Jeremy Harris

I didn't mean non-cleaning in terms of not removing copper oxide (the dull colour of copper) they do that by being an anti-oxidant. I meant non-cleaning in terms of not being able to remove contaminants from the pipe, dirt, paint, burned flux etc. The copper alloy fluxless brazing rod I have penetrates pretty well, not as well as solder, but it does get sucked into the joint as long as it is spotlessly clean. I've just been out and checked, and it's a copper/phosphorus alloy, marked CuP6 on the packet.

I tended to not worry too much about bonfires, except when people light them on a still evening when there is an inversion and the whole damned valley fills with smoke. Since having an MVHR I am FAR more concerned about them. The MVHR has the unfortunate effect of filling every room in the house with smoke, unless you are quick enough to turn it off as soon as you get the first hint that someone's having a bonfire nearby. It is one of the major flaws with them that rarely seems to be mentioned.

Productivity falls on some outside work in winter, just because of the lack of daylight as much as anything else. Inside work should be the same whatever the season.

The first plot we were buying (before the purchase fell through) needed a piled foundation. I had loads of quotes, did a lot of research and ended up concluding that screwpiles were far and away the best solution. They were quick to install (just fit a drive head on a digger and away you go) and could be set to accurate levels. The design used a ring of screw piles on to which a steel ring beam was bolted. This was at ground level, but the ground level was created by digging out 150mm and filling with stone, so the undercroft was well drained (reduces the corrosion risk at the soil/air junction) and the ring beam rested on the stone. I was reassured about screw pile longevity when I found out that Brighton pier is supported on Victorian cast iron screw piles, driven into the sea bed, and that they are very commonly used to anchor motorway gantry signs.

It could be, but so far I've not seen any indication that mortgage terms are getting tighter again. They still seem to be advertising on TV and interest rates look likely to decrease, rather than increase, as far as I can tell. I can find out later, as I'm meeting a former colleague and they are in the process of relocating more staff, so he should have a good feel for what's happening. Certainly when I relocated around 1400 people in 2008/9 there was a major problem for many of them in getting mortgages, despite being relatively well paid. The main issue seemed to be that few lenders would offer more than a 70% of assessed value mortgage. If that has returned then it would create a lot of problems for those at the bottom of the house-buying ladder.

I always thought that the flux free copper jointing done on gas and refrigerant pipe was done with the low temperature fluxless copper alloy brazing rod. I still have some, but haven't used it in years. It needs a nice clean joint, but used to be relatively easy to use, although needs a lot of heat. Modern solder flux is tallow based, as far as i can tell, and has no cleaning power at all, it's simply an anti-oxidant (some may recall using grease or oil fluxes in the past that worked the same way). There were a couple of "cleaning fluxes" in common use, my preference was to use zinc chloride, either in the liquid form (Bakers Fluid) or as a paste where it's mixed with grease. Both leave residues and are now listed as unsuitable for potable water, I believe (along with tin lead solder). The tin lead solder ban is a pain, as the non-lead solder isn't syntectic, so can crystallise and go brittle if there is even the tiniest bit of movement before it's fully solidified. It doesn't seem to flow as easily into end feed fittings, either. The irritating thing is that the decision to ban it wasn't based on any credible risk from lead leaching from soldered pipe joints, especially given the very tiny area of solder exposed to water in any properly made joint. The ban is part of a very much wider ban to remove lead from all products, whether it's harmful in that application or not.

The "mortgage problem" is probably the most common excuse for pulling out, I think. We've had that happen two or three times when selling and I've never really believed it. I think one problem is that people often make a decision to buy very quickly, often on the day they view, which, when you think about it, is slightly mad. Most people buying something much cheaper, like a car, might spend days looking at specs, going around dealers, haggling over the price, etc, before deciding to buy. Saying there is a "mortgage problem" is an easy way out, as they don't have to admit that they've just changed their minds.

My view is that we'd never have had such an easy ride with the neighbours and Parish Council without the models. The site model (the one in the photo at the head of all my early blog entries here) was invaluable, as lots of people (including planners) seem to have difficulty understanding what something will look like from a plan.

