jack

I know that, but I suspect a lot of the general public doesn't. My point was that the new name - whatever the reason for the choice to change it at the time they did - makes the organisation's focus clearer to the general public.

Not in the case of Snickers. The same chocolate bar was known as Snickers worldwide for decades before the UK change. I don't know why it was originally called a Marathon bar in the UK, but they only changed it to Snickers to align it with what the rest of the world was doing. Re CORGI, I assume they changed the name so that it gave a better impression to the general public of what the registration meant. No idea whether anyone got paid a lot of money for the new name though!

Company name, not brand. If you didn't know how Japanese business names worked (KK or Kabushiki Kaisha for limited company), you could just as well have assumed that "Koki" meant "Limited".

It was the power tool division I was talking about (I wasn't replying to SteamyTea). Not that I've spent any time at all looking, but I don't recall ever seeing a "Hitachi Koki" branded power tool, whatever the company name may have been. For the typical power tool purchaser, this is a change of brand from Hitachi to HiKOKI - and that involves, as I said, throwing away decades of brand recognition and introducing a completely new (and imo horrible) brand.

If you ride, it's also great for giving the bike a quick rinse at the end of a ride. Not an issue in summer, but washing a bike down with cold water in winter can be a very unpleasant experience.

From memory, the power for our external blinds goes through each window aperture, between the top of the window frame and the overhead reveal. It's held in place by the low-expansion foam that seals around the window, and sealed by airtightness tape. Not sure that's the best way - a conduit through the insulation would probably be better, especially in terms of airtightness - but we weren't sure of where and how we'd need to connect the blind motors, so left it until the windows arrived after the insulation had been installed. I find external power points useful for things like pressure washing, power tools, electric garden tools, temporary lights, stereos and chargers. I wouldn't flood the place with them, but I do think that one in each place around the house where any of these sorts of things would be used is helpful. The one outside the garage gets used a fair bit. We also have one near our front door which can be used for Christmas lights. This is also the time for putting in conduits through the walls for things like: External lighting (including wall lights, but also garden lighting if you haven't left one or more conduits through the slab to run that) External sensors CCTV (including front door intercom if likely to ever be of interest) Taps - I wish we'd put in more of these. We have one on the left side of the house, and another at the back. We could have done with one on the right, at least. Also, if you're having a water softener, consider putting a softened tap to where you wash the car (if you do that at home). A hot tap (which will also be softened if you have a softener) would also be useful. I wish we'd put a hot tap in to rinse the dog. We thought we'd be clever having a shower installed in the mud room, but the amount of dirt that comes off the muddy-puddle-loving dog most days means that it's a lot of effort cleaning up after giving her a rinse. It'd be a lot easier if this could be done outside in an area where a bit of dirt wouldn't matter. Doorbell - I've lost count of the number of people I know who've built houses or done substantial renovations, only to realise that they didn't run a wire for a doorbell! They end with with cheap plasticky doorbells stuck to their lovely new front door frame with double sided adhesive.

But WHY? Seems crazy to me to throw away decades of brand recognition and introduce a completely new (and imo horrible) brand.

We had an overweight (big-framed too) guy onsite and he was one of the fastest people we used. Really cracked on. I mean, he did a shit job, of course, but he did finish things quickly.

This is the one that drives me mental. Tried this several times. Still got shit quality. I used to think the problem was that they didn't care. Then I thought that maybe it's a matter of them lacking skills. In the end, I concluded that a lot of tradespeople literally have no concept of what a quality result in their trade looks like, nor any interest in knowing what that result looks like. Without that, you'll never develop the skills needed to deliver it.

I don't bother with boosting. Even in the coldest depths of winter with sequential hot showers, all trace of condensation is gone within an hour or so. And that's with the boost set at less than half that suggested by building regs.

And make sure it's solid copper, not copper coated aluminium (CCA). Agree with everything above. If you're dead set on making provision for fiber, run some conduit (making sure you only use long, sweeping bends - perhaps look up minimum radius for fiber).

Thread locked due to commercial content in the last (now hidden) post.

