Jeremy Harris

This is the seller I bought from: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2X-MAKITA-18V-3-0Ah-LITHIUM-ION-BATTERY-BL1830-LXT-UK-LATEST-PACK-NEW-/251543119079? There are a fair few around, but I've run the BL1830's from that seller hard and they are both holding up well. I can't tell the difference between them and the genuine Makita packs.

Have you tried the knock-off packs, Nick? I'm really impressed with the two I bought and they have been really hammered as I've been using the pair of them to run the Makita mower. I reckoned that at a bit under £20 each they were worth taking the risk on.

Given the companies track record, do you really think he will give an honest answer to this question? I don't, I think that the rep will most probably misrepresent the acoustic performance in a way that is tantamount to lying..................

This supplier really is an unethical company, aren't they? I mean, when you approach a retailer for a quote for a product you do not expect that retailer to be got at by a manufacturer, to ignore your specific request and give you a quote for a different product. For two retailers to do the same sounds very dodgy indeed, as it sounds close to being a cartel (which is illegal). Edited to add: Under sufferance, and not because I agree one bit with it, I've edited the above to high light the intention and added the text below for the avoidance of doubt: The observation I was making here, and which has attracted criticism much later in this thread, was that a builders merchant had been approached to quote for a specific product, with specific performance parameters relating to thermal resistance, acoustic insulation properties and decrement delay time. Instead of offering to supply a product, or an alternative that met all the same performance requirements, it offered an alternative that fell well short of meeting the acoustic and decrement delay requirements. I consider that to be unethical behaviour by any company, whatever they are selling. For two different suppliers to do the same thing seems to me to raise suspicions as to who they are really serving, their customers or their suppliers.

I'd agree with the above wholeheartedly. Our ground works chap had his own crusher back at his yard and consequently was able to give us a good price on crushed hardcore for our site access. However, what we got was not at all good. I went over and had a look at his crusher and it was a medium sized one that really wasn't up to crushing the wide range of stuff being chucked into it. The result was that there was a wide variation is size (some bits were half-brick sized lumps of hard concrete) and there was also a fair bit of rubbish in it. I spent a lot of time removing old galvanised steel plate wall ties, bits of assorted reinforcing steel etc from the top layer, just to minimise the risk of damage to vehicle tyres. The large crushing plants have the ability to sort and grade what comes out, so you end up with a cleaner and more uniform hardcore that compacts more easily (ours didn't compact as well as I'd hope, but did manage to keep vehicles out of the clay beneath).

Sounds like the pack has a failed cell. It might be worth the hassle of replacing, but my guess is that it may well be cheaper, quicker and easier to get a replacement battery pack. What you're describing is a pack where one cell has developed a high internal resistance and is causing the charger to cut off early. That cell has no effective capacity either. The AEG packs don't have the same electronic disabling fuse that the Makita BL packs do, so sadly it's not the same easy fix. It's worth hunting around on Amazon and ebay, though. The chap that did our landscaping has all Makita tools, like me, and he'd bought four cheap Makita knock-off packs, at around £20 per pack. He had been using them for a year and reckoned they gave the same performance in practice as the genuine packs. I took a punt and bought two packs from Amazon for around £40 and they seem just as good as the originals. I couldn't have bought new 18650 cells and re-celled a failed Makita pack for what I paid for two replacements.

Bad specification and installation. As delivered, the default settings on that 6kW unit would have meant it would be icing and defrosting all the time in cool weather, as it's the same as the Glowworm unit we have, and the default settings on that are way off what's needed to make it run efficiently. It's far from easy to understand how the settings need to be changed to make these units work as designed, as they are not designed or set for the UK climate as standard (they are imported and badge engineered, and the re-sellers don't seem to have grasped the need to adjust the ratings and performance for the UK).

It's highly unethical, in my view, but ebay is ebay and will do what it wants, pretty much. The other give away that an apparently UK based seller is really in China is to ask some questions and see what time of day you get a reply. It's usually pretty easy to spot Chinese based sellers as they respond overnight and at weekends, when the majority of UK businesses will be closed. The use of "Chinglish" in the reply or advert can also be a good clue!

