Square Feet

Thanks for all the replies. Sorry I wasn't able to respond yesterday, cos I know it's annoying when someone asks a question and then disappears. I'm not sure if I know how to answer all of your questions but I will try. I live in a wee town in southern Scotland, so nobody here is a shower snob. It just needs to be there so that I can call it a 2 bathroom property when I sell. If there are flow issues with having both showers on at once then I think that would be for the new owner to find a work around - ie not using them both at once mebbe... That wouldn't be tested as part of the Home Report survey. It does need to work properly on its own merits though. The flat is a double-upper on an upside down layout so most of the bedrooms are downstairs, but I am creating a new bedroom upstairs, for which the second shower would be logical. I don't know a great deal about the hot water system as I didn't get it fitted. I've also only had combi systems in the past. I can do plumbing ie fit new things, adjust pipework etc, but the bigger picture here is a bit beyond my understanding, hence the question. There's a pressure vessel that needs topped up from time to time so I would say it's a pressurised system. The cold water tank sits directly above the hot water cylinder in an airing cupboard type arrangement. It's a substantial size ie 950l x 550w x 600h. The hot water tank is 1080mm tall by 480mm dia. It copes with two consecutive showers quite easily before the hot water is depleted. The shower downstairs is pretty much what you have linked to @Nickfromwales I think. I remember replacing it like-for-like a few years ago and it costing north of £200. Most of the pipework in the boiler cupboard is 22mm, with the exception of the pipes going to and from the expansion vessel. The pipes feeding the downstairs shower are 15mm. It takes its cold feed from the header tank, not the mains. I'm thinking that I will just need to pony up for another power shower like the linked one. It would be the easiest re electrics too now that I think it through. I don't think a mixer shower would work as I don't reckon there's enough pressure.

Hi all, I'm currently renovating a property that has a power shower downstairs with a hot water tank upstairs. I want to fit a second shower in an upstairs room next to the boiler/hot water tank. Does this need to be a power shower also? Is there anything I need to be aware of for fitting two power showers into a system? I'm just renovating the property to sell so I don't want the expense of doing away with the original power shower, hot water tank etc -I just want to fit a second shower as cheaply as possible so that the place can be sold as a two-bathroom property. Many thanks

@ProDave Do you find that you use the balcony much?

Thanks Alan, The surveyors came out today and seemed very thorough. I did ask them to record the cable level of the phone line that runs across both entrances so all good there.

He's definitely one of the good guys

No, it has to be full planning. Ecology insist on that for the plot mortgage. I'm not expecting it to be knocked back completely as the site qualifies as brownfield I believe, but I might have to compromise on what I want in order to get it through. We shall see.

Yes and no. It's in a small group of houses, (many self-built) on the edge of a village with a hall that hosts community gatherings. It's 6 miles from a small town (4k people) with a co-op, doctors and a few shops. It's 17 miles or half an hour from a much bigger town with 4 supermarkets, 3 builder's merchants and a Screwfix.

@Alan Ambrose thank you. So do I need the windows as well as the ridge and eaves for No 3?

I've now reached the happy place of 'offer and acceptance' for my subject-to-planning offer which in Scottish legal parlance means that we have a bargain and timescale agreed. I wanted 12 months to complete planning, the seller offered 3 and we compromised on 9. So I now have until April next year to get the planning I am happy with before I have to pay for the plot and take ownership of it. We've also agreed that if my application is stuck in the planning process through no fault of my own the timescale will be extended to reflect that. I'm not looking for any comments on this regarding legal safeguards just now thanks. This may be a little simplistic, but in my mind there are four possible steps to the planning process: Pre-application enquiry Planning permission in principle (same as outline planning in England). Full planning Building warrant I've opted to skip step 2 as I think I should be ok to move straight on to step 3 once I have a positive pre-application enquiry response. If you've any thoughts or advice on that then I would be interested to hear it. As you can hopefully see from the photo it is a gorgeous plot in a beautiful part of the world. The image above shows what will be the view from my future house. I feel very excited and lucky to have this opportunity.

Hi all, I am currently speaking to a couple of topographic surveyors and trying to come up with a spec for my topo survey. It will be used to plan the position of the house/garage/driveway etc and will also form part of the submission to planning for a full application. One has come back with some questions I can't answer so I wondered if anyone here can help me please? Is 2D or 3D output required? Manhole cover sizes and levels would be recorded as standard but are manhole invert levels required? Are neighbouring rooflines, eves and window sizes required? You mention measuring the public road 150m in either direction of the access points. If so, are you needing just the centre of road and verge lines or right up to the fence lines or walls? For No 3 I think rooflines and eves will be needed for planning but I don't know if I need window sizes (plot is in Scotland in case that changes anything).

A few years ago the Tories hollowed out trading standards and bunged Citizen's Advice a few quid to handle most of it for them. The people at CA are volunteers who do a lot of good work but they can't go to bat in the way that TS used to. The net result is a massive weakening of consumer protection in this country. Add to that the fact that most online platforms are based in the US and it's a complete free-for-all. I recently tried to report a listing on eBay for being fraud and an AI bot decided it was all fine and let the listing stay up. Nobody cares. FB and YouTube are happy for these ads to be on their platform as they are banking the cash. Meanwhile your granny falls for a scam like this one.

No 1. The rest look a bit 'communist bloc'

@AshleyFae "The issue is that it's some kind of old set up they're not allowed to provision anymore, so they'd have to upgrade a ton of stuff." They always seem to say that. It's just an excuse to get you to pay for the line to be upgraded, even if it doesn't really need it. I saw an episode of Grand Designs recently where they did that to someone who had knocked down their old place to rebuild on site. They still got hit with something like £75k for the leccy upgrade.

Good luck. That seems an awful lot for one person to get done in a single day, but I hope you get there.

Amtico/Karndean is a devil to lay properly. I've only ever laid about 5sqm in a campervan and that was enough for me. Also if you are using different patterns then you may find the planks/edging etc are different thicknesses (sometimes by as much as 2mm - enough to feel underfoot) - they do seem to vary a lot and not every pattern or edging will match and be compatible with each other. I think the lad is quite right to just say that he can't do the job and walk away. It's really quite skilled. I found that it was nearly impossible to stop a very small amount of glue pushing up between the planks and causing a slight gap, which when repeated enough can throw the whole thing out of whack. I'd ditch Mr Bodgit and start looking for a specialised Karndean/Amtico flooring fitter.