Square Feet

That's good news then - let's hope it is someone in here and that it is useful for them.

I keep seeing this on eBay - it's far too big for me and probably for most on here, but I thought I would just put a link up here in case any parts of it were of any use to anybody. It's not mine and I have no connection to the seller. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284460150912

Hi John, thanks for your reply. Yes it's the one rad in the system that needs to always be on. I just wasn't sure what valves (if any) I needed to fit. It's going to be rented out and I don't want the tenant to be able to turn it off somehow. So just something like these? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/384102627619

Hi, can anyone tell me which valves I need for a towel radiator that is used as the safety radiator in a combi GCH system? All the ones I can find seem to be thermostatic which won't be what I need I think.... Cheers

Hm. I just watched it through the app last week. Sorry about that - they seem to have taken it off awfully quickly.

This is quite good fun. I'm sure you will have heard the story as it was all over the news - a young lad accidentally bid on the wrong lot at auction and ended up paying £40k for a ruined mansion in Dunoon instead of a two bed flat in Glasgow. I'd have knocked it down without a second thought, so fair play to them for wanting to rescue a formerly grand old building. For all their naivety the couple tacked some elements of the build which I would have thought belonged in the specialist builder sphere, like raising the roof, completely reslating and replacing stone lintels. A testament to what you can achieve if you are young, energetic and completely clueless about what you have let yourself in for. I thought initially it was all going to be a grand 'content creation' ruse but I didn't end up feeling like that was what happened - they used social media as an incidental lever but didn't massively play up to it. Their instagram is What Have We Dunoon if you want to check that out. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001c4sm/episodes/guide

The water tank episode was horribly painful to watch. I'm sure Grandad wouldn't have wanted her saddled with all that debt. The episode this Wednesday (Scunthorpe) was much better. A single dad with 300k and a free plot brought the build in for £375k and had a fantastic house to show for it. It could have been simpler and cheaper with less junctions (and I have my doubts about those heat panels) but he seemed happy with the end result. It was a pretty good price considering he did very little of it himself.

Because you are missing the point of why most people invest in property - for capital growth.

I agree, but my understanding is that from 2024 they will have to (in Scotland anyway) or did this come unstuck somehow? https://passivehouseplus.co.uk/news/government/scotland-to-mandate-passive-house-for-new-homes

Although you are in Scotland you seem a wee bit unaware of some of the support (and legislation) up here. I am currently getting a Scottish rental property insulated and fitted with new double glazed windows and the bill is being footed by the Scottish Govt. It's a loan, not a grant, but at £65 a month for 8 years interest-free, I can cope fine with that. There's lots of financial help available for green initiatives in Scotland. You also mentioned the possibility of landlords evicting their tenants over this - again this doesn't apply to Scotland as there are a lot of tenant protection measures in place that make this impossible. I hope I am a responsible landlord, so I am happy to do this. I did live in this property myself for a bit and it was fecking miserable - cold and draughty and completely depressing. I wouldn't inflict that on a tenant, so it needs done. It also means I am getting most of the walls in the property skimmed 'for free' so it's a win-win for me.

@Bozza Thanks for posting your photos - it's exactly what I am researching. I'd also love to see some internal shots, even if it isn't finished as it would give a good idea of internal space. I was concerned that I wasn't likely to get PP for something that tall as I thought 3m was max (off the top of my head) but this gives me hope that it might be ok. Cheers

Hi, does anyone have any experience installing this stuff? Recticel Powerdeck F Insulation for Bonded Warm Roof Systems Specifically I am wondering if it is just as easy as regular rigid insulation to cut or does the glass fibre make it more difficult? If you have cut it then what would you recommend using? Cheers

Sure... it was sold at the beginning of the year though!

I can't remember! A couple of metres maybe? It's been sold now so I can't check. The attic room wasn't classed as a bedroom because the stair was too steep anyway, so it wasn't really a consideration.

Thanks to everyone who helped me with this. It has been a while now but I forgot to come back and post photos of how it turned out. In the end I used CLS and for the top and bottom rails and routered out a channel in these to fit the spacer moulding I had found. The newel posts were just a big chunk of timber from a diy shed (67x72mm I think). The spindles were £40 from eBay. The CLS and newels were about £17 I think and the spacer moulding about £16. It was all pretty stable in the end and passed the survey no trouble.

Can you get any services in just now? The long wait times and delays those bring seem to be a constant theme of self-building.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/08/solar-panel-users-excess-power-scheme New update re the situation after March this year.

I am hoping to buy a plot in 2019. Obviously I will then be moving into the completed house before Christmas.

Yes that is worrying alright. I have no love for our present Westminster Govt and no faith that they will be anything other than bastards on the side of corporate greed. Battery storage is starting to appeal more and more....

Yes, it does sound like it would be best to hang on and see how this plays out, though I can't see it paying anywhere near as much as FITs.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/18/solar-power-energy-firms-government

I bought some cheap Cromar 3 off ebay for a loft renovation I did recently. From memory it was £27 or £28 for a 50m roll. I think that is about half price. It was seconds, but out of the 50m roll, only about 2m had to be ditched, the rest was fine. As JSHarris says, tape adhesion was a bit of an issue as I tried to use duct tape without success - it worked ok for a couple of weeks, then started to come away so you need the proper stuff.

I also found Velux had crap instructions and flimsy plastic bits that snapped if you looked strongly at them. I did find that Velux were very good at sending out replacement parts though - FOC and very quickly.

I hate it when untreated wood goes grey too. They always say on Grand Designs "and it will weather off to a beautiful silvery grey" but in reality it just goes manky and looks like a garden shed.

There is a lot of difference between old single-skin containers and some of the newer twin walled ones. I rent one of each at the moment - the twin walled one is dry (good rubber seals on the doors help with that too) so it has furniture and personal items in, and the rusty old single skin one isn't (it suffers from condensation on the inside of the roof), so it has tools inside.