ToughButterCup

Since our Final Inspection under the BCO of our choice, the LA becomes responsible for Building Control under a process called Reversion Can the LA Building Control Office charge what it likes for their BC under Reversion service? And if they can, can the amount be disputed? Our LA, Wyre Borough, publishes a list of fees for all sorts of services, including Building Control. But it doesn't publish a fee for Reversion. The fee may well be individually determined The LA wants to charge us £750 : that may or may not be reasonable. Doing a bit of Due Diligence, I see that our neighbouring Local Authority also suggests that Reversion work may be individually determined. On what basis are Reversion fees set? Our original fee (at the start of the build) was £600. Now the LA wants to charge more than that for cannot be as much work as the fee for a brand new build. The one thing that I really have learned during this build is that some people and organisations (whether they realise it or not) think that self-builders are too stupid to know any better. Have any BH members had their BC fees determined under Reversion? Did you get the feeling that the office concerned just thinks of a number and doubles it?

Shame: T+C Vibro were - for us - excellent. I would not inflict our contractor on anyone. Proximity - 13 meters.

We'd both had too much giggle water to drink....

@MikeSharp01 I've always thought that Mike talks a lot of sense. And it would seem I now have proof positive. Courtesy of Geberit. We have Toulouse, one upstairs, the other down : 2 Geberit Tuma Classics : Botticelli-spraying dervishes they are, bit of a shock first time, but you soon get used to it. Brilliant for lower back injuries. Wish we'd bought the bum-drying version now. But you live and learn. They need to to be descaled every so often. And of course, I forgot. The mechanism refused to work. Being Swiss, it dug its heels in and simply refused. Rang Tech assistance. Very nice man. Very nice Tecchie indeed. Would I please download the App. What? An app for an arse-spraying dervish? Yep Did so. First job(by) : update the firmware (on the toilet itself 😶) Click here. Job done. Next job : initiate descaling. Job done You might like to have a look through the rest of the app says the Tecchie Lad. And what do I find on the app? You can use your phone as a the remote control for the spraying arm. Thats right, you finally have an excuse to take your phone into the loo with you. Just to prove it, here's a screenshot I took when I was ---- Yes, you can have cold water or warm water...... an idea starts to germinate, you make the spray really strong or soft ... tick tick tick 👹 It works by Bluetooth .... the signal is really strong.... With me yet? My mate comes round and blags a couple of beers. You're ahead of me now aren't ya? Yes. I did. But I'd made a mistake in my logic. @MikeSharp01 is exactly right. The IoT was - in this case - an opportunity for a Ne'er-do-well. He was standing up for a tinkle. Not sitting down. Duuhhhhhhhh. The sprayer came out and sprayed when it was told to. And the sprayer jet made him look like he'd peed his trousers. Ne'er-do-well is too kind a term. Forty Hail Marys and sit on the Naughty Step for a while.

In ze Vaterland, zer is a sing called a Jalousiereinigungsyetm (Blinds Cleaning System) . Zis cleans ze indeewidual blades of ze shutter or ze blind. Available on Amazon here . There are many more available elsewhere. Vorsprung durch Reinigung ! (Progress by buying cleaning things until the thing is cleaner than your neighbour's, thus making them jealous : rinse , repeat) On a more prosaic note, I found that a combination of a car-wheel cleaning brush and a hoover made an unpleasant job easier . Cheap. Effective. Works well outside and in. Grandchildren can be bribed too.

Our design was provided by Tanners (Eire) . One sentence in an email from him about the foundation design saved his fee many times over. The design 'type' is called an Insulated Raft. - One of the consequences is - for example - that we have had no heating at all in the house so far this year - and the ground floor is tiled throughout. We used ground improvement columns - not piles - because they cost about one third (£6,500 ) that other piling contractors were threatening to charge (10m by 10m house, 64 'piles' ) Heres the build-up from piles upward

Our piling design included Foam Glass blocks at the head of most of our piles to get over the problem you raise. (Those supporting a structure outside the 'lived-in' envelope didn't need the foam glass blocks )

Waffle. The older I get the less I like it. Thats why I -now- think differently about one particular comment made - in a public meeting - by our objecting and objectionable neighbour ... "Eee's in it ter mek munney: 'at's top 'n borrom on it - an 'at's why 'ee shoudn bee allowed " The stupidity and venality of the remark shook the audience a little: enough to distract from a valid, material consideration: being overlooked. The issue was never discussed.

Welcome to self-building. We're nearly at the end of our build. Only one thing is true on every single self-build. Each build is an accumulation of compromises. Many (most?) of which are known only to the builder. Visitors to our house never see them. Unless I point them out. And ten years from now, who's going to notice the compromises on your build? Except your wife who will allow herself a quiet smile...... Yes, Brownie Points cost.

