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Watched Grand Designs on catch up last night - the Castle Folly. This Folly was sold to the couple rebuilding it by a local farmer, whose partner is a good friend of ours, who was persuaded to buy it years ago by an his ex-wife but then did nothing much to look after it. He received a rude awakening a few years ago when English Heritage sent him a bill for £70 -80,000 for stabilising the structure, to prevent it collapsing. He was very pleased to sell it! Anyway, our friends , were invited to view the renovation after the grand unveiling. They reported the couple were put under lot of pressure to get it finished by the production company, who then removed all their furniture and dressed it for the big finish. Apparently our friends chatted to the new owners and the wife told them it was a nightmare to live there with two small children and those stairs..

I agree with this but decided my time was better spent doing other things than trying to build my one myself. I bought the cheapest unit I could find and it has been working well for 2 years or so without any problem. it is a unit made by SolarImmersion - see https://solarimmersion.co.uk/

Looking good, great progress

One thing I forgot to include in my post above. What does your contract with the roofing contractor provide in relation to loss and damage caused by or as the result by their work? Did they exclude consequential losses in wording such as. '"...... for any consequential loss, damage or inconvenience resulting there from. negligence"? "

No you're not going too far. The first rule of claims management is to build up a reasonable estimate of all the costs related to the damage, including any cost of mitigating the loss, and then negotiate from there.... Personally, I wouldn't bother with a solicitor (they're generally not qualified in this sort of thing, will only gather information and would resort to a barrister anyway for anything difficult). I would consider instructing a barrister, who is a specialist in construction claims, to assist with assessing the case and drafting a final letter before legal action . Barristers are cheaper than solicitors, more business like, direct and efficient. Use a chamber outside of London. I used a chamber in Exeter for a problem I (representing the Management Company as a owner/director) had with neighbour, when I had a flat in Torquay. The guy I found is now a judge.... See Magdalen Chambers = https://www.magdalenchambers.co.uk/ I sent them a letter with a synopsis of my issues and they gave me what was effectively a lump sum quotation. I went from there. I did most of the work to brief the barrister, which you can also do very effectively, and the barrister gave me an opinion and wrote the letter. He then helped with mediation, and then later in court. A barrister cannot start the court proceedings, this has to be a solicitor.

I agree with this. There is little point in trying to negotiate with the Insurance Company - as you have already found, as they are/will be intent on settling at the least cost within the defined terms of their policy held by the roofing company and this policy may not cover all the damages that you are now claiming. Also, you have no leverage with the Insurance Company, as you cannot drag them onto court, as you have no contract with them! I also don't believe that you have a case for complaint with the Insurance Company - you're not their client and have no insurance contract with them. They're simply defending a claim against their client - the roofing contractor - however unreasonably they are acting and their policy allows them to do this. If you take the roofing contractor to law, then it may well defended by lawyers appointed by the insurance company., again because that is what the policy provides It's a strange situation - did the insurance company send a loss adjuster to your house? That's what I would have expected? I would have also expected the negotiation to be with the loss adjuster.

SWMBO ( Yvonne) is the gardener. She has planted a small olive tree and fig tree in the new garden. The olive tree is in a raised planter, outside the kitchen window with the herbs and still getting established. The fig tree has been planted for a couple of years in a very sunny position and has lot of figs, which have started to drop off and bullet hard. We will have to wait until next year before we get to try them! We love figs but they need to be fresh and properly ripe. We buy (and eat) a lot in Spain, readily available and cheap from the market and shops in season (June). But, we can't seem to find decent figs in the UK and they are expensive. No matter that they look and feel like the figs we buy in Spain, they never properly ripen and are always disappointing

Also have a look at this Topic, which details a couple of other options, including the one I used

Well done, get that VAT Reclaim submission completed and submitted asap.

No problem - I would have thought you had some external lights and fittings, such as satellite dishes, aerials, CCTV cameras and Security Alarm? but maybe not? My house has all of these and they required wall penetrations = see pictures

Some things to add to your to-do list: 1) All the penetrations (MVHR, electrical, CCTV, gas, water, whatever etc) through the external walls BEFORE they blow in the cellulose. It's a difficult thing to do afterwards.... It means you will have to start planning external lighting, external power, CCTV, satellite dishes, aerials etc. 2) Fascias and soffitts (not sure of your roof construction) whilst all the scaffolding is in place 3) Make provisions to control the rainwater off the roof, at the earliest opportunity. Fit gutters and temporary downpipes. Get the water into rain water system, if installed but at least get it away from the house. 4) Noggins on external framework for everything that needs to be attached - satellite dishes, aerials, balcony fixings, etc, etc 5) When is your scaffolding coming down? Can you complete the groundnworks for drains, rainwater connections etc whilst the scaffolding is still in place? You're doing well, keep going....

