jack

Well clearly it can't be done now, and what's more it's Jan's fault! Good luck with that argument! No. One of the larger errors we made when building.

What a pain. Do you know why the building society doesn't accept direct applications?

Well no-one in my house (except me) does anything other than maximise the wetness of the towels and bathroom mat, despite my efforts to get them to stay in the shower for just a few seconds and get the worst of the wet off first. I do the "hand blade" trick you talk about (thought I was the only one!) We've gotten into the habit of hanging our towels on the balustrade outside the bathroom, and they dry completely in short order. I do know that the floor mat gets sodden and really doesn't dry out properly, but that's because it's usually so wet that I need to hang it over the edge of the bath. As I said though, 3 out of 4 occupants do their utmost to saturate it with every use, so your mileage may be different. I'm slightly concerned that the towels won't dry as quickly when they're hung in a more enclosed space inside the bathrooms. Will need to wait and see on that one.

Exactly. Anchoring with inflated initial price, large reductions in several "one-off" tranches, time-limited offers. I can't stand this kind of crap, and refuse to buy from any company that uses it.

I believe so, yes. It would have been about 15-18(ish) months ago. I don't remember exact pricing, but I was very surprised given what appeared to be the amount of work and materials involved relative to, eg, a kitchen. In fact, I did wonder at one point whether it was feasible to get wardrobes from a kitchen company!

We had the same experience. While made to measure, these are unlikely to be "bespoke" in any real sense. You know that the fitter will be in and out in a day (budget a generous £400 for his/her time, including paying the fitter and profit to the company). You're therefore left with them saying that at full price there's £15k worth of materials and labour in the units themselves? Unless the doors are made of solid gold, this is a joke. Even at nearly £8k, they seem to be suggesting that there's over £7k worth of materials and labour in these units. Crazy. I only wish I could say that this sort of pricing was uncommon. I always said I would never have Ikea furniture in our new house, but we ended up getting wardrobes for the kids' bedrooms from there because the cost of even really basic "bespoke" was 3-4 times higher than Ikea. This is for 2x3.5m straight runs of wardrobes with one set of drawers in each, and absolutely no special materials (eg, exotic veneers). For our bedroom I plan to pay a chippy to come in and do it on a day rate with me supplying materials.

Too late for you, @TerryE, but for others who might be comparing the two, this is my experience as well. We went for the Wilo-based UFH set from Wunda following probably too much research trying to compare it to the Grundfos equivalent, and I'm amazed at how quiet it is. Our house doesn't have a lot of background noise, but even in our small plant room it's hard to tell whether it's operating when I have it running at about 40%. If only our Immersun unit were as quiet at full load!

Que? Are they saying that if you took the fence down, planted the hedge, then put it back, you'd be fine? I can't recall whether you've said, but has your building been signed off?

Feedback from an unintentional experiment: We had a leak in the UFH in one room (downstairs study). The rest of the slab is treated as a single circuit, heated by an ASHP. I haven't managed to find time to repair the leak, so we've had an entire winter with the study effectively unheated. While the study floor was noticeably colder than the rest of the house, subjectively the air temperature hasn't been all that much different. I think part of this is the fact that the house temperature isn't actually all that high - we once reached an accidental peak of around 24.5C when experimenting with heating, but more generally we spent winter drifting between 20-22C.

If the frame gaps are consistent, why would these all be (badly) hand cut? Surely you'd set a table saw up, or even a circular saw and straight-edge, and spend some time up-front banging out what you need at consistent widths with straight edges? It's difficult to know with this one. "Acceptable" probably means something different to us compared to the average British builder. One trick I did use once or twice where we weren't happy with trades was to go back to the manufacturer's instructions. If they say things like "cut with a straight edge", "leave no gaps" and "interference fit is important", then you have some objective evidence to beat the builder with.

We were lucky(?) - the hotel they were staying at wouldn't serve them breakfast before 7, so they were never at ours before 7:45!

We too had someone from the OS turn up and survey our property.

Do you think that these are the offcuts from the layer behind?

Nice casting from what looks like good brass, sharp machining... must be your plumbing skills!

Sorry, is it like this everywhere or just in a couple of sections?

We took an almost identical approach, and our result (replacing a tiny bungalow with a large house) was very similar to yours, except that ours didn't end up in committee. We were quite surprised by that given how modern the house is compared to those around it. Of course, had one of the local trouble-making councillors got hold of it, the story could well have been different. I hope we'd have won in the end but I'm not sure whether we'd have had the appetite for another two years in a tiny damp bungalow while we appealed.

Actually, I would. For all my flaws, I try very hard not to be a grammar Wayne Kerr. And (starting a sentence with "and"!) when I am, any corrections are done in ninja mode so no-one should be the wiser!

I think your Heras fencing argument is a good one. Instead of threatening that option, perhaps consider calling (not emailing) and explaining that: (a) until the building work is completed you have a legal duty to keep the site secure, and the current fence achieves that outcome. Rather than threatening Heras fencing, just make the comparison (ie, I'd be allowed to have Heras fencing, and it's more than 1m high, so why is this more attractive fencing not compliant for the moment?) (b) say that you want to work with them to make sure you get the sizing of the hedge right up front, and ask them what size and density they would consider acceptable. I think it's difficult for them to insist you meet some arbitrary standard that they won't set out in concrete terms up front. Whatever you do, I'd be inclined to keep it verbal rather than putting it in writing. When you write something down, people tend to read and re-read it (especially if they don't like what they read). Small things become large, distorted things. It's a lot easier to sound reasonable by phone.

I've done Crossfit on and off over the last few years, but recently decided to take a break for a few months to focus on strength training. I was never any good, but my wife's massively gotten into it since taking it up late in 2015 (to the point where she's just qualified for this : http://www.europeanmastersthrowdown.com/) Anyway, interesting stuff. Will let the thread get back on topic.

Do you do Crossfit?

We have a full width low wall with a shelf above for all of our WCs. Space wasn't an issue and we liked that look, so it worked for us. As ryder says, his build-up is different from ours anyway.

Down the rabbit hole we go. Safety squints on, people!

We had a similar experience with SSE about 18 mths ago - no charge for applying (as far as I can recall), and approval for 8.5kW without question. It did take them a long time to process the application though. Their estimate was something like a month but it took more like 10 weeks from memory. For reference, we have one 3-ish kW array a couple of doors up from us, on a split E-W system due to their roof layout. I'm not aware of any others in the immediate vicinity, which undoubtedly was a factor in the approval.

Thanks Jeremy. I agree with all that, and will take action via small claims if necessary. At the moment, my main concern is how best to approach the insurer and/or the roofer, and in what order. I don't know how much of this initial response from the insurer is actually the insurer's doing. When asked, he could well have said "I don't know why it leaked", and this is an accurate statement of his position (he and the guy who did most of the installation work were both honestly surprised at the way the outlets failed, and couldn't put their finger on exactly what went wrong). The insurer could well have taken this statement and is now running it to avoid paying up. Given that it's now been repaired, it will be very difficult for any expert to prove or disprove what caused the leak. Again, I suspect this is a tactic by the insurer. Anyone else have thoughts about the next best step?

I don't know, I've never had to make an insurance claim involving a third party before. I've just followed their lead. I read similar about Aviva when I was doing some research recently before renewing my car insurance. You can be sure that between that information and what's happened here, I'll never insure anything I own through Aviva.