jack

Ah yes, I remember that feeling well! It's never happened to me before or since.

Interesting theory. I'd query whether steam rising from lower areas would be able to get close enough to the already burning cladding to initiate the described reaction with the aluminium. Between expanding air/combustion products and updrafts, I suspect any such steam would at best be carried straight up, or more likely slightly away from the facade. The idea of water that had already been absorbed into the PIR over time seems plausible - you can imagine it being vaporised and expelled due to the heat.

Describe self-building 5 words: Hopefully nothing too serious.

With the telehandler?

Speak for yourself!

That's great news Ian. The map definitely isn't always the territory when it comes to practical skills like this.

Call Hasbean and have a chat with them. Tell them what you like and they'll give you some ideas of what to go for.

Maybe Onoff's bathroom is a black hole, and time dilation happens when he enters. Bit of an issue with him coming back over the event horizon though.

Sainsbury's Colombian is okay at a pinch.

Yes, you've definitely discussed it elsewhere @JSHarris

This is me every single time I do anything involving tools. I regularly lose things when I haven't actually moved from the spot, and it's getting worse as I get older!

Agreed. To me, it looks better with the lighter renders in all the examples at the Houzz link. Definitely worth spending some time optimising the exact shades of the different materials so they work with each other.

I can have two cups a day, both before around 1-2pm. Anything more than that and I'm lying awake staring at the ceiling for all hours. I also find myself getting more anxious if I drink too much, so I tend to keep it under control. Shame, because I love it more than most other things in this world.

True, but it's on a separate layer and, from memory, can easily be removed using Acrobat or another PDF editor.

Has bean? Why, hasbean.co.uk is my favourite coffee supplier!

My favourite youtuber reviewed this a while ago:

My wife likes it too. I can't stand it. Instant headache the moment I get even a whiff of it.

My other recollection of that thread is that the guy who was affected (I think his wife suffered the most, from memory, due to some sort of respiratory complaint) seemed to be completely convinced that the local authority were the ones who should act. I actually gave up reading it after tens of pages, when it became clear that he wasn't willing to bite the bullet and take legal action. I don't actually know how it ended up - I stopped reading over there due to the general nasty vibe I got from some of the regulars.

Example: I give my recently-acquired beard a quick brush when I get out of the shower, in front of a mirror that's temporarily sitting on a chest of drawers against a wall in our bedroom. The movement of my hand is enough to make the mirror wobble. I suspect part of the issue is that the posi-joists in this area span between an outer wall and a very long steel beam. It may be that I happen to brush at a resonant frequency of the system as a whole!

That thread lost me the will to live. It went on for YEARS!

Ours are 400mm spacing and there's still more bounce than I'd like in some areas.

From what you've said, I think they've justified it to the level required in the circumstances. In a conservation area, they do have the right to control appearance, and if you can't convince them, you need to consider moving towards what they're asking. Is there a way to make it feel like you're giving them something while still retaining most of what you want? You say they're contradicting themselves, but I'm not so sure. Yes, they want new buildings to look like new buildings. That's the way of modern planning. That doesn't mean that they want every element to be completely different from the existing buildings. On the contrary, the usual approach is to stick to a similar form and introduce an interesting play with materials, or stick with existing materials and play with form. What you can't do is both, or do one to too great an extent. You're right that the line feels subjective, but unfortunately there isn't a perfectly objective way of judging this. I'd also say that your planning department seems to be engaging and working with you in a very positive way - it isn't always like this, as many people here will tell you from experience (Aside: when I went to our planning department to get some informal feedback on our plans, the senior planning officer's first comment was "Please don't show me something from Grand Designs. We can't stand Grand Designs around here. We've managed to only allow two Huf Houses and we fought both of them all the way to appeal". At the time, I had my hand in a bag to pull out an issue of Grand Designs magazine that had a picture of something along the lines of what we were thinking of applying for. I quickly put the bag down!). Incidentally, I know you're not looking for feedback on the design, but to me, all that dark zinc does feel a bit oppressive relative to the "lighter" feel of the surrounding houses, especially when a lot of the lighter areas of the cladding are obscured by hedging. Also, I agree with you on the additional materials point. That just sounds arbitrary. In particular, I don't like their suggestions for combining render with another form of wall cladding and then having a third material for the roof. I'd rather have more render on the walls and stick with just the two materials. I hope you don't mind this level of honest feedback.

Wireless of all forms has improved continuously over the years, but you can't beat properly installed physical wiring. Personally, I'd hard wire given the marginal additional cost and effort (possibly the more expensive wireless components would make up the difference anyway)

Strictly, I believe that cooling mode capability is acceptable, as long as it isn't enabled. Our unit, for example, is eligible for the RHI. It has a cooling mode, but it's disabled at the factory and needs to be enabled via service mode. It would be feasible to install the unit with the mode disabled, get the RHI, and then enable it. From memory, the instructions for enabling cooling mode were on a card in the instructions that came with the ASHP!

CCTV is looking at the outlet of his boiler!