Our asbestos removal was zero rated.

We went through a similar experience before demolishing in 2015. It doubled the cost of demolition. The majority of our asbestos was contained in the render on the house and this had to be removed manually, before we could demolish. Our demolition team also wore all the protective gear and it worried a new neighbour, who called out the Council to check if we were working safely - we were! Our experience was posted on Ebuild, at the time.

Yes, it can be a bit of pain - we have had house with limestone/marble in the bathrooms and porcelain tiles elsewhere. We had to have two sets of cleaning materials - one for the marble and one for other finishes. We had a cleaner that had to be constantly reminded which cleaning materials to be used on which surface

For anyone with a PAUL MVHR, Paul Scotland offer very competitive prices for single sets of filters at the moment - see https://www.paulheatrecovery.co.uk/shop/

Skips Floor tiles

This is not correct see my input below As @le-cerveau says refusing to pay illegally/incorrectly charged is the best approach and careful management of contractors is required to avoid a stressful and prolonged VAT reclaim experience with contractors.

All the above is good advice, particularly The one thing that is not clear to me is whether you have a clear account of your total costs to date? How have you been paying the main contractor for work completed to date - has he recovered more than the cost work completed to date - was the payment method agreed based on a positive or negative cash flow basis to the main contractor,? Was it based on a % measured completion or on stage payments against agreed physically completed elements Your main contractor should now be required to detail the actual costs to date by each build element in your estimate. From this data, you should be able to look at fully completed elements - for example, foundations.. You can build then a detailed estimate of costs to go for each element - for foundations if 100% complete, cost to go is zero - and this will give you; A much more accurate estimate of final cost- you are now only dealing with cost to go. A much better idea of which elements you can influence by reducing quality, eliminating or postponing - you can no longer costs on anything finished or close to completion - you can no longer costs on anything finished or close to completion A basis for having a detailed discussion with your main contractor,- element by element - what work has to be completed on each element and when, cost estimate to complete and also the reasons for any overun on both completed and incomplete elements, so

Summer Sale mid May to mid June approx, Winter sale mid January to mid February approx. The dates are on their Website for 2018 for their last sale period. Their outlets are usually very open about these dates, at least where we bought from was.... We bought in February and paid in full and they stored for free, until we called for them to be delivered in May/June. We needed some top up trims and other bits in July and we had missed the summer sale

Those gate pillars are fantastic - very jealous, though they would look a lot out of place on y house

Those are the Enphase micro inverters - M250. One per panel. It wasn't possible to locate these inside the house. In any case, I think they need to be outside for ventilation/cooling and also the cable runs would have more complex than I would want. I think there is an ongoing thread on cable connection inside the roof space which discusses the pro/cons of this

We have an apartment in Spain and have to have an Spanish Bank for managing all out outgoings and bills in Spain. We have tried lots of different routes for transferring funds from £ sterling to euros over the years with varying degrees of success and exchange cost We have been using Transferwise for the past 6 months or so. It works very well, with low fees. It provides proper bank accounts for £sterling, euros and US$.. Good apps for a completely online service. We also have a REVOLUT card, which is provides an additional route for cheap currency exchange.. Both work investigating and easy to set up

That's what my fitters used - see photos

This is devastating news. I have out been out all day and have just seen a missed call from ECOWIN. It must have been Craig ringing me with this terrible news. I will call him tomorrow to send Yvonne and my l our condolences to Lorraine, their family and the ECOWIN team. We have Gaulhofer windows and spent some time with Thomas in Glasgow, when we were visiting various projects with Gaulhofer windows when finalising our window selection and order details. He was always pleasant and extremely helpful. He was very professional dealing with a couple of problems on our order, particularly when the problem was the result of the vagaries of the Gaulhofer manufacturing process computer system and ECOWIN were left with the responsibility. He was and he was also involved in the early formation of PAUL Scotland, MVHR company, and gave me an introduction that proved very useful.

No, it's a recirculation fan. - Elica Wave ( though I believe they are now called Flow https://elica.com/GB-en/hoods/flow, - it works well and is very efficient and fairly quiet at normal extract rates plus it also has dimmable LED lighting, for task and decoration. We have MVHR and the kitchen extraction outlet, with a coarse filter, can be seen on the ceiling between the recirculation fan and the pink ceiling light. It's not a normally good idea to have an extract fan with a MVHR system. We just turn the MVHR to boost, for any heavy cooking.