Sparrowhawk

Carpeting the staircase solves the problem. I'll see myself out

Why didn't the developer demolish it when building the estate? It looks incongruous and they could've fitted a couple of houses on the site.

I like the shape of the back wall. If you've got the right garden that will make a spectacular view from outside - with the right cladding. Hopefully not rendered? For side extensions on narrow frontages that look better than tying in like the photo you've posted, look at London architects and how they squeeze their side extensions in. I didn't bookmark the ones I'm thinking of, sorry. These will be more expensive than that photo though. Which way's north? The architect has missed it off the drawings (pet peeve of mine) What construction did the architect have in mind with half of the first floor walls in the extension not lining up with ground floor walls? Others will be able to say if this pushes the cost up. Can you get plant on site from the Avenue at the bottom of your garden? If not how wide's your current side passageway?

Yes - it's the front and it's rendered, but cracking in places. Good thinking! The cavity's approx 100mm and the house is rendered in a mix of old (1920s? later?) on the front the driven rain side, and 1990s/2000s on the others. The 2000s stuff is nice render, rust marks from an idiotic choice of corner beading but no cracking or anything. The challenges are: much house wiring in the cavity inc 80A cable between two fuse boxes (use Perlite as cavity fill? No installers use this - so will need some rewiring) unfilled cavities open onto partial fill with batts in the extensions (don't see the problem here, fill it all) internal cavity walls throughout the house (that's what lances are for or they can drill internally and we'll redecorate) cavities need closing at loft level (somebody else can faceplant in 1980s glass fibre to do this - or it needs scaffolding & fascias off) air bricks need sheething at ground level (standard requirement) and better do a wall tie check with the 98 year age of the house + closeness to the sea, plus check the cavity's clear of rubble One company looked in the cavity via 2 drill holes, said it looked fine and did I want to sign the paperwork now. Given there's the original house + two extensions of different dates I thought that a bit superficial.

Hi and welcome to the forum. First question: what's your budget?

It's been a few months since I posted. There's little progress to show but been lots of thinking going on. We've been seriously thinking about this, but with nothing better coming up we've decided to stay, since most housing is the same age in this area and we reckon it will have problems. We've given ourselves 10 years before we move to another region of the UK. We also worked with a local architect who offered a "love it or leave it" service. The lack of light on the north aspect annoys my wife and the room layout in the extension isn't great, so as we are planning new windows and lifting floors it seemed ideal to discuss potential remodelling, removing walls and all that kind of stuff before doing anything. Said architect was most put out we aren't taking their work further, on the grounds that estimates they had asked us to get from builders were 2x-3x more than our budget (which the architect knew). And we felt their designs didn't provide what we wanted (our fault for not knowing clearly what to instruct). So we're back to widening and maybe raising an opening at the back, new glazing, and back to thermal efficiency which no one I've spoken to in the last 2 months has given a damn about. And now we've decided to stay I'm back to working on the house. First stop is thermal fabric modelling, and working out why the floor is 1.5 inches higher in one room than the next. My wife has asked for a crowbar and wants to start tearing the place apart... And I need to decide if the cavity wall insulation companies in the area can be trusted or a complete bunch of ********. The idea of a calculation of exposure to wind-driven rain meets with blank looks.

How much is that 'lite' version?

@Papillon which CAD do you and others use in the industry for 2D work? I've done a bit of 2D in Sketchup (a floor plan and an elevation) and hopeful there is something easier to use (or cheaper!) as I need to do a couple more elevation and section drawings. Thanks!

Thanks, was googling for "Socket screwdriver" which doesn't seem to exist, and "ratchet screwdriver" which is something else. Edit: Do socket sets take screwdriver bits? One 2.5 inch screw I've just taken out from a wooden fireplace surround had to be levered out its whole length, so losening just at the start as a manual impact driver seems to do is unlikely to be enough for some of these.

I have a number of stiff screws to get out, either overtightened or seized in place, that I can't shift with a screwdriver or with my 10.8V Bosch PSB 10.8 LI-2 Cordless Combi Drill. So I found a screwdriver with a hole in the handle and I've been putting my body weight on it and exerting force via another screwdriver through the handle. No screw has won - yet. But this bodge has damaged the screwdriver through the handle. As there's more to remove, what's the proper type of screwdriver to do this with?

Back on kitchens, the one thing I'll say re Howdens is their kitchens are everywhere - holiday homes, rentals etc. They have a 'look' and I suspect when you come to sell that cheapens the kitchen because people can tell it's a common kitchen. Maybe

My wife's a spender on everything and anything, and is now encouraging me to buy tools to "even things up". That wasn't quite what I had in mind when I said we should balance our spending, but okay...

Found this nice bit of reporting on the Bristol development (with a bit touching on Selby). Now they've figured out what the problems are it seems a shame to wind up L&G's housebuilding arm - the next estate(s) would have been better, and start to repay the £200M loss (or "investment" as it could have been viewed).

