jack

Interesting. Are these sidecutters with notches? Or just ordinary bladed cutters? I find the latter a bit fiddly to use, especially if I'm doing a lot of stripping of thicker wires. The electrician that wired our house used something like this: https://cpc.farnell.com/duratool/ws-150/wire-stripper-5-in-1-automatic/dp/TL09913 Having stripped innumerable wires using sidecutters in the past, these were a revelation - so quick and easy!

Ah, fair enough, I didn't realise location was an issue. I'm surprised FFX is only that much cheaper, although I think Screwfix sometimes does do a good deal on Makita drill/impact driver combos. Do check that you're comparing apples with apples as regards the battery size, number of batteries, and model of the tools themselves. The one criticism I have of Makita is the huge variety of similar tools they sell. Often, superseded models seem to hang around for years after their replacement is released (or there's a lot of old stock being sold).

We've just had a Toolstation open near us (Screwfix opened nearby about two months after we finished the build ). I find the variance in pricing amazing. I don't recall ever buying a power tool from either place - they're just never cheap enough, even on sale. Screwfix can be good value at times. I remember needing a pressure sprayer recently, and Screwfix was the cheapest place I could find one. Even ebay was no cheaper. But then I needed some stainless screws at short notice and Toolstation was 30-40% cheaper for what looked like very similar screws. Still, better than B&Q or Homebase for just about everything. It makes me angry how expensive those little blister packets of crappy quality screws are in those places.

You probably know this, but for those who don't: the flat rate scheme changed last year for businesses with low overheads (and hence low amounts of VAT to recover). The rates are now such that it makes little sense for people - like me - in this situation to stay in the flat rate scheme. It used to earn me a few percent on every invoice, but was hardly life-changing. Being VAT registered is a problem if your customers aren't VAT registered themselves, because it increases the cost to the end user. My electrician gets his clients to buy as much of his materials as possible to avoid being VAT registered, mainly to avoid him suddenly becoming 20% more expensive. In contrast, my work is all business to business, so it makes no difference to them whether I charge VAT or not.

Check the cost on the websites above - they're often quite a lot cheaper than Screwfix. Both Screwfix and the sites above do regular sales, so maybe wait unless you need to buy now. I like the way brushless tools operate, but theoretically there's more electronics to go wrong with brushless.

Definitely agree for higher-powered items like grinders and oscillating multi-tools - anything that uses a fair bit of power that you'll likely end up using for long periods. For example, I bought a nice cordless circular saw and ended up having to buy a cheap corded one because the cordless just didn't have enough grunt (and still drained a 4Ah battery at an alarming rate). For my money, a decent cordless impact driver and heavy-ish drill will go a long way on a building site. For the latter, I got the Makita DHP481Z on special for just over £100 and it's an utter beast. It's a bit too heavy for doing lots of lighter work like driving screws (although it will do that), but for drilling wood it's unbeatable. As an example, I had to drill 25 x 10mm holes into stacked softwood to the full depth of the bit, and it was effortless. I'd tried drilling fewer than half the number of the same holes using an el cheapo corded (but allegedly heavy-duty) drill and ended up burning out the brushes before I reached the last hole. Believe me, when you're trying to get a job done, the last thing you want is a tool that either doesn't work efficiently or craps out when you're halfway through something. I have clone 4Ah batteries, and for drilling/impact driver use, that's more than sufficient. The impact driver, in particular, just seems to go on and on with a single charge. A 4Ah battery takes less than half an hour to charge in any event, so worst case it's a cup of coffee while you wait.

The way power tools seem to develop, it's possible they may be worse!

Personally, I'd try to find the extra money for the Makita (my personal preference) or Dewalt. One way of reducing the cost is to buy them without batteries and get a well-reviewed 4Ah clone battery from ebay. I did that four years ago and the battery and tools are still going strong. When buying things like drills and impact drivers, I've tended to buy the cheapest brushless version. Two good sites for discount tools are FFX and ITS. I've used both with good results.

You see these all the time in France. Maybe try one of the big French DIY places online?

Tends to be PIR I believe, largely due to better performance for a given (often height-limited) thickness. EPS tends to be used under slabs in raft constructions where a separate screed isn't used, largely because of its durability in that application.