OK, the "system" (some might say scam.......) works like this. - You are a Chinese-based retailer and you do not want that fact to be known to your customers, because you know that UK buyers will pay more, and place greater trust, in a UK-based seller. - You rent a bonded warehouse in the UK and pay a UK agent to ship goods from that warehouse to addresses you pass to that agent, and pay UK VAT and duty as required, for a fee. - You advertise on ebay as if you are based in the UK, giving the location of the goods as being the warehouse location (roughly). This is legit under ebay rules. - You collect payment in CHINA, via ebay, so as far as the law is concerned this is an overseas purchase, not covered by UK/EU consumer protection law, and the goods do not have to comply with any safety regulations. - As soon as a sale is made the goods are shipped by the third party agent (who is not legally the retailer, as he/she has not advertised or sold any goods) to the buyer. - The buyer has a problem and then finds that they have purchased direct from China, in effect, and so have no recompense except under ebay rules or Chinese law.

The give away is the location, Portsmouth. Hundreds of Chinese sellers drop ship from Portsmouth, and they don't make it clear on their ebay ad that you are really buying from China directly, so have no protection under UK consumer law, just whatever protection ebay offers (not much). I got involved in helping someone fight a legal battle over a Chinese seller drop shipping illegal goods from Portsmouth a few years ago. A lady had bought an electric bike from ebay, thinking she was buying from a UK seller. She was stopped by the police because the "electric bike" turned out to be an electric scooter with pedals fitted, but which couldn't be used to propel the thing. The police were trying to prosecute her for riding a motor vehicle with no registration, insurance or road tax and I got involved trying to advise as to whether the scooter met either the UK or EU definition for an electric bike (certain electric bikes are legal, many are not). In her case the scooter was very definitely an electric scooter and it proved impossible to make it legal, as there was no way it could have been made to pass the single vehicle type approval scheme and then be registered and insured. She tried to take action against the seller, but it turned out that despite being advertised as being in Portsmouth the seller was really in Shenzhen, China. Trading Standards got involved, but were powerless to help, as it was effectively a direct purchase from China, despite having been drop-shipped from a Portsmouth warehouse (even that wasn't accurate, it actually came from a warehouse at Southampton Docks). The police decided not to pass the case to the CPS, but advised that the scooter had to be broken up, which it was. It was a very sorry tale, as the lady had spent all her savings on it, and in getting legal advice.

Have you looked at the accuracy? It's pretty rubbish, +/-1mm over 1.5m, so over a 30m distance it's going to be +/- 20mm (or up to 40mm total error). It also has no mention of any accuracy class or certification, so I strongly suspect it's a cheap Chinese import that may well not even meet the advertised spec in practice. If it were me I'd look for a certified Class 2 one, which will be guaranteed to be no worse than +/- 3mm over 30m, a heck of a lot better than that ebay one.

I've no experience of them but they look like a neat solution. I bet they aren't cheap, though!

Probably not if you opt to use a sealant that's a dark shade, like the window frame. I doubt very much that a 5mm bead of dark sealant would really show at all, it it's done neatly.

I'd be inclined to forget about grouting the edge next to the window and just use a good sealant. I'd also get the tiler to pay for it....................

One has to question why, when we've had an air tightness requirement in building regs for many years now, a tiler decides it's OK to remove the sealing tape? I mean, surely to goodness this won't have been the first time he's seen the stuff, it's been in common use for around a decade now. A fix with flexible sealant is probably OK, but that's not really the point, is it?

Therein lies the problem. Great Crested Newts are indeed very common, yet they are still listed as being a protected species, dating back from the time when they may not have been so common. The same applies to bats. Some species (pipistrelles, for example) are extremely common, in fact so common I doubt that you can go anywhere in the countryside and not find them. However, they are lumped in with all other bats so are given exactly the same level of protection as bat species that are under threat. If you want real madness then how about the friend of mine that was required to undertake a badger survey as a planning requirement at the same time that badgers were being culled in the area.............................. You really couldn't make up some of the barking mad legislation we have. We seem to have adopted a policy of blanket legislation, rather than allowing common sense to be applied as to where protection is needed and where it is not. Even an ecologist relative of mine says the same, that the current legislation is probably harmful to wildlife overall, as those in the know do rather like you've suggested, and remove any wildlife before making an application, just because they know that common sense won't be applied. As a footnote, we looked at a cow shed conversion a few years ago. It was being sold with PP and the surveys etc had all been done. Half the building was an open-fronted machinery store and the ecologist had found a single Pipistrelle dropping in there. In his report he noted that it was probably not an indication of a roost in the building, as it was open fronted, but most likely just left by a single foraging bat from the nearby woodland. The planners still insisted that the plans include a "bat hotel", with an entrance at one gable.........................