According to a recent Twitter discussion having the sash open at the top only is one way to address this

Did you tin foil the inside or outside of the windows?

Thanks, looks handy. Sellers don't like stating the max standing height or even safe working height in each combination, do they?! Werner have a handy page about where you should stand and do give figures on their site which I'm using as a starting point. For the fascias I'll need to stand 1.5m off the ground to work easily. Am I right in thinking that having the ladder as an A frame is more stable than leaning the top against the wall and the bottom on the patio?

And it's common to find out later that what you chose to set up isn't doing what you thought it was going to. You've not been missold, oh no, but it'll now cost you a few thousand in fees to unpick the mess that exists.

Moneybox yesterday (24 June 2023) covered how to hold the proceeds of a house sale safely: if you don't want the hassle of multiple saving accounts then National Savings & Investments is the way. Guaranteed up to £1m for one of their offerings and £2m for another. As to the list of separate banks, the FSCS website is a nightmare so I use this MSE tool. There's also a 2021 list from the Bank of England. This is territory for talking to an accountant, who will know what is most tax efficient to do (my father is a chartered accountant, taxation specilist and helped many clients with trusts, but is now retired). You could try an independent financial advisor but unless you hit a good one you're more likely in my experience to get the 'salesy' info like your current company.

After making do with a hand-me-down set of wooden decorators steps, I need to get to two places I can't reach from them. Also they're getting increasingly wobbly and need to go! I want to get to and remove the fascias and gutters from first floor roof height, which are 2.9m off the ground; and in our stairwell I need to get up there and lever the dado rail from the wall and then replaster and paint. The staircase is 0.75m wide and is inclined at 45(ish) degrees I've looked at https://www.screwfix.com/p/werner-3-section-5-way-aluminium-combination-ladder-with-platform-2-48m/420kh but with the stabilisers fitted it's too wide for the stairs and I'm unclear if the platform will grip at any height - or it cannot be level on the stairs. What are good options to consider? Second question are stabilising bars the best option to make working up a ladder safer? They look like they should make it more stable when pulling/pushing stuff at the top of the ladder.

Ruined because it never held as full a charge again after that. It was approx 1 year old at the time, and I had to replace the battery that winter as it failed to reliably start the car.

Ruined a car battery with a similar inverter; ran it flat at a beauty spot. Had to call out a garage to jump start me. Didn't realise how much they'd draw, IMO you need the engine running at the same time as using one.

4% relatively easy access is the best I've found.

What surprised me was how little heat it needed when compared to normal housing stock. If my 1920s house ever got -10C outside, my thermal calculations say a 3x2m room with 2 outside walls will need 1.3kW at 0ACH to keep warm, so per square metre of floor area this conservatory is more efficient than my house.

I've been staying in the garden of a house in Scotland this week. They have a 6x6m conservatory on the back built in 2018 and heated with an air to air heat pump (Mitsubishi MUZ-EF50VE rated cooling 5kW, heating 5.8kW; head specs unknown). I got chatting as it was the first heat pump I've seen and I was impressed how quiet it was in cooling mode. They were not happy. Where they are winter gets to -10C and the regular blowing of cold air into the conservatory as the heat pump does its de-ice cycle had really turned them off it. That and it's expensive to run and doesn't keep the conservatory warm in winter (but the cooling works in summer). I did a back-of-the-envelope heat loss calculation (using the theoretical U-values shown on their planning application). At 20C inside and -10C outside and with 0ACH the conservatory needed 2.5kW to keep at temperature. If it has 3ACH those add another 2.4kW to the requirements. Expensive but seemingly plenty of capacity on the coldest of days. I wonder if the head can cope with outputting enough heat? They've gone back to using a couple of oil filled radiators in winter which they say work great. The HP is relegated to an expensive addition to cool it for a few weeks of the year. This conservatory floor had a quoted U-value of 0.18 and the specified build-up was... the planning portal is inaccessible, I'll update later. @SteamyTea the floor buildup was: Concrete Floor Specification Floor finish on 3mm underlay on 22mm chipboard on 50 x50mm timber battens, 125mm A142 mesh reinforced concrete floor on 100mm XTRATHERM POLYISO XT ZERO ODP insulation on 1000 gauge D.P.M.,sealed to new and existing D.P.C.s on 25mm blinding on 150mm minimum well compacted hardcore Floor U-Value = 0.18W/m2K

@Nickfromwales when I go the "unimaginative" builder round to quote I asked about doing this and he laughed at the idea. Said it was uneconomical as you have to dig down a long way, then put hardcore etc and build up the floor. If the depth from floor level to ground is currently 0.37m you'd have to at least double that. Brought in the word "foundations" along the way. What's the minimum build-up BCO will let you get away with for a solid floor inside an existing property?