kandgmitchell

Well the air tightness test has been done and comes out at 1.1. So it's time to fit the cat flap. I know, I know that cat flaps let in draughts as well as cats. But we're not going back to trays etc, they'll be able to come and go into the utility room until we're ready to open that door into the rest of the house. So, I need a really decent cat flap - I am aware of the really fancy electric passive house type but that's hundreds of pounds, works by proximity detection and so will be forever opening when we use the side door. No, I need a suggestion for a normal, well made, relatively draught proof cat flap that others have experience of. We've used CatMate in the past on older houses but they tend to swing in the wind. It's got to go into a door and not bothered about checking for microchips or collars. Thanks in anticipation.

3 month visits are probably not statutory per se but part of the performance standard required of private BCO's by their regulator. Things were tightened up a few years ago and now the private sector don't like lengthy projects as they reflect on their statistics. Bit late now but if you expect a project to last a long time then choose LA BC because they don't really care. As to fees you are in the realm of private contracts for a supply of services. You'll need to query this charge as you would with any surprise charge from any other supplier.

My brother works for Anglian Water maintaining the sort of small sewerage works that service lots of the small towns and villages. The flow rates through some of these during the increasingly heavy rain falls are well above the capacity of the works to cope with.The rain water is getting in to the system from somewhere and as he put it, if we don't discharge in an orderly manner the works will just flood and you'll be stepping in it anyway..... That's not to say nothing is being done, he was telling me about an enormous underground holding tank AW is building at one of his town works, to act as a buffer when heavy rain occurs but the moral of the story is not to connect your rainwater discharge to the foul system.

and then everyone complains when water companies discharge overflows from sewerage works into waterways when it rains.... (I know they do it other times but you know what I'm getting at).

I guess this is a 100mm dia taking drainage from some fittings in the bathroom. You can certainly change it's direction above the "wet" part and put an elbow out through the wall. It's to avoid pressure build up in the pipework so it just needs to vent to the external air. The termination should be a minimum of 900mm above any opening within 3m into your dwelling. So the neighbour being 4m away isn't going to be affected. On a totally blank wall and no dormer window above, you could just leave it where it exits the wall. However, be aware it vents the foul drains and having a direct 100mm pipe venting below head height may not be nice particularly in the summer. I'd turn it up the wall and vent it at the same height as originally. Oh and remember to put a cage on it to keep birds off.

Ours is 1750mm x 2000mm and has the MHVR kit, hot water cylinder, buffer cylinder, two pressure vessels, the CU and the internet hub. There's enough room to swing the door inwards with enough spare to be shelved for overflow stuff like toilet rolls, washing powder and cat food etc etc.... No batteries but like others - not so keen to have them indoors.

Brick on end?

This was 8 weeks from slab to hand over, with all services done and bathrooms tiled. We wanted our stair for space purposes and decided to fit our doors and skirtings. It's taken almost as long using local labour to do that as the poles took to put the thing up!

with this as the rear

Well this is entirely our original design but adapted for the DW system so they can do it (if you alter any of their standard designs by say moving a window it becomes "bespoke"). We omitted additional cladding due to cost and didn't do the glazed gable and fancy aluminium glazing as their system couldn't handle it. The interior is however exactly as we wanted. Sure there were compromises to make but we should be in, carpets laid and sitting on the sofa watching TV within 12 months of clearing the site and bringing on the static. We are both in our later 60's so didn't want a prolonged build on site, been there, done that. Garden to sort but can enjoy a warm modern house this winter after the last couple of renovations of old, cold "characterful" houses.

The pre-2022 Approved Document for new build L1A had the limiting fabric U value for roofs as 0.20W/m2K with the caveat that in creating the target CO2 emission rate and the target fabric energy efficiency rate (the SAP calcs) a U value higher than this would be necessary - this was a "bottom line" so to speak, to avoid a really high U value compensating for a really poor one. The latest post June 2022 Approved Document has that bottom limit as 0.16W/m2K. Not sure where 0.13W/m2K you mention comes from. However, should you be able to achieve 0.13 and 0.15 on different roofs then the SAP calcs done under the pre-2022 regime will take account of what were for then, very good U values and ought to show a compliant set of SAP results.

Well the Caravan Act 1960 says: Cases where a Caravan Site Licence is not required Use within curtilage of a dwellinghouse A site licence shall not be required for the use of land as a caravan site if the use is incidental to the enjoyment as such of a dwellinghouse within the curtilage of which the land is situated. So during the house build it is incidental to the site operations (i.e the house) and is permitted development under one class and after, it becomes an outbuilding used within the residential curtilage and is permitted development under another class. Comply with the rules for those and as @joe90 says don't use it as a fully self contained dwelling for others then you'll be ok.

Well how does that work then? If the door head is at ceiling level as per the elevation, the lintel must be in the depth of the joists. That throws up two queries. 1) I doubt if a 150mm deep lintel will span the enlarged opening and 2) how do the bits of joist on the outside of the lintel and the fascia get fixed? I suspect the roof isn't at door head head and there is enough depth to get the lintel in over the door and for the joists to sit ontop of it. Someone needs to take responsibility for chosing the lintel though.

