ToughButterCup

Quite the most polite way of saying ... Put the horse in front of the cart eh? But @DanDee, we do what we can because we can, because we're engaged, most of all because it's fun.

Our POSIs were sometimes referred to as EcoJoists. But then nobody really cares, as long as you spend the money with 'them'. Key thing is here: ask for designs and quotes using the terms acceptable to the manufacturer - because the joist manufaturers must produce a competent design (CDM2015) Give Steve Grice a ring (our designer / producer ) 01928 360021. He's always prepared to listen and talk stuff through. Ian

And I'm outraged for you. Not one newt, - not a single one - will benefit from your payment. Instead contributions will be made to ecologists mortgages. My whole GCN exercise cost about £6k all in. And - this I hope is a smile inducer for you - it was our children who 35 years ago went round with buckets and 'stole' GCNs from other local ponds and put them in 'ours'. Gave them names, looked after the 'nests' - the works. 'Nest' = a single blade of grass snapped, bent over, both halves stuck together to protect the eggs. I've recently been trying to reclaim their pocket money. Not going too well that. Have you tried suggesting you could create a hibernacular as compensation? We made three or four (out of waste-wood and rubble). NE liked that ....

Well, scaffolders would be sucking their teeth a bit if self-builders all changed to that method. Top idea to make a platform outside a top floor window so you can step off the roof onto that platform and then duck through that window inside the house. Cladding and slips would be easy too. Wonder about the maximum shelf-loading internally .......

Here you are. Comparing quotes is not easy.

@SteamyTea, I am interested in the detail of how you measure the temperature within your house. I have five sensors distributed at what I think are sensible places in the house, kitchen, living room, bedroom, mezzanine and wet room. In working out the average house temperature would it be sensible just to average all the readings from all of the sensors I have? For me, the end in mind is to look at the average difference between the outside temperature of the house and the inside temperature and look at how that correlates to overall consumption. I ask for your advice because I've become increasingly aware that the devil resides in the detail of how things are calculated and I just wondered what you thought.

Here's one way of deciding.... Asleep at 03:00 and someone shouts fire. You have had a good night on the giggle water ... If you think its sensible to ask the question, then the answer is ... Just Do It.

I am wondering why you can't answer that question for yourself by looking at your Building Regs Application? Our BCO noticed that the roof on our piggery is quite small: 20 sq m. She suggested putting the outflow from the gutter on one side of the piggery into the foul drain from our wetroom. The resultant saving in expenditure helped cover the cost of the BCO fees. My direct answer to your question is: IF the outflow from the roof is small, it probably doesn't matter. Ask the BCO when she / he comes on site. The rest of our rainwater outflow was planned for and set out in our B Regs application. Maybe your SUDS (rainwater) plan is tucked away in an Appendix to your application?

There are very few journos around. Most are dogs in a fight without end.

Your post took me back to when I was going through this particular exercise. I went to several committee meetings and to the area planning committee meetings. I wrote up one of the meetings in a blog post here

and that's the core reason to present yourself as superbly-well prepared for your meeting. In command of the local agenda - the local micropolitics the Council micorpolitics a detailed understanding of all recent similar or related cases handled by the Officer concerned - another way of saying, quit the day job and focus on your Planning Application. My OH supervises PhDs. "For non-specialists, getting Planning Permission and building a house on your own is as demanding as any PhD"

I'm not sure that's universally true Jim. For example our LPA has publicly said that they no longer take PC feedback into account.

And thus the reason why I (and others) make the effort to support BH members in their applications for refunds from HMRC. If I, or any members of the teaching teams I worked with, had ever applied logic the way HMRC does (consistently inconsistently) , we would have lost our licence to practice. VAT Reclaims from self-builders is too small a Public Policy backwater for politicians to feel its worthwhile putting a bit of stick about. No votes in it.

Cast iron rule. You attend. Cast iron rule. You make your case. Cast iron rule. You make every single word of the case count. Cast iron rule. You practice what you want to say in front of a competent Critical Friend. Cast Iron rule. Make them reject you , dont by your absence make it easy for them to reject you.

Thats the killer. The day job. OK , you are 'in the business' Gary. But we all know of local trades folk whose partners moan about the leaking roof - ' call yersel' a roofer and you won't mend your own ' : ' I've been after a new front door for year an' ee won't fit me one ' (local chippie's wife walking her dog past our place the other day ). Worse: I bet many of us have heard of marriages that have broken up due to self-builds. And you two .... grafters.

Looks like a re-purposed sauna floor, removed and re-imagined.

