ToughButterCup

Whassis about then eh? I mean just how much mind altering substance do you have to take to do this to an innocent tap connection , eh? Or: how to make the easy super, unecessarily hard. The monbloc tap , two innocent little holes... Choogle up to Screweez, and talk to the lass with the dry hacking cough and a sweat on ... (not jokin') : Could I have one of your finest PUSH-FIT FLEXIBLE MONOBLOC TAP CONNECTORS 15MM X M10MM please miss ..... (Oops, notice she's pregnant and has a highly polished sparkler on her ring finger ?) And she gives me this .... So, let me get this right. They give you one connector that's easy to tighten (left hand one because it sticks out of the bottom of the monobloc) and one which needs me to get a pair of tweezers to nudge the friggin' thing tight. Why FFS make the simple hard? Why Buildhub, why, and why me ? And don't tell me it's "Because yer 'ere lad" Please tell me I have missed the obvious. I'd be so pleased if that was the case. Please. Please.

+1 for @Onoff's recommendation : takes a lot of getting-in to (for me anyway) But is very helpful. It doesn't explain that you need to buy several diameters of earthing sleeve, though , and why you can't buy less than a mile of it at any one time. Or why the Knipex pliers you bought and that were borrowed by the electrician were to be found - one month after it was fitted - under the new fridge-freezer. I now have two pairs. ? I'm going to use my leftover earthing sleeve to add a bit of zip to the grandchildren's straws........

All of us have a distillery. Its called the gut. Thats why its impossible to have a zero blood / alcohol level.

Just thrown a load away 'en oi? ? You star Peter. I had seen them ,but on closer inspection, I see they are saucer-shaped : in other words not as thick as they at first appear. Tiled under the kitchen work surfaces ... just about the only thing we've done bang on right..... You can do us a PAT test on yer way past next year Dave...... ?

Here's a really useful resource for you to read.

Swearing and Ibuprofen's done it . Now to find a bit of melamine or something to get it back. Never without pain these days (ahhhhhhhhhhh, poor me ?)

Mr Eight Fingers of which a mere six consent to do any useful work calling .... ( the other two are good at holding liquid soap because of the scaring) Our chippy thought he'd have a joke by making the space for our dishwasher one mm bigger that the 600 needed, so there's half a mm either side... well not even that because the side of the opening isn't plumb. And now that he's sitting on a deckchair sunning himself somewhere - phone off - router unplugged - earmuffs on, I need some help. To me, the dishwasher is effectively jammed in. Back in the good old days, I'd have just heaved and sworn a bit, and the - as yet unconnected - dishwasher with a bit of sweat, would have moved. Now I need to be a bit cleverer about it. I've looked at loads of YT videos, and while some are nearly what I need, none are quite right. I think I need a really simple thin sheet of something like PTFE. There isn't much vertical space left for me to raise the front of the damn thing, let alone enough play to rock the washer forward to get something under the rear legs. I've tried to find where to buy a 700mm wide sheet of PTFE - no luck. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough. At the moment, I think I'm not far off deciding to take the worktop off. If ya cant take a joke Ian, don't start.... Anyone got a bright idea?

I found exactly that problem too. The answer that works for me is to take inspiration from what I see, and try to find the time to emulate / make / do / buy / beg / something so similar that it doesn't matter. Bit like buying wine from a winery that's from the same area ( Fr. terroire) but doesn't have the expensive label. Same geology, same climate, same orientation but a fifth of the price. And its fun trying to work out which wines match those criteria.

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 ...