TheMitchells

There is a drain pipe for the rain coming off the roof to the left of the kitchen window and that runs somewhere under the house towards the front, we think. we ran water through it and we could hear it in when we lifted that drain cover, but it didnt come through there. So I not sure if connecting to it would be a good idea. it would help fill the waterbutt in the summer!

This is the outside and as you can see - no SVP. there is a drain cover outside the kitchen window and both soil pipes run into it from the ensuite (left hand window) and the bathroom, the middle window in the above photo. But both svp's arer boxed into the corners of rooms so going outside isnt really an option either. However, directly belwo the ensuite is the kitchen and now we are thinking about bringing the drain straight down through the kitchen ceiling and run it along the top of the units to the svp in the corner. you can see the boxed section on the right. Maybe not ideal but we can box it in there and it wouldnt really be seen much.

No, the soil vent pipe runs inside the house down through the bedroom and lounge (boxed in) but we could look at possibly taking the pipe outside and into the drain. Its raining and is almost at freezing point outside so I'm not looking till tomorrow?

We have decided its time to update our en-suite and change the quadrant shower for one across the whole of the back wall. when we did the quadrant, you can see that we stood the shower tray on thick ply, sitting on wooden blocks. this was to give sufficient room for the drain, which runs left under the vanity units and into the large pipe which runs down the corner of the bedroom, the other side of the left hand wall. We would like to have the new shower tray on or nearer the floor so there isnt a step. The floor joists run at 90 degrees to to direction the waste would need to go meaning drilling each one with min 32mm hole for the waste, until it gets to the main soil downpipe, having dropped it accordingly. This will also mean having half the floor up. As far as regs go the joists are deep enough (min 0.25 of joist depth) but we would need to come out to 0.25 to 0.4 of the span too which would be awkward Are there any techniques or methods these days which might be easier? this shows the shower drainpipe running into the soil pipe. the large grey one is the soil pipe from the loo. The white drain pipe running from under the shower tray. The plasterboard and tiles removed. they were ordinary plasterboards but we shall do it with proper aquaboards this time. (any recommendations for those too would be appreciated)? You may notice that the vanilty units also sit on 10cm blocks of wood - we like to have a higher than usual sink; is much nicer than the usual height. So - any good ideas that we can try?? thanks, in anticipation.?

Poor you! hope you are up and better soon - good advice - I need to remove some ivy from the garden and I keep thinking that I aught to do it before they start nesting. Will try to get on with it soon.?

Good luck! sounds very excited and dont worry - we all ask 'silly questions' and no one minds in the least! Its how we all learn. Maybe a blog cou0ld be started so we can follow the build as it progresses - please. and lots of photo's.?

That all sounds excellent - I shall do exactly that - thank you. More questions will be coming on the central heating and wet room extension....... But we have something taking up all our time at the moment - I just had to share! She's called Tegan and is 8 weeks old. we are going to socialise her for Dogs for Good, a local charity.

Just a quick question regarding a new suppy of gas. We are planning to change the central heating of our bungalow (which elderly parents are living in) from electricity (economy 7 and night storage heaters) to radiators and a gas combi boiler in the summer when parents will not miss the heating. we are also planning a wet room extension which hopefully will start at the end of this month when planning comes through. My thought is to get the gas brought to the property at the same time as the building work is going on, with any trenches dug at the same time as the foundations. the neighbours gas supply comes from the road to the front of the property and so I would expect ours to do the same. If we organise the gas pipes to be brought to the bungalow and a meter installed, is it okay to then leave it for a few month till we do the rest of the work? What exactly should I sort out now and to what point so that we can then leave it till summer? thanks.

Good luck with the renovation - you have come to the right place for advice.?

I agree with OnOff's key features above. We renovated an end terrace house and it had several of those issues. Damp was certainly a problem as previous owners had used cement render over the lime mortared walls. so where the render had cracked or was damaged, water was getting in but could not get back out again. Not sure if it will help but our blog will give you some ideas of what to expect.

Wow - over £18,400! Thats a lot of money for fees before anything even starts but I guess it is best to be aware of these fees; better aware than surprised when they appear. Thanks Grant.

Good luck Russ, we orginally posted this question and in the end, we withdrew from the plot purchase. There was problems with trees increasing the foundation depths and the fire access problem, and the access was not great. I am hoping you dont have that many issues and you can come up with a solution.?

I'd recommend attending one of the Self Build courses at Swindon Self build Centre. but I dont know where you live so it may be too far. I found it very useful and it was nice chatting to others who would be in the same boat as you. Its three days and around £390 I believe. But it covers loads of things, all useful and opens your eyes to options you may not have heard about.

And there is a great post for all the abbreviations and accronyms - look here.

look at the top right of the page and you should see any notifications which tell you someone has added to your post - if you click on 'Follow'. Its the Bell shaped symbol.

Thanks Jaygti, thats exactly the question I was wondering for our wet room plans, so nice to have the opinions and I plan to now give the planners a ring tomorrow - thought I'd give them a day back to catch up before pestering them. ? Good luck with yours! Corrine.

Looking forawrd to reading all about the build - we looked at the site in Bishops Castle but it wasnt the right time for us to buy. was very tempting tho - maybe some more will come up when we are in a better position to buy. Good luck with it all.

Details please! sounds interesting.....?

No they dont use it very often, about 2-3 times a week. It is scary how much we all use for heating our homes. and we dont think the bungalow is very leaky. It has had cavity insulation added and there is plenty insulatio in the attic. But they do like it warm. They have even put in an order for a new electric fire so when they just want a little extra! But when they get the their age, I guess if they want it hot, why shouldnt they have it hot. ?

