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At our previous house we we’re directly into the drain neater Quieter Worked a treat Did the same at the new house Neat quiet Didn’t work a treat We are surrounded by trees that shed little brown leaf things that blocked the drains solid We now have a 90 degree bend Not as tidy Really noisy when it rains But does the job

Mile stone Some pics?

Quite normal We had no water on so we manually pumped the pipes full of water and left full of water with a pressure gauge in place The UFH we filled with air

I’m in the North west of England Building labour has rocketed My friend has sent me a message tonight His Daughter lives in the South East The best quote she has for tiling five mtrs of splash back Is £450 Labour and adhesive and grout Massive shortage of skilled labour

Ask for a breakdown If you can sit back and let someone else take the stress I would take it at those prices

Good point Groundworks are a leap of faith and very difficult to predict

You really don’t need a Qs for building one house But if you are looking to get a ballpark estimate of materials Online is as good as anything

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Pretty good example of how much money you can save by doing it yourself Sure your not going to be as quick as someone doing it each day Does it matter Well done ?

Ha ha Thanks How could we ever get board of On Off

Pretty stupid tip I wouldn’t use him Apart from it being very slow Why on earth would grind or leave an expansion joint then cover it with render Going off the picture you have posted It looks sot on to me Plenty of fixing Not driven in to far Staggered joints A few small gaps on the joints are not an issue The base coat and mesh will cover them without a problem ?

I’ll try that Dave Could site it in place of the aerial It was a planning condition that we didn’t put one on the outside of the house

Yep Me to

Right I originally installed a loft aerial With a seven point booster While I can get a perfect picture on all The screen often momentarily freezes or fills with colour It ok on the bbc channels as I just press the green button to get it through the WiFi Or go on Netflix The aerial is pointing at trees Is there any other solution than mounting one on the outside of the house

The best and 100% way of curing damp is to tank the walls Not the cheapest but not as expensive as you may think Below shows a job that I was doing a few week back Although this was a cellar With a perimeter drain Tanking above ground is quite q quick and simple job

I think forever house is a romantic term and helps justify the effort we all put in But in reality most of us will won’t live in the houses that we have built for the rest of our lives But there’s nothing stoping us enjoying living here for the time being

More expensive than pVC ?

Lead seems a bit extreme and as you state expensive Regardless of conditions you shouldn’t get much if anything soaking through the outer skin Most trays are made up of damp course or rigid pvc and inexpensive Architects are good at spending other people’s money

Sorry hijack Omitting MVHR is the only thing I regret from our build Wonderful warm home in winter Cheap to heat It takes such a long time to cool down in summer. We were advised to set the UFH to 19 in summer It would be great if the in house temperature dropped to 19

Make no mistake self build is hard If it was easy everyone would do it Grand designs sort of skips past most of the bad bits Building the dream is closer to what your likely to experience But I think most would agree that the ends justifies the means I’ve taken apprentices on that thought it would be like DIY SOS Drinking Tea and playing tricks on each other I think we all need to go into this with our eyes open The contractors aren't your friends They are being employed by you and you have the final say on everything Betting having Grumpy old Bob on your build that knows his job inside out Than Jim who’s a real nice guy But turns up when he feels like it and doesn’t have clue

Your a long way past the unpredictable bits now Ian Not haven’t to look up at the sky to plan your day or week You can now enjoy doing the internals Choosing colours and gadgets

I’ve recently completed a refurb Plastering tiling and render For a couple downsizing to a large four bed extended bungalow They had the same dilemma But with a fixed price from a very good local builder decided to extend and refurb But with extras the cost has finished up higher than anticipated They now have beautiful home But are not happy with the layout that is full of compromises and wish that they had demolished It may be worth the extra to you Its all about the location

In the end they spent 1750 per mtre Which was 100 k more than they had anticipated It was the one that had floor to ceiling glass Estimated at 33 k Nearest quote around 100k The ended up adding quite a bit of cladding instead of some of the glass plywood instead of plasterboard Also left the Pozi joists on view