jack

Bear in mind that it isn't just your neighbours who'll be breathing in all that crap. Even with an "efficient" woodburner and good extraction, you'll still end up far higher particulates in your house than if you didn't have a fire. I can't stand the things. I hate the smell, I hate the watery eyes, and I hate the sore throat I end up with when I walk around the neighbourhood during woodburner season.

All boundaries are shared, otherwise they wouldn't be boundaries! If she's saying it's a shared fence, that's possible, albeit unlikely in the absence of specific evidence, but it's a complete red herring in any event. The boundary is a line. The plant is clearly on her side of that line (assuming the fence is in the right place), hence it's solely her responsibility to get rid of it. If she's spoken to a professional about this then presumably she knows this has to be (literally) nipped in the bud. If you won't contribute - and you shouldn't - then she'll need to handle it herself. She's already shown her hand with allegations about your distant topsoil being the potential source of the knotweed, and now trying to get you to pay for removing a noxious weed that's clearly not on your property. Given her behaviour so far, you shouldn't be helping her to treat it, other than perhaps advising her that she can do it herself for a lot less than the quote she's had. If she pushes back, I'd be tempted to say that if she doesn't take care of it and it moves to your side of the fence, you'll sue her for the cost of getting rid of it.

Yes, passivhaus levels of insulation and airtightness. The main reason you need some sort of route for air between rooms is MVHR (in fact, it's a building regs requirement). I don't use stack ventilation, mainly because we have issues with insects getting in.

Yes, we did this. To be honest, we rarely keep doors closed long enough for it to make much difference. We were a bit worried about noise transfer, so we lined the inside of the aperture with some corrugated sound-absorbing foam (peaks and troughs aligned in direction of air travel). There's very little noise transfer, but I can't honestly say what impact the sound absorbing foam makes.

I did the same, and am convinced it contributed to my claim being immediately approved, despite it being made 5 years after we moved into the house!

If the bikes are valuable, check with your insurer about what level of security is required. It's usually something along the lines of having locks that meet the same requirements as the front door of the house.

After putting it off for way too long, I'm finally looking into remortgaging from an interest-only mortgage (with offset) to a repayment mortgage. We only need to borrow about 8-10% of the property value (although if no-one actually comes to value it, they'll be looking online at things like Zoopla etc, which shows the old bungalow with a value of maybe 55-60% of what the new house is likely worth). There are a few potential wrinkles: I'm self-employed. I have 5 years of earning history, so I guess not really an issue other than the fact that my year-to-year, and even month-to-month, invoices and dividends are quite variable. My wife is employed part-time, but also gets some money via a dividend paid to her as a director and part-time administrator of her parents' business. She's only been paid for the directorship since late last year, so she hasn't filed any returns, and has no evidence of dividend payment other than the money arriving in our account every month since then. One of our kids is at a private vocational school. His grandparents pay half of the school fees. I can show the amounts they've paid via bank statements, but there's nothing formal in place. The house is of non-standard construction (cellulose-filled timber frame) I was planning on just applying directly to whatever lender looked best via comparison sites, but does anyone think I might be better off going via a broker? If so, does anyone have any recommendations? If it's better to apply directly, does anyone know of any particular lender that's relatively flexible about the points above? Thanks.

There was an article in the last few months about this. I believe the guy had managed to nearly finish it. Don't remember whether he was planning to sell on. Edited to add: just realised it was the article @Moonshine quoted above!

I don't know if it's still the case, but it used to be the case that steering wheels were generally made of less stern stuff than steering locks. In many cases you could use bolt cutters to snip through the wheel, then bend it enough that you could slip the steering lock off. Bend it back and off you drive.

It's been going for a while. I remember hearing that a large number of Range Rovers in and around London were nicked over a short period several years ago when the technology first became available. These recent events are the first I've ever heard of it happening to anyone I know though. Faraday pouches cost very little, so might be worthwhile if you have the sort of car that's being targeted.

Reasonable value, hard to trace (most people won't have bothered recording serial numbers etc like they might have for expensive stuff indoors), a ready market, and a lot lower chance of getting noticed breaking into a shed than a house when people are at home. Couple of anecdotes: my inlaws were broken into a couple of years ago while they were away for the weekend. Thieves used garden furniture to climb onto their bedroom balcony, and used a small axe they'd grabbed from the shed to pry open a window. The alarm went off, but they quickly went through the house, grabbed jewellery, and then smashed their way out of the french doors downstairs (not noticing that the key was in the lock and they could have just opened it!) They left credit cards, a couple of Apple laptops - I'm sure the only thing they'd have taken other than jewellery was cash. Not much the inlaws could have done to stop this sort of break-in, although they hadn't deadlocked their upstairs windows which did make it easier for the burglars to get in. Another: friends of ours woke up a few nights ago to find someone undertaking a relay attack on their car. They knocked on the window and the thieves jumped in their car and ran away. There have apparently been a few of these attacks in our area recently. Keeping your fob in a Faraday pouch or box isn't a bad precaution, especially if you have one of the cars that seems to be targeted by this attack. Oh, and a friend of mine had his car stolen a few months ago when he accidentally left the back door unlocked overnight. Someone came in, grabbed the car keys, and drove it off their driveway. Bit of a shock the next morning! As well as general security, one thing to think about is sentimental objects. In my inlaws' case, for example, they lost a watch and an old wedding ring that were of great sentimental value, but wouldn't have generated much cash for a the thieves. If you have something sentimental, keep it somewhere properly hidden and/or secured.

