patp

Am following this as we are about to start on our garden. (Well when the garage is finished which is being held up by building control requiring a Structural Engineer to be involved in the design and making of the wide door lintel.) What would anyone do differently? I want to get the pond (a natural clay pit) dug out and the whole site levelled and then crack on with hard landscaping etc. A little voice of warning is telling me to slow down and tackle one space at a time. We have a large wrap around garden so not the traditional front and back gardens. My instincts are also telling me to enlist the help of experts?

Brilliant! Lots to work with there.

We had several lots of £300 compensation over the incompetence of BT and Openreach. The first thing that happened, when I asked BT to connect the new property up with a line, was that they cut off our existing house line. This was just days after husband's cancer diagnosis leaving us completely incommunicado as the mobile signal is cr*p. After frantic rushing around waving said mobile in the air in pouring rain I managed to get a manager on the phone. This, I believe was due to us having fibre to the premises and that department being properly staffed. From then on it took a year of frequent phone calls and messages to get the new build connected. I found Facebook messaging them to be very effective. Not only do you get a human to plead with, but you have an easily readable dialogue for the next operator to read! In our case it was like a Greek tragedy and they were all truly horrified at what we had been through! Good Luck! Oh, and don't let them "cancel the complaint" when they make you a promise of action.

Is this for the glass? It is stuck to the glass

It is worth a try, I suppose, but probably gonna cause me more stress than the job deserves. They take about a month to answer an email!

Our wooden windows have a silicone sealer for the glazing. The window guys have made a complete bodge up of cleaning it off after glazing the windows. We now have it around every window frame and even blobs in the middle. I should ask them to come back and sort it but experience with them tells me that I will be dead and buried before they respond. Any ideas on what to use to remove it? Have tried some silicone remover from the shed but it did not budge it.

Not strictly on topic but can anyone help? We were in desperate straits last Christmas time. Living in our caravan on a campsite we needed to get a meter fitted asap so that we could move to site and finish the build. Eventually got hold of Octopus and put our plight (husband/site manager just diagnosed with cancer and both in our seventies) to them regarding the 3 month lead time on installations. They put us on "emergency fit" and turned up a day later to install our, 3 phase capable, meter! Since then I have heard absolutely nothing from them! That means no bills! We do have 46 solar panels so are not expecting to owe a lot (?) but it is still concerning. Husband's health got worse (chemo attacked his heart and gave him heart failure) so that is my excuse for not chasing harder but should I be jumping up and down at them? Electrician is so busy I cannot get hold of them to come and talk it through reference our generation v usage so that I can stop worrying or go into panic mode! For info we have an ASHP and the usual array of domestic appliances.

We have owned a pair of under counter fridge and freezer for quite a few year. We were attracted by the satisfying clunk of the doors and robust feel of the interior. Still going strong albeit in someone else's house as did not fit in to our new kitchen design

Our windows can be opened a crack and locked in that position but it is just not enough in this really hot weather

We are now, thankfully, living in our bungalow. Here in East Anglia we have been going through and extreme amount of dry warm, and now, hot weather. Does anyone have any idea how to cool a bedroom without installing air con? I am a very poor sleeper and can hear a gnat fart at fifty paces during the night. I am particularly thinking of how we can have windows open and still maintain security. We do have two, large, windows in the bedroom so a through draught should be possible but how do we make the windows secure? I know that in Spain they have inward opening windows with metal grills on the outside. Is the only solution to change the windows to that design?

Carpeting is perfectly possible you just need the special underlay that is recommended for underfloor heating. I held off carpeting the hall just in case I thought the lounge and bedrooms were not warm enough. It turns out that they are fine. Do remember solar gain. We have South and West facing windows and we notice how much difference they make to the room stat when the sun is out.

What JohnMo said Just let it tick over all the time. I was so worried that I would cook at night but I don't. Yes it is warm but a very gentle warmth. If you like roasting your feet or burning your face then either get a wood burner or a small electric fire to complement the underfloor.

It was Octopus for us. too. Can I ask if how long it takes to get billed. Sshhhhh but ours was installed in December and we have not heard a dicky bird. Getting a bit jumpy now.

All the utilities. We have moved in (woo hoo!) and still don't have a phone line! Mobile signal is rubbish. So far have had three lots of £50 compensations. Try organising a build with no communications Electricity was going to take three months to install a meter until I told them of husbands extreme bad health when it duly arrived the next day! We were told that all electric suppliers are ceasing the supply of meters. At the time no one was sure who was going to do it (!) but we think, now, that it is UK Power. Worth finding out though.

