Mr Punter

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.

Along the High Street are these on the Freemason's Hall

Looking at you spirit level, does the screed ramp up toward the threshold? If it does maybe you could grind it down or reduce the adhesive for the lat 100mm. What goes in the gap?

If you plan to change it and there is no stopcock outside you may be better using a squeeze off tool as in my limited experience freezing the pipe is normally hopeless. The good news is that at least you can run a tap to see if the squeeze off has worked, rather than having the loose plug of ice exploding from the end of the pipe.

If you have the money, your option C looks good. Increase the roof overhangs and fill the walls and roof with Celotex. Cembrit and James Hardie do cladding similar to Marley. It will be a bit fiddly as you have window reveals raking cuts and you need special blades to cut it. Weather looks nice where you are.

Where we are they fit water meters externally at the property boundary, so it is easy to isolate there with the stop valve next to the meter.

Hi @SeanBirt and welcome Why not get a timber frame company to price this for you? If they do the work they will also supply all the required structural drawings and calcs for building control and advise on the most suitable blocks / bricks for the base courses. I often see 140mm blocks for 140mm cls walls. They may be able to supply the kit cheaper than you can buy the materials and make it yourself and it will all be done to correct spec.

You can run pipes and wires under and behind kitchen units. For the island these will need to run under the floor then come up. You could create a channel in the floor or you could create a small tunnel for the pipes to sit in with 30mm insulation above and 30mm supporting either side. You really need to minimise what goes under the floor and keep any joins and fittings to as few as possible. 60mm is fairly poor for insulation and UFH. Why not have more insulation and lose the screed and have an overboard system? You can still have a tiled finish.