Conor

I put a hole in a wall and nearly smashed a 2x2.6m window trying to move a few bits around. Don't do it. There are safer ways to save money.

We went in to various garden / home type places looking at rattan sofa/dining sets. Nothing below about £2.5k. and it all looked ropey. We got a set of exactly the same kind of stuff online from Fimious for £800... Table, two sofas, two chairs. Indistinguishable from the £2.5k. still crap, but at least when my arse goes through it in a year's time it wasn't £2.5k

Why do you need to remove the paint? We just scraped big lumps off. How are you laying your lvt? We put ours down on 2mm foam. Feels lovely underfoot.

There were indeed. Was swiftly off to the pub for three pints of reward bitter shortly after.

Balance paid to us last week.

We did 50mm insualted screed. It weighs nothing, mostly polystyrene balls. Originally I wanted to go directly to the slabs, but they were too uneven and we have too many steels to go over, was never an option. Eventhing works fine.

Nope*. Reason being the count of floors is from the principle level upwards. No additional fire protection measures needed. *Raised with BCO before drawing submission, there were different opinions before agreement, and under NI regs.

2.5kg m² rather than the reccomended 2kg.

Not until the top coat is on and flashings on! All you can see is the OSB deck through the grp. Which means it was done right I suppose. I did 2% catalyst when it was still cool, down to 1.75% when the sun started hitting. Had about 15mins working time only. Few spots it got away from me that resulted in a few lumps and bubbles. Will need a bit more work. Many rollers and brushes in the bin now.

So was up at 5.30am this morning... Job done

EPDM was my first choice, but the only local company I could find that sell it, turned out to be beyond useless. And I could not find anybody willing to ship to northern ireland. Also was working our far more expensive, and at this stage in our build, that's hugely important I've done a GRP roof before, and was shown how to do it properly by a guy that builds GRP boats. This roof will not fail.

I'd only get an impact driver if you see yourself having to put in 100s of screws in at a time. A cordless drill will give you more control and less likely to snap a head, drive too deep etc. I've both and will use my cordless drill over the impact driver for any light work or anything that will be visible.

Lots of people here have a similar setup with UFH embedded / on top of a concrete slab. Works fine, and give you advantage of using it as a thermal store. I'd skip the insulation and polythene and stick the pipes to the slab using self adhesive rails. Nick has posted photos of a job he's done that's basically the same.

Depends entirely where they are, what kind of bridge they are forming etc.

We run ours exclusively on off-peak. Timer set 5-9am. At the weekends also have on middle of day as we tend to have visitors and higher hot water demand. Yet to ring out.

Thanks. For the catalyst it's a pre assembled kit so don't think there's much choice, but I'll speak to the supplier today. Was just thinking using 1% catalyst rather than the usual 1.5-2% I would have used previously. I'll try and get most of the work done in the mornings to avoid the direct sun.

Boarding out our deck for tanked balcony this afternoon. Had to give up as just too damn hot, no shade, no breeze. Forecast is for 25-27c all week, little cloud, no breeze. Did a quick Google and apart from using less catalyst, any issues with fibreglassing in this weather? With the direct sun I'm sure surface temp will be 40c+ as direct south facing and sheltered

Is there an opportunity to incorporate a position for the heatpump during your extension works? You'll be ripping stuff open and there might be a more suitable location. As some have said, wall mounting is an option. You've a garage, plenty of other walls... Front of the house would be worse case scenario for me. Have you done / doing renovation / upgrade works? What's the context of the install? Digging a few trenches and some new pipework might be relatively small comapred to your bigger plans.

Recessed covers, easy. You can fill them with anything.

Whatever you do, don't tell the water company. This will just open up a world of pain. If you have an existing storm water connection, you can use this. If it's a combined sewer, you can use this. The existing water is clearly going somewhere so I wouldn't worry about it. Lift some lids and see what is what. Remember, don't speak to the water company, and on your building control drawings have the new storm drains shown on the drawing "connection to existing storm water system".

Wouldn't bother with the 10mm feeds to the toilets as it's an extra set of fittings (15-10mm reducers x2 for each, inserts, pipe etc.) Only other input would be to run 22mm pipes to the bath.

I'd encase the whole thing in lean mix concrete. 100mm type 1 on top isn't near enough.

When we were designing our house we were faffing around with room and spaces sizes. Our architect gave us som basic guidence for min spaces for different uses, we followed them and it's worked out brilliantly. The min comfortable width of a dining / socialising space with enough for circulation is 3.2m (1m table, 0.6 each side for chairs, 1m for circulation). You've got it bang on.

Easily. Assuming you have forks / lifting slings etc.

The size / type of retaining wall is highly dependent on the soil type. E.g. where I am it's a stiff red clay with high modulus meaning we have very tall and steep slopes with no additional retianing needed. For what I'd do there, it depends what I want to get out of the space, and where the best spot for socialising is. I'd hate to be staring at a big concrete wall, so I'd be minimising that aspect. I'd probably extend the flat area a bit, raise it up, meaning a "sunken" patio, up 400mm to a flat lawn, going back to the bank which would then be a small number of low walled terraces.