Cpd

I love using second hand and up-cycled materials I get a lot from various Facebook sites but I have good contacts at various builders merchants and they send huge amounts of stuff my way after stock takes, building a staircase out of old whiskey barrels and recycled wood at the moment. I love the challenge of using mismatched stuff and trying to make it look good. My property consists of 3 buildings and a cabin so i have plenty of places to use stuff. Got given gutters the other day, they are galvanised and no rust but I expect they won’t last for ever so I painted them black with car body under seal / wax oil. Had to hand make all the brackets...... well I did not have to .....but had some brackets from another type of gutter so put them in the forge and re bent them on the anvil just because I can........ yes it all takes a lot longer and sometime cash savings are not there but you end up with a bespoke job. People love my cabin I build as it is very quirky and the attention to detail is always remarked upon. For me it’s a way of life, I enjoy fluffing around making Stuff day in day out. I have the advantage that I live on site all the time as I make my money from tourism So I need an endless list of projects to keep me busy..... I have at least 5 years of non stop projects on the go right now !

There goes my idealistic dream.........back to the drawing board !

Agree, next time I will go with the timer only version.

I went with this one, it has a constant silent trickle and bursts into life when the bathroom light is switched on at which point it is not quiet. Clears the room well and I would buy again.

Love the simplicity of it and the structure, no good to me as no local suppliers and transport to my island would be very cost prohibitive, gabions are my only real choice as I have plenty of stone to fill them on site or close by and I can fit a lot of empty gabions in my 10x5 trailer.

Got to agree there...... for what that are one would think they would be cheaper...... boohoo said piggy !

All looking very business like, hopefully some good weather for roof work. Keep the pics coming!

What a steal ! Great way to cut a big lawn.

Tempting..... but it would still be a very expensive trip with my Land Rover and trailer ! Just about to start digging 200m of ditch by hand for my water pipe...........ffs ! It’s a strange old world, 8 years ago I could of happily purchased a brand new machine and now I have my old rusty spade..... I’m happy so that’s the main thing, well that’s what I am going to be telling myself when I’m knee deep in the bog trying to force a water pipe down while being eaten alive by midges and sucked to death by leaches !

If it’s anything like the Inverness store the discounts start ramping up pretty quickly as the close date draws near, i kept popping in until what I wanted had 80% off. Got a whole load of door hardware for 90% off. Stoked.

@Declan52 Ooo do you have a link, might be cheaper than going with the velux ones.

I have put 4 velux in my shed when I was re roofing it as a way of increasing light and ventilation. What I did not expect was the huge heat increase ! It really gets hot in a very short time when the sun is out and I am just glad they can be opened to get some cooler air in ! I am slowly insulating the building so hopefully in colder weather that solar gain can be utilised. I will also look at getting some velux blinds.

Well I won’t have it that bad, about 200m with no digger access with moderate ground conditions, shale and along a cross slope. Luckily we are in a very mild location, close to the sea on the west coast with very few frosts so it will be a minimalist trench ........

@PeterW your full of good ideas ! Will do.

Moving it forward today, the front just lifts off as does the roof all within a few seconds so that there is plenty of access. Need to tidy it up a bit, paint to the same colour as the shed and wire it up, also need to start plumbing the tanks up and then dig a very long trench for the pipe......

Seriously nice looking roof ! Well done.

Always trying to get to grips with what’s a minimal build up for UFH ..... my cottage refurbishment has been on hold due to ill health and family priority’s but I want to get it going again next year, I am taking the time to review some of my original designs and this thread has prompted me to look at my hopes to retrofit UFH. In short it’s a very small footprint house approx 10x5 meter internal floor area with 2.2 m ceiling. I can get a max of 90mm calotex into the floor and had intended to use UFH run of the ASHP with it also running radiators in the two bedrooms upstairs and the bathroom. I hear people say 100mm is a realistic minimum, @Temp says 80mm not enough and I am smack in the middle with a possible 90mm ! The downstairs room would be very well sealed with 100mm calotex in the walls and the ceiling is well insulated between floors, upstairs is even better insulated with 200+ in the vaulted ceilings and 100mm in the walls. Is UFH still an option in a small build like this where there is only 90mm of possible floor insulation ?

Bit more progress today between other jobs.

Bit more done today.......

Got my wall pointed (well the bit for the box) and my fixing points for the back board (dukes.....?) just got to work out how deep to make the box, it will be about 1.5 meters wide to accommodate all the bits and bobs and I am going to line it with 25mm Calotex and try and build in a low wattage heater I have lying around. The idea of the heater will be to wire it into a switch or something that will only come on if the temp drops below a certain point.... any ideas ? Ok that’s as far as I can go today as other tasks need to be dealt with. The back board is solid core shower board, a reject from a builders merchant that I have in stock, the front and sides will be like the existing cladding.

Can people recommend a simple good CO2 logger / recorder please ?

Our minds think alike, due to its position it needs to come out of the top, the box I am building sits below the roof of the shed, I have moved the box far enough away that if i build a small section of removable lid I can extract the bulb, ........ I have not put the gutters on the shed roof yet and only now realise that I did all my measurements to the edge of the tin roof..... ,, FFS ! I better remember this tomorrow morning !

I’m still looking into rads for upstairs and ufh downstairs. If you have recommendations for good quality fan assisted rads to run of the low temps put out by an ASHP I would be interested as there seems to be a wide cost difference in these..... I am thinking fan assisted as i am interested in as fast a response time as possible.

@jamieled from travis Perkins price was inclusive of delivery. I am very happy with them. Been playing with the plumbing today, all good fun.

Not messing about then ! Great work.