jack

That should be all you need, really.

Ah, sorry, it's a joke based on the long planning history of this house. Joe's local council were insisting on 1.5 storey based on a mythical "local vernacular" requirement. He took it to appeal and won.

This would have been better as a 1.5 storey cottage. Much more in keeping with the local vernacular.

First he'll need to plant the hazel seeds, manufacture the necessary tools , dig up some limestone, build a crusher, build a kiln, etc. We may be some time.

You could make one, surely?

This thread is so fun.

Bear in mind that those of us with 200mm centres have our pipes buried under at least 40mm of concrete. That will tend to provide more even heat than the same spacing under ~20mm, which is all you'll have above yours with 16mm pipe at the bottom of 35mm screed.

I may be misremembering, but aren't there DNO limitations on how far the supply is allowed to be from the house without further protection (3m rings a bell)? Putting the temporary supply on the boundary doesn't sound like it'll achieve that (depending, of course, on how far the house is from the boundary). I have no idea what cost/complexity implications are associated with this.

Ours used to jump several feet from a standing start, with very little scrabbling. The mesh might discourage them, but I personally wouldn't rely on it.

Most dogs won't jump fences unless they're very low. Most cats, unless old or fat, will easily get over 6+ foot fences.

Correct use of past tense. Actually, my wife hates hanging about once she's awake, even on weekends, so she bounds out of bed in the morning. I tend to take a more leisurely approach...

Is your temporary supply going to become your permanent one when the house is finished? If so, you should spec for that.

Our kitchen is at the back of the house, because our building area was long and narrow. Study and lounge are to the right (south) as you move into the hall, and snug, toilet, utility and plant room are to the left (north). We have friends who built a house with the kitchen at the front of the house, and that works really well (at least partly because their house is shallow and wide, so the kitchen is still close to the back garden. We did consider an upside down house due to the steep rise to the back of our plot, and schlepping up to the kitchen was one reason we didn't do that in the end. You have to work with the constraints you have, for sure.

My mate knows people who were affected by their holiday homes being vandalised and even set on fire by Welsh nationalists. It was a big thing in the 80s and mid 90s apparently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meibion_Glyndŵr

Keep a dated diary in a properly bound notepad, summarising any interactions you have with her/them. Ideally you'd get someone unconnected with you to date and sign each entry on the date you make it. That way, if threats were to become serious, you have a contemporaneous record written so it'll be more than just your word against theirs. Other than that, I don't have any real advice. Since trying to talk to them clearly isn't getting you anywhere, perhaps it's better to just crack on, do what you need to do and accept that there may be consequences. The alternative is to wait until they sell and hope the new neighbour is more rational, but as you say, there's no guarantee they'll manage to get shot of it. BTW, are you English (or more importantly, not Welsh?) Friends of ours have had a family holiday home in north Wales for decades and they're still only barely tolerated by many of the locals. Crazy attitude given that tourism is all the area has left. If you aren't Welsh, you may be getting some of that vibe.

Will take a listen, thanks.

The other possibility is to plan the new house in a position that leaves you the option to split in the future, if it isn't something you want to do now.

Absolutely. It's a shame the original reactor designs were built with nuclear weapons materials in mind, or we might have gone the thorium route instead. Cheaper, safer and more plentiful than uranium-based. The other big issue with nuclear is the time it takes to design, approve and build the reactors (plus no-one wants a new one near them). Same with fusion. If we'd spent the amount of money on battery based grid storage that's gone into fusion research in the last 30 years, we'd be halfway to solving the energy problem. Fusion at scale is going to be too late imo. There's been work on small (ie, neighbourhood) scale thorium reactors, although I haven't really followed what's been happening over the last handful of years.

Baby steps, but we'll get there eventually.

Nice garden - I can definitely see why you wouldn't want to build on it. Anyway, welcome (again!) to the forum.

I'm not really concerned with food going down the drain per se, it's just that I'd rather keep it onsite and have it go into our (poor, sandy) soil than send it into the sewer.

According to the Le Creuset website, if you use the dishwasher you should treat their pans with oil every time you put them through the dishwasher: "When frying in an uncoated pan for the first time or whenever the pan has been cleaned in the dishwasher prepare the pan as follows: Add some vegetable or corn oil so that the base is covered. Heat the oil gently and turn the pan to coat the inner side walls. Remove the pan from the heat, let it cool and clean with kitchen paper." I can't be arsed with that, so I tried just not putting them through the dishwasher. Since doing that, I find that food doesn't stick as much, and the pans are more or less wipe clean rather than needing scrubbing. I do treat them with a bit of oil now and then.

Not a fan of putting food down the drains - seems a waste. I recently started using a bokashi bin for the first time in 10 years. Works well, although I'll admit it involves a little more work than a waste disposal unit!

I don't think anyone is suggesting that you don't need a kitchen sink! We don't put our pots and frying pans through the dishwasher, but they clean up very fast in the sink. Plastic gets a quick rinse before recycling. Everything else goes in the dishwasher.

It's a decent system apparently, but eye-wateringly expensive (all the Loxone branded stuff is, imo). One Loxone dealer in Belgium has a solution that integrates Doorbird intercoms with Loxone, if that's what you're after. You can set up a wired doorbell system using one digital input monitoring a button of your choice, and using one of the outputs to trigger any wired system. When you say "funky", do you mean in terms of tones it plays or how it looks (or both)? Edited to add: I'm on the Google Groups Loxone mailing list. Some very helpful people contribute to it.