jack

Yes. And you can start one with "and" as well!

Let me know if you'd like me to merge these threads together @Ed_MK

That wasn't what I was suggesting. Our laundry room is just near the bottom of our stairs, so minimal transit in the downstairs area with laundry. I personally dislike the idea of walking through multiple door openings with awkward laundry baskets. I can see why you've put it where you've put it (natural light and all), but it's a shame it's such a hike from the bottom of the stairs. But hey, house design is full of compromises. At least we get to choose our own compromises when designing our self-builds!

My parents in law have a number of wealthy friends - sold their businesses for £10-30 million type of well-off (after years of raking in hundreds of thousands of quid per annum from these businesses). All are retired with huge houses, expensive cars every couple of years, large holiday houses in France, trips all over the world. Yet to a person, all they seem to care about is foreigners, benefits cheats, regulations inconveniencing them ("health and safety gone mad!") and the amount of tax the government "steals" from them. I have a lot of difficulty sitting in the same room hearing them talk about how hard they worked to get where they are, as if every poor person just needed to a work a bit harder to get everything they've had. Oh, and it seems they all read the Daily Wail! I think the problem is that selfishness makes you unhappy. All the research shows that true happiness comes from giving, not getting. If these people spent a bit less time (and money) trying to fill the voids in their own lives with "stuff", and a bit more time trying to make the lives of others better, I'm sure they'd be happier. Not really a conversation you can have with them of course!

Before I began the actual process, I couldn't understand all those Grand Designs episodes where people were working full time jobs then working on the house long into the night when they weren't actually building it. How much time can it take to make a few decisions, I naively thought. Interior doors? An hour's online research. Kitchens? Give it two or three nights' research, then a couple of trips to make a decision. In reality, even minor decisions took many, many hours of researching and thinking. Important things like kitchens probably had 100+ hours spent/wasted on them. That's a lot of time when you're working and have kids to entertain. I find that the real stresses came later, because everything you do beyond a certain point is visible forever. Earlier stresses and difficulties are covered over and forgotten about, whereas a poorly installed run of skirting board reminds you of its existence every time you walk past it (well, it does me - my wife doesn't see any of those sorts of issues ). People shouldn't underestimate the amount of stress that'll be involved. At times it was easily the most stressful thing I've done, and that was with the benefit of being not far off a cash builder with no money concerns. That said, the end result is worth it. In my case, my marriage is definitely stronger as a result of what we went through (a couple of common enemies helped!), and I learned a lot about myself in the process.

Given how incredibly rough the floor is, I suspect @oranjeboom would have a decent chance in court if it came to it. Of course, it there's anything in writing about the importance of flatness and/or the datum he'd be providing, then the position would be that much stronger. There are standards for screed flatness, but if you don't specify, you'd be left arguing that it's implicit that at least the lowest standard would be met. All my best guesses based on no real knowledge, as per usual!

How many self tapping coach bolts will you need, at what size and length? I've half a box of galvanised 110mm (from memory) self-tapping coach bolts lying around somewhere that you're welcome to, although I'm assuming these will be too short if you need to get through a layer of Durisol and 50mm of wood.

Lacquer over the top, they say, but the gaps between them will be dirt traps, and the edges of the coins mean the lacquer will wear through quickly. I've seen kitchen worktops done like this where they encase the lot in a layer of resin. Expensive for a space this size, and then you're likely to have a load of bubbles trapped in the final layer, plus it'll be slippery.

That's one direction (the gravity-assisted direction!) taken care of. Given the amount of laundry we get through at the moment, utility room accessibility is pretty high on our list of priorities.

I may sound like my mother in law saying this, but it's a long way from the bedrooms to the utility room!

How many of you on site? During busy times with several people onsite, the portable toilet was reeking after a week. Can't imagine going months without a change! For £25 a week or whatever it was, I was happy not to have to faff around with buying, selling, and maintaining it. Plenty of other stuff to worry about during that period!

I assume that includes (weekly?) servicing?

Let's not overdo it!

