Mr Punter

You can do the studwork before or after screed.

You can easily have a modern twist on a design without it being a pastiche. Go with what you want. It is your land and money.

Hi Tony and welcome. At 75 you are not as aged as some of the old gits on here!

It is really difficult to design yourself. Much easier to work from drawings. £100 is very little but if you can get this deducted, all the better.

+1 If you had a structural warranty you may have been in with a shout up to 8 or 10 years.

I would hook out the trees before any talks with the planners. Detached house looks quite plausible.

The water reducing additives - superplasticisers - allow the concrete to flow easily without addition of excessive water, keeping the concrete strength high and the water content low. If you use this in formwork and there are any "issues", it pisses out pretty fast. I wouldn't bother on a slab if the concrete crew are good.

Any chance of you getting ownership of the land shown hatched? That would make the detached scheme + parking a bit more comfortable.

I don't think this is a recent thing it is highways dept who don't like gravel spreading from driveways over the road. As long as the apron abutting the road is bound material it should be fine.

A general builder would be fine for this. It looks like the pipe is 110mm soil pipe. They can reuse the terminal that is there.

Needle nose pliers?

I understand that the Ditra stuff is fine over most stable surfaces. You can see that removing the battens will make a mess, so just let it all dry thoroughly, Ditra and tile away.

If the vent was extended up a couple of feet it might help. Not a difficult or expensive job.

Having seen the extra photos I have not got any useful suggestions I am afraid. Getting a balcony like this, with habitable space below and closed at the front and sides, needs very careful planning and detailed design and specification, which it did not have. If it is left as is there could well be major damage because of water ingress. I think you should get a specialist designer and have it redone.

I got some Zigbee temperature / humidity / monitors and a hub a while ago. You only have interface via their app and I could not work out how to store the data locally. The stuff began to fail and was more of a pain than it was worth, so it is consigned to the "drawer of crap" in the filing cabinet, together with some SONOS stuff that was Emperor's New Clothes a few years ago, but turned out to be his grubby jockstraps. I may be mistaken, and the stuff is actually magic.

Do it after. They will get in the way and make the renderer even more angry.

You might just about squeeze in your soakaway where the tonne bags are. Put in the crate type.

Well the good news is that it looks really good. You have issues with the failed drainage and waterproofing, so I think you need a redesign of these aspects. If it is just the drainage, you may be able to leave the tiles, otherwise, probably strip and start again. You really should have more than one rainwater outlet here or at least have it so any surplus water would run off the front of the balcony rather than into the building. GPR is good on flat roofs and if specified correctly should be ok to tile onto.

No need for an alley to the back as per most mid terrace houses. It is handy sometimes though.

You could do a 2 storey side extension, but I don't think there would be enough area for it to be worthwhile. You would also need additional bin / bike store space.

If there is a new cheapo EPC you may end up with an E rating.

The ridges don't look great. The one on the lower roof looks really dodgy. I would not worry about the colour.

The timber frame will shrink downwards by about 30mm relative to the brickwork.

Unless you are doing this for aesthetic reasons as part of a facade remodel you are wasting your money. You can do a 2 storey rear extension without full PP.

I recently got some quotes for EPS bead insulation in a new build 150mm cavity. 135.8m2 net of wall area, 20.37m3 volume. First quote: £8,890!!!!!!!! Second quote: £4,080 Third quote: £1,453