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Be aware that, if you put steps in, you could devalue at selling time? People with disabilities and those with young children might find them off putting. A long, curved, pathway, though, would be a rather nice feature winding its way down the garden.

We had Arundinaria Nitida (might now be renamed at Fargisia Nitida) in our garden for 30 years and it only spread enough to fill the space allocated to it. Was very upset when the beast from east hit it hard. I would have no hesitation in planting it again.

Paid the deposit - thanks guys and girls! Oh, I forgot to mention, that they are levelling the area around the pond, which has been a builders yard during the course of the build, for FREE!

Check the orientation. Architects use the view from the road (kerb appeal) to orientate their designs. They don't have to live in them. Solar gain is very important and the lift that South and West facing windows give you when you have lived with them cannot be bought. We had to completely rotate our bungalow because all the main rooms faced North and East.

That's given us an idea! He told us he will match or under bid on any written quote we get. We have had a couple of verbal quotes but not really taken to the people involved so we have no negotiating tools there. We do have a friendly farmer next door who dabbles in site clearance and recycling the spoils. We may be able to cut the costs by taking that side of things out of his quote. We presume his will be using skips which are horrendously expensive compared to the farmer with his dumper.

I take your point Radian. He told us, verbally, that all slab work would be on a full bed of mortar. A couple of typos did not help. It should say a full wet mortar mix. The "digging out" also belies the amount of work involved as the site is not level and will involve a lot of digging and carting away of soil to make it so. Of course we will not know if it is top notch until they do it but he is very enthusiastic and seemed very genuine in wanting to build a good reputation. The photos I have seen of his work all look excellent. I must admit to being shocked at the overall price but, like most on here, we have never done this before. One, largish, firm that came to quote did not submit one and I wonder if that is because they saw a lot of labour! He did say, several times, that he would undercut any other quote. To be honest we have struggled to find anyone that wants the job and has shown any enthusiasm for it. It has been a joy to work with some of the other enthusiastic tradesmen that we have met over the course of this project. It might be worth paying a little bit more to experience that feeling during this last stage?

We are in Norfolk. Might pop them an email and ask what the sleepers are made of. He may well have told husband what materials he would be using.

Oops - forgot that they have said that they will level out a large area around our, natural, pond free of charge.

To install 3 offset sleeper beds in theg front garden (this is really the back garden - it is a wrap around plot) 2 sleepers high with a 3rd sleeper flat for a seat (each sleeper bed witll be 1.2 x 2.4m). Bottom sleeper will be bedded on concrete, all sleeper beds will be fully lined and soil supplied by customer. the preice also includes the sleepers around the pathe from garage to back patio and from the end of new back patio to fence. Qty x 40 Unit Price £50. Total £2,000 To level out all areas to be shingled (20mm natural stone) Reinstate with a geotextile membrane which will be secured before adding a 30mm layer of shingle 133.3m2 @ £20 Total £2,666 To prepare the area to be turfed and lay down premium grade turf. 66.3 m2 @ £17 - £1,127.10 To install 17 kerb edgings between bungalow and garage along the driveway, these will be bedded in on 4 in of concrete and haunched to retain tarmac scalpings on driveway. - Qty 17 @ £15 Total - £255 To dig out 120mm below finished level and dispose of materials, reinstate with with a geotextile membrane, 50mm hardcore sub base which will be compact then 500mm full we mortar mis will be put down to lay 4 size smooth, honed and calibrated Mint sandstone slabs. Charcoal sets will surround all paved areas and a mushroom jointing compound will be used in all joints 97m2 @ £140 - £13,580 3ft high picket fence x 3 @£75 - £225 To dig out to £150mm below finished level, reinstate with a geotextile membrane, 50mm type 1 mot hardcore sub base which will be compacted, 40mm shard sand will be laid compacted and screed before laying brick weave (supplied by customer). This will be compacted to bed the bricks then kiln dried sand will be brushed in.. All the edge bricks will be bedded on concrete. 16m2 @£60 total £960 We liked the way this small firm were very enthusiastic. The owner was a civil engineer and is now branching out in this new business with his new wife and one other worker. We are lending them our mini digger.

Following.

If they don't trust you to pay on delivery then don't trust them to take your money before delivery.

Ah, this was on an old property now sold. If we had known the builder had not contacted Building Control then we would have done it ourselves. The house was sold subject to contract when we found out.

Following as we sold our old house with an indemnity insurance on some structural internal work that we did not know needed to be seen by the local building control. As you say, both solicitors seemed happy with that solution.