The chap I knew a few years ago who had a wheeled JCB, who ran the farm next door to us, years ago and had a "man and a digger" hire business, always spent ages cleaning the buckets after any job, to the extent of wire brushing the inside and then wiping them over with old oil. I wonder if keeping the buckets nice and clean inside like this helps? I've no knowledge at all of this, but, given the effort he went to every time he came home from a job I can't imagine that he just did it for his own amusement.

Could well be a duff plasterboard screw, one that missed the corrosion proofing. I noticed that our guys found the occasional "blind" screw in a strip, where the head hadn't been formed, so there's always the possibility of there being one that missed out on being passivated.

Good point, I thought that from the scale, 1:48, which isn't a typical UK scale (1:50 would be more common here for house models, I think). However, it does say you can print off paper to cover the model with a range of scale finishes, so may be there's an opportunity there to make it fit better with UK appearances.

I've just had an advertising flyer from a company I've bought electronic components from for years, and for once it looks quite interesting. It's bit expensive, but looks to be re-usable, so might well be cost-effective if refining a design using scale models. It might well have a resale value, too, within the self-build community. I built a total of six 1:50 scale models of our house, at a cost of around £50 in materials (foam board, liteply, cutting board, glue etc), so maybe the cost of these kits isn't all that high, given the possibility to re-use the components. I'm not endorsing this at all, as I've only had a quick look at both the details from the supplier and the manufacturer's website, but it looks like an interesting system: http://arckit.com/

One thing I learned early on is that you have to expect all suppliers to be a bit less that well-informed when it comes to details about their products. Some of the shortcomings in advice given by some suppliers was truly shocking, we found. This isn't usually the manufacturer's fault, it seems that UK suppliers of products made elsewhere are often lacking in technical understanding, so it's best to assume the worst and question every single detail.

You have to admire the French and the way they ignore any rule they don't like, and the way they accept that massive strikes that cause total disruption are perfectly valid ways of showing displeasure, and almost seem to have state support (at least it seems unusual for the gendarmes to do much about the!). On the other hand, they can apply some rules so zealously that one cannot help but wonder how they decide which laws to enforce and which to ignore. Until a couple of years ago we had some friends who lived in the Loire, and we used to fly or drive down to see them quite a bit (he ran a flying school at a nearby airfield). In that department, speeding was rigorously enforced, with hidden cameras and speed traps all over the place. Yet a significant number of cars on the roads were clearly un-roadworthy, and a look around showed that many weren't insured (the little green ticket in the window). I remember being stopped there once and the gendarme making a great show of checking that I had a hi vis vest, a proper set of spare light bulbs and a warning triangle in the car (which was a pain, as it was a Mercedes SLK230 and the roof was folded down, so access to the tiny boot area was hampered, and he wouldn't let me start the engine to raise the roof...........). He didn't check my driving licence or insurance, though, and neither did he even look around at the tyres, lights etc.

As Terry rightly says, but I'll add that I'm not a fan of compriband, particularly. One thing you need to do is completely fill the tiny gap all around window and door frames (the gap is typically around 3mm all around, for the fitting straps). This isn't just about weather tightness, it's about preventing air movement cooling the frame/window joint. Hence the reason for me wanting to very carefully fill that thin gap with low expansion foam. The foam isn't an air tightness seal, or a weather seal, it's solely to prevent air movement and provide an insulating gap filler, to reduce the risk of their being a local condensation locus.

No, MBC will just fit the airtightness tape to seal between the frame and the windows on the inside. Our window supplier offered to seal the gap around the windows (quite cheap, around £40 for the whole lot IIRC) bit I wanted to do it myself to be sure it was done as well as it could be. I used low expansion foam, injected deeply into the narrow gap from both side, to try and get as good an insulation level, and prevent cold air from penetrating, as I could get. It took time to do, but I think it was worth it to make sure the small gap was 100% filled.

The version I've heard before (bearing in mind that I both fly and sail, or at least used to before the self-build lark) was the three "F" rule version: "If it flies, floats or f***s then rent it, don't buy it".

It's the French car maker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupe_PSA Some might argue that the level of French government investment/guarantees in the group for decades amounts to a foul under EU rules...............