Yes, that would have explained it but it wasnt - they were all up to temperature and it wasnt even the night it turned really cold. Possibly - there is a boost for evenings when you can open a flap and it lets the heat out of the core. But it should not have been open - although Dad may have accidently changed it. Its about the only thing that could do it. But still seems a lot of power. I just hope it doesnt happen again. We are doing readings every day now. Unfortunatly the washing machine cannot be used at night - the economy 7 comes on at 12.30 and goes off around 7am. And for some reason, it cannot be turned on with a timer. it has to be pressed to set it off. And its on the 'socket' ring at the consumer unit. the economy 7 stuff has their own consumer unit.

yes, thats an option. and I did think about getting them to the local sports centre for a shower there.

Having installed my elderly parents in a nearby bungalow, we are trying to sort out the heating systems and electricity costs. It is a bit of a conundrum and maybe someone has an idea what could be causing the problem. The bungalow is heated by one night storage heater in the lounge and a rather large night storage system in a central cupboard, (left photo) through which air is blown when required into all the rooms, incudling the back of the lounge. This is controled by a thermostat in the lounge. The place also has a very large hot water tank in another cupboard which is also on the Economy 7 night time tarif. The econmy 7 stuff (tank and two NSH's) is on its own fused thing in the fuse box. Before buying the place, I asked about electricity bills and was informed that the average winter bills were about £90. Hhh. Dont think so! We were taking reading of the electrcity over the course of the first couple of months as it got colder to make sure we had an idea of costs. Here is the spreadsheet. As you can see, the costs are far higher than expected. and I havent the foggiest what happened on the21st and 22nd Nov! Why did the night reading suddenly quadruple! parents assure me that nothing changed from normal. then we had two night really low! Our idea was to turn off each unit in turn to see how that effected the readings but 'something caused a major hiccup and they certainly cannot afford to have occasional costs of £12 anight. On Sunday (yesterday)after a few evenings of relative similar readings, we turned off the heater to the hot water tank. And the evening costs did drop. On feeling the tank this morning, the bottom third was cold, middle third warmish and the top hot. So we are leaving it another night before turning it back on. They dont use much water at all as they cannot get into the bath and apart from the washing machine occasionally, they use a sinkful per day washing dishes. The heating is set quite high as Dad feels the cold and the house is certainly warm when I go in but not excessively (usually around 21oC/70oF in the lounge). They turn the thermostat up for about 10 mins in the morning then a bit more in the evening when the other nsh is probably not putting as much out. Any ideas what could have caused the sudden increase the other evening? Thats a lot of electricity to use. And are we doing the right thing to try to calculate what each unit is costing to run? I think we shall seriously be looking at replacing it all with a simple gas combi boiler in the summer. There is gas in the street and we can see many similar bungalows are it connected. And if we plan it with a future kitchen extension in mind, it will save us having to do it in a few years time.

There are plenty of bamboo varieties that would be suitable but they tend to be only aviailable from specialist suppliers. The ones you get in the garden centres tend to be those that are invasive. Bamboo root systems can be either clumping or running. Avoid the running ones! Phyllostachys is actually a runner but tends to clump form in our climate. The best bamboos for smaller gardens include Fargesia murielae 'Simba' - this grows to 2.5m and spreads to about 1.2m but is a lovely shaped bamboo with orangish stems. Can also be grown in a container. Fargesia nitida. - Upright growing and good for exposed sites. Purplish stems and dainty foliage. Up to 3m and spreads around 1m. Thamnocalamus crassinoidus 'Kew' - delicate, small leaves with stems which emerge powder-blue but age to red. up to 4m and spread 1.5m. All sizes are after about 10 years, so fairly slow. Be careful of Pleiblastus as they can spread a lot. And dont worry if they do not do much in the first couple of years. Underground they will be getting established and then they will start growing well. Hope that helps.? I'd also recomend Grisilinia - makes a readlly good hedge and is evergreen.

Thats what Dad suggested initially - but like an idiot, I thought we should do a 'proper job'! I should have listened - the wisdom of age......?

Well, the answer came back from highways and its not good news. Having reviewed the proposals I would recommend that you make use of the existing access as in order to form another access would require stopping up of the existing as the Local Highway Authority would resist more than one access serving a single dwelling as per adopted policy. I would propose to provide an additional length of driveway leading from the existing access to the front door so that the highway ( including footway) is not required to be modified in any way which would be costly. So we are not able to add a new driveway, without 'stopping' up the old one as the policy is to only allow one access per property. And as the old one leads to the garage, thats not really an option. (Maybe). And taking the driveway from the origonal all the way to near the front door would be far too expensive. I have not measured it but it would mean a driveway a lot longer than planned drive and as the cost of our proposed one is around £1000, we would be talking several thousand and thats not an option either. So much for helping the elderly to stay in their properties longer! So what do we do? 1. Ignore the advice and just make a new driveway where we want it. are they likely to send a Highways person out to check and take action against us? Unlikely, The council are bankrupt so I doubt they will want any court cases. 2. Block the origonal driveway with some planters that can be moved later. Make a new driveway as per our plans. We are only using the garage for storage. It means parking visiting cars on the road but we can cope with that. But would the Highways still insist on dropping the kerb, which they admit is costly. 3. Leave the origonal driveway, remove some of the hedging next to the footpath and if Dad parks on the lawn, so be it. Its not an official driveway. I'm tempted to go for option 3 - its cheap and solves the problem in the short term. if the lawn gets a bit muddy, we could always lay a few paving slabs for the wheels! Isnt Bureaucracy wonderful!??