Mr Punter

@Triassic I am trying to picture your batten arrangement as it is often OK to just fix a vertical batten to the timber frame, then your render carrier board fixes to these.

The smooth Paslode hot dip galv are good. They have a coloured coating on the tip that lubricates, then heats ups and acts as a glue. They are more difficult to pull out than the ring shank ones and will have shards of wood glued to the end if you extract them.

Very easy to hit a nail or a knot and it is very tempting to take a firm hold of the thing you are nailing, but if your hand is within 4 inches of the nail it can still be vulnerable. I have seen nails bend right round and make their way out of the same side of the stud.

If you put a @ in front of a name you can pick from a dropdown list and they will get a notification @Annemay I have attached a pdf of how the kitchen could be. Untitled-1.pdf

In the bathroom can you have a fan with a delay start timer? Also, do they like to dry clothes on the radiators? If so, a continuous fan near the source would help. Duct out the cooker hood if pos.

Have you got all the rooflights in, flashings done, parapet walls complete and copings on?

He could more easily have fitted an extra noggin to the right, shifted everything over a bit and had the stud spacing out the backboxes by 38mm. Studs look plenty chunky enough to take it though.

Paslode im350 for first fix. Compressor and air nailer for second fix as the holes are so much cleaner.

15mm taper edged plasterboard, taped and filled x 3, rubbed down and painted will give a very good finish, is cheap and is DIYable. Are you doing a driveway or just using the grass?

I often see 2.4m studwork with no noggins.

What is the finish on the walls?

I have just emailed the application and transferred the fee, taking a fair amount of time but saving £20 (well £16.66 actually as we are VAT registered and also with corporation tax maybe only a tenner, so a waste of time but I made my point!). I printed the pdf form via a pdf driver and used the Adobe text, checkbox and sign utilities to fill it in.

It sounds like the map and GIS need to be changed, as they are at odds with the schedule.

OK I have just spoken to the LPA and they suggest I download the form, print it, scan it and email it to them, together with the other documents. I will do as @Hecateh suggests and just print to a PDF so I can fill it in on screen. They have their own payment portal. I will let you know how I get on, but what a hassle to save being blagged out of £20!

Agreed. This is more like Ryanair behaviour. Loathsome.

I am really impressed with this house. One of my Buildhub favourites. I also like @Tennentslager's build in a similar vein. Very well done.

I just went through the online Planning Portal to get a condition discharged. The application fee was £116.00. After uploading all the required documents I am hit with a payment screen requesting a mandatory additional "service charge" of £20 to PPQ (Portalplansquest). Is this now standard? Surely if the charge is mandatory they should add it to the published planning fee?

1 part cement, 9 parts all in ballast.

From a thermal efficiency viewpoint, you should set the glass of the window somewhere in the insulation layer, so the window needs to move inside a fair bit. The window is often attached to the timber frame and you will need to make allowance- perhaps using Compriband tape - for the timber frame to shrink downwards compared to the masonry.

I think the mortar mix is going to be the main thing and you may want to look at using a lime based mortar for this. Because the mix is likely to be fairly stiff it will not work with a pointing gun so you will need to press it in to the joints.

You will probably want to screed in any case as the hollowcore is not perfectly flat, especially if prestressed and it will take out the camber. Regarding the pipework, manifolds and controls, get a price for this and assess for yourself if it is worth the money. If you have solar gain from windows it will probably never cool enough to compensate.

Brick or rendered block would probably be best and cheapest and there will be lots of local builders who will be familiar with this. What do other extensions have where you are? Make sure you fit a decent extractor in the shower room. If properly built and ventilated it should never have mould.

I have used one of these. They are really accurate and the blade does not wander like the ones where the saw moves on rails overhead.

Given your lack of experience and the fact that this requires a very high level of skill and knowledge together with a great deal of time and materials I think you could be setting yourself up for failure.

I am with @Declan52 on this. On the basis that there are no links to this, I don't think will work the way you are suggesting. I thought that you were going to make single sided shuttering, fix it to the wall with spacers, pour the concrete in from the top and vibrate it with the poker on the face of the shutter. I could not work out how you would get to the top bit though unless you left out the floor above until it was done.