vivienz

I'm watching this topic with interest, Ferdinand, as my father in law has largely lost his mobility in the last year and now relies on a wheelchair and negotiates stairs with difficulty. Thanks for the updates.

I have a Krupps now. I gave up on the little Gaggias after my second one died, but my Iberital grinder is still going strong. The Krupps milk steamer setting is very good, better than the Gaggia in my view, it produces a really dense froth for my early morning cappuccino.

I could give up an awful lot of things but coffee isn't one of them. None of that horrible decaf stuff, either; a friend of a friend occasionally sends my way a catering pack of coffee beans by a well know Italian coffee brand. I like a challenge and it would be rude not to accept, wouldn't it? Mind you, Aldi's rich java ground coffee is pretty good.

We haven't yet, but we may do soon. We've just put in for PP for a replacement dwelling in north Dorset and the design has a slate roof which we propose to also use to clad the upper storey of the building, with stone cladding on the ground floor. The planning officer distinctly said 'no render' during a pre-app last year, which we agree with, but as in your case, it will all get rather busy if we have 3 different materials covering the building.

This one is just for general interest; I came across it today on the webstie for Shaftesbury Town Council, but it appears to apply to North Dorset generally. Development Pressure in North Dorset Due to circumstances beyond the control of the Local Planning Authority, North Dorset District Council no longer has the ‘five-year housing land supply’ that is essential in controlling planning applications that aren’t in line with its adopted local plan.The five-year land supply is an assessment of the number of homes that are realistically likely to be built over the next five years. The total includes any shortfall from earlier years as well as a buffer supply should housing not be delivered as planned. The district council has slipped to a housing land supply of 3.42 years’. This is a result of: A very low rate of housing development over the last year - Only 140 houses have been completed against the annual target of 285. Slower progress than anticipated on developments allocated in the local plan – such as the major development site south of Gillingham. Because of the reduced supply, the district council will have to apply the national ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ which will allow more development to take place. This will be applied to all planning applications immediately.Cllr David Walsh, Portfolio holder for planning, said:“This is very frustrating for the council. 10 years of hard work has gone into putting a local plan together which sets out how local residents want the area to be developed. It has been examined and approved by the Secretary of State’s Inspector.“Through this local plan we have allocated land for development and have given planning permissions to developers, but the market is neglecting to bring forward housing. This could mean we may be required to allow development in locations not identified in our current plan, which are neither desirable nor appropriate. “The current system is penalising Local Planning Authorities for the lack of development in their areas, even though they are not actually able to influence the delivery of such development.“Having met and spoken with Planning Ministers and the Town and Country Planning Association, I continue to push for Local Authorities to be given the tools with which to bring forward development on sites with permissions granted. I had hoped that these would come through the Housing White Paper.“We will continue to work with the Gillingham developers to help progress the site so that it can boost our supply in the future.”The district council, alongside West Dorset District Council and Weymouth & Portland Borough Council, has developed a programme of ‘Accelerating Home Building’ work. This will include working with housing associations, private sector developers and land owners to promote housing development and bring sites forward at a faster pace.

Sorry, Peter, there's no mention of that brand in their induction hob reviews. 6 of the top ten (rated at 80% and above) are Bosch, Siemens and Neff. The other 4 are Ikea, AEG, Gorenje and Samsung. Of these, Neff have the most and least expensive in the 10, £670 and £349 respectively. The common flaw of all the induction hobs seems to be poor heat distribution, according to the review.

Well done.

I'm always keeping an eye on induction hobs as this is what I eventually plan to have in our new house. A really interesting (to me!) article is in the latest issue of Which? They compared a best buy Samsung NZ63J977OEK at £799 with a New World IHF60T at £254. The Samsung got a score of 80% whilst the New World got 79%. Barely a gnat's whisker between the two for performance (Which? comment that the Samsung is slightly quicker) but a whopping price differential. The cheapest current supplier for the New World is Argos.

OH and I started off looking at kit type houses - everything from DanWood to Huf. Huf was just to horrify ourselves with what we would never be able to afford! Eventually, though, we decided that none of them really offered what we wanted and by the time you had altered them enough to what you had in mind, you might as well go down the individual route. One of the particular things that put me off the kit houses was the insistence on the foundations being laid to an incredibly tight tolerance but giving very little in the way of help and guidance as to who to use (apart from one company). We bought a plot in north Dorset, near Sturminster Newton, with an old pre-fab bungalow on it that will be demolished and replaced with the new house. I found the plot by keeping a keen eye on Rightmove and property sites. Re. the design, I 'interviewed' several architect/architectural technicians firms as well as seeing a couple at self build shows. Some I really didn't like and so wouldn't use, some were way over the top on their fees but there was still a good selection of reasonably priced, personable individuals that we felt we could work with and who were relatively local to us. It's hard to be open minded and not be overwhelmed at the beginning, but don't be afraid to change your mind - it's your own money you will be spending!

Self builders never retire - they just find different ways of being busy.

Bloody awful. I really, really hate banks - they never truly get what they deserve for messing up people's lives,

It's incredible to realise that the original Voyager missions are still ongoing, too. It always puts me in mind of the early Star Trek film that had Voyager as a key part of the story, nearly 40 years ago now.

Are these put into the public domain with all the other documents that you can find on a council's planning section website? If so, you may be able to check out statements for individual properties that have been passed in your area. I should be getting a look at the statement our architect has drawn up for our submission this week - PM me your email address and I'll send you a copy once I have it. It's a different council, North Dorset, but I daresay that the outline of it will be similar.

