Spinny

Yes indeed. I very strongly recommend employing a qualified experienced building professional in some way. Even if just on an occasional as required basis. And constantly being eyes on with what builders are doing - you can see how everything should be done on t'internet. I have seen builders order and try to use the wrong materials, and builders try to deny the most obvious truths to customers. Once a building professional appears they start to take notice, even if the building professional is just telling them the same obvious truths you were. It gets their attention because I think they realise in any dispute between bob the builder and a well qualified and experienced building professional with an alphabet soup of letters after their name there will only ever be one winner in a court or arbitration. I know they are expensive, but so are trades people these days, and nothing, repeat nothing, is more expensive than not catching problems early.

Have you told them that ? Have they asked for access ? When people behave badly it destroys trust and there is no way to tell quite where things stop. I may well be paranoid but presumably someone could possibly climb on the extension roof to nail on a fascia board and attach a gutter from above. Or simply wait until you go out or go away, pop over the fence and nail on some soffit, and you will come back to find it finished. So if you are relying on them needing access, or needing to ask for access, as a mechanism for resolving their overhang you might be sadly disappointed. Building Control might, and only might, look to see if there is a gutter down the side, and might, or might not say they won't sign it off without one. I don't think you can just be passive here and do an ostrich, and expect that a neighbour that ignores the law in one way won't just ignore it in other ways, or assume that a third party is going to get involved and rescue the situation if you just keep quiet and don't say anything. People deliberately do illegal things every day and nothing ever happens - and ''authorities'' frequently don't notice, pretend not to notice, or actively look the other way. Once someone raises it, ''authorities'' have to pay some attention, even if just to deny they can do anything. You have to claim your rights, you have to speak, you have to throw the stone to get the pond of indifference, idleness, incompetence, vested interests and expediency to ripple.

Good point, have you told them that ? Part of the PWA is to set out terms for access to your land - which you are obliged to give and cannot refuse - but the PWA sets out arrangements in the agreement document or Party Wall Award for such access e.g. neighbour notifying taking access 14 days in advance, limits on how much of your land they take access over, hours of working on your land etc etc. Unfortunately my experience remains poor with a game of secret squirrels, chinese whispers, and deliberate obfuscation and ambiguity now going on through 2 party wall surveyors and a bad actor architect. There seems to be more interest in playing silly buggers for the sake of it than establishing a clear legal agreement.

Dave, nobody is going to check on planning conditions. And is it definitely a formal condition in the approval letter, or just advisory ? In general, unless there is a huge breach of planning, like building without it, making it 3 times bigger, putting a bright yellow roof on etc then planning will not know or take their own action. Someone has to complain - and the only someone that is impacted is you.

I very very much doubt that planning team will do anything at all. Is a PWA actually a planning condition anyway, or just some informational statement made. I would have thought vanishingly small chance on planning doing anything. If someone, e.g. you complains, they may just comment back to you. But I think you have an unrealistic view of how planning works, and the pressures on council budgets etc. It is up to you, but I'd have thought if you ever sell then solicitors questionnaire may highlight the issue. What is being done is wrong and illegal, and they probably know it and you are being suckered. Take a close look at the planning drawings. Write a formal letter of complaint to planning (why did you not comment/complain when they applied for planning permission ?) stating their planning approval breaches the law. Write to the planning ombudsman to complain about the planning decision. None of this is likely to get it knocked down now. However this could get you some financial compensation, and should help ensure that planning don't keep ignoring boundary issues and approving plans which are illegal. Talk to your councillor too. Writing to your neighbour to inform them you have become aware that they are in breach of the PWA, and are trespassing on your property, should result in them seeking to comply with the PWA by sending you a PWA notice and seeking your agreement after the fact. Then you can negotiate something - e.g. their agreement in the PWA that the overhang can be removed if someone at your property wishes to build there. Or their agreement you can fix things into the wall, or modifications to reduce or remove the overhang, or conditions that the gutter is cleaned annually at their cost. If you do nothing, what might happen next ? A nice boiler outlet or extractor cored out through the wall ? A waste pipe discharging onto your property ? A second storey ? The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Isn't that just natural ? Wouldn't you think likewise if you were in their shoes ? I expect they don't want the sale process impacted by having building work going on which might well deter buyers - perhaps not just the drainage pipe work, but also the porch construction too. If they are splitting up then I expect the price achieved for the sale and the speed of the sale are sensitive subjects for them. And if access to their rear is via the passageway then presumably people viewing the property would use it. Often after trenching work the reinstatement doesn't look that good - just a strip of concrete or tarmac patch work. Has happened to me with a water pipe replacement. Maybe discuss the timing of your work, the duration, the quality of the finish when you reinstate etc. with them. Could you build the porch next year instead, or later in the summer ? I am sure you just want to get on with it, but we are all people on the same planet, hopefully looking out for each other too.

