MikeSharp01

To paint vertical and horizontal for papering over IIRC.

Looks like the outside slopes down towards the house! If there is a reasonable area of path up the slope then in a real down pour that slot drain probably won't cope and you will get water coming in the door. Might it be valuable to arrange it so the tile up to the door slopes down towards the drain and to lower the last few path slabs so it is level OR arrange a run off the path across wise so some of the water get directed elsewhere rather than channeled to the front door?

If anything goes wrong or needs moving then its simpler if you can get at them. I am a great believer in little access panels everywhere, much to my other half's annoyance, so I can get at things easily - like the underside of the bath, through the wall behind it in the corridor. The deal in the new place is that there won't be any other than in the utility room so I will have to think very hard and test every connection before covering up!

We are trying to resolve the details of the junctions between the slate hung walls and the slate roof. We want a crisp junction but have not managed to find a detail for it. The one we have uses a dry verge and secondary trim (The vertical junction is basically the same without the air gap), as in pic but I would like to get to something more like the Belgian house below. Any ideas very welcome.

It must be getting a command from somewhere, does the new unit have any unconnected inputs. It may be that noise on these inputs, or indeed the relay input which maybe fed from an output with some sort of pullup / down resistor in the new models controller, is triggering the mode change and latching it. Is there a wiring diagram for both units. On another note I guess you are telling us that Heatrae Sadia don't support 3rd party servicing very well so we should take note! In the light of the right to repair movement(s) I think we should start asking that full circuit diagrams are available prior to purchase of such equipment.

Sounds like a great place to work, until you get called back into the office! Enjoy the forum and all it has to offer.

Yes - as many as you can to run the services that don't need TLC - Electric, Water, Comms, even gas if you are up for using tracpipe, leave the roof space for the hot water etc so A: You don't need loads of holes through your joists thus making them weaker, B: you can insulate them carefully so as to keep the heat where you want it.

Mine takes about .9T and is only 800mm wide.

Jet washer - Steer clear of abrasives as you can take anodizing off, assuming it has any, if you are not careful. If not anodized then you can be harsher.

Good question, I just wandered round here and looked at our windows, double glazed and fitted in 1993 (close to 30 years), there are over 40 individual units and none of them are blown. I would have thought that modern manufacturing would get to 30 years MTBF for triple glazed without a problem although I cannot see any guarantees that go out that far.

Welcome to THE forum for self builders.

Great piece of work but the overall benefit may hinge on more than the pay back time for you personally. The house will be around for perhaps 100 years at which point it will have paid back more that 10 times over on a planetary scale rather than just for your pocket - assuming the windows don't get replaced (our daughter has just replaced several rotten sashes that where installed in 1887). If you have children, they will see the benefit in an improved environment and future generations more so. Maybe there is additional gain here to help justify.

It must be the regs then allow people to NOT have have homes that impact the planet less. We almost had something like we needed in the 2016 regs that HMG deleted prior to them coming into force. On the plus (ish) side there is a new PART L coming and I found a good review of this and the associated new SAP scheme HERE which shows how much tougher it will be for the big house builders and the self builder.

Didn't he use Eltron in line water heaters to boost the temp on demand he found that they would add the few degrees he wanted to the tank output.

Yes we have only been going 4 and I feel like an old stager, still 18 months to go at current pace.

Welcome to THE forum for self builders (old or new), hope you find it useful to be here.

Ok, I have them on the way. Many thanks. Mike

What machine are these for, angle grinder or a tile cutting machine? Also what is the lube if not water. I tries cutting with water but the muck gets in the crackles! (Not acceptable to customer - our daughter!)

Anybody got any good ideas for cutting crackle glaze tiles without edge damage. Can't get better than attached with wet wheel. Left is cut and diamond polished bevel right is as cut with slight diamond bevel. Left shows too much base to be acceptable while right is too damaged without diamond polishing. Any thoughts?

Not true in my experience - we have a couple of children, both in their twenties, who were regular frequenters of pubs that are set up right before this pandemic - and we used to drop by and see them there. I dimly recall, as it feels such a long time ago but is only slightly over a year, when they dragged us round several central London pubs for lunch, afternoon drinks then evening. The pubs were, to be fair, all of a type - staffed mainly by hipsters, but good beer and well kept wines.

If it already has pedestrian access then there is no one you can lobby because it is an established right of way. Even if the road is private, is it?, access rights are very challenging to overturn and in your case, as you have lots of properties that need pedestrian access, you could not restrict it.

Is not pavement parking being banned / changed - HMG put out a consultation at the end of last year, you can find it HERE, closed, but it shows that HMG want's to ensure that pavements are available for pedestrians. It won't be long, 15-20 years before we don't have cars each we just call a 'self drive' and it will navigate to you and whisk you off to your destination. (By then the AI's around you will have worked out that you are thinking of going down the shops and the 'self drive' will be waiting just round the corner for the actual call 'Alexa call a self drive'

Maybe @Bruno lives even further north than you do - summers in such places must be very hard to imply a COP like that!

Is it remotely possible that the strainer has corroded away?

Not sure I can cut it as neatly, XPS will cut on the hot wire, given the volume the U factor is not an issue.