Jilly

You can confirm presence/absence of GCN with a pond water sample which analyses for DNA: much cheaper than the survey method.

Start digging the founds and get Building Control out? It's open forever then, isn't it?

We clad a steel post with aerogel insulation and an aluminium outer skin. It looks ok and doesn’t seem to form a cold bridge.

We did a conversion on a similar non valuable building and many bits had to come down and be replaced, so parts ended up like Trigger’s broom. As I understand it, if a conversion is done like this it’s acceptable as there is no permission for demolition of the whole building. It’s of course much more laborious. Do take advice to double check this. We were able to remove old non stable walls and replace them. My builder advised only to ask BC questions that were directly relevant to the inspections.

Maybe try the local freecycle too?

Fabulous house! If you are running your own business too, take care of your stress levels as it can be off the scale sometimes, especially if you are PMing. You can get hand made solid oak cabinets made surprisingly cheaply. B & Q carcasses don't pass the wobble test for me, especially with expensive heavy doors, so maybe rethink that bit? Some of the stainless steel and black ovens give the right look without being mega bucks. One hidden cost/stress can be rental costs if you get delays. Live as near to the site as you can is wise advice.

Also take a look at the period house forum and the Haynes manual

That looks great, but mine were specified.

Keep pushing for alternative solutions, as you might be made to keep the mitigating solutions forever. Clarify as with the garage, whether the pole can go afterwards or not (I suspect it might need to stay, so make it something you can live with). As I understand it we are not meant to touch/change anything recorded on the Bat Licence. If I had known this could be discussed with the ecologist before being written in stone on the Bat licence I would have paid more attention. They will suggest bat tiles/boxes etc. The boxes have to be specific (expensive) ones, not just any old thing from the garden centre. As an aside, it's rather surprising that you have bats when you don't have any nearby trees....

Ah ok, thank you!

The gunk I cleared was in the part near the main sink drain (eek I didn't actually check back up the condensate pipe and it pointed down and nothing came out...) If we used something that was glued in there would be no way to clean it out if it happened again, or have I missed something?

Yay, I’ve done it! Thank you! Yep, with lots of towels and circuit off. There wasn’t a lot of gunk really, so I could do that again, but I’ll be more careful with cleaning the drain and maybe it’ll be less likely to recur. The WB repair man blew down the pipe but wouldn’t show me how. I had a look after he’d gone and noticed he left the rubber pipe off the condensate bottle thingy. The boiler installer was the non LPG chap who caused a bit of worry at the beginning, so I’m not sure about him 😔

Ok I’ll try that thank you!

Our fairly new Worcester Boch LPG boiler started making boiling sounds. Its under guarantee so the repair chap has just been and diagnosed a blocked condensate pipe, which I need to get cleared and replaced. It runs behind the cupboards and fits into the sink waste with quite a few bends so maybe this is the cause. I've been trying to send lots of hot water and bicarbonate of soda (I'll go and get some caustic soda), but it doesn't seem to be doing the trick (and I suppose could be pushing more gunk back up as I can't blow it (boiler man told me not to so I don't invalidate the warranty). ? Any other suggestions please folks?

I had 3 quotes for piles and one was double, so definitely get more quotes.

Don't bother with ufh without tons of insulation. See lots of threads on this, you'll spend a fortune heating the ground.

Steamy Tea will tell you you need a lot more insulation under ufh than you think or it will waste heat and you will freeze. I used 100mm Kingspan Kooltherm K103 and it seems to have worked ok, but I really wish we could have had more. PS don't believe the builder who tells you heat rises so you don't need much, it's not true, the concrete sucks the heat away.

Don’t panic. Garage conversions usually/ often fall within ‘permitted development’ and therefore doesn’t need planning permission, but there are exceptions (look at the planning conditions associated with your house, it may say certain PD righted have been removed. The fact they have invited you to apply for retrospective (in the application you put brackets around what has been already built on the heading) means it sounds promising. Also you can go to appeal, so you have loads of time. You’ll need drawings but might well be able to use your BC drawings to save money. It’s likely to be quite straightforward if you haven’t increased the footprint. You might have to explain about parking and then that you don’t need the garage or some such. It would be good to speak to the neighbours who have done it and find out what they did/didn’t do.

Have you read this thread? It's a really useful description of how to obtain planning permission by making it easy for the planning officers by quoting and adhering to planning policies.

How are you getting round the fact it's in pasture land?

What does inside your kettle look like?

The NHS sometimes sell off flexible endoscopes which are often old but very good quality at auctions. If you are good at video games you might find them easy to use and you could wiggle the end to look around a bit...You have no control of the directionality in the cheap ones. You could fashion some kind of sleeve to make it rigid. The diameters vary a lot.

Practice a lot, it can be a little disorientating to make out what you are seeing, especially with a cheaper model or a second hand one with one with some broken fibres. Have you considered a thermal camera? They give a good impression of the overall insulation and hence weak areas of heat loss in the thermal envelope. There's surely going to be an element of unreliability in a spot check with an endoscope if the insulation is patchy? I might be thinking of using the scope that in an area that has flagged up as weak on the thermal image. There are some cheap endoscopes (non rigid) sold for the motor trade which are ok for very limited inspections.

I think you'd find the plastic boxes with reasonably tight fitting lids might be ok.