Many thanks guys and gals. The farmer in question is a "diamond geezer" so we will let him have it. His land butts onto ours and he has known us and our plot for forty odd years so he knows he is getting good quality topsoil that has been heaped for three years now. Just didn't want someone to say, six months down the line, that we could have sold it for mega bucks

Do people buy bulk topsoil from site. We have a large amount due to our build being a large bungalow. HWMBO insists that we should give it away to the local farmer who runs a business on the side clearing building sites. I think we should ask him to pay something for it.

Dan the man has just been and rectified the hanging strings. All 46 panels are now connected and generating. We chatted with him and he took full responsibility for them not being connected. After he left we chatted about the situation and have decided to accept the compensation offered by Spartek of a new Huawei inverter, which, Dan tells us, will connect more easily to battery storage and is better at remote monitoring. We will, of course, accept the offer of compensation payments to cover the loss of revenue because of their delay in issuing certificates and the lack of solar generation etc. I just hope they don't make me do all the chasing of Octopus for the figures because I am tired of that already Thanks to all for their support through this. Particularly Dillsue who stuck it out to the end

No it is not what I want to hear but, as you say, we must be practical. We are now thinking of selling up and moving so the disappointment of living with a substandard installation will be gone. So hard to take when you have put your heart and soul into something

Shade report (1).pdf Hope this works. You should see the other engineers comments about what is and is not considered acceptable. We have a perfectly good West facing roof and an East facing roof. Then there is the, unshaded, South facing garage roof.

I am not sure of the figures but a meter is used which takes a light reading. It then is transposed to a graph. I will try to see if I can find it and post it here (assuming my computer skills are up to it).

His version is that he told us. Yes we discussed it but at no point did he tell us how detrimental the shading would be. Why would we want to pay for something that is not going to work? We have been told that, as part of his "good practice" he should have given us a quotation package that included a diagram of how shading would affect the panels. The advisor that we called in has done one using a gadget and it shows unacceptable levels of shade. The installer took no such readings and has admitted that his staff did not give us a quotation package.

?Which Legal do cover existing disputes. The panels were not sited in shade at my request. I merely passed a comment that I thought solar panels were always sited on South facing roofs. We did not receive any advice on the matter or a written quotation from them which is when the shading should have been noted and a diagram of the shading given to us.

They have the photos of the errant string now. I have been copied into them asking Spartek to address all my concerns. I think that they are, basically, just mediating between us and we can do that perfectly well ourselves! I wondered why Spartek were not that bothered about us bringing NICEIC in. They are showing themselves to be useless. A bit of the lunatics running the asylum perhaps. They take the contractors money and register them so that they get us consumers to feel safe and then side with the contractor when push comes to shove. Does anyone think it is worth going down the legal route? I think the part that is going to stall us is the problem with most of the panels being in deep shade. While Spartek can, quite cheaply, rectify the other problems, moving over thirty panels from one roof to another is not going to fill them with joy. I can join ?Which legal today for half the normal annual fee.

We have submitted evidence in writing, from another registered installer, of all the problems. He did not notice the unconnected string because, at the time, it was tucked beneath the roofing felt. It was only when the owner of Spartek came to the house, following our complaint, and inspected the loft that it was found. So he has admitted most of the problems and offered to put them right. My main worry, now, is to get a definitive answer about the inverter and the RCD. Then I need a decision about the shading. If the shading is bad practice then are they going to make the installer move it to another roof?

Over the course of this build we have had the run around from Anglian Water (took it to the Ombudsman - what a waste of time and effort) then Openreach who took a year to connect us to a pole about 50 metres away along an unobstructed driveway. Now here we are dealing with some quango that seems to be on the side of the contractor instead of the customer.

No progress to report on this I am afraid. We seem to be going round in circles. All Tina at NIEIC does is ask me for "evidence" of the bad installation. It does not seem enough that Spartek have admitted to most of the errors and offered to put most of them right. We just have a disagreement over them wanting to replace the Solis inverter with an Huawei one (why?) and also insisting that there is no need to have an RCD between the solar and the rest of the wiring. The other contractor says there is no need to replace the inverter and that an RCD is needed. Tina will not budge until we agree to let the contractor back in to our premises to rectify the problems. All she keeps repeating is "we are evidence based - so we need the evidence". How much more evidence does she want than an admission, in writing of a complete c*ck up, blamed on his "staff" by the owner of the company. She is like a broken record and seems to be afraid to pass the problem to higher authority without concrete evidence, supplied by the customer. We, today, agreed to allow Spartek to attend and connect up the dangling string from the bank of solar on part of one roof. We have photos of the string dangling. It amazes me that NICEIC expect the customer to gather all the "evidence". How do they know that our evidence is true and accurate.? How do we know that Spartek are not just bodging up our system in as cheap and cheerful a way as they can. It beggars belief that they do not send someone out to take a look!