We fitted black textured UPVC fascias and soffits, really against my better judgement, as I didn't really want to use UPVC. Aluminium was just way above our budget, though, because of the big overhangs that were designed in to both reduce high sun angle solar gain and provide some rain protection for the cladding (which the overhang does very effectively). Now the black UPVC is fitted we're extremely please with it, it looks far less like plastic than the white stuff, to the extent that few guess that it is UPVC when first seeing it and often ask what we used. I can't remember off the top of my head what brand we went for, but I'm sure that there are some offcuts out in the garage that still have the protective film on with the makers name, so I'll try and remember to take a look and post back here if I can find it.

Ferdinand's warning is apt. Two weeks ago I had a visit from a (rather wealthy) chap who is having a house built a few miles from us. He came to look at our build around 2 years ago, when he and his wife were in the early planning stages. Unlike a lot of us here, he has been very hands-off with his build and had a standard contract with his architect to design and build his house. What has now happened is almost exactly as Ferdinand has said. The build costs have risen by a little over 20%, primarily because the architect's original cost estimates were hopelessly optimistic - I've been through them as a favour for the chap. The increase in cost has been reluctantly accepted, but he has now received the bill from the architect, and because his fees are based on a percentage of the total cost (in this case 12%) this bill is over 20% higher than expected. It has always struck me as wholly unreasonable for fees to be a percentage of the total cost, especially when letting a design and build contract, as it removes any incentive for the architect/project manager to reduce cost. The higher the build cost the greater their fee. It is common in commercial design and build contracts to use a "target cost incentive fee" contract and there is no good reason why this approach should not be used for a domestic design and build. In essence, you set a target build cost, based on a full QS breakdown. You then contract to have the house designed and built within that cost, with the incentive being that a percentage of any cost saving will be shared between the two parties to the contract. For example, you have a firm target price set of £200k. The architect/project manager manages resources wisely and gets the best prices for materials and comes in at £190k. There's a 50/50 incentive fee split, so you save half of this £10k saving, and pay out £195k for the work and the architect/project manager makes £5k extra profit (the difference between the £190k cost and the £195k you pay.

It very much depends on what you want to do. A dumpy really needs an assistant to hold the staff, and needs to be set level carefully before you start, so may not be ideal for working on your own. Working outside on your own a good self-levelling rotating laser level with a receiver on the staff means you can quickly set out levels around the whole area swept by the laser and the receiver saves a lot of faffing about trying to see the line. A standard laser level should be a Class 2, good for +/- 3mm over 30m, which is OK for most levelling work on site, like drains, base of foundations etc, and just about OK for finished floor levels. Watch out for second-hand units that have had a hard life, it's easy to damage things like the self-levelling system on some of the cheaper ones. My personal view is that a decent self-levelling Class 2 accuracy rotating beam laser plus a good surveying tape is probably worth buying new, but that for setting out on a position-sensitive site, or one where there is a slope or a few immovable obstacles around you may be better off getting several accurate 3D positions fixed with a Total Station and then making sure those datum points are protected so that you can work from them. You can do accurate setting out from known datum points with just a tape and a bit of Pythagoras, and be sure that you have got an accurate result by measuring in closed loops, with reverse measurements on every distance and then applying a least-squares correction to the loop to average out the errors.

You're right, but sadly there are an awful lot of products that are released to the market with flaws, flaws that often only become apparent years later. Most manufacturers will do some form of accelerated life testing, but this is far from being a perfect way of predicting how a product may perform years later, because some things are just very difficult to assess. I had a look through the testing that some of the materials we've used underwent, particularly the roofing as I was concerned about it fading or going brittle with age. The manufacturer tries to simulate ageing by subjecting it to high UV levels and many rapid heating and cooling cycles but I doubt that they are wholly representative, as my guess is that the slow migration of plasticisers may not be speeded up by this sort of accelerated life testing. I think we all run the risk of being product testers for any relatively new product, whether we like it or not. Even car manufacturers get it wrong with monotonous regularity; all three of the cars I've owned in the past 11 years have been subject to recalls to correct defects only found years after they went in to production, with two of those being safety critical (one was a steering joint that had to be replaced, the other was a fault with the accelerator sensor). Only one was a minor problem, fixed with a new firmware download, rather than any physical work.