What sort of power cables are they? A developer next to us had to move high voltage cables underground before he started any work. Might this one turn into a bungalow?

After it is all marked up go around the house and imagine switching on lights etc. Ours is an L shaped bungalow and as you leave the main living room you enter the angle of the L. The hall light switch has been placed about three or four paces away. It is very annoying if not unsafe. It was put there to be near the external door but nevertheless I would have asked for two if I had known. Has anyone solved the problem of siting all living room furniture in the centre of a large lounge and then lighting that area using lamps? Bit annoying to not have a reading lamp of some sort in the centre unless you trail a lead.

Has your builder checked the new bricklayers' standard of work and work ethic? Quality does cost money.

We feel very fortunate that we have lived adjacent to our site for forty years. We, therefore, knew people who knew people and we could, mostly, book trades by reputation. For instance our amazing brickie was working opposite us on a large self build for a well respected civil engineer. The brickie is a one man band, close to retirement, who picks and chooses his work. He actually approached us because he said he would only work on bungalows now. Unfortunately he had an allegiance to the civil engineer neighbour so we did lose him every now and then but we never regretted handing him the plans Same with many of the other trades they all came recommended by the trade on site at the time. We, of course, always went out to quotes but if there was not much in it opted for the recommendation from our trusted on site tradesman. The Civil Engineer over the road installed the sewer system which needed a pumping station. But we trusted that he was right and that he would do a good job. The only one that went wrong was - yes you guessed it - the windows! They were a local carpentry company that were passionate about their work but still managed to muck up all the measurements! They provided us with formers, to the brickies delight, but the windows that followed were different to the formers! Nightmare It all turned out all right in the end and they did not request our final instalment Would we do it again? Never! The worst bit - living in a caravan on site. We stayed on a local campsite for a while and that was much better. You felt that you had left "work" and "come home". That would apply, I think, if you sited your caravan on a friend's driveway perhaps too? It is the - never leaving the site - that takes its toll. The trouble was that the campsite charged £20 per night and the muddy site was free...... Another tip for newbies reading this. When the plans get changed as they surely will - throw away the old ones!!!

Oh yes! We are in a caravan at the moment and have endured Eunice, Franklin and Gertrude. The only blessing is that they dry the mud up! But being as the month of February is known, locally, as "February Fill Dyke - be it black or be it white", the dried mud does not last long

And all of us still building have, probably, built through the wettest winter on record, Brexit and Covid!

Well, I thought I was insured your honour What I took out turns out to be public liability insurance. I may just ring up and check though because the last time I spoke to them they increased the value of the insured property in line with current costings. Turns out the "nice bloke" roofer is coming round to fix it down free of charge At the same time he is going to quote us for replacing the membrane with lead.

Thanks folks. Next question is - house insurance?

We have solar panels fitted and underneath them is some flashing that looks like a rubber type material. It has lifted and is flapping in the wind. They have been fitted about a year or so. I called the roofer who, in conjunction with the solar panel supplier, fitted the panels. He looked at the problem and stated "that's the trouble with that stuff". He has said he will return to sort it out. Chris has said to him that it would be better done in lead and he agreed and offered to price up the job for us. He is, generally, a good bloke. Where do we stand over liability? I asked the roofer and he says he thinks we are not covered from the solar panel side because it is "storm damage". We have public liability insurance on the site but not any other cover. Funnily enough I was just researching house and contents insurance. Too late

Thanks everyone. We have had one quote (C 1.2K) and Chris did mention that he has installed them in the past but the guy did not offer to just supervise Mind you Chris is in his seventies with metal knees, a triple bypass survivor and still fighting bowel cancer so I think we should bite the bullet. Funny about the Telegraph quote because I read today in the same paper that research carried out by DEFRA has found that the risk has been overstated for years. They state that domestic wood burning stoves only account for 17% of all fine particulates as opposed to the previously stated 38%

Thanks @joe90. This is the reply I got to my enquiry - "You will need someone who is a currently qualified HETAS Engineer, as we require a HETAS commissioning report from them for the installation. DO not do it yourselves if not HETAS qualified as when a HETAS engineer comes along, he/she will not sign it off for you. And it will need to be ripped out and re-installed by the HETAS Engineer." Chris, a retired heating engineer, has installed them in the past and my query was - could he do this one. He has corrected us on a roof installation and I get the impression that he takes kindly to being challenged.