Mr Punter

Yes I have applied for revised consent on a few schemes. Maybe you could talk to the planners or the conservation officer to get a feel for what would be acceptable.

Why not? I installed one. Pretty straightforward.

A lot of the gas duct is useless. Best bet is duct with pipe pre-installed.

Explain to him what you just said to us and offer him what you feel comfortable with. You don't need to fall out over this.

It sounds like they are from Royston Vasey.

Can you not get the gas pipe laid in with the rest of the services? Gas can be a real pain as as soon as there is any scaffold they will not work. Doing it later will make a right mess. No drainage shown so I guess that goes elsewhere? It may be best to run the intercom in a separate duct than the power for the gates. You need to run a duct across the drive as well for power to the other gate. Allow for a socket by the gate post / control box.

My architect asks for a bonus on receipt of planning. It means he doesn't submit anything silly and ask me to pay for amendments but it is not so high that he is out of pocket for an unsuccessful application. Probably nearer 5-10% than 25%. If a big redesign is needed I would expect to be paying extra for that. How much extra money does he want? What do you think would be fair?

May be worth getting some 4 terminal Wago connectors and using those to join the wires. From you new fitting you need a live and neutral to connect to the neutral and switched live terminals. You could use the flex wire from the now redundant pendant.

I adapted a cooker hood - removed the motor but left the metal grease filters so they can be put in the dishwasher from time to time. The larger the fan and ducting, the better.

As long as you can get to it for servicing it is fine. If the area is unheated, lag all the pipes properly. The nearer to kitchen and bathroom the better.

The idea of the hood is to capture the smoke and steam before it escapes into the rest of the room. Unless you have a very powerful fan and a large area grille I think it may disperse before it gets extracted. I like stir-fry and cooking meat on a griddle, so I have a hood with grease filter but with a fan mounted remotely in a plant room above to make it quieter. I used a variable speed controller but it seems fairly useless so I just switch to full. I used 150mm duct and a Soler&Palau 200mm fan.

Hi @Biglad and welcome. Not sure if you need planning consent or if this would be covered by permitted development but you would need building regs in any case and I suggest you get plans drawn up with calcs and bearing details for the steels and submit these to building control and you can ask for their comments on foundation type as they should be familiar with what is required where you are. You could get a builder to do the shell and finish it yourself. There should not be too many risks with this type of project.

Morning @Stu68 and welcome. That looks like a lovely house in a fine location. I don't see any point in removing the ceiling level rockwool. It may help attenuate any noise from outside and the MVHR unit. The 2 degree temp difference between loft and adjacent heated space will make very little difference to the MVHR heat losses / efficiency and is nowhere near enough to be a condensation risk on the ducting. Unless there is an issue I would leave all as is and enjoy the place.

It is not a good plan to render over and bridge the DPC as water can track via the render.

Lots of modern appliances are fitted with Aquastop to prevent flooding. Is the idea with these drains that all the floors are laid to falls? In my experience the worst damage can be caused by water slowly escaping and creeping under (the unfortunately named) floating floors.

If this is worse than the current arrangement Building Control may be able to object. If all 3 doors lead to habitable rooms you may want to hing the door so that the majority are served without blocking the hallway. Also, can you allow the door to swing 180 degrees?

A formal contract may be a bit of a sledgehammer and may require formal appointments as Contract Administrator, Principal Contractor, Principle Designer etc as well as documentation - Payment Notices, Early Warnings, Confirmation of verbal instructions, and take into account prolongations, specification changes etc. On larger jobs a good deal of time is spent by the parties trying to improve their own financial outcomes under the contract terms. Working with agreed plans, a priced specification and a payment schedule should cover most of the potential issues for you. Whatever, if there is not good faith on both sides you are screwed.

I wonder if the death of the person qualifying for exemption has been tested or was anticipated in the legislation?

Hello Claire and welcome. It sounds like a fairly complex question and is probably best put to an expert in these matters. 400m2 is a very large house!

CT1 is really difficult to finish nicely and is prone to discolouring.

Tend to be plastic with push fit elbow and copper for the last 300mm or so.

I have an IM350. They are only good for fixing to timber, not steel or blockwork. They may work on a soft aerated block. I thought cavity closers were mostly plastic and either built in as you go or friction fitted into existing openings.

The arrangement is normal. Worth making sure that all the subbies have insurances if you are worried on that score.

4.0m is what we have and it works fine.

Yes, floor first but I also like to tile the whole floor before fitting the units so that appliances can be moved out and if there is a leak it will be visible sooner. Also if you rearrange the kitchen the floor will be complete.