Intrigued to see the detail of how the roof joists interact with a Keylite lintel. Who is going to choose the correct lintel for the situation?

Can't see an issue subject to changing the lintel due to the wider opening - is the flat roof at window/door head height? If so what was the original design lintel?

It sure is. The trouble is most trades see a self build as being no different to a larger site. To us though it's our house set in our garden (or what will be a garden). It's frustrating then to find rubbish just lobbed into the bushes, buckets washed out wherever they want and as @Roundtuit says them treating anything on site as fair game for their use. Can't get over all those tools on display though - it looked like a dewalt showroom........

Those cill heights are high then. "Does anyone check..." That's a hard one because some BCO's may think of it and others may not - you're in the realms of an individual's attitude and interpretation. I could be more certain if the opening height was compliant. In your situation I'd submit a "full plans" application - you can do the drawings yourself as they'll only be floorplans of before and after. You'll need the SE's calcs for the beam (but you'll want them anyway). This would allow you to get BC's attitude to the situation on paper (i.e comments back as part of the checking process) rather than having done the work and getting any bad news on site which could be the case with a Building Notice.

The recently installed heat pump - a Vaillant arotherm plus, stopped working last Friday. A power cut covering half the village happened on Saturday for about an hour and it seems to have cleared the problem and everyting seems to be back to normal. However, it occurs that I know next to nothing about this installation and how any of it works. I can find the instructions for the sensocomfort controller and the pump itself but there is another box on the wall for which I can't track down the handbook and I'd like to know what it does. I'm still waiting for the installers service team to call me back after Friday's breakdown so I'm not holding out much hope there. I prefer to have at least a rudimentary understanding if only to recognise if things aren't right. The picture shows the unit displaying Friday's fault .

Because we were paying hundreds of pounds a month to hire the containers since we moved onto the site, it was all in one room and no it wasn't in their way for fixing skirtings. It isn't a building site - the kitchen's in, all the walls are painted, the bathrooms are plumbed, tiled and usable...... just need the skirtings and doors so it can be carpeted.

This is a DanWood house so the shell is complete, finished internally, plumbed etc. We didn't want their stairs as they were open riser and couldn't have their doors and skirtings as we didn't want their floor coverings either. So we have carpenters in fixing linings, hanging doors, architraves and skirtings, installing our stairs etc. whilst we are still in the static. Our furniture and other belongings had been in a container on site, but as soon as we got the house handed over we stacked everything into the living room and the study. The other day I found two of our decent dining room chairs had been fished out and were being used for break times. Today takes the biscuit.... On an expensive glass shelved display unit I found all his power tools - planer, drill, charger, nail gun etc etc nicely displayed and available for immediate use..... I politely pointed out that he really ought to clear them off before my wife came back from work at lunchtime 'cos she's a lot scarier than me! Talk about make yourself at home, I suppose we should be thankful the beds are at the back of the room!

The means of escape requirements of the Building Regulations say: Escape from upper storeys a maximum of 4.5m above ground level 2.2 See Diagram 2.1b. Where served by only one stair, all habitable rooms (excluding kitchens) should have either of the following. a. An emergency escape window or external door, as described in paragraph 2.10. b. Direct access to a protected stairway, as described in paragraph 2.5a. So hopefully the OP's first floor windows comply with a) above already. If they do then forming the through room will not have an impact whatever the ground floor room use. However, if the first floor windows do not comply, the OP's argument that they are not making the M of E situation any worse than it is at present (i.e neither escape windows nor a protected stair exists as is) could be countered by Building Control saying that the kitchen is a high risk room and the present stair is separated from it, despite not being protected. The risk must therefore increase and thus the proposal makes an existing non-compliant situation worse which contravenes Regulation 4(c). So check those first floor windows! Oh and the garage fire door needs to be an FD30S

That gutter edge is surely wrong? It depends on the individual system but some have a two piece trim that sandwiches the membrane. If I recall the system we used a few years ago on a porch roof had a mechanically fixed gutter edge membrane strip that the main sheet glued onto using contact adhesive. Whatever it should be it ought to be neater. Best way is to find out who makes the edpm and look up their standard installation detail on the web. That should illustrate how it's done.

It'll only be exempt Building Regulations if detached. Do the plans for planning approval yourself - it'll probably cost you for pre-application advice (although some Councils don't charge householders) and almost certainly they'll ask for the sort of drawings you'll need for an application anyway.

We didn't apply for specific planning permission for the static caravan as we were relying on Class A of Part 4 of the the Permitted Development regulations as being a building/movable structure required temporarily in connection with operations on land (i.e the approved house build). Patently the Council agreed with this as they charge us minimum council tax and have registered us here to vote.

Is that a drainage ditch or simply a boundary ditch and bank arrangement? Not an unusual feature in the countryside where owners wanted to define land boundaries cheaply, dig it out and pile it up and plant a hedge along the top. Probably not meant to be there to drain anything but just being lower lying collected run-off.