MikeSharp01

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the forum.....

PS where is international party night starting this evening? My Lear jet is waiting but not route plan as yet....

It is raining here so I have had time to reflect upon the challenge Ian faces. The essential point is that the responses so far all assume that one needs to fit into the world around you while it is entirely possible to make the world around you fit in with you even if only slightly. Given this one could envisage a situation where the mind set of your average Lancashire ball goer could be so rearranged that they feel underdressed if they do not appear at the events in a ball gown that is covered in dust, has small rubble like elements in the hems and is otherwise unkempt. Indeed it may be that you could leverage this new punk like trend and create a revenue stream around the storage on site of other people's ball gowns so as to ensure they no longer feel out of place.

So I run it into a nail and it sorts it out? Must get one

Just drill a clearance hole in the boards then screw it down, jacking won't be a problem. If its floor boards then glue is also a must to prevent squeaking You can set a depth stop on the drill using a short length of suitable diameter pipe round it.

My friend from HSE sent me this. Not sure I understand it ( Ken it) but I guess fellow members north of the boarder will get it. The rest of us will need the sub titles https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DHpVhSx0fZwM&ved=0ahUKEwimqYPH5_LTAhVhCsAKHdW5C28QyCkIHjAA&usg=AFQjCNHgkdPCY8kbk2jzjPRB9_2XfYVv-w&sig2=MnjXqoFX3FVsl5GPJ_aLEw Enjoy

Not sure the NHBC has no value as without it most homes are not mortgageable, so it gets you a mortgage, but that is also a ticking time bomb because it won't be the mortgage company who picks up the pieces when it all falls to bits, it will be the home owner who thought they had a guarantee.

This is really interesting @jamiehamy the discussion gets a bit detailed but the tennor of it is very clear - the inspection system that everybody thinks is in place is not and never really was. Quality of build was actually a function of pride rather than QA or QC of you like. The deskilling / delayering of the workforce on the building sites, the lowest bid price culture and the risk based approach taken by the Scottish system all play their part in creating an almost perfectly disfunctional system which does not have the consumer / house buyer anywhere near the center of the mix.

I guess that's what he means cos reflections in the main line will be common to all and loop means, IIRCC, take the main cable right up to the transducer and out again.

@ProDave I think will probably have best ideas but you can definitely get 3 phase isolators which I would put in the line at the terminal end for the two phases you won't be using and take your 240 from there. Then, if at a later date, you, or a future occupier, want to use the other phases - perhaps to increase your PV return to supply you have a way of getting to the connection in safety.

I think its the normal VAT helpline but when I asked a question they just pulled up the VAT for new build guide and read me the portion I had told them I was not clear about. @JSHarris did not have the greatest experience with them. The safe thing is to get the pump cost included in the concrete delivery so the invoice reads just 'concrete' then there can be no question that the VAT is recoverable.

This sounds obvious but, assuming you are up for it, have you been back to them for a bigger mortgage, the new contingency, if your loan to value is OK it perhaps won't breach their risk appetite and you won't need the money unless you need to go into the new contingency. Should be fine if you don't need it as you won't draw it down although that would depend on any early repaymet terms in the mortgage.

I think you can see from the above that choosing windows is not easy. I am going to add a little more by following up what @Bitpipe says above because for us the decision in the end came down to how the windows 'read' from the inside and outside. {By read we mean how it looks - chunky, thin, invisible, & colour because as you move from inward opening to outward opening or fixed panels the inner frame read and outer frame read often change thickness.} If you have inward opening above outward opening you get the frames stepping in and out as you go down the building. With outward opening windows you can thin out the in the internal frame by plastering (or otherwise finishing) right up to the opening frame but on the outside the frame will be chunkier. In some systems the frame is designed to look the same from the inside and out while on others you can have as much as 50mm (in our experience) difference. With inward opening you can do the same on the outside and take the cladding into the reveal and hide the frame either completely or partially. The chunkiness read is also linked to the material such that if you want very thin contemporary windows then you probably have to go for straight aluminum insulated frames while more chunky styles can be achieved in softwood, hard wood & UPVC with or without aluminum cladding. Hope this helps.

Cool, @JSHarris so now you can have almost anything, control wise, managed by a PI at the end of a wire.

You just need to amend the relevent land registry entry and you can do this yourself provided you can prove title. The key thing is to get the wording right so that there won't be a problem if it gets to two barristers slugging it out in court. Edit. Why not transfer the Portion of land to the cottage then it's simple. Edit 2: you can do the transfer using a boundary agreement even simpler.

Use a membrane not a paint, they last longer. I did an underground building a long time ago and the only bit that was ever damp was the paint on tanking portion, the bit with the membrane was never damp and probably still isn't.

In our case UK power networks paid as they are not allowed, where we are in Kent, to fly cables over buildings with a limited clearance.

Cripes - you are only down the road from me and I thought that radon was a rock strata issue not a clay base issue had not even contemplated that I might need to keep radon out.

I would take the radon barrier out beyond the block and drop it down so as to be sure that you get coverage. As you ahve drawn it damp rising in the block work could migrate along the bottom of the DPC over the radon barrier and into the concrete / insulation, if you get over the blocks with the radon this cannot happen all rising damp stops dead there.

Hi Lucy. We had rather a different experience with moving power cables. The trick we found was as Peter has said was the way leaves on the two poles, both on our land between which a wire ran. We had the wires crossing above the house, one storey, and we said we were building a second storey and that the cables posed a danger as although we would still be below them it would only be 5 feet. They agreed to reroute the cable underground and paid for it all. As it is not you it might be worth finding out who has the pole way leaves and see if they can help you put pressure on the local supplier. In Jeremy's response he mentioned contested works, these are aspects of the work that can be done by people other than the electricity people themselves (IE they don't have a monopoly), so you can either do them yourself or get your ground worker to do them for you.

Yes provided the radon barrier does not get punctured by things, small stones / rough cement, sticking out of the slab then I cannot see the need for anything else. I cannot think why either way round has an advantage so either way and, as you saw with our pour the reinforcing supports didn't push through the EPS, in fact my experience was that he supports crushed before they went into the EPS.

Welcome - sounds like fun - thick lines, thin lines, construction lines, the reassuring rasp of a well honed pencil on the cartridge paper, forming those little arrows - filling them in and writing text between two feint lines. I should get a good rubber. CAD is great but symbiosis of man and thinking machine (JC Jones, Design the Seeds of human futures, 1970) it ain't yet, wish I had the time to indulge with a pencil and the space for an A1 drawing board.

Did they teach you nothing in Sunday School, although on reflection I am not sure the missionaries ever got to your corner of Wales - headed straight for St Davids forgetting to turn left at Neath, in my Sunday school however they taught us that when we get to heaven we will spend our time (forever) in a constant state of delight, which must include beer don't you think. If on the other hand you end up in the other place, they call it hell I believe, there will still be beer but you will spend forever not getting any. However you can do a bit of hedging and become tea total and then you will be forced to drink beer all the time down there, whereas up there they will assume delight is a constant supply of soft drinks so I guess you can't win - better stay here and enjoy it while you can.

Welcome and looks like great fun... You need to know is that self building is a lot of going round the houses so this design will make it easy,

Thanks all, that is all i need to go back to the architect with, All I can find in BR is the need for it to be rodable!