Triassic

Ah, that's the stuff, I bought some labelled as stainless steel, now I find out it wasn't, it's going he rusty and fallen out. Can you remember the brand?

I closed the gap between my cladding and the timber frame using stainless steel knotted mesh stuff, as suggested by others here. It turns out that the supposed stainless steel pan scourers weren't, so they've rusted and fallen out. Can anyone suggest where I can get stainless steel mesh stuff or pan scourers? Ