MikeSharp01

Usual to get the land first as the design will usually only work in one place so needs the place. Buying usually needs the solicitor so at the start seems right BUT before you buy the land you need to know what the chances are of obtaining PP would be. Although in theory you can go for planning permission on land you don't own because it's an open process others will spot the PP and the value of the land will probably go up. I think the general experience here is get the land first but either pay very little for it if there is a risk of not obtaining PP or compete with others on price if there is a reasonable expectation that PP will be granted. We solved the problem here by buying a tumbledown shack and then obtaining PP when we owned it. On our case the plot is not big enough to split.

THURSDAY IS big day for garden room slab concrete laying. My plan was to use poker and vibrating bar to get it level and flat is then bull float and finally a powered float with pan and blade to get the finish (polished) but I have read that a roller striker on place of the vibrating bar would get me closer to the finish I want at that stage. I have the edge of polystyrene former to run it along but was wondering if anybody has experience of using one of these machines.

As I mentioned last week somewhere else on this forum it is possible to see that the problem is not directly one of cost but perhaps one of relative cost. Energy is way down the average households list of costs below mortgage, council tax & car lease for start. So looking at things that way energy is too cheap to be noticed as a place where serious concern needs to raise it's head.

Link works for me. You can only have an appeal heard once as @ProDave says and that's what happened here by the looks of it as the first was rejected on a technicality. Once I finish here I will join you in a pub 250 miles south.

The Edinburgh uni doc is for thinkers and students trying to impress their tutors. Sadly, or perhaps happily if you are one, several of the tabloids provide upto the minute validity for its readers.

Hedges are such a source of fun. Our local wildlife trust (Kent) has a list of all the different types of hedge row, what mixes of plants are in them and why and even how to lay them out. When we get to it we will have a Kentish coastal mix here. Link to Kent wildlife hedging doucument Kent downs hedging

Does there need only to be one, it could be that they are all around us and we wouldn't know....

Make your own manifold - what a great idea Joe, you could make an MDF box and cut THESE in half and glue them into suitable holes to make the flexible duct connections. Spend some time saving money and you get exact the number of outlets you need.

How are you proposing to join the lengths together to make the 6m length as the join has the potential to be a structural weakness? You can get 6m timbers or switch to an engineered I-joist as you can get them upto 15m!

Call it a site hoarding - that you have made to look in keeping rather than a somewhat crasly painted OSB thing. They defo cannot stop you then as it will say somewhere in your PP / BC pack that you must erect and maintain a secure boundary I suspect - it does in ours (Kent).

Yes I was awake at 2:00 AM wondering about concrete polishing - its all booked for next Thursday - I hope I have all the sums right!

We have about 30m2 of matt black vertical hung tiles on our south wall and I have been wondering if there is any mileage in making this into a Trombe wall and ducting the air into / through the MVHR at appropriate times. My research into the subject has led me to put this question into boffins corner because there are some 'views' out there and I know, cos I can read and once you put something onto the internet it has a habit of being there for a long time, that both @SteamyTea and @joe90 have had some input into such ideas in the past HERE (2010 ish). Interestingly the WWW is well furnished with opinion but very little science. Perhaps there is not much but I wonder if anyone has any pointers to the / any new science or technology in this space? Clearly there will be costs both financial and thermodynamically but if it can be controlled, IE you can switch it in and out as required, the question comes down to the positive or negative effects / efficiency on / of the MVHR unit when feeding it with warmer air and the engineering of the wall to avoid build up of nasties like fungi. I think I can see that just feeding it into the supply input will mean any heat produced will mostly (depending upon the efficiency of the MVHR heat exchanger) come out again immediately in the exhaust air - however the remainder is a (the) contribution. I have also read that injecting the air so heated into the exhaust line before the MVHR, where its temperature is above that of the house's exhaust air, might be a way forward as this air's heat will then be added (in some proportion - heat capacity, volume, T delta, humidity dependant) to the naturally aspirated air coming into the MVHR system for supply to the house. Controlling all this won't be simple though I suspect. Given all this, and the fact that since our fellow forum members were talking about it 7 years back and it still is not mainstream, it sounds like a non starter but I wonder if the world has moved on around it enough to make it possible / feasible! (PS I appreciate that the basic laws of thermodynamics have not changed.)

Yes I tend to agree and find exhibitions as opportunities to see what is out there and ask particular questions but I think I had hoped that there would be more of the small scale stuff on view today. Rather I felt it was aimed at the commercial (Industrial and Office block) builders rather than the house builders and very little of it was applicable directly to self builders. That said its all grist to the mill.

Went today - not sure I got value for my time and the £20 parking fee - I know I should have taken public transport but for reasons I will keep to myself I was not able to do this although I did set out to use it. Loads to see but mostly vanity show casing of products which the likes of most of us probably won't need. I think it is instructive to see who exhibits at these events and you can spot the sales patter of the organisers at work when you see who is there and who is not. Some excellent talks though and if you are wanting to build in straw bales there is stand showing it off and delightfully passionate they are about it. Did see some great little plate heat exchangers from ZILMET which I can find a use for I am sure. Windows for domestic projects had only a couple of offerings INTERNORM and DAKO where all I spotted. The 'alternative technologies zone' was well supported although again its interesting to see how the ideas they were pushing 20 years back have become mainstream and perhaps a bit too commercial in terms of bells and whistles. The controls and instrumentation stands all look to be doing good business as did the solar heating (PV and ST) but the GSHPs may have passed their sell by! Interestingly not much MVHR stuff to see - unless you are on an industrial scale. There was also the Kitchen and Bathroom showcase but that was a big let down I am afraid.

