MikeSharp01

When you send in a demolition notice you are obliged to send the statutory undertakers notice so they can take amy action they need to I guess you did that but didn't do water as you did not need to. Building control also have a duty to do this. Looks like BC did not spot that the water was not supplied and just wrote to them out if habit. When the water company could not tie this up with a communication from you they reacted think that is somewhat reassuring in the sense that their system worked even if it was triggered by a BC error.

Assuming the staircase failed beyound its design parameters, if not them designer / SE / constructor / installer will be liable, and guests were not told that no more than N people could be on the stairs then Yes because they did not risk assess the possibility of an overload. Even if all 15 of them jumped up together they should not have been there together. It is an example of the Roman legions breaking step when crossing a bridge I guess it's probably not the dead (no pun or insult intended thats just what its called) load that's the problem. All that said it will come down to a bunch of barristers firing expert witnesses at each other.

If you are worried about loosing wall / roof U value then perhaps do as we have done in our design In our design. We are running in the wall and ceiling (also vaulted) in a couple of places and have designed to box in the duct with PU sheet, and fill around the ducts with the same frametherm fill as in the main void. This way we maintain the U value of the wall / ceiling as the PU is that much better than the frametherm. It will be fiddly on site but at least I can present the therm model to the passive house certifier if its a problem for them.

Hmmm - since when has not having an avatar been any less of a statement than having one

Not sure Jeremy but I think that I have said before that if our vote actually allowed us to change things I am not certain we would still have it! Essentially the problems faced by our elected representatives are usually outputs of complex / chaotic soft systems. This usually means that, for most, change (often described as progress) becomes the art of ensuring that any unintended consequences are hidden from view at the outset and happen, as they undoubtedly will, elsewhere or at a time when you cannot blamed for it. Most of our representatives are not able to think things through to a sound conclusion because they are constrained by what Edward De Bono described as 'Unique Rightness' where you can only pick solutions from those you already know. Our job should perhaps be to help people think things through in an open minded gestalt that uses deep understanding of the interactions (causes & influences) within the systems to identify root causes where interventions might most profitably be focused.

a couple of builders that reckon our house would be "impossible to build".. Just shows you how unthinking the average builder is as they don't seem to understand that something that has been done, albeit not by them, is by definition removed from the 'impossible' catagory.

I suspect that part of the problem with people ignoring the energy consumption is that it's probably the 3rd or 4th cost of running a home. So rent / mortgage, council tax and perhaps insurance come above it and for some people things like the family enterainment package might even eclipse it. Not to mention the family car. Sadly we won't get the person on the Clapham omnibus to focus until energy gets expensive enough to be worth saving sad really.

Hi Lizzie. Somewhere I have seen a research article / presentation that shows a timeline of weathering for a variety of woods. There is a guy called Ivor Davis who is a bit of guru and has published widely. It is sometimes a bit heavy but you get both barrels - try here as a start: http://www.woodknowledgewales.co.uk/files/Cladding Design Performance and Installation - Presentation by Ivor Davies 2012.pdf Found this picture here.

Get a second hand industrial machine as if you want to rip through (or across) 75mm timber you will need a couple of Kw at least, few skil type saws will go upto 75mm anyway and when you tilt a table saw (or any saw for that matter) over the depth diminishes so if you want to cut 75mm at 45 degrees you will need about 110mm of blade depth, so at least a 305mm blade I suspect.

Great windows, who is the manufacturer?

@recoveringacademic Is this bluff, double bluff or just guff ... are we in danger of creating the impression that the big house builders need to be defended by the little ones - you and me, or were you poking some fun.... trouble is pretty soon nobody will know what is fake and what is not.

I suspect you would need to look at their annual accounts to get a true picture, my guess is that the land profit (IE rising price of their land bank) is taken each year as part of their asset register and written down or up, but it could be 'handled' in a number of ways on their books. I think that means dividing the profit by the number of houses built is at best approximate because they can 'adjust' the way the undeveloped land bank value is treated to suit their needs.

If fitting a generator as backup make sure you have VERY good over voltage / phase control in place. Last time I was involved with a generator the over voltage failed and did £60K damage to much of the electronics plugged in at the time. Took a year + to sort with the generator contract insurance.

Perhaps I am over thinking this but what would be difficult about creating a 50Hz signal for the inverters to use as sync. Presumably it would not need any power behind it so could be quite simple. Depending on how far off grid you are you might even be able to extract it from the eather. ? (and / or tie it back to a GPS derived clock.)

Yes I tried that one but I had no immediate effect. However we seem to be having some mind changes as the full drawings of the all timber system will soon come back and I think they will be to bulky for us, the sight lines change as you go from inward to outward opening as you go down the bulding and neither the other half or the architect are going to like the look this gives so suspect we will have to look at another system anyway. Ho Hum.

I tried this here but gave up, lost the will to live, looks like it should work.

We are building in a cul-de-sac, straight off a big-ish A road, with no turning place for lorries with more than 4 wheels or a long bed. So every order so far has been accompanied by a simple instruction set asking the drivers to reverse into the road, off the A road, easy to do there is plenty of room / width, and to load our shipment on the drivers side if we are responsible for off loading. I reckon about 50% of the deliveries have one of both instructions ignored even though they are usually printed on the delivery ticket! So we end up reversing an artic out into an A road or watching as a bold driver thinks there might be a place up road, about a mile long, he and sometimes she can turn round. No amount of telling them that last week a SMART car was unable to turn any further up and they still give it a go. Eventually I hear them bleeping past in reverse and wonder how they will get on without a lookout into the A road.

If they have a Farrari then they can perhaps afford to have it scratched, round here they are more worried about people putting their sticky fingers on it while taking selfies, but the more interesting question might be where will they put the muddy wellies / walking boots & damp clothes, when they return from their safari to their Farrari.

Great news - Serious rig, serious engineering, Serious stress, Serious fun but none the less accomplished and you have stretched your nerves so as to be better able to cope with the next arrival of rig / engineering / stress / fun.

@SteamyTea you have gathered some great insight from ONS but if as @JSHarris says it's about where the housing is then good old capitalism should have sorted it by cresting jobs where housing is cheap because labour should be cheap as well. Given this has not happened there must be some other factor driving the gap between the population growth and housing demand. Thinking about it I suspect it's to do with household size & shape. The trend away from extended families, the divorce rate, double income households, every child having their own bedroom and the national obsession with owning your own home all contribute.

As I understand it, and our experience of doing the same thing, is that removing the roof and / or windows may not be enough or could be more than enough. The individual officer makes the judgement, we had removed the roof tiles and much of the felt and it got through OK but only after they had 'discussed' among themselves.

£76 is a vg price we are on £92 + VAT for RC 25/30. Where abouts are you?

I think I might be up for sponsoring some research into how the digger has become the oposable thumb of modern man juxtaposed, by way of balance, with a similar discourse on the iPad for modern women as both seem to extend the reach and allow one to get so much more done. Good / bad to be evaluated.

Yep I guess that's correct they all seem very different the other possible manufacturer does not use the expanding tape on their standard details.

Wonder what the insurers make of stolen keys then used to steal car are you liable if you didn't secure the keys.