago and still have half of it left. To do a whole roof you probably need around 2 to 4 kg, depending on the size, I'd guess, so a 5kg bag or tub may be enough. If you have a good equestrian or farm supplies place nearby they probably stock it for treatment of fungal infections (works on humans, too, and will kill Athletes Foot, but it does tend to stain your feet............).

Have you looked at other options? For example, if thinking of an oak frame, forget about flex and just place the frame supporting pads on something like ground improvement piles, like those that @recoveringacademic used. These are just holes that go down to a depth well below the heave affected zone and are packed with stone. The same system could be used to support a reinforced slab foundation, which would allow other construction methods to be considered. Trenches are, in my view, probably one of the least effective ways of dealing with poor ground conditions, but somehow we seemed to have trench foundations engrained in the very DNA of the UK construction industry, for some unknown reason. FWIW, you can also just use a thicker bed of stone under a slab to mitigate poor ground or heave, too. Needs a deep excavation for really poor ground, but if you're already excavating a lot on site the additional cost may not be that great. Best bet is to talk to an open-minded structural engineer, one who's willing to consider solutions that may not often be seen in a domestic build. I found a chap with lots of experience of foundation design for motorway structures, and he was a goldmine of ways around difficult ground that could be adapted to domestic construction. Another option would be to look at helical piles, they are quick to install, can bear their full working load as soon as they are installed, and have a long track record of being very reliable. The Victorians built seaside piers using helical cast iron piles into sand, that are still standing today.

We did the same and it's perfectly legal and adequate. In fact the garage didn't get used, as the house shell was up very quickly and so that was used. Before that, we just had a portaloo with hand washing facilities, plus a 25 litre container of drinking water and the ground works blokes had lunch etc in the cab of their diggers/truck. I found that around 80% of the people I had on site preferred to sit in their van to have a break anyway, even when the house was almost complete and I'd put folding chairs, a makeshift table and tea and coffee making facilities in there. I did have a first aid kit on hand, plus a plastic box full of spare PPE (no one used it) and a laminated sign with the phone numbers and addresses (with directions) for the local GP, dentist, shop, A&E etc.

The key issue is that CDM (all variants) is intended to be an industry regulatory mechanism, and the creators of it just didn't consider self-builders as being within the industry, but they also failed rather dismally to make their intentions with regard to the relatively small number of self-builders clear. It's a pretty typical bit of poor government regulatory drafting work, where not all groups that could be impacted by the regulations were consulted properly. This is a common failing in government; they are required to produce a regulatory impact statement before getting draft regulation approved, but have a nasty habit of leaving out some who could be impacted adversely by the regulation, and only dealing with these "anomalies" afterwards, and then often rather inconsistently. Thankfully there is a clear, if somewhat tortuous, path through CDM 2015 that, after you've joined up a lot of dots, does result in a clear outcome, which is that, in essence, a self builder is a domestic client and therefore cannot have any appointed responsibilities under CDM2015, and might find themselves creating more problems if they tried to do so, as they might well be putting themself in a position where they could carry liabilities as a commercial client, for which they neither had the expertise or indemnity cover protect them, rather than the very much lower level of responsibility that a domestic client carries under the over-arching health and safety legislation, of which CDM 2015 is a part.

The thing that really bugs me is the massive inconsistencies across planning, conservation and building regulations inspection. The systems are well and truly broken when, as discussed here frequently, some individuals are made to jump through a near-impossible series of hoops, whilst others seem to get what looks like a free pass through the system. There needs to be a root and branch reform of all three areas, with standards that are regulated and maintained so that they are common across the whole of each country within the UK. The fact that one town can approach approval of something in one way, and another a few miles down the road can approach approval in a totally different way, is just farcical, as well as being exceptionally frustrating. In my case I found both the planning officer and the first and last building inspector brilliant, the first conservation officer was an ignorant PITA who didn't even know what common building materials were when standing in front of them, the Environment Agency were a total PITA over run-off from our site to the adjacent stream, but were more than happy for me to run sewage treatment plant effluent into it, and generally caused me a lot of pain and grief over levels for flood protection that were, and are, barking mad, when you look at the true risk (rather than that which a bunch of undergrads did as a project, which is what they used...........).

Probably not, as long as you arrange for one pipe inlet/outlet to be vertical (to let air out) and also arrange for the pump and heater to be wired to the same circuit, so there is always flow through the heater. Willis never designed these heaters to be used horizontally, or with a pump, they were designed originally to be used vertically with a thermosyphon, but the smaller, but similar, immersion heater in a tube that is inside a Sunamp PV is horizontal and works just fine. It has a similar resettable over-temperature cut out as a modern immersion fitted to a Willis heater, and is arranged so that the heater can only operate when the pump is circulating water through the heating chamber.