To be fair, the problem of oxygen migration through plastic pipes wasn't a well understood one back in 1994. Barrier pipe is a relatively new invention (in this application) and the manufacturers didn't fully understand how big a problem oxygen migration through plastic pipe was. There was a school of thought that believed that the reducing capacity of inhibitors would be good enough to prevent water in sealed heating systems from developing a high enough ORP to cause corrosion problems. We now know that some types of plastic pipe can be far more oxygen-permeable than was originally thought, so those for heating systems now include some form of oxygen barrier, either a thin lamination of aluminium or a lamination of oxygen impermeable plastic. If Hepworth had been asked specifically to give the oxygen permeability of their plastic pipe 20 years ago they may well not have had proper data, as I have a feeling that it was only when problems were encountered in heating systems plumbed with the stuff that the manufacturers took heed and realised they needed to come up with a fix. In many ways it's like push-fit pipe fittings. When these first came out they quickly developed a reputation for being less than perfectly reliable. Those we use today seem to be at least as reliable as a conventional pipe joint, as the manufacturers have tweaked the designs and made them easier to fit correctly.

I did wonder about this, so decided to fix all my pipes down with dual pipe clips at every joist, to keep them clear of the metal webs. As an aside, I first fitted some 22mm pipe clips (the clip over ones) along the run and then fed the 15mm pipe through them. This meant that I could feed the 15mm plastic pipe single-handedly using the 22mm clips as guides to keep it off the metal webs, then just unclip the pipe clips and swap the pipe over to the adjacent dual clips.

Essentially all you need are a set of plans to gain planning permission (which are the very simple ones like you've shown in the plan above) plus a way of showing to building control that the structure is going to be built in accordance with building regs, plus enough detail for your builder to work from. Compliance with building regs can follow two routes. Either you submit full drawings to show compliance before you start, and get those approved (and those drawings and detail has to be enough to show compliance with the structural regs in Part A, as well as all the other regs that govern things like the width and position of doors, the entrance floor WC, etc), or you get approval as you build, with the inspector ticking things off as you go. The latter route isn't that wise for two builds, as the inspector could well require a layout change, for example to comply with Part M access needs, and if you've already got walls and doors in when he picks this up you could be faced with a lot of work to correct things. You can get an architectural technician to produce building regs drawings and do the submission, and like an architect he may need the help of a structural engineer, or may not, it depends on the design. Most houses for the general market probably never need an SE, as they use standard details that are deemed to be compliant with Part A (the structural bit of the building regs). Some house builders (mainly timber frame companies) provide a full structural design as a part of the package, and this will usually satisfy building control. This is what we did, I did all the drawings for planning and building control, the frame supplier provided a signed off foundation and frame that building control were happy with. The frame supplier used their own SE to sign everything off at the design stage.

A word of caution. I tried to run 10mm copper pipe (still have a big coil of it here) to our kitchen hot and cold feeds. There was no way whatsoever that I could feed it through Posijoist. The pipe snagged very badly on the Posijoist metal plates and try as I might I could not get it to feed off the coil cleanly. I ended up damaging two runs of 10mm copper then gave up and went and bought a roll of 15mm plastic. The plastic doesn't snag at all, I found. Admittedly part of the problem was me working on my own, but even with two I think it would have been a difficult job, as just the weight of the pipe after a few metres is enough to make it sag and then catch on the metal edges. Afterwards I did realise that if I'd put in some cheap 15mm plastic pipe I could probably have fed the 10mm copper through that to avoid the snagging problem. You may be able to arrange runs where this isn't an issue, but for me there was no easy way out of running all the pipes between the floors.

As above, but be aware that you will need to make sure that there is no chance of interstitial condensation at the sole plate. It seems clear that with increasing levels of insulation and airtightness not all SEs are taking full account of the need to change the way that the sole plate is both sealed and insulated from the cold foundation. This wasn't really a problem when we were building thermally poor houses, but is very definitely a major issue now, and one that has to be addressed by design, as it is challenging to retrofit a solution. There are still a lot of standard details for timber frame to foundation junctions that are badly outdated and need review.