Ian that's horrible news. You have my deepest sympathy. I'd be very happy to donate a few days of my time at some point if it helps. Skills aren't so strong, but I have all my fingers, am stronger than I look, and am a highly efficient biscuits-to-work converter. No need to reply now, but have a think about it in due course. Keep your pecker up in the meantime.

I doubt mixing is going to be the way forward, as it will affect the way loads are transmitted. As I understand it, no fines means that the larger pieces will lock together under load. I wouldn't speculate about something as literally fundamental as this. Hilliard is a really helpful guy. He knows your house and your ground conditions. Give him a call and I'm sure he'll set you straight within a couple of minutes.

Notifiable by whom though? Is this likely to be the owner's responsibility rather than the supplier/installer?

Just checked our spec and it's actually 30-50mm. Not sure where I got the 28mm lower number from!

Give him a couple of weeks' notice so he can allow some growth for you to hack at. Buying a plot without planning permission is a minefield. If a plot doesn't have planning permission, you have to ask why the current owner hasn't sought it, given the huge uplift in value that planning permission provides. In my opinion, buying such a plot without really (really) knowing your onions is a recipe for a lot of stress and delay at the very least, and a significant loss of funds at worst. And welcome to the forum.

The network rail stuff is, as far as I know, what some including me have used as a replacement (with Hilliard's blessing) for the specified 28-50 (from memory) angular no fines material. It's been a while, but I seem to recall that this is an unusual spec in the UK, which is why recycled rail ballast became of interest. If you can find a source of hard, angular, no fines material with a slightly different size range, I'd just give Hilliard a call and ask whether he's happy with it as a replacement. Not sure whether a revised formal spec will be required - worth checking with your building inspector.

I'd be concerned about significantly changing what BPC have designed you, without checking with them as to whether the changes will unbalance things. If you increase the extraction from the kitchen, you'll have to balance that with more supply elsewhere. Have you taken this into account? That's my experience too. We have a single run and a double run for our roughly 6m x 6m kitchen/dining area, and even on full boost (400m3 per hour) it isn't enough to keep the kitchen clear if we're doing something really smokey. I think it's partly because we have high ceiling (nearly 3m), which means that smoke can disperse somewhat before it gets anywhere near an extractor.

I emailed my D&A statement to Ed. Our architect wrote ours, and it's a lot like a planning consultant would have written. This was for two reasons. First, our house is very contemporary in design, and our local council is deeply conservative (in more or less all definitions of the word). We wanted to telegraph to the planners that we understood the framework within which the planning system works, and that we had considered each and every relevant rule that applied in the circumstances. Second, our local plan was in the process of being rewritten to bring it into line with the new national planning policy framework. Until the local plan was approved, the national framework needed to be applied. The framework is a lot more pro development than either the old local plan or the new one that was in the process of being drafted (aside, that local plan was eventually rejected and our local council is only now, years later, about to submit a new local plan for approval). While I'm sure the planners knew that they should be applying the national framework in the circumstances, we again wanted to make it clear that they knew that we understood the situation. It may have helped that our architect is local (lives a couple of blocks from us) and has a history of success with very contemporary designs in the area. It's possible the planners had become a little tired of losing to him at appeal! It's all a load of gamemanship and there are many ways to play the game. Start with something bigger than what you want, and trim down to make it look like you're giving something up, or start small and make amendments to enlarge towards what you really wanted. Submit a highly professional, polished job making it clear that you know what you're talking about and are willing to fight, or submit something drawn with crayons and play the naive, honest homeowner. So much fun, I almost regret that we got permission first time around!

Interesting. Can't remember the last time I actually bought bleach, but certainly many (perhaps many, many!) years ago you used to be able to buy the plain watery stuff. I thought it worked better in toilets because it dissolved easily rather than just sitting on the bottom like the thick stuff. No point even considering bleach though, if the pure stuff is available easily and cheaply.

By "ordinary", I meant unscented and unthickened. I wasn't aware of any additives in cheap bleach of this type - I'm sure I've read in more than one place of its usefulness for sanitising drinking water in small amounts. Whether I'd want to rely on a household bleach for more than emergency/apocalyptic use is perhaps another question.

Ordinary bleach!