What's SWMBO's solution to the problem?

Welcome. I suggest you read the decision notice really carefully . Look for the reasons given for rejection. Maybe copy and paste them here for us to be able to help more. Ian This document may help. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/830643/190910_Tech_Guide_for_publishing.pdf

That job - switching lights off - has been mine since marriage, especially since the evolution of teenage children. Thank God that stage only lasted ten years. I understand from mates thats a common dad-job . 🙄

.... Behaviour altered to what? On a positive note, every teenager would have left the UK. *king good idea .....

Well, you at least will understand when I say : "How do I know what a Gallic Shrug is....?"

Hello, welcome. The title of your post leads me to caution : are you sure you're going to get Planning Permission? I ask because it would be horrible to put a lot of effort into the details of the build , only to be refused permission.

From bitter experience I offer the following. Context is important. Couple of quick questions. Do any officials or planners or ecologists have dated documentary evidence of the property - especially, are there any photographs? How well do you know the ecologists involved? How arsey or co-operative is the LPA's ecologist (not yours) ? Let me describe what happens locally. A year before any official gets to a site where there is a hint of wild-life, and the owners live out-of-the-way (on a farm or behind screening trees) site owners kill the protected species in that location. (I've described how a few times on this board - but across a wide range of locations, pig manure works a treat it seems). IF there is no documentary evidence of your site after examination by the ecologist AND your site is 'out-of-sight', then locally, owners would just get on and do it. I'm not suggesting that that is what I would do, nor suggesting you should, but on my build, since I did not follow local tradition, I spent about £6000 more than needed, and the project was delayed by 9 months. The micropolitics of this type of issue is extremely important. Tread lightly.

Welcome. Thats the kind of post that's really appreciated here : offering help rather than a long description of a knotty problem. Photo of the silver trowel please..... ☺️

... neatly describing why builders call architects eejits and architects say that builders never follow their drawings anyway Another way of putting the same thing is : two groups of Competent People (CDM 2015) - for whose services we pay - do what the Hell they want and blame the other when things go breasts up Which is why - for us paymasters - a sense of humour is compulsory.

Exactly right.

Clearer display than the Bosch .................

Look for @Jeremy Harris recommendation on this board. I agree with the point above: you're looking for relative temperature difference. In a fit of lust, I bought the Bosch colour thermometer a couple of years ago. Works a treat. It's good enough to act as a thermal imager to identify rats 20 meters away. Yes, @SteamyTea, yes, I know.

I needed 64 - cost £6,500. Town And Country Vibro John Ashton is yer man 01772322044 • Work 07885673213 • Mobile

Unlucky @markocosic : very often rats regard their dead brethren as lunch. Waste not want not.

Their teeth never stop growing. They have to gnaw. They'll gnaw through thin metal mesh.

Mice? Mice? Try our rats. Since we live next to what has recently become a pig-farm, we have some right cocky fewkers. Once they'd eaten through the rodent mesh, they were into our roof space (all 80mm of it) like , well, rats up a drain. Here's the kicker : they continued to gnaw in the roof space immediately above our bed head. Sciffle scuffle scuffle. Sleep impossible. As luck would have it, when the rats struck, I hadn't taken the scaffolding down. So - in my Jim-Jams at 10:30 of a freezing evening - flip-flops frozen to my feet, I'm up the scaff ladder like a homesick angel. Pitch black outside. Nuts somewhere in my throat Grab a spare scaff pole which was lying on the boards. Using that pole, bang really hard on the barge board - hard. Hard enough to warm me up a bit. I wuz furious. SWMBO shouts from inside - "What da Fekkety Fek's that - - - sweetheart? " ( a bit late that endearment - sweetheart) "Lesser-spotted pole-rat darlin" "Well it's still nibblin' " Bollerks; Bang very hard, start to slip on the frozen scaff boarding. From up there, I look down at the lane next to our house: pitch black except for a red-flashing set of lights and a dim haze reflected from a hi-viz jacket . - No street lights - Ooooops: my near neighbour walking her dog. It had stopped to look at the eejit up a scaff this late of an evening. "Hi Ian, howzit goin' ? Cold up there is it? " "Can you tell from down there [.... name redacted ...] . I'm amazed." Only then did I notice that my legs and withers (but not my rippling-muscled torso) were illuminated by the light from our bedroom window. Its amazing what tremendous night-vision women have. I thought it was cold enough for it to be invisible. But no, apparently . Anyway, local Rat Man came and sorted it all out. And I ordered a new night-sight for my gun. Worthy opponents, rats. Worthy opponents.