@Andehh So where did you get your blinds from ? And what are you using for control ?

Jeepers, Somfy seem to absolutely take the piss with their 'we saw you coming pricing'. Hundreds for a blind motor FFS, and £180 quid for yet another bloody zigbee hub.

@CalvinHobbes @NailBiter @Mattg4321 Any update or news on this topic since a year ago ? Anyone installed any electric blinds ? I am just trying to define details for installing electric blinds myself. The electrician has run 1.5mm twin and earth to the window reveals, but am still unsure whether anything else is required. I see some blind motors are smart home capable (with zigbee for example), so that seems the best control option. So presumably you don't need any additional cable to a wall switch because you can just turn the motor on/off/reverse wirelessly. Anyone done electric blinds over bifold doors ?

Fit seems quite variable, places where it looks OK ish other places where it really doesn't. Some spreader plates bent out of shape, some insulation not well fitted with gaps, and large void under the spreader plates (what proDave says). You may be heating the flow of cold air through the subfloor void more than the floor above. If you google between joist underfloor heating images then there are several such systems which have insulation bonded directly to the spreader plates or shaped to fit them exactly which would help to avoid a cold void under the plate sucking out heat. Unfortunately I think it is a job that requires patience and precision to properly separate the cold sub floor air from the warm above floor air. I think I was lucky to have a carpenter fitting my u/floor insulation. There are also multiple systems on the market, some better designed than others. All too often builders go for what is cheap and immediately available and incentives their interests rather than what is best, especially if the spec is just generic 'between joist'.

Thanks Nick, looks like good stuff although not on the high street it seems. But how do you use it for ceilings though when the can has to be inverted ?

Think it would be good to measure the actual temperatures so you have some definite facts to work from. What temperature is the water flow in the underfloor heating pipes ? What temperature do the spreader plates reach ? What temperature do the floor boards reach ? e.g. Search for 'Infrared Thermometer Gun' on Amazon. Is the underfloor insulation fitted nice and tight and how thick is it ? For a 5m by 4m room, then 50w/sqm is only 1kw. Underfloor heating is best in well insulated houses as you need heat input to meet or exceed losses. In general you are aiming to get the whole space up to temperature and then keep it there, rather than traditional rads at 60C where it can potentially reheat the space within an hour or two. A temperature gun (or thermal camera) would also allow you to look for cold spots.

We already have regulations that say you can't vent your boiler onto a neighbouring property. I cannot see any difference. The problem is that the rule of law today is no longer accessible to ordinary people. The cost is prohibitive and means the law might as well not exist. Only the very rich can afford to go to court. Putting it under building regs would mean it could be enforced and stop it happening at a stroke. The only people wanting to object would be those intent on breaking the law and getting away with it. As somebody once said 'there is no justice, only power'. Never has this been more true in the UK.

I am not sure it is wise for you to ignore the party wall act. It is all a bit late if you wait until he builds out over your land. I'd have thought a court might decide that as you didn't object and didn't invoke the law i.e. the PWA at an earlier stage then it would be disproportionate to expect the neighbour to completely demolish a finished extension. I can't see any reason not to talk to him asap, whatever stage he has reached. I think the current state of affairs with the PWA is daft. There should be a building regulation that says you cannot build over a neighbours land. We have building regs about vents and things, so why not about banning overhanging eaves. Building regs are then subject to council enforcement action. Council planning departments should also be liable for massive compensation payments and penalties if they approve illegal extensions.

Underfloor heating doesn't heat the floor to a high temperature. A lot of floor coverings won't take more than around 26deg Celsius. The general idea is that the warm floor is enough to give some space heating of 50-100watts per sqm. So you are not going to feel it getting 'hot' like a radiator. Do you have a between the joist system using spreader plates under the floor boards ? Hopefully well insulated between the joists under the pipes ? We have a pipe in board system from Omnie where the u/floor heating pipes are sandwiched into the floor board. The lower board is 22mm chipboard routed to take half the pipe, then a top board of 12mm routed to take the upper half of the pipe. The top board is also lined with metal foil to conduct the heat out from the pipe. So that type of system will likely give more output than between the joist with floor boards. Obviously this does raise the floor slightly because 22 + 12 = 34mm which is 19mm higher than a 15mm floor board. Using a heat gun would allow you to measure the temperature of the floor in different places, and compare the temperature when it is on vs the temperature when it is off.