The neighbours are all pleasant - we have met them quite a few times, especially whilst we were planting all the native hedging in the spring over a few weekends. There are only 2 full-time sets of near neighbours, so it's not an arduous task to go and speak to them. You never quite know when an objection will crop up, either. One of the things I'm anticipating is a possible objection to the south facing window of the bedroom that's above the main door. Although it's some distance to the cottages, it does directly face them. On the other hand, the cottages have plenty of upstairs windows facing towards the existing bungalow, so who can tell? Re. the waiting, I know that 8 weeks is the theoretical time. The way everything has crawled along so far, I won't be at all surprised if it takes a good deal longer; I just can't help being an optimist! Deepest, darkest Dorset seems to run on a different time standard to elsewhere and it's never faster.

I agree, it's just that there are quite a few comments about councils that aren't being as expedient as they could. I'll be delighted just to get permission, to be honest! Depending on how long I have to wait, of course.

From what I've read here, I thought that requests for time extensions were to be resisted?

We (or rather, our architect) will be submitting for planning permission from North Dorset Council later this week. Cue 8 weeks of nail biting. It seems to have taken a long time to get to this stage, but it's worked out okay in terms of timing on finances and bats as well as a couple of other things, so the enforced exercise in patience has done us no harm. The plot is quite long and narrow, roughly running north south with nice views in all directions apart from due south where there are a couple of neighbouring cottages. Not that they look bad, they're just not as pretty as the countryside. The existing dwelling is a 3 bedroom Woolaway type bungalow, built sometime around 1970 and we want to replace it with a 2 storey, 3 bedroom contemporary build. As it's just the two of us and the cats, we want larger rooms rather than more rooms. Nothing is decided in terms of building system yet - all that and quotes come next, along with everything else that's involved, so I'll be putting plenty of questions on the forum, I hope, in the near future as this is such an invaluable resource. Here's a photo shop mock-up of the proposed house and some floor plans. 1120 - 103DIMS - Bagber Farm Cottage - PROPOSED GROUND FLOOR.pdf 1120 - 104DIMS - Bagber Farm Cottage - PROPOSED FIRST FLOOR.pdf

Excuse the lack of technical terms here, but how about timber cladding just on the gable parts above the windows? That would dramatically reduce the vertical line that they eye runs up and down and horizontal lines of cladding would possibly counteract that strong vertical effect even more. Are you concerned about how others perceive the house, or you want to change it for yourself as well? Do you own any of the land between the location where the photo was taken and the house? If so, planting a hedge closer to the footpath would obscure more of the view for passing walkers/users than something really close to the house, but I'm not sure if it would also obscure views that you want to retain. Regarding other planting ideas, I've seen a great idea for gardens where ivy is grown up and around free-standing pillars. A series of these was done with different species of ivy ranging from small to large leaf sizes and gold/green leaves to almost blue/green. It was really effective and beautiful and doesn't have as high a risk of being taken down by wind as a large screen of ivy/plants would.

The other difficulty with planting is that unless you choose an evergreen climber such as ivy, it would only be an effective cover from April - October. Lots of tall conifers can be grown successfully in large pots - perhaps some of these along the base of the wall would work? Albeit that the 'softening' look would be at the bottom rather than the top, but it would still break up the monolith look and not interfere with the fabric of the building in any way. Also a lot cheaper than cladding if you start with modest sized plants.

We've taken the plunge and Mr Vivienz has put the replacement thermostat in and, voila, it's working! Fingers crossed that this means no more cold showers for the time being. Thanks again for all the help and guidance, all.

Morning all Here are the photos of what's there now and what we've bought. All the working end/access to the boiler controls are at the bottom of the tank; our access panel is located in the ceiling of the ground floor and the heater itself is in a panelled corner of the upstairs, directly behind the shower. I've looked again at the French plumbing spares site and it does say that the 450mm can be replaced by the 270mm version.

I'm bumping this thread as we're back in France and hoping to get our immersion heater fixed this weekend. We ordered all the bits that arrived just before we left last time and have now taken out the old stat from the tank. Please excuse me for what is a really thick question for the brains on this forum, but we've never done this before. The old thermostat is 450mm and the new one is 270mm - does this matter? I'm guessing that there is a reason for the difference otherwise all thermostats would be the same length, but is it one that means we need to get a 450mm version. Thanks, all.

Holy cow, that's awful. What a test of mental strength for you both, in terms of what did happen and, as you so rightly say, what could have happened. We're some way off from any build yet, applying for PP at the start of September all being well, but my word it turns you into a justifiably suspicious and cynical individual. I can't think that I'll trust anyone when we eventually get to our build and will be looking at everything with a fine toothed comb and canvassing opinion here before signing off on anything. Chin up, Ian.

@Trw144 - have a look at Everedge if you want a durable lawn edging. We've used on several borders between lawn/beds/paths and it's really good stuff. Not cheap, but likely to outlast us. https://www.everedge.co.uk/

It depends on how much money is involved and how much effort you will have to put into recovering that sum as to whether it's worth spending your time on recovering it, particularly when you are thinking about continuing the job yourself. Does the builder have insurance? If the potential claim is large enough to warrant it, then that might be the route to go down to recover some costs. Of course, just because an insurer says no, it doesn't mean that they are correct in refusing and even if they stick to their guns, you can do the same and go to the Financial Ombudsman if you disagree with whatever they state to be their final opinion. A time/cost analysis is always good in order to avoid a pyrrhic victory.