jack

Mmm, pinkeye!

Someone's told her :-(

We got ours serviced weekly. I think it was £20 a go on a long term contract (might have been a minimum of two months or something). £20-£25 seemed to be bog (ha!) standard around here (Surrey/Hampshire borders). That was usually often enough, but there were a few busy weeks where frankly it was pretty grim by the time the week was up. We rarely had more than about 5 or 6 people onsite at any one time. That's part of the reason I wouldn't have gotten involved with the caravan toilet situation. I imagine it would need emptying every day or maybe two. I don't know how much the chemicals cost, but even if they were free, £20 a week seemed a decent price to pay to have it completely taken care of by someone else.

Was it something to do with allowing ventilation for drying?

We used a horrible small broken down old caravan that we won for something like £180 locally on ebay. The deal was similar to yours @Grosey - it had to be delivered (this thing seriously didn't look like it would make it!) We had it onsite over winter and it was great, actually. It was so small and flimsy that a small column heater would get it quite comfortable within an hour even on a cold day. It was falling apart so we didn't fuss about the inevitable knocks and filth due to muddy-booted builders coming and going. Once we had windows and doors in the house, we were able to move inside and stop using the caravan. In the end, we had to chop it up and get rid of it, which I think cost another £100. Still not a bad deal overall. Given the way builders tend to treat these things, I'd be reticent to assume it'll be good for anything but scrap once you've finished with it, so factor that into your sums. Re: a portaloo, having to regularly empty a chemical toilet used by builders is a false economy in my opinion. I'm not squeamish but I had better things to do onsite than deal with this every other day. I'd pay the fee to get one onsite, serviced weekly, and use the time not spent emptying it to do something more productive.

We used CAT6. Yes it was more expensive, but in the scheme of things not such a big expense. If doing it again, I'd probably put in more CAT6 to places where any form of AV equipment was going, as it seems just about everything comes with a network cable. I'd probably use cheaper CAT5e for light switches (we have a home automation system). Missing out wiring a front doorbell seems common - I have two friends who both managed to do it and ended up having cheap plastic battery powered wireless doorbells stuck outside their lovely new doors. I'd actually run two cables to the door: one for the doorbell switch, and the other in case you ever want to install an intercom (possibly including a camera). Plan for external PIR sensors, in case you want to do more than just use PIR security lights. We have a couple of places where the PIR is wired back to our home automation system, so we can do more than just have a light come on when a PIR is triggered. Ditto for possible security cameras, as mentioned above.

Yep, although the difficult bit may be working out the individual run lengths to start with. There'll be bends, perhaps not of constant radius, plus the map is not the territory and you may find yourself losing/gaining when you actually go to install the stuff. I had real psychological difficulty committing to the first few cuts!

Our plumber handled this by installing a 1.5 bar PRV on the way into the house. The idea was that it'd be easier to do that and replace it with a 3 bar one after sign-off than to individually modify taps etc. Shower pressure is lower than I'd like, and it can be frustrating trying to fill a sink up, but day to day it's surprisingly okay (as long as you don't try to use two showers at once!) One day we'll get the damned house signed off so we can up the pressure! I agree about the regs being insane. Usually when you turn a tap on you're trying to fill something or rinse something. If you want to fill something, flow rate is irrelevant, because you use the same amount of water whatever the flow rate. If you want to rinse something, then as you say, a higher flow rate is a lot more effective so the tap is on for a lot less time. Don't even start me on calculations that involve baths. We have a bath in our ensuite that's been used twice in 8 months, and another in the main bathroom that's been used maybe once a month, but there was a lot of sucking of teeth from the plumber when he saw there were two baths in the house.

+1 on the above. I did exactly the same. With that and a couple of minor tweaks to manifold positioning, I managed to get down from 4 rolls to 3 as well, which was a non-trivial saving (we stupidly went a more expensive route).

I've tried very hard to reduce energy and materials consumption in all aspects of my life, but I will not relinquish a nice shower. I tell myself that the shower waste water heat recovery system we've installed justifies an extra three minutes' thinking time in the shower every day!

@Ferdinand, take a look at the 30/30 squat challenge: http://placeofpersistence.com/30-30-squat-challenge-by-ido-portal/ The idea is to accumulate 30 mins across the course of a day, rather than trying to work towards a single 30 minute squat. I've been on the facebook page for a while and the feedback is universally good.

Can be quite difficult if you're not trade. Unlikely to get one by saying you're a self builder. Some have reported success by turning up looking scruffy and builder-like and just bluffing it.

Absolutely, and absolutely. I believe Mark Brinkly says as much in the book.

This might be to do with what I think is called brick "factoring" in Mark Brinkley's The Housebuilder's Bible. Apparently once you've contacted one source for a quote, no-one else is allowed to supply you the same bricks. Apparently the trick is not to give anyone your address until you're sure you can get what you need. Have you tried ordering from the other branch directly? Maybe get your wife (or a mate - let's face it, the building trade is a bit sexist!) to order?

20m from the road? He's taking the mick, surely.

Ooh, lovely view!

Augurs well that they were willing to make the effort with the tax office. Glad you got it resolved!

Aside from this offer, October is apparently the best time to buy at Howden's. They have a big sale, and they're very responsive to offers (especially towards the end of the month) so they can turn over as much stock as they can. We were told this by one of the contractors we had onsite and he was dead right.

Pretty sure that's what we have in our utility room. Seems fine - they use Blum hardware, which is proving solid so far. One minor shortcut they use (at least on the handle-less doors we have) is to cut for hinges on both sides of the door, then blank off the unused ones. Not the neatest solution, but hey, it's a utility room!

What's his reason for wanting timber clad? Are you rural/semi-rural and he wants a barn-like look?

We were the same all last year. Hardly a day (or even an evening) off, and any time we did take off had us both sitting there feeling guilty! It's taken us a surprising amount of time to break out of that feeling.

Would they consider invoicing you for the total amount as "supply"?

That's a particularly galling situation. We got stung a couple of times that way. Another: while I'm happy with the Loxone home automation system we installed, we went for too many dimmers. It would have been smarter (and cheaper!) to just use undimmed lights in several places, especially where there are several light circuits that can be switched in via scenes to make things brighter. The Photonstar lights we've installed give out really beautiful light. I sometimes feel we paid too much for those (adds up when you need a separate expensive driver for each), but then the light quality is very good, they look great, and in some areas we were able to use powerful wide beam versions so didn't need to fill the ceiling with them. Our 6m x 5m kitchen, for example, only has 7 downlights and it's perfectly bright enough at night (and that's without any of the other lights in the room on!) The recently redeveloped house next door has something like 20 much cheaper lights in similar area!

Might be worth starting a thread about things people have paid a bit more for that turned out as well as (or better than) hoped.

You hopeless romantic. Thought of another couple of regrets: No multi-point locking on the steel doors to my work shop (which is as the back of my garage). I was surprised how flimsy the doors are. It wouldn't take much to lever the top or bottom open while they're locked. When I get a moment (ha!) I'm going to look at retrofitting. Our kitchen has too much floor to ceiling glass. I wish we'd gone with our original design, which had an area with a low wall, where we could at least have put a couple of seats without having them in front of windows. Bound to more to come...