MikeSharp01

You split the anti freeze, a case or two of half decent Chablis will do or perhaps a few bottles of 24 year old malt, into two collections and then offer one each to the local plumber & electrician as barter for them to do the job.

I have been digging out the main slab foundations area for our passive slab and have found that the trench carrying services to the garden room at the back of the site, running under the slab from the utilities hub to the garden room about 600mm below slab base is very boggy. When I back filled it it was wacked down but still the digger tracks are sinking in if I track along it. I can only think that as it was a trench in heavy clay that the wacking has not been able to replicate 350 million years of compression and it has absorbed loads of the water we had in the early part of the year. It is only about 450mm wide and I made sure that it is not anywhere near under the main structural points on the slab. Should I just pile more earth (clay in our case) on top and keep wacking, dig out and fill with type 1 and whack that or given that it will have 150mm of type one above it whacked down anyway to support the slab former just leave it alone. Any thoughts anyone?

Such progress - must work harder down here, still I suppose we are known up there as 'those soft southern coves'.

Hi @ProDave did you finally decide one way or another.

Yes we had the same with the LPG chaps when we did the rebuild at Millstone manor. We laid the pipe from the proposed tank position to the house entry point. They did the rest but as there is no meter I guess things are different. Anyway have started gathering names of local worthy plumbers from neighbours.

Brewers are usually keen on price. We paid about that for our exterior RAL colour from DULUX weathershield range.

Ok so I need a GSR person next week to get things moving. How deep will they expect @Nickfromwales ? Will be about 500 below soil level and 600 below slab.

There have been discussions about this before that seem pretty definitive but I thought I would clarify. I am ready to lay the gas duct from the external meter box under the soon to be laid slab and to bring it up in the plant room. Will be Yellow duct and I will try and keep the bends as smooth as I can. I can put the Trac Pipe in the duct ready. (The end near the meter box will be vented once the main install is complete). The connection to the meter will happen with the main install as I need to slide the trac pipe down the duct below finished floor level, pull it back 300mm, as the whole slab is being polished and the gas duct, along with all the other ducts, will finish in a sealed sunken pocket that will be opened once the concrete is set. My question is this. Do I need a gas safe engineer to witness any of this if the trac pipe is essentially free in the duct, so it could be withdrawn and pressure tested if needs be? AND If I do need one to check the ground works and pipe install what form of words do I need to get from them to ensure that the person who gets the install of the gas system will accept the witnessing if, for some reason, it cannot be the same person? Finally I wonder if @PeterStarck , @oranjeboom or any other East Kent dwellers can recommend a gas safe engineer (The main boiler will be a Vaillant) .

Just taking a quick look round it does come out at about 60% of other sources. I am also in the market for a 300m coil but had not started my search, now ones eyes are open in a big way!

Seems harsh to burn members at the stake to warm your home just because they have used a couple of suppliers.

Sorry, did not mean to hijack this thread with emoji issues - so its just him?

Does that include the 'Adult shop'? (PS finding it difficult to get on with the new emojis will keep working at it!)

Welcome to THE forum, stay dreaming - believe me the reality is a very different place. (EG )

Keep a hi viz, and you hard hat / bump cap in the car for just such occasions.

This dropped through, rather into, the letter box at millstone manor this week. The truth is, as one might expect, in the small print. If I were a vulnerable person I might be fooled into thinking I could not do this myself and that this has come from the council. Am I being picky!

Almost same scheme as her. Our diversion was £600 but all we needed was the pipe squeezed, a new connection made and fed to the new gas meter location to which I had dug all the trenches. I then pulled the plastic pipe out of the metal in the severed end and all was well.

Yes ours, when visiting, never hear the 'would you like to help me clear up after lunch / supper / dinner' ?

It sounds unlikely and you might think you have exhausted your search but if someone turns up with a title deed for the land before the parcels were sold and can show that the gaps between the parcels were never sold they will have a valid claim. Land registry is not the only repository of land ownership.

Somebody owns everywhere seems like a good code to start with. There used to be an 8 year rule now it is 12 years in total IIRC. Once you fence it in you will need to be unchallenged for 12 years. After 10 you write to LR and tell them you have had unrestricted personal use for the last 10 years. You then need to wait 2 more years and if you remain unchallenged the land becomes yours and can be registered to you.

Jealous I am.

The site slopes so at the rear of the site the dig is down 600mm at the front it is about 400mm, it is 15m long and 9m wide. So the volume, with swell, is 68m3 x 1.40 = 95m3 which is 7 x 15m3 trucks full. Then there is the soak away (1 truck) and we have to remove about 30m3 (2 Trucks) of soil from the footpath. We have already sent 3 trucks of rubble away, who ever knew how much rubble a wooden shack needed.

Although I have been away from the build for a few weeks due to to flu, work (yes I went back cos they asked me help out for a few weeks) and parties I have been back on the build for the last 5 days and have reached a harrowing conclusion. The muck away costs for a passive slab are huge! The first lorry grab lorry turned up today and took 15m3 of soil which didn't even dent the pile and we have only done about 30% of the slab area, 600mm deep. When I worked out the budget for this phase I had reasoned that the existing property, a timber cabin, would be hollow down to the soil when in fact, as we demolished it we realised that it was on a slab with some massive foundations - no idea why. These had to be broken up first, and disposed of as rubble before we could start to scrape back the clay to the required depth for the slab build up to commence. So I now think we will need between 10 and 13 lorry loads of muck away which is about 4x the budget I had worked out and will eat a second chunk from the contingency. The expansion (swell) of clay (40%) as you dig it does not help either. I noticed that the grab lorry has load cells, or similar contraption, so it knows just how much weight it has aboard and although we had the volume today we were well down on total weight. So my next job is to run up and down along the pile with the digger to compact it so that it goes back to around 100% before the grab picks it up as I don't think it will swell much in those jaws. Moral of the story is - if you are thinking of a passive slab and you need to dig down, IE you are not building it all above ground, work out the muck away costs carefully.

120-150 as the 100-120 probably wont stretch. If you can get a 'returns' possibility buy one of each and return the one that fits best. If you can get the 120 to stretch, without tearing, then it will be a tighter fit but the 120-150 should be fine. Ho wide a tape are you looking for?

Is this a meeting part of choosing an architect or have you chosen? If you are choosing then you need to understand their approach and style while trying to understand if you feel you can work with them. I would not show them ideas but let them come up with their own so as to broaden thinking.

Would an external three way (2 in 1 out) heat exchanger so you could use one coil with two heat sources extra pump needed but might widen the scope.