MikeSharp01

What about blown in insulation there are many variants including glass wool and old newspapers or look at having your insulation pre cut to size fro you so all you do is pop it in. We have thinsulex in part of our current home as I needed to keep the section very thin but making sure it was installed correctly with air gap both sides, limited sagging and sealing the staple / nail & batten punctures was a pain.

Welcome to THE forum. @JSHarris makes all the key points and has the experience to back it up. Looking at it in the round the only way to make GSHP cost effective will be to get the installed cost down to ASHP levels. The only way to do that is to get the equipment very cheaply and do all the digging in yourself. Go for ASHP unless you can get a supplier to subsidise the install.

She is an economist, not a scientist / engineer, so 'dissipates' is in the lingua franca I guess while physics, and being able to defy the laws of it is, perhaps, not uncommon when one is reminded of the joke that if you ask 10 economists a question you get 11 opinions. However I like this one better: A man was sent to Hell for his sins. As he was being processed, he passed a room where an economist he knew was having an intimate conversation with a beautiful woman. "What a crummy deal!" the man complained. "I have to burn for all eternity and that economist spends it with that gorgeous woman." An escorting demon jabs the man with his pitchfork and shouts, "Who are you to question that woman's punishment?" Source of this and more jokes

Probably right Jeremy but as I think Faraday is reported (Lecky 1899) to have said to Gladstone when asked what use a discovery of his would be replied. 'Why sir there is every probability you will soon be able to tax it.'

I suspect that these will also be regulated in the future as people work out that your extraction from your borehole could be a source of revenue and actually by extracting it you are stealing it from my (think of me a money grabbing politico) putative borehole 200 miles away, and lets face it water, like air should not be free should it

The one thing they cannot do is use it to cut off your water supply, they are prohibited from doing that with even a manual tap I believe. One thing you can say for sure is that the variable rate tariff will push people into more use of grey water in toilets and the like - much the most sensible thing to do IMO! I am hoping, budget permitting, to have an under garden grey water system for our flushings in the house, Looking at smart meters and factoring in rate rises the cost effectiveness of such a system becomes yet more attractive.

See my comment above, they would not have needed funding unless they had the idea and the key people and the basic ideas arose in ACORN but it was not going to be the vehicle to carry what became ARM forward. The essential point you allude to is that funding for bright ideas is what is needed - in the UK we have always been good with bright ideas but in the last 50 or so years our business finance systems have been shot to bits by short termism and our engineering capacity debilitated by having all the brightest engineering graduates working in the finance sector rather than engineering because people in the money business earn better than they do in creating something useful we could, if we made them, sell to others.

Yes life and business is as much about serendipity as it is about engineering and such things are littered with un-traveled roads. I think it is hard to see the ARM architecture, the enterprising people behind it and the experience they got in the context of ACORN not being somewhat primed by the BBC Micro work but I do agree that trying to plan such an outcome at the start would be, if not quite impossible, almost impossible because the technology developed along the way, that was not there at the outset plays a part.

In general you are, I think, correct because they don't think things through, which is not hard as you guys have, as above, and the industry I know is very wary of this programme. Nonetheless some HMG projects have shown returns - BBC micro was a government funded programme that built quite some innovation which led to ARM holdings.

UK HMG - madder than a mad things mad thing..... BUT the answer must be out there its just the one who finds it will clean up.

Welcome - One day all social networks will be like this one.

Right to light is a bit of a mine field but as I understand it there are a couple of simple tests that will allow you to see if you have a problem and might need to go further. 1. Has your neighbour earned any right to light? I think - check this, that they have to have lived there for 20 years to get it. 2. The nature of the room to which the window refers so only habitable rooms have a right to light. The definition of habitable needs looking up. 3. Does the room have any other windows which are unaffected? If yes then you may be able to argue your case with the planners. 4. Is there a tall boundary wall, over 2m, between you and them if so you might be able to argue for work on a single story as the window is already blocked by the wall. If you do infringe a right to light when / if it arrives at court the compension is worked out using a formula which values the loss of amenity cauzed. So how much less light they get across a normal year. You can settle this between you out of court but will need it properly notorised. Hope that helps.

Welcome. The project will cost you around 1.3-1.5k per square meter for a straight forward build more complex = more coSt. If you do loads yourself then you might get it down a few hundred per meter. Architects can be expensive but can offer value for money in planning terms when things get tricky.

