MikeSharp01

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.

Just been to one of the two possible window suppliers and now I know why the tape is there at least for this manufacturer. Essentially, as they explained it to me, it is set back a small distance to create an air gap up the side of the frame to ensure that the ali cladding can breath otherwise moisture would build up behind the ali cladding and not be able to escape. It seals the frame but is not designed to take up slack in the construction because the brakets etc still have to be a slide fit. If you clad / render up to the frame then you have to leave a 2mm gap to allow the alu cladding to breath. A bead of silicone would seal the gap and cause eventual failure of the timber frame. They also told me that it's life expectancy was 25 years, guarantee is 15 years so suspect it is the stuff @Nick describes above, in the open if protected then it should last much longer. Well that is what I was told!

Why such big gaps? Why is it not possible to make the windows a snug fit in the brick formed orifice? Such large gaps also have the visual effect of making the frames look much bulkier than they need to. @pauldoc I cannot find any life length guarantees on the tapes I have looked at so suspect they won't last unless mechanically protected from UV / Weather etc as if they did have a guaranteed life then it would be in their technical manuals / general advertising. In the ads for the product they show them as very much more compressed than in the @readiescards example also they show them mid frame so that sealant has somewhere to go to cover / protect the tape.

Cripes and I thought star trek was science fiction when all while the local builders merchants have been teleporting stuff all over the district.

Uh oh... Have not invested yet as I have borrowed a friends paslode which does a good job. The SE has not specified the nails only the spacing. I will ask for this detail. Thanks for the heads up.

Your are correct 5&6 is very much optional but as Kevin McCloud said when filming a friend of mines grand design 'if i was spending a million pounds and I was not confident of my capabilities I would want to be shackled to somebody who knew what they were doing' or some such. There are many building warranty suppliers and they have been discussed elsewhere on this forum eg here:

The Build Control Officer (BCO) they have to inspect the work, ensuring your building is built according to the building Regulations (BR), as you progress. You only need the architect to inspect the works if they are offing the structural warranty (they may not be cheap and they may not wish to anyway). You can buy an insurance backed warranty that takes the BCO's inspections and gives you a warranty for the building. The architect will need to prepare the full plans, all the detailed drawings, which includes getting a structural engineer (SE) to do all the structural calculations. The architect is responsible for ensuring that the design meets building regs at this stage, but things can change - see below. These, full plans, are what the BCO will approve, before you start, and then inspect the work at various stages along the way. The architect is only needed, if at all, after the BCO gets stuck in to resolve issues you find with the detailed drawings. Changes which affect the structure and / or any of the building regs will need to be agreed with the BCO as you go along. Hope that helps.