And I meant to add that this is a public forum not on the dark web Nick....

Is that a 30Kw condensing (liquor only) meeting or a combi (beer & liquor) meeting - now let's put 2 & 2 together and make 5, this morning the boy went off for few days and now you're in a high powered business meeting and it's international women's day....

I have never been confident of compounds as it seems to me that most fittings should have well designed / engineered seals. If it won't seal at the design pressure without such compounds then perhaps you might want to wonder if a better design might not be available or has it been put together correctly. In the world of parallel threads I have a box of Dowty bonded seals (1380 bar max - see here!) I use in face sealing otherwise the olive has to do the work. In the tapered thread world it does get a bit more complex but for most things I think good old PTFE tape is the way forward (There are places this is not appropriate) and in petrochemical applications some compounds are available. I guess we need to await Nicks views though - obviously Wales is not awake yet!

If it never pays back the market must be very limited probably to users like: 1. People who have to be off grid. 2. Die hard eco warriors who want to max out their PV system and can afford the cost. 3. People who don't get the 'economics'. 4. Early adopters who want the latest widget and where they get 'value' out of the plaudits of others for owning such widgets. 5. Any others? The quicker they get the glass / sodium battery out of the lab and into production the better because only when battery technology and associated parafinallĺilia can match grid prices will they get real traction.

Thanks all... Can see my way through it all now. On another matter.. I know what you mean I was held up by one in my local supermarket yesterday

Thanks Jeremy, the french drain idea is a good one and also means that I don't have to put a vermin barrier in the peripheral pipe at the ditch end so I can probably get away with putting a percolation path to the lower end of the ditch and not worry too much about backing up because that will clear / be cleared fast enough not to be a long term problem. We are on stiff clay and so once the water gets in a hole it stays there unless I pump it out or await a prolonged period of sun and then it evaporates. As the ditch is used by all the houses on our side of the road as drainage it is kept reasonably well clear as nobody wants to flood their property and the person with the blockage gets the first of the overflow! Thanks for you thoughts.

I am just setting out to finalise some ground works and have realised, I guess I could have worked this out, that bottom level of the crushed stone base for the passive slab will be slightly below our existing drainage outlet which is a ditch we have running across the front of our property that takes the ground water away, slopes down about 200mm across the width of the property (1 in 60). Now comes the hard part, for me, as I am not sure exactly how these peripheral drains function - other than the obvious, because they are perforated so water goes in and out at will they are only any good for rapid transport of water when the localised water table gets above the drain invert. If I don't need to let the water out and its just a mechanism for distributing water build up under the slab then I have no worries. If I don't need a slope on the peripheral drain, IE its just a path for water above a certain level to get out - it will be perforated after all, I can just about get it out into the highest part of the ditch. If I need a slope I can get a very slight one and take it to the other end of the ditch. However, in either case, if the ditch blocks it will back up water under my slab - not ideal. If I must have a good slope then I am going to need a soak away into the clay, more of a pool than a soak away, which the BC guy has already said he would probably allow to overflow into the ditch so I am back where I started. Any thoughts anyone?

Ok Terry that makes sense but are you still planning to increase the sun amp count or stick with the pair you have?

Hi Terry. Really interesting read but I cannot help wondering if your worst case scenario is driving you towards a costly system. What percentage of days /minutes of the days will this worst case occur and how can you pay back the investment over what the putative 40Kw a combI / existing Sun amp pair could supply. It will take three people in the house to make the scenario work, one of them has to be washing up and they have to be synced up. Does this often happen in your home? It would be cheaper to throttle back the kitchen sink if the showers are running.

is it being deleted or moved? you don't want to get someone else to do it because the flak will come back to you anyway and as your surrogate has no direct link their need to be gentle and supportive is small and so very risky for you. If you have a formal dispute you will need to mention this when you come to sell I believe. Does the original scheme, that was done wrongly, need to be brought back into the frame and the whole thing reworked so everybody is happy. In the end your approach perhaps needs to be conciliatory but firm. Conciliatory in the sense that you will do all the work required plus give him some choices as part of the change, timings etc, and firm in the sense that it will be done because its was in the planning and highways agree. Whatever you do don't make it look to him like he missed something - it should read, spoken or written, as if he knew this was going to happen. So (never start a sentence with so) perhaps something like 'Can we get together do work through thoughts and ideas together on completing the changes to the parking layout in the close from the planning requirement (pop quote in). We appreciate that there will be some disruption but we are keen to do all we can to be a good neighbour. Please let me know when a good time to talk might be (give contact details).' That should trigger him realising what the problem is is but you are clear that it has to be done and have been open with him. So when you do talk he will know what has to be done and will work with you. If he doesn't you may then need to get heavy but at least you tried. Hope it helps - good luck.