Almost all the Internet of Things (IoT or IOT) depend on set of instructions carried on a Protocol. There are a few of them about and I found it quite difficult to understand them - even at a superficial level. Why do we need more than 1? Why the competition between any two or three? Annoyingly complex. Because protocols underly what each manufacturer offers in the market place, we need to know just enough about them to take the decision about which one to use. I found this YT Channel : It explains the concept well. Here's a list of five YT videos that cover the topic briefly and well.

Recovering from a second hip op within 7 months gives time to think about stuff. In our case it's how to apply SMART tech to enable older folk to extend the range of things they can do No matter how you fight it, getting older slows you down. Things stop working. For no good reason some things start to hurt. Other things need almost constant gentle first aid. Some things fall off - or out. Some things disappear. Other things double in size and visibility. But then if you read BH for more than a few minutes, you find yourself surrounded by people keen to improve things in the house. And lots of evidence of what can be done to make some of the challenges outlined above less daunting. But reading the threads can be hard work. The Tsunami of new terms and quaint acronyms add to the difficulty of wading through the wide array of market offers. I need things that can for example switch this on or off, or on and off randomly, or make it easy to switch that thing on when I'm not there tell me that the solar pv has finished charging the water tank tell me I'm likely to get a healthy dose of solar radiation tomorrow - less likely to need to boost my water tank let me look at a plug socket and tell me it's 'on' when I'm the other side of the room. [... ] insert your need here .... I'd like to use this thread to be a low-level introduction to help inform readers about the technical assistance that can be made available to help older folk make purchase decisions based on evidence presented and discussed here and elsewhere make recommendations based on user-experience. make judgements on whether a 'tech' approach to a problem can be thought of as DIY or not summarise common concepts make those concepts easy to understand give practical examples of how BH members have applied 'tech' to make their lives easier - with a particular focus on 'getting-on-a-bit' I'd like this place to be where we can present simply expressed evidence. And a place to encourage, and maybe put a smile in someone's mind.

Yes. They both weather to a beautiful silver colour. The chestnut starts whiter than the Larch, but they both end up roughly the same colour. The larch we had (about £4k's worth) attracts everyone's attention now, and all the more attention when I tell them that - now - it's contraband. They both weather slightly differently according to exposure to the sun, prevailing wind and rain. Any Siberian Larch that exists must (ought?) to have been bought before hostilities commenced, hence I could only recently order 200 LM of Larch (144*14, unsorted, sqaure edged) at £7.39 per LM from ProWood in Wigan. I wanted 4m lengths - but all of that's gone and no more available. 3M lengths only. Annoying. Original price? £3.76 per LM. ( 2 years ago) Chestnut good substitute? Yes. If you can get it at all. But costs more than Larch

The end-in-mind is ? Cleaning? Preserve rather than replace? Create a fungus garden? For each a different workflow .....

As pointed out by the Mods above, the discussion should be about the wall, not the behaviour of people involved in the dispute

A different route would work here.... deduct the cost of the electricity from the final bill. I'm sure that @SteamyTea, @Omnibuswoman and other regulars know that, in the round, and if the circumstances are appropriate, reclaiming unjustifiably incurred expenses from a builder is a reasonable thing to do. I write this post principally for those who lurk here on BH, but then - too late - tell us a tale of woe which ends by telling us they paid their bill in full. If builders make unreasonable charges, pay part of the bill and then agree a final settlement later.

A good argument could be made for HMRC being told to do that (say why) so that others and not least HMRC's own knowledge base can improve. If a public organisation isn't (appropriately) Open and one that can be seen to publicliy learn from its mistakes, then mistrust flourishes. And we don't have far to look for current examples of that . In fact, since the lessons are all the more likely to remain hidden. . Could I suggest you - in your spare time - ask for an explanation please? BH members benefit greatly from articulate members experience. And we all lurvvvve a moan about they nasty HMRC Cock-Wombles.

As written, to me, it seems that you have new built a house. Therefore....

Hello - welcome. I bet you are fizzing with anticipation: remember that. Hold on to it like was a cherished family member about to fall off a - summat or other. Because you'll need to hold on to that memory for (potentially) quite a while. Lets hope not though. The bit of your post that will have hooked more than one or two on this board is And, given that collectively we are more nosey than a herd of under-fed tomcats we need plans, site plans, M+E design, poo tank details, pv design, photos - anything ..... please😁 Pop your ideas into the relevant subsection of the board, that'll release any inhibitions the BH Commentariat may have had. Cos we like other people's problems more than our own. Helps us treat our own procrastination better when we try to solve others' problems.😏