ToughButterCup

Yes. But, tanks are often quite large things. What are you going to do when your garage disappears without touching the sides into the tank: you need a cunning plan for that. ?

The ones suggested above do. You can set them to come on, and stay on, when the light level drops. They recharge themselves the following day. My idea of fit and forget.

Welcome Heather. The answer to your question is available at two levels: national and local. The National framework is available for you to examine with very little effort . Have a look through some of the resources in this google search. They should be read with caution, perhaps even respectful skepticism. Ya never know who's writing wot on 'tinternet - or why. Hmmmm - applies to this post too. '... absolute no-go ... ' I bet you can find applications which have succeeded in AONBs. It'd be useful to research those that have succeeded because ..... In relation to the area of interest for you , the answer is harder to find, but it only takes a bit of effort. Look at the websites of the Local Planning Authorities. Search for planning applications that match the idea that you have. See who has been refused PP, and who hasn't, and work through why the applications were accepted or rejected. The answer to your question is inevitably highly influenced by local considerations. Network - ask as many local folk as you can and listen to the answers. I think , like us, you may well be in for the long haul. Only took us 30 years or so. Stick with us and we'll help as far as we can. Best of luck Ian

Without doubt the most unpleasant job, bar none, during our build. We ended up cutting on a table saw, outside backs to the wind, dust extraction full on , masks and face visors and still coughed and spat the whole time. Dreadful job. You have my sympathy.

A vote for Gaulhofer - mainly because you can tune the hinges and striker plates to within a gnat's crotchet. But, they made my eyes water when I bought them. Sexy as Hell, though ....

For how long and to what end? I have just installed 16 of these to light the footpath between two houses and to help with unloading the car . They come on for half a minute or so, or however long an object moves within its sensor area. They are cheap and perfect for what we want. Installed all of them within an hour.

And while you are at it, offer your loo for anyone in the row who is desperate. Good PR: nobody will take you up on it.....

Code for because they didn't understand it, there's a market opportunity here , or more succinctly '...[they] were simply lazy ...' There's a lesson in there about safety and personal responsibility for all of us. That why respectful skepticism is such a useful habit to develop.

But @joe90, natural insulation is often called Adipose Tissue. In humans anyway

Dave, that's really nice. I should guess that a sustantial part of the cost was caused by the curved detail, and I bet that glass is bevelled - not cheap either. Well done. Now, off to fetch a bit of old MDF for a loo door. She's on the war path.....? Can't imagine why.....

Here you are .... 4 years in, no maintenance As Gary says ( @nod ) says they are pricey, but we'll re-sell them at about £80 or so. Won't get the VAT back, though. We (well, I ) smashed one by driving over it with a trailer that was loaded with a 3 tonne oak tree: the mat bridged some deep ruts which I had not filled in. Was a bit piddled off until a visitor told me that whenever he made the same error, he cut the mat up into appropriately sized chunks and used them as ersatz paving stones. There is no down-side to buy something like these mats: same logic as buying your own scaffolding. Pssst, wanna buy a few? ?

I have ( well, had, we don't have a chimney now) a horror of something like this happening to us. Ever since I went to Glasgow and looked at the exhibition of how the Gorbals (and surrounding areas) were 'upgraded' . In part because of the way that chimney heads were blown off by a storm and killed about a score of people. If you look at the chimneys now - they are massive things - they nearly all have metal stays. This is the most accessible link I could find

I'll pop out, have a look and get back to you ....

You are very welcome indeed. Your first post I see, so you probably don't know how to use the site search engine: it's very powerful: lets take the first question: '... What’s the most/least people have paid for connecting utilities? ...' Take the key words : connecting utilities . Top right of every page > search copy and paste > connecting utilities - and this happens over 1000 results - too many Now play with the filters for example connecting AND utilities or in content titles only like I have linked to here There are more search options, some are extremely useful, others not so much. Your effort really will be repaid. There's very little that hasn't been covered before .... Go on, enjoy poking round Ian

Plastimatts or ground mats like these are maybe an idea.... We bought 10, over the years have smashed two, and we should get our money back on the other 8. Three or four visitors have commented on them - and every lorry driver does: on our mud , they are a godsend. Even better if you have a digger and can sling them to a bucket ....