Over longer distances the digital tape is probably best but aiming is a pain in daylight. A long steel tape for distances over 5m is a must for good setting out and accuracy as plastic tapes are not usually not graduated in MM and can stretch. However all the measuring systems are not super accurate over the longer distances without compensation for temperature, humidity and pressure (depending on system used) EG and 8m steel tape at 20°C will be 8001mm at 28°C so over 40m it will be 5mm out!

You can get 8m long I- Joists that could form the frame. Not many tiles go down to 15 deg pitch but I think the Marley Thrutone range does of your ate looking for tiles but the lap distance will be big so more tiles per M square and therefore cost.

Morning @recoveringacademic! The safe limits for scaffolding are a movable feast and depend upon the construction method used. So the wider the base the higher you can go safely unsupported. There are windage tables and calculations and the large contractors insist on something like this from their scaffolders. Your scaffolders will be able to advise you but given you are only going up one long pole length, by the looks of it, you have the whole thing as a homogeneous wall around the building so the challenge won't be the scaffolding but the walls it is supporting and perhaps here is the rub. Scaffolding is designed to give you access to the building rather than prop it up. This means that the building normally has to stand on its own or have independent support that is nothing to do with the scaffolding. You can get the scaffolding to take some of the lateral loads by putting diagonal bracing down to the ground on the outside and putting upper cross linking high capacity beams, above the roof ridge level, which transfer the lateral loads across the scaffold structure and back down to the ground via the diagonal bracing on the other side. However even this would need the services of a structural engineer to be sure it would / could take the wind load on an otherwise unsupported wall from a squall in Lancashire. I think the general advice around getting Durasol to advise of sequence / pours etc in a windy situation is best but independent, of the scaffolding, support is probably going to be your only route. As an example of the building supporting the scaffolding - not the other way around, here is a pic of a skyscraper scaffolded using bamboo!

Conservation areas have tight local plans and if you try and rebuild anything there it essentially has to 'fit in' with whatever is there already. EG if all the local buildings are half timbered then the new building, even assuming you are granted permission, will have to be half timbered as well to fit in. Perhaps that is a bit simplistic but essentially it is the point. Things such as windows & door often feature in conservation area rules. Local planning team will be able to guide you.

Depends where your pub is to some extent - conservation areas might be a problem, but otherwise it should be no problem, on this road there are two that have been converted, on knocked down and rebuilt. Just speak to planning department and see what route they prefer as I think you can go for planning and change of use combined or just change of use without planning if you just plan a simple conversion to a dwelling.

Yes £450 + VAT for a concrete pump per day here in Kent, so worth a call, if they expect further work on the build you might hope they are accommodating. Just out of interest how much concrete did they pump on the first pour into the form blocks, the volume looks quite small once you take out the interstitial insulation?

Cripes Ian - just seen this, how awful for you both.

Yes provided you don't bash them about. A friend of mine has a business making them for the big contractors and his order book is full to the end of the year for housing estates, new hospitals and, as you mentioned them, new hotels. Unless you are a carpenter of experience you won't do a diy job anything like as good but it will be cheaper and perhaps more satisfying for you.

"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool." - William Shakespeare

Looking at the wall / slab intersection construction it does have some cold bridges. Perhaps take a look at some standard details and see if you can rid yourself of them if at all possible. Main one is up through the inner leaf off the foundation and into the slab above the insulation. I am sure, but I cannot find, a detail that includes a thin ring of upstand insulation around the slab between the inner leaf and the slab.

You can put your stopcock anywhere you like and split it anyway you like provided it is after the water meter as I understamd it. Just ensure it is not anywhere it could freeze if not somewhere in the warm envelope.

In the big picture you probably ought not to be building together if you have not mastered the arts of getting enough of your own way each. In micro perhaps draw lines around the key features of the project and assign a lead and budget to each. As each of you, one assumes, wants what is best for each other each will consult on the other on their lead portion. In our build interior design bathrooms, kitchen's, lighting etc are the other half's. The external aesthetic is the architects and they have to mediate. So I ask her where she wants the light fittings and switches she tells me and if I cannot see a problem I get on and do it. If I can see a problem I tell her the problem and she comes up with alternatives until we agree. On the other hand if I want a total station... that's in my scope we already aportioned the 'Tools" budget and I get on and buy one - it arrived Thursday, because she wants (needs) the kitchen to be dead square after all so a protractor, a response heard during questions about how much such a toy - sorry tool, costs just won't do.