Crofter

I don't feel like I've cut any corners. There's genuinely nothing I would do differently even if I had a bigger budget. (Actually there is- I'm never tiling an entire room in metro tiles again!)

Wow. My entire bathroom cost £700.

When I started my build, I was getting 25x50 battens that looked like any other treated timber. They were fine. At that size, you expect a few splits especially near the ends, but overall they behaved ok. At some point the supplier switched and began selling me those godawful blue stained battens. Apparently the colour is there so that BCO can glance up at the roof and tick a box as he knows that they are approved battens. Or so I was told. Anyway, they are utterly awful. The blue staining comes off in the rain and stains your hands. And they split at the mere sight of a screw, let alone a nail.

It's so frustrating. Parcel force deliver to here at a decent price, and obviously anything royal mail is a fixed rate. But so many companies ignore these options. I swear that when I was doing the build, I spent more time trying not to get shafted on delivery than I did actually building! One little good news story though- yesterday I phoned a supplier for something and they agreed to cut their stock 2m length down to the 1.8m I needed, which dropped it down a price bracket on delivery. Order went from £93 to £52 with a single phone call. Very decent of them.

Already bought but thanks for the offer 😊

Interesting. Our MDF has stood up pretty well. Eight years so far as a busy holiday let occupied about 200 nights a year. We don't go mad with the floor mopping though, because the floor is bamboo. And in the bathroom, I have replaced one small section of MDF with tile because it was suffering from damp.

I wanted solid oak. Then I priced it up (not just skirtings- architraves, liners, and stops too) and had a change of heart. Considered veneered, but it wasn't all that much cheaper and seemed far more vulnerable. In the end I just went with MDF, and painted it. Very happy. Not only did I save a lot of money, but fitting was an absolute doddle. If you make a mistake, you just cover it with filler, sand it smooth, and paint. Can't do that with solid wood! I already had bamboo flooring, exposed timber beams, and plain white walls. The colour of the skirts was a nice extra touch to what could have been quite a bland interior.

Oh well in the end I've chosen Illbruck me315, because the places selling the other stuff all wanted silly money for delivery (of a single roll of tape) to a Highlands postcode. Hopefully it'll be up to the job.

Is Vana the same as Pro Clima?

I've just started replacing a couple of windows. Previously I'd used SIga Wigluv black tape, and I can confirm that after nearly ten years it's still perfectly adhered and has done its job perfectly. It's flippin expensive though. I can get e.g. Illbruck ME315 for a third of the price, and it also seems very highly regarded. I'd be interested to hear what tapes other people have used and how you would rate them.

That must depend on the product. I've got a set of French doors from them and they're definitely not completely airtight. They were cheap though, and they're on a pretty exposed elevation.

I'd be surprised if you could get 2G to outperform 3G without it ending up costing more. When I was recently shopping for new windows, I was offered a Krypton option and it pushed up the price much more than simply going to 3G.

I don't know about the English rules but AFAIK they should just specify a u value. Good 2G can be better than poor 3G. Not necessarily cheaper, though.

Ok that's much better. If your walls are already at 0.18 then improving the glazing will see a more substantial return because they are now the weak point, by far. People don't always realise that even the best windows money can buy will lose three times as much heat as a BRegs minimum wall. And cheap 2G will be up to uW 2.0 which is appalling. Everybody will find their own happy place on the cost/benefit curve, but personally I wouldn't ever aim for less than 1.4 as you should be able to find that for about the same price as the 1.6/1.8/2.0 crap. 1.1 is widely available at sensible prices. In my experience the prices only tend to rise markedly once you go below that.

1.8 is horrendous for a wall (you don't mean 0.18 do you?) but improving your existing walls is much harder than retrofitting better windows. None of this is rocket science. It comes down to surface area and u value.