We bought £50 worth of offcut of artificial turf (5m by 5m) and put it outside the bits of house we wanted to protect. (kitchen, back door) I ran a branch of our hose and sprayer to the artificial turf edge, and put a boot cleaner there, so everyone could scrape and spray their boots before using the loo. Its been down now for 4 years and has real grass and other stuff growing through it. The chickens do their bit of cleaning up of bits of food, and contribute just as much mess as they clear away. The dogs hoover the rest up Wait for a couple of dry and preferrably windy days , the mud crusts up well, and then get a leaf blower on it - comes up like new. Best £50 we spent.

Thanks for that: didn't know they could be adjusted. I'll get on to them. Air-tightness isn't an issue because it won't be tested in 'closed-but-not-shut' mode. The orientation of our house is such that it's open to the southwest, albeit protected somewhat by large mature trees 25 meters away. But we aren't tucked away in a convenient wind-free microclimate nook. The window opens into a Winter Garden, and I'm almost sure its orientation contributes to windspeeds especially if they are coming from the southwest. Bit like a funnel. I'll give Craig ( @craig ) a ring. Yes @Ferdinand, she's going to put a large summat-or-other in the Winter Garden - so that the area will become more like a Kevin Mc-Wot's-Is-Name -type breeze corridor. Ya daren't say that ( breeze corridor) out loud in Lancashire. Get lynched. Does it annoy your cat @joe90 ? Does ours ...

Our Gaulhofer slider howls just like a wolf. Doesn't bite, just howls. It's huge (3m or so), gorgeous, easy to move, everyone that sees it loves it, plays with it. Asks how much it cost. ? It came with a free wolf; every time the wind blows from the South West it howls. It only does so if the window is closed over, but not shut (locked). The window needs a baffle of some sort - perhaps like a finger protector. But this one needs to stick a sock down the wolf's maw. Ideas? Thank. Ian

There are templates (the RIBA has one) but they're used on large projects. I spent weeks trying to answer the same question myself about four years ago. Maybe there are one or two now, but they're not in widespread use I think. You are in excellent company here. We've almost all been through this mill, damaged by it, pissed off by it, bitten by it, call it what you will. After 5 years at it, I'm so punch drunk I just about manage to look daily at the bottom line (whats left in the bank) . Sometimes I can only manage it weekly, sometimes I wince and avoid looking. The other day SWMBO - a super-careful administrator with a gimlet eye for uncomfortable levels of detail said ' Just book him whenever , we'll afford it somehow.' Could have knocked me flat. Building gets you like that . I think there are probably one or two BH members who have been able to do what they like, when they like here. Its the norm to be scared legless by the money issue.

Heavy Metal LED strip eh? Bit of a tear-away aren'tcha, eh? Go on admit it. Next job : embarrass the kids even more.

I'm not sure how the Exit Fee relates to the question of whether I should be charged at a different rate than the one I was on... ? Perhaps I didn't make it clear. British Gas took over from Ebico when that company failed. Can British Gas, after taking over Ebico's customers, charge me more than Ebico did? Can it charge me a standing charge when Ebico didn't?

'Twas Jezza of blessed memory who told me to be quick and, ably backed up by that Scottish Sparkler (see what I did there ? Bonfire night and all that?) @ProDave I opened an account withEbico (who, when unmasked called himself Robin Hood Energy). Well Ebico , just as Jezza predicted , blew its fuse. And along comes British Gas, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tell me that they have my best interests at heart. Yeah, right..... Except that they say they're charging me a standing charge .... can they do that ? Don't they have to offer me exactly the same tarrif as I was on with Ebico? (16 p per kWh; 0 standing charge) (Got the capitalisation right there didn' I @SteamyTea ? )

Maybe this shines a bit of light in the hole?

I was hoping it was like hair gel or something . So @Onoff could contemplate making his own heating system

There, right there: that's the conflict of interest I alluded to earlier in the thread. The builder or in our case plumber who came to see our place, sucked his teeth and said; "Yer wan' a 10 killerwot boiler 'n sum decent rads in thur mert " nodding in the direction of our partly completed house. "But it's being built to a passivhaus standard" says I. "Aye, 'as whay tha needs nu more than 10 killerwots" The guy specifying the system often gets to put it in. Not in this case.