I'll try and update the blog with some more photos of the landscaping, once I've finished most of the planting, maybe this coming weekend.

Well, after a day's hard slog we managed to dig out and remove a few more tonnes of crap clay/rubble and replace it with around 10 tonnes of nice topsoil, that filled my nice new "tree planter" as well as the two remaining areas of claggy grot left over from building the house. Seven trees are now planted (not the main screening trees, we're still looking for those), two cherry trees, one either side of the drive ("Shogetsu", or Shimidsu Sakura), two red flowering crataegus "Paul's Scarlet" standards behind them on either side of the drive, then on the front side of the drive we've planted a silver birch, then a Pyrus "Chanticlear" and finally a white beam, Sorbus Aria "Lutescens". I've also managed to weed out between all the surviving bare root hedging we put in at the time of the build (a lot of which didn't survive) and planted a few more field maples. I need to quickly go and get a few more hawthorn/blackthorn plants to fill in some gaps. Working down in the bottom of the slope, where the hedging is, is evil. The slope is steep, and things like the wild rose and hawthorns and blackthorns are just out to get you. I've managed to weed out and lay black weed suppressing fabric down there and although it's pegged down, I'm going back over the steeper, narrow, areas, with some 13mm chicken wire, pegged down with big staples. Wickes have a good offer on bark chippings at the moment, four 90 litre bags for the price of three, at £7 per bag, which works out cheaper than having dumpy bags delivered around here. I managed to get 12 bags in the car this morning (the car didn't like it much, it has to be said - my guess is that the weight in the back was around 1/2 tonne, as the bark chippings were soaking wet inside the bags), but it managed OK. Another two, maybe three, car loads will cover up all the remaining weed fabric, I hope. The bark chippings stay put OK on the more level areas (it was a bit windy today, so a good test), but aren't going to stay in place on the steeper banked areas, so the plan is to spread the bark chippings over the weed fabric, then lay chicken wire over the top and staple it down. Where it abuts against the drive kerb haunching I've got some stainless penny washers and self-threading concrete screws, that I hope should hold down the folded edge of the chicken wire OK to the concrete. Eventually we'll plant some ground cover plants in slits cut through the chicken wire and fabric, once things are more established. The main aim at the moment is to just stop the weeds from competing with the hedging and trees, especially where it's really difficult to get down and weed effectively. Next job is to choose the big screening trees, and plant them in the nice topsoil that's in the big planter. One advantage of putting the other trees in first is that we now have a far better idea of the size and screening effect of just the 2.5m to 3m high deciduous trees that we've already put in. The other good news is that my other half is coming around to the idea of at least one Photinia "Red Robin" standard; I like them and best of all I can get a nice 3.5m standard for a not to horrendous price. A bay tree is also looking a distinct possibility, too, but we're still undecided on the others (I now think we need four, rather than three, bigger trees). I still bloody hate gardening, though....................

That's exactly what I've been doing, and equally I'm REALLY slow, so jobs seem to take forever. The upside is that if there are any screw ups I've only myself to blame.......................

PEX is pretty resistant to most things. FWIW I'd not cut the pipe and fit a joiner, I'd make up a small mould around the affected area and pour in some two pack PU potting compound. That#s good enough to seal up high voltage underground electrical connections, and will be a belt-and-braces job around that scuffed section. There are loads of places that sell the two pack PU resin, and it's all pretty much the same. It has a little bit of "give" in it too, so won't be bothered by any slight expansion as the pipe warms up. If your stuck for a supplier, then try Rapid: https://www.rapidonline.com/robnor-el116h-bk-500-thermal-conductive-polyurethane-resin-500g-87-0224 or TLC: https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/SWJKRESIN.html You'll probably need a couple of the TLC kits, maybe three, to get enough resin to fill the mould. Make the mould as tight to the pipe as you can - it it were me I'd try and make a mould from a bigger bit of pipe with a slice cut off, slid over the UFH pipe with the top open and the ends taped tight to the UFH pipe to stop the resin leaking out.