Looking to prepare the junction between walls and ceiling structure ready for plaster boarding. How should I be finishing this area adjacent to the steel ? The silver PIR insulation across the end of the steel is the top of the cavity insulation in the wall. I am thinking somehow I need to seal it so that warm air in the ceiling doesn't contact any cold air squeezing through the top of the PIR where it meets the plywood deck. Thinking I should somehow put some more insulation around the steel and the top of the inner leaf it sits on ? (Have rockwool but that wouldn't be vapour/air tight)

Time to get a smart one so you can dim them from your armchair ?

Some stuff here that might be helpful... https://www.pavingexpert.com/drain01 https://www.pavingexpert.com/threshold01

@dave1967 I think it is normally suggested to call round, ask them if they are aware that they need to follow the Party Wall Act, and provide them with a copy of the .gov.uk guide or a link to the version on the web. Say you are concerned to make sure everything is properly agreed first as required by the act as it is a legal requirement and otherwise it could impact both properties for the future. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/preventing-and-resolving-disputes-in-relation-to-party-walls/the-party-wall-etc-act-1996-explanatory-booklet If you were unaware of the act before then you could say you saw it mentioned in an article, and after looking into it, the person building needs to comply with the process in the act to get formal agreement in place before work starts, and it is separate to planning permission and building regs. If you think he is not tech literate to read it on the internet then I guess you could print a copy for him, or find a video link that explains it that he can watch. I guess stay friendly and avoid any provocative statements about possible objections or problems or changing plans. Has he shared any plans with you ? Is it under permitted rights without planning permission ?

I can't see anyone owning our property ever wanting to build to the boundary anyway. It would create a terraced house and devalue it. The planning authority have clearly become incompetent and have created a huge problem because if people are allowed to build to the boundary they create a race condition. The first neighbour can do it, the second cannot.

I don't think it is that uncommon to have a shared driveway. I might guess there would be some legal precedence about whether the right to access implies an obligation to pay towards damage rectification or maintenance. But another +1 to Galileo because there may be questions beyond this building of a horse training ring (which should itself be a one off (or a hundred off) because to me there is the implication that this horse training/riding facility will be there to be used, so might imply regular traffic with people pulling up with horse boxes, or in 4X4's to drop kids off for horse riding lessons, or watch the weekly gymkhana ? Installing locking gates and/or bollards might be one way of giving you control and forcing proper requests for access. Emergency services could have access to a key or a key box. If you had a suitable access control method then it might also be used to provide a full record of access by your neighbour to demonstrate reasonableness or not. The emergency services access seems a little odd as I would have thought the emergency services means ambulance or fire brigade and I would expect respecting property rights to be the last consideration of either service in a true emergency anyway - is their 'main drive' definitely too small for an ambulance ? Also emergency access implies you cannot ever park on the drive as an emergency can occur any any time. Perhaps consider when the permissive access was established, by whom, and why it would have been done originally.

Isn't it a bit late to be taking the Christmas tree down ? or Never do Irish dancing on a scaffold. or Hey, jimmy, you sure your stress calculations say this scaffold is fine for a 15 stone man ? But more seriously how would that ever pass health and safety requirements. I thought builders were supposed to make and record a safety inspection of scaffold every week.

I guess the only back draft protection I am aware of are the backdraft flaps that open one way only. However these seem like they would obstruct the outward flow from the extractor even when open. Probably not an issue for low volume bathroom/utility extractors, but presumably not so desirable when trying to rapidly suck out cooking steam and smells ? I have never had a proper extractor before so am a bit clueless.

Any suggestions on the best type of external kitchen extractor vent to install for an integrated through the wall 150mm extractor ? Needs to be installed on a cavity block wall which will have external cladding and is south facing. Should I have a backdraft shutter or will this just compromise the extractor performance ? Will the cladding get stained over time by the outflow ? Will water condense and create water marks/drip marks on the cladding ? Thinking about this...Bullnose vent ?

Agree. You can't insure a risk that you know to have already materialised anyway, so it is too late for insurance.