FarmerN

Concrete tiles far worse than clay tiles for moss in my experiece.

We bought Rationel windows from John Knight Glass on the Wirral , they supplied and fitted. I think they did a really good job, we did specify fitting to Passive standards when ordering. Windows and Patio door been in two years now and still pleased.

We demolished a house and rebuilt. The meter was moved by the power company to a temporary kiosk as already suggested. Once the new build was water tight we paid to move the meter again into the plant room. I was expecting the power company to go back to the pole for the final new connection into the plant room and was surprised that they just made an underground connection to the temporary kiosk supply cable to make the new supply. Saved them about 15 meters of cable, the builder was doing all the digging except the last 3 meters to the pole which the power company wanted to do them selves.

Builder did our soffits and facias first. I wish he hadn’t! The facias were a tiny bit high , resulting in a bit too much kick up on the final slate. We were meant to finish the gable overhang with an aluminium dry verge system. Because of the extra kick the straight aluminium verge kit would not go on and we ended up with an unsealed gable verge. As stated in an earlier post take great care on positioning of facia to ensure correct eaves drainage into gutter and to avoid excess kick on the final slate. I still do not understand the desire of traditional slate roofers (or ours anyway) to reduce pitch on the bottom slate. If the bottom slate is supported by the facia as in our case it makes it very hard to change or renew facia at a latter date.

I would not like to comment on the drinking water quality of the pipe pulled through a drainage field. Personally I'm a bit agricultural about these things, but thats me. There must be an element of risk...........but . Is the MDPE contiuous with no joints while going through the drainage field? Are there small childeren or vunerable people living there? As for the drainage field , it sounds like standard flexible land drain pipe. Joints are readily avaliable on line ( Plastic Express etc https://www.plastics-express.co.uk/land-drainage-80mm-products.html ) and with these it would be easy to repair any severed pipes . 2 joints and a short length of pipe of the right size and a bit of gravel to repair any breaks.

Brick and Block construction , wet plaster and a builder who wasn't really intested. Only one air test done at end of construction. Air Test 1.9. Should have been and easily could have been lower.

I knocked on the door of a new built house I liked and asked the owner. They had a folder with all the details of the build in it. They were really pleased to talk about their new house.

Would you want to extend the power supply from it in the future for a greenhouse, garden room or workshop? About to extend electrical feed from my treatment plant to a workshop.

We put a 3Kw wood burner in our 200sqm new build, with MVHR, GSHP and UFH We do light it in winter for about 2-3 hours a night and I like it, you do have to leave the room door open, it soon gets HOT, the sort of temperatures everyone is trying to avoid at the moment! Ours was planned from the start of the build so was easy to put under floor ducts for an air supply coupled direct to the stove doing away with any question of an air brick. As in post above you definitely need an air duct direct to outside coupled to the stove. It is impossible to justify on heating basis , it’s the aesthetics and nice to know we have the ultimate back up to a power failure. Fortunate enough to have a plentiful supply of home grown logs.

We put an ACO drain channel in along wall in a similar situation, seems ok so far.

+1 Harder to get the window reveals right with wet paster. We did wet plaster and I am happy with it,it was on top of dence blocks not thermalite. The plasterer was incredibly slow and some of the reveals were hard to get right as too thick a layer of plaster was required.

Thanks for reminder, just sent mine off.

Can you lift a stained block out to experiment on? Try different things. Brick acid, very strong hypochlorite /washing up liquid mix, different solvents ? Apply and leave to soak rather than scrub. Care needed ! Don’t mix chemicals! Good Luck.

Are you suggesting no inlet ducts to the bedrooms or have I misunderstood?

I can’t help on fitting Panels on old roof , but we had a 1890 roof retiled a few years back, no felt etc . It was bone dry in the attic and very well ventilated ! Roof only lasted 120 years! Timbers all very sound, the bit that was failing were the batten nails. You could see the odd bit where whole battens were sliding. This would be my worry with putting panels on an old roof. Just built a new house, the bit that annoyed me about the new roof was the battens were nailed on with a nail gun, OK they were galvanized nails , but the nails were so thin and the coating very thin compared to hammer driven roofing nails. I think they will slip a lot sooner than the roof, on the old house. They used Copper nails for the slate but that seemed almost pointless as it will be the batten nails that fail.