The official answer is that, in the strictest legal interpretation, no, they cannot. However, planners can mandate a specific type of slate, and if that can only be obtained from one supplier then effectively they can mandate this. I've always felt that any such restriction should be capable of challenge, wherever it can be proved to be, in effect, a local authority specifying a single supplier, on the the basis that it constitutes interference in the free market, something that local authorities are not allowed to do, However, there are some exceptions that show that they can get away with this, particularly where the planning authority happens to be a National Park. Always worth a challenge though. I've known people provide mis-labelled samples for approval as a part of a planning condition in order to get around it, for example getting two or three samples of slate and labelling the one they want to use as being one they know the planners have approved in the past, even though it's something else...............

Normal GPS will be far too inaccurate - you're talking about no better than +/-2 to 3m on a very good day with the sort of GPS used in phones, and much of the time the errors will be bigger than that, more like +/-5m unless the signal happens to be very good and the GPS is fixed in position for several minutes to allow the built-in Kalman filter to smooth out the worst of the positioning errors. Surveying GPS device, like a Total Station, uses phase measurement techniques to correct these errors and get to around +/- 20mm or so accuracy in 2D. So GPS is pretty much useless for this unless you have access to either a Total Station or a survey-grade GPS (the thing that looks like a mushroom on a pole). Best bet is to pay for a boundary survey. I think ours cost around £400 +VAT and included lots of useful additional information, including the marking of the position of prominent trees, phone poles, posts etc.

I sent a PM yesterday with his phone number, should be in your message box - top right of the screen, icon looks like an envelope.

I found a bit of ordinary detergent helped with the aid of a water fed brush. I'd be very wary of using copper, as the frames of PV panels are aluminium, and they are practically at the opposite ends of the electrochemical series, so there is a strong probability that this would induce corrosion of the alloy frames. After cleaning, you could try spraying the panels with a copper sulphate solution. With luck this will kill off any lichen residue and slow regrowth. I've found that copper sulphate can work surprisingly well at killing lichen and moss, although it doesn't last forever. With luck, it may inhibit regrowth for a year or two, and it's safe to re-spray the panels with copper sulphate solution annually if you want to try and prevent regrowth. When sprayed on concrete tiles, copper sulphate solution can keep the tiles lichen and moss free for a few years I've found. It seems that the copper sulphate soaks into the tiles and acts to prevent lichen regrowth for a fairly long time.

No not at all. There are no solvents in any can foam that will have any effect on any plastic used in construction I'm aware of - it's even (chemically) safe with PVC wiring (unlike EPS).

Uncoated masonry is pretty air permeable, so coating definitely makes a very significant improvement. However, a lot depends on the nature of any structure or insulation outside the inner masonry leaf. Some types of insulation, for example, can act as a pretty good wind barrier, as can some forms of outer wall finish.

I thought it might be related to pH, but I don't think it can be, as the pH is exactly the same on our unsoftened water as it is on the softened water, around 7.1 to 7.2. I suspected it might be to do with the slightly increased sodium level, but then had a look at water quality around the country and found that our softened water was well inside the normal range for drinking water supplies around the UK, so I'm not at all sure what the concerns are. AFAICS, the internals of the boiler are stainless steel and monel, which would resist some pretty harsh water. Cornwall has drinking water that is more aggressive in terms of corrosion potential than our softened water, and yet none of the boiling water tap suppliers have an restrictions on sale there. It all seems a bit odd, and I'd love to get to the bottom of the real reason for their concern over softened water.

Our Itho boiling water tap came supplied with a phosphate dosing cartridge filter unit as a part of the package, with a caution that the warranty wasn't valid unless this was fitted. I'm running it on softened water, as I can't see any good reason not to, having looked at all the materials used within it and got good test results on our softened water.

I can pass you the number of a really good tiler who's based somewhere around Shaftesbury, by PM, if you'd like to give him a ring. He may be OK travelling down as far as Wincanton, I'm not sure. He's the chap that laid all our travertine flooring and also did all our internal decorating, and did a very good job.

Standard UK copper pipe comes in 42mm OD and 54mm OD sizes, which wouldn't be a restriction over 40mm PVC/ABS waste pipe.

@ProDave, take a look at this, obviously not WRAS compliant in any way, but frankly if it's only feeding the cold supply to a thermostatic mixer shower I don't think that would bother me much. :

Found another one for just over £100: http://www.measurementsystems.co.uk/Sensors_and_Meters/Air_Quality_and_Gas_Sensors/gs-cd-st8013-carbon-dioxide-co2-switch

Found just the thing: https://www.epluse.com/en/products/co2-measurement/co2-carbon-dioxide-switches/ Just need to find the price - probably expensive, as NDIR CO2 sensors themselves are a bit pricey.