MikeSharp01

Are you saying you would loose the vaulted ceilings if you go for Trusses.

One is basically weight 60Kg or a load at a point. The other is more like spread load. If you imagine 30 2kg bags of flour in a bag that is 60kg. Now mark out a 1m x 1m square and then spread the 30 bags out across the square and that will be 60Kg per square metre.

Wonder how big your passive house would need to be to stretch this heat pump to its limits: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65321487 it can boil a whole Olympic swimming pool of water in less than 4 hours.

Did you mean 'on'!!!!

We have our own digger, for a few more weeks. We got is second hand and replaced the motors at the start as one was leaking, and although we have had to re-build one of them since, fit new hoses in places, replace the aux hydraulic connectors - which were jammed, change the oils & filters a couple of times and fit new seals on one of the rams otherwise it has been very cost effective. I hope to sell for about what we paid for it in the summer so although inflation has nibbled away it it will go one for a long time yet.

That's not bad £75K per year, so that is what a one man band would have to clear to equal that.

We have had an HWAM 'WALL' for 20 years and still working wonderfully - the way the flames waft about when you control the draft is positively artistic , wall mounted 220Kg which makes maintenance hard - we have serviced the automatic burn / draft control temperature damper a couple of times - and that is a service recommendation. It has been great.

It is fibre cable! For optical networks.

Was that the kit that drilled those holes into the vault for the Hatton Garden job?

Have a look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay-with-Flints, don't know where you are but if any of the places mentioned it may well be that.

It looks like a desiccated clay, does it stick together when grab a handful? Big flints or shards?

+1 to the torpedo level. If you think about it you don't need the holes to be dead level, they just need to come out of the wall in the right place, so drill from the outside, I guess where the balcony is attaching. The slop in everything will do the rest. Also if you want level you actually need perpendicular - IE at 90 degrees to the wall in both planes.

What was the threshold like - it maybe that it was just a big tilt and turn window used as a door?

No Apparently not - here are a few I did today and I just won't go without them, so no robots here, yet, - perhaps a slightly more sober mower driver, Sunday lunch don't you know! (Perhaps that also explains the slight tilt on the picture.)

Very Smart

You can usually specify the window's inner timber profile so it is just square.

Looks good. Just one word of caution around the glass - glass corner window, we have one and although the window was not that expensive it was hard to source as not all the manufacturers do them and, the big AND, the cost of the structure to make it possible, two cantilevers or one very strong one and a beam depending, put about 15% on the cost of the frame, timber in our case - steel would be cheaper in this situation probably and the Structural Engineers costs. You need to hold the whole corner of the roof up but at least yours, like ours, is on the first floor.

Welcome to THE forum. Sounds like an interesting project.

Perhaps as an idea offer SE to put a couple of shaped (SE to specify length) 18mm (SE to specify - might want thicker) Marine ply plates either side fixed, glue (SE to specify - might want structural adhesive) plus screw/nail/possibly bolted through to both stringers and the end upright (SE might suggest shoulder blocks and other strengthening). The challenge will be to play out what happens at the end of the plates although wood does not have the stress point fracturing that steel, for instance, has SE will have a view AND the potential for buckling the ply plates as they deal with the compression stress in the top stringer that is no longer there, which I feel would be small but might not be. You may also be able to get some crosswise support from adjacent beams if you can get plates in. Either way it won't be a standard detail so in the SE's hands.

How is the pozi fixed to the floor boarding, what it the pozi spacing and what else is the pozi supporting? I cannot help thinking that a structural engineer could show you how to reduce that top stronger out of the way.

By The sounds of it you are in Scotland - up there you have some additional protection and tribunal services you can reach out for / to. I cannot recall the exact name of the service but I believe you can take a case against the factor through them. Googling I think is is called the "Housing and Property Chamber: First-tier Tribunal for Scotland" https://www.housingandpropertychamber.scot/

Turntable perhaps - maybe we are now a little far out of the box!

You could reverse in then?

I guess if you think about the short/medium term this is true. In the longer term will you own a car? Won't self driving cars be much more thing - which turn up as and when you need them.

I have not heard that heat grab idea before - I wonder how it really works as apart from the immediately obvious it will have the effect of extracting in a place where you would naturally want to be supplying so the air from the bedrooms will now go out of the hallway and bathroom extracts and it may suck air up the stairs feels odd but has the whiff of right about it.