Interesting. Our wooden cladding (Siberian larch) has weathered fairly evenly east, south and west. The critical thing seems to be rainwater - you can see a diagonal line down within the deep overhangs showing where rainwater reaches. Sunlight by itself doesn't seem to cause very much weathering - I suspect you need a combination of UV (breakdown) and rain (to wash away the breakdown products) to get the full effect. In addition to higher temperature swings, is the side that's weathered most for you more exposed to wind and rain? I can't remember the orientation of your house, but vaguely recall that the front faces south-ish(?)

There's a gap planned between the horizontals.

Ha, several cross posts at once! Thankfully everyone's saying the same thing...

What does your planning say/show? That's what controls finishes.

Try the birds-eye views (all of them) too. Amazing the range of different visual information that's available between Google and Bing.

I think ours are 700. The little bit extra makes a difference imo.

I don't really share pics of my house on t'internet, but they look something like this (albeit with horizontal larch cladding, and with the windows/blinds recessed about another 400mm inwards): In the white-painted brick sections of the house, they're set back about as much as in the photo above. As shown in this photo, you don't need to close the blinds completely to get most of the benefit. I prefer them slightly open like this, and only close them when it's very hot and the sun is directly on them, and at night. I think they look "elegant", as you put it, but our house is extremely modern, so I think it works. I can't see how awnings are a replacement for some sort of per-window solution like blinds or roller shutters in all but very limited areas. There are about three places in our house where some sort of awning might work. One of those is outside a big south-facing slider, but the height of the slider means that the awning would need to be huge to keep out the spring and autumn sun. We're lucky to have a tree that provides some shade in this area, so for the moment we don't have any shading treatment on that opening. The other two points have 1.2m overhangs due to balconies above them, so already have a decent bit of solar control. They also have blinds, which helps on summer mornings (they're east-facing). I can't see how awnings are a solution for first floor windows, windows along the side of a property or street-facing windows. If you don't much like the look of blinds, that's fine - just leave them fully retracted (they're invisible) unless you actually need them.

They're the company I've been looking at for the retrofit. Happy to hear anyone's experiences with them.

Ours are extraordinarily good at keeping the sun out. We have several large west-facing windows with external (uninsulated) aluminium venetian blinds. When they're down, there's no perceptible radiant heat, even with the western sun beating on them on a hot day. I don't doubt that some heat gets by, but it isn't particularly noticeable. Even fully closed, there're 5-15mm gaps at the sides, plus the holes for the guides and small gaps between the slats themselves, which I'm sure allows some of the heat between the window and blind to escape. Another thing is that they're quite useful for privacy. We very rarely retract the ones at the front of the house, because they help stop people seeing in. Something I didn't expect is that we quite like the look of the house when the blinds are down but open. They add to the look of the house imo. One thing they aren't at all good at is blocking out all light. On east-facing windows particularly, enough of the early morning sun in summer gets through the gaps at the slat edges, and even the holes for the guides, to make the room noticeably bright from very early in the morning. We mistakenly made no provision for recessed internal blockout blinds or curtains, thinking we wouldn't need them. This is the main disadvantage of this particular type of blind imo (that and the fact they provide literally zero security, since you can just lift them up like ordinary venetian blinds.

Ours aren't Gaulhofer, but the detail is probably similar. This is what we have where the house has brick slips on render board over a timber frame with cellulose insulation, and external venetian blinds:

Do you have any vertical sections through your windows?

I'll be interested in the answer to this, as I have two windows that I'd like to retrofit something like these to. Doesn't the French supplier have tech drawings they can give you?

Short answer: no. While I love hifi and home cinema, I just couldn't justify the extra costs of doing properly. That said, were I to build again, I'd spend more time on soundproofing the TV room and probably make it a bit bigger. I did put speaker cable into the walls, but only for 4 channels (on the assumption that wiring for a subwoofer and centre channel could be hidden behind furniture at the front of the room). Still haven't wired anything up - time and money yet to be allocated!

We have a 5.4m slider, and to be honest I'd rather have gone for a pair of wide French doors in the middle with horizontal windows along the rest of the space. In our case, such a large window drastically limits our options for furniture placement. That may not be an issue for other layouts.

We use floor cooling downstairs during really hot periods, so for us stack cooling is all about bedrooms. We have a large centrally located electric skylight. Opening windows in the bedrooms does result in some air movement via the stack effect, but it feels to me that cross-ventilation is much more effective unless there's no air movement at all. It very much helps to open the windows as soon as the temperature outside drops below the internal temperature. Insects are the main issue with this strategy, and if I were doing this all again, I'd include retractable insect screens on the bedroom windows.