No idea, sorry. I just remember one or two posters from a few years back saying how big a difference this made. @ProDave, were you one of the people who did this?

Welcome. I'm sure someone said it was very helpful to build a "skirt" (of osb maybe?) around the lower edge of the static caravan to stop the wind whistling through underneath. Helps keep things a little warmer and reduces the chance of pipes freezing.

I watched this episode tonight and was shouting at the TV by this point. That and them only looking at the electricity supply two years into the build I liked their enthusiasm and energy, but they seemed very naive. Or perhaps I'm getting old and cynical. Or maybe both. I suspect, as is often the case with GD, that they've left some items out when totting up the budget (I mean, £16k for electricity and £11k for tree removal!), but I suppose there's no kitchen, no heating system, and who knows whether all the bathrooms have been finished. I liked the general vibe of what they were going for, but replicating the old tumbledown building really didn't do it for me. The lead flashing ruined the whole effect imo. How could he be an architect - even a newly qualified one - and have given no thought to how he'd interface the timber frame with the top of the wall? Overall it was just a bit unsatisfying, but they're happy, and that's the main thing.

We went private. We needed a warranty in case we needed to sell it within 10 years of buying it, and it was quite a bit more expensive to get building regs and warranty handled separately, so we did them as a combined deal. The guy who did the inspections was really good. He was pretty relaxed, and the couple of things he pulled us up on were fair enough. I suspect it's as much about who you're lucky/unlucky enough to get as which company you engage.

Yes, I descaled it before I contacted them. I need to check, but I believe it's in one piece from the screw-on tank connection at one end of the flex to the outlet of the tap. From memory, the flex connection from the tank is swaged to the bottom of the tap tube, so can't be replaced.

Interesting timing. Our Quooker is a similar age to yours, and we started having issues with the tap a few weeks ago. It turns on, you can hear the relay clicking, but nothing comes out. After some testing (with guidance from Quooker, who've been very helpful I have to say), it's become apparent that there's a blockage in the flex to the tap, or within the tap itself. They've said it's possible that the internal pipe in the tap could have twisted over time. Annoyingly, it isn't serviceable, so the only solution is replacement of the whole tap at something like £200 for chrome, or £260 for stainless. Also annoyingly, they no longer make the brushed finish we have with the current tap. When I get a moment, I plan to take it off the sink and see whether some scale has clogged it. If so, hopefully I can descale it.

Paging Dr Pimple Popper

I considered non-slip additives, but didn't go for them in the end. I'm pleased I didn't as i suspect it would have been messier, and harder to get a neat finish. I also didn't want to risk it being difficult to roll things around. It's a fairly smooth finish, but I've never had any issues with it being slippery when wet. I'm pretty careful how I move around if there's any moisture though. It's mainly an issue near the garage door. The floor can get damp if it's raining and I have the door open. One thing to keep in mind with epoxies is that they aren't all UV stable. Promain did warn me about the potential for colour change where the epoxy gets exposed to sun, especially where the concrete extends outside the door, and certainly there's been a slight change in colour after about 18 months. It's really only something you notice when the door is open and both colours are lined up beside each other.

I'm sure you're aware of this, but for the avoidance of any doubt (and for anyone coming along later who doesn't know), the insulation is put onto the surfaces of the walls around the fridge, not on the fridge itself. A decent gap is needed between the insulation and the fridge to allow airflow to take the heat away.

That's an almost identical size and layout to the kitchen of a friend of ours. It won't be too big when you have a couple of people moving around in it! I appreciate that you've said this before, but I don't know how loud your fridge must be for this to be an issue. We have a separate (admittedly inbuilt) fridge and freezer in our open plan kitchen. I'm extremely sensitive to noise, but I have no idea whether they're on or not. In contrast, I can hear the built-in bar fridge in our pantry clearly when it kicks in, despite it being about three metres further away than the main fridge and freezer. I keep meaning to check the noise ratings of these units to compare them, but frankly there's not a great deal of point given I'm not going to replace the pantry fridge just because it's slightly noisy. However, anyone looking at fridges would do well to factor noise ratings into their analysis, especially if they aren't planning to build them in and/or are sensitive to noise. That said, I think your main point is that you wouldn't want a single open-plan kitchen and family room as your only living space, and I completely agree with that. At the very least, I think a separate TV room or snug is very useful. This is particularly the case if you have kids, who especially in their teenage years will want their own space (and/or you'll want space away from them!) We have a separate living room and a TV room, and even then we sometimes wish there was an additional space for us to get away from each other without going upstairs!

No worries. To be clear, it's more the fact that there were two posts on the same topic than where you posted. If you'd just posted in Boffin's Corner, it wouldn't have been moved.

@ollie, I've merged the two threads you started on this topic into one. I think this is the more appropriate forum than Boffin's Corner where the other one was.

7 or 8 years is a long time to leave something like this without action. It may be that your right to get them to do something about it themselves has expired, or may be perhaps more difficult to enforce. I'd just write to them to confirm that the driveway is causing drainage problems and risks damaging your wall, and that you will therefore be removing the section of the the driveway on your property 14 days after the letter has been delivered. If he wants a different outcome or approach, he needs to let you know during that period.