jack

I'm so glad my experience has helped someone else, and very pleased you found the issue now rather than later. MBC came out on the same day the errors were discovered by the window installers, to adjust the two or three worst of ours. The rest were fine, as there was quite a lot of tolerance built in (eg, window aperture was nominally 30mm taller than the external window frame dimension, but was built to 18-25mm). Interesting yours were mostly upstairs - ours were too. Was it vertical dimensions that were the problem? Good catch on the slab recesses. Fixing those after the fact could involve a world of unpleasantness.

@craig, the quotes actually didn't change, we just needed to split a couple of windows into two leaves rather than one. I can't fault the (German) manufacturer - their product is very high quality, and they were a pleasure to work with (the MD sat with our architect for two hours going through installation details and provided some very helpful ideas). The installers, unfortunately, did a poor job. Missed that the windows were to be packed up by 15mm to allow fitment of cills, which meant we had to hack off the edge of the cavity closers to make space. Then it turned out that they hadn't realised they needed access from the side to mount the external blind rails to the window frame, so I had to go around taking of all the exterior battens. They left on the the morning of day 5 of a fixed price "5 to 6" day job, then demanded full payment for travel time (they came over from Ireland) and accommodation to come back and finish the job when the issues above were identified. To add insult to injury, I found out some weeks later when I went to remove the cills to work on the butchered cavity closers that they'd obviously not had the right screws to hand to fix the cills, so they used construction adhesive to permanently attach them! I would never, ever consider having installation handled by anyone other than the window supplier. The opportunity for buck-passing and excuses is just too high.

Welcome Craig. I've recommended Ecowin/Gaulhofer to a couple of people in the past (one definitely used you) based on running into Thomas on my way out of Ecobuild a few years ago. I went with another supplier in the end, although it turned out that the reason we went with them over Ecowin was actually due to Thomas being more technically knowledgeable about his products than the people we went with! (Basically, he looked at our window schedule and pointed out that some of them weren't possible as openers due to their size. The other lot didn't realise this until we'd committed to using them and their technical department got more involved). Will use you next time, I promise!

We used them and I unreservedly agree with this sentiment. Out of all the trades we had onsite, we only had one person onsite (the electrician) who worked as hard or I trusted as much.

Welcome. Sounds like an unfortunate set of circumstances.

Welcome Jack. Awesome name

In so very many ways!!!

Without knowing exactly what was done, it does sound high. We registered a new bit of land we bought from our neighbour, and I think the all-up costs were around £450. That said, I suspect it'll be hard to argue if costs weren't agreed upfront. Also, your neighbour is on the hook for the full amount, so there'll likely be a lot of bad will generated if you refuse to cough up half. The difference to you sounds like a bit over £150. I'd personally consider paying it with a smile and a thank you, and chalk it up to the cost of maintaining good relations with your neighbours.

You really are hard to please!

XKCD has a strip for everything (although that one covers most situations online!) Good to see the plenum argument again.

Ha, nice one!

Looking very smart. Shame about the lack of dog silhouette.

Google "brick fence holes" - few ideas there. Examples: http://taradillard.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/orchard-wall-gate.html https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-image-brick-wall-pattern-red-bricks-newly-constructed-building-image31530001 http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1112795

Welcome Archer (sploosh!)

We clearly got a bargain then! From memory, our 9 x 10m bungalow cost around £6000 to knock down and take away in late 2014 (Hampshire/Surrey borders). That was the lowest price by some way - I think most quotes were £8-10k. They didn't do the best job, in that there were a few bits of rubble that weren't cleared away, and some paths were left that arguably should have been cleared. Took the groundworks guy about an hour in his massive digger to sort it, so no biggie.

Good weightlifting coaches will tell you that injuries happen more often in real life than in the gym, even though the real-world weights that do the damage are typically much lower than will be lifted safely at the gym. It's partly a lack of attention, partly a lack of respect given that you're used to moving massively heavier things around without injury at the gym, and partly the fact that the real world doesn't always have knurled grips at a convenient position. As an example, I tweaked my back last year lifting a not particularly heavy bit of aluminium extrusion for our balconies. It was probably less than 15kg, but my back was already tired from having moved things around for the previous three hours, and I didn't think before twisting and lifting. At the time, my deadlift in the controlled environment of the gym was well over 100kg more than the weight that got me... Perhaps rather than treating these as numbers never to exceed, think of them as numbers to have a think about, and guidelines for where we're relatively strong, positionally.

The double kitchen run is about 9m, from memory. There are a couple of others (bedroom supply) that are around 10-12m, and they're single duct. From memory, my ducting has a slightly larger cross-sectional area than the stuff most on here are using. That might explain the relatively low number of double runs in my layout.

I believe doubling up is only needed (if it's needed at all) where the run is particularly long and/or the room has high extract rates. The only double on our house is one of the two kitchen extracts.

It isn't even high enough up the list to get a number at ours!!!

Your garage door is as dirty as ours!

Are these raft foundations?

I knew we'd moved away from coal but that's a startling graph.

Agree - labour is either zero rated at time of supply or you're stuck with it.

Doing that well is harder than it looks!

Think he's talking about what he's in the middle of doing!