I'd suggest that engine oil changes should be more frequent on something like a digger than they would be on a car, as diggers spend a lot of time with a very load load on the engine and probably end up with more oil contamination as a consequence. Diesels tend to suffer from slight oil dilution from unburned fuel, which can fool some into thinking they aren't burning oil, as the unburned fuel can keep the oil level constant, or even make it rise. They also tend to produce acidic combustion products at low operating temperatures and these collect in the oil, too. 500 hours sounds about right for a nice modern diesel, but IIRC, the PSA group diesels of the vintage that's in Dave's digger needed either 5000 mile or 6000 mile oil changes when fitted to cars. At an average of 30mph that's around 200 hours, rather than 500 hours.

The delay can be very beneficial IF you have the right information available. We had around a year's delay because of the boundary problem with our plot, and I spent most of that year fretting about heating systems. Had I known what I know now I'd have put far more thought into ways of providing shade and reducing solar gain, and far less into heating, as it really isn't needed very much. Unfortunately, at the time we started our "thinking process" there were very few people on the old Ebuild forum that had actually built a passive house (in fact I have a feeling that we may well have been the only ones there looking at building one - more joined later). That was a real issue, as heating seemed to be a hot topic and I can't recall a single post back then about reducing or controlling solar gain. As a consequence, we're now having to spend a significant amount of money on fitting heat-reflecting film to the outside of some of the glazing, something that could have easily been avoided had I planned (and argued with the planners) for external shutters on some windows.

That is a good result, but does make you wonder how much profiteering goes on by the utilities giving exorbitant quotes that are just accepted, without question. I bet there are a fair few who just pay up, believing that there's no point in arguing with a monopoly. I'm really glad you've shown that there is a great deal of merit in arguing with them over price! If Wessex Water had been open to negotiate the price to replace the 80 year old pipe outside our house, so we could have a feed from it, then they would have gained a customer. Because they didn't, they have both lost a customer forever and will have to pay the whole cost of replacing that pipe before long, the whole price that they wanted to charge me. I'd have accepted paying 50%, as the pipe feeds another of their customers, but they weren't having it. They've also lost out on income, as I have run a garden tap to my neighbour's vegetable patch from our borehole supply, so they don't have to pay for the water they use on it any more, via their meter.

Our panels were supplied with the membrane over the external openings. It was cut back on site and stapled to allow the windows to be fitted

Our frame went up during November and was watertight within 4 1/2 days. We had the worst winter for years, with torrential rain and floods for days on end, and during all that time the house had no roof covering, other than the membrane. The roofing wasn't completed until near the end of January, because of all the bad weather. There were no problems at all with water ingress anywhere, the only real issues were that things were delayed by the weather (the rain and wind delayed fitting the PV, for example, as it was too hazardous at times to work on the roof).

You'd close off the pipe from the filter to the tank, close off the buffer tank feed to the filter and allow the buffer tank to fill, have an overflow pipe from the top of the filter to take the muck and backwash water away then feed water from the buffer to the bottom of the filter bed, via a valve. The backwash will lift the sand bed and fluidise it (a bit like quicksand) and will wash away all the lighter stuff that's been filtered out (which will be mainly organic solids and dead bacteria). The backwash flows out the overflow and when the buffer tank is empty you reverse all the valve and put it back to normal service. If the filter is big enough it probably doesn't need backwashing very often. Some big gravity sand filters are cleaned by just digging out the dirty sand every few years and replacing it with washed sand. You could make up a unit that worked like that easily enough, and I suspect that's how the Victorian system Peter describes was periodically cleaned. The sand will get clogged up eventually, and it depends how dirty the water is and how big the filter is, together with the volume of water that flows through it, as to how frequently that occurs.

Yes, it is the "black ash", but it doesn't look at all "woody", just very lightly textured, like planed timber, perhaps. We didn't want a glossy finish, and this is sort of semi-matt, so doesn't shine or have reflections. From ground level you can't see the texture, really. The soffit boards we have look like tongue and groove. I didn't look closely as it was going up, so can't see whether it really is T&G or just looks like it. We have a 500mm overhang on the gable, and the soffit under there looks seamless to me, which means they either supply wide boards or it really is just T&G sections.