I originally include a sentence about one's wrist needing a break before the batteries would run out, but I didn't want to leave an opening (fnarr fnarr) for @SteamyTea

Agreed. I can't imagine what sort of if work you'd have to be doing to get through two of those batteries in an hour.

Much better, but still not perfect. One of the earlier jobs my wife took on was screwing down chipboard flooring using spax floor screws with a torx head. Somehow she still managed to regularly get it off-axis enough for slippage to occur. She just didn't seem to be able to "feel" where vertical was. It's nothing to do with her being a woman, I should add. It's a skill like any other, and comes with time and practice. I remember when I was younger that I never seemed to be able to drill perpendicularly, but I'm mostly okay now. My wife had just never touched a drill until these tasks arose.

Watching my wife try to use a cordless drill to drive in screws is one of the most frustrating things I've ever experienced. When you've been doing it for decades you don't even have to think about squaring it up, how hard to push at what point to avoid cam-out, etc, but it takes time to learn those things. I was there the first time my wife tried and I had to leave the room in the end. It was that or murder (touch and go whose murder, to be fair).

My OH jokingly calls me "Captain Sensible". In my opinion, the fact that she thinks I'm "too concerned about safety" is a very good reason to to actively discourage her use of anything sharp, and particularly anything connected to a powerful motor!

... even when you say clearly in the entry that you won't deliver! I once had someone offer me £5 to deliver across town a crappy old Ikea coffee table that probably wasn't worth £5.

Right, I understand now. Yes, ours went through the DPC at the inner surface of the upstand, like this: I believe we cut a circle in the DPC (see arrow) so that the duct was a tight friction fit, on the assumption that there was nowhere for the water to track to this point once the outer DPC was sealed around the ducts anyway. If you were paranoid, you could use a sheet grommet of some sort attached to the DPC to provide a more resilient seal, but that felt like overkill to me at the time.

@MikeSharp01, we didn't go through the DPC. We just lifted it out of the way where the ducts disappear into the EPS upstand at the side of the slab. The ducts go through the EPS upstand and ring beam at the level of the middle insulation layer (of three x 100mm). Let me know if you need a diagram.

I stand by my earlier assertion: at one level or another it's all physics (a lot of which is admittedly maths!)

If you use an ultrasonic humidifier, it helps to have a fan beside it to disperse the droplets into the air. I've used these in the past, and if you aren't careful, the area around them (floor, furniture) gets damp. Because there are moisture sources inside the house (eg, people, cooking, showers, plants) that add moisture to the air. The more you ventilate, the more of that moisture is lost to the outside. For example, turning off the MVHR completely would result in nearly all internally generated moisture accumulating in the house over time. Obviously that's not a desirable situation, so it's a balance between fresh air and keeping moisture levels at a reasonable level. When the weather is cold, you also get a larger drop in RH as the (often already relatively dry in winter) incoming air is heated.

When it's dry outside, over-ventilation is the main enemy. Can you turn the MVHR down to a lower setting? As an example, we're supposed to run ours at something like 180 m3/hr, but it was on for a year at 50 m3/hr with no issues at all. Another possibility is pollen screens for windows. I have no idea how effective these are, but could you get at least some windows covered with these so you can open them and get some flow-through ventilation overnight and when it's not too hot? Edited to add: large pot plants are also supposed to help. Edited to add: example of pollen screens: https://newblinds.co.uk/pollen-screens

Well, with spring now well and truly upon us, it's clear we're going to need more watering capacity for the plants we installed over winter. I thought we might make do with some soaker hoses, but it's clear that a more permanent system is going to be required. I've looked at various consumer irrigation systems (Hozelock and K'archer), but there are all sorts of other brands and types. Has anyone had experience with any of these systems? Anything to look out for or avoid? What about drip v microspray? The drip systems seem to provide water in a very localised way - I can't help but think that for larger plants, a spray would be better. Thoughts?

I always, always do this now. It's not that I don't trust them, but GPs are expected to have such an incredibly wide range of knowledge that it isn't surprising that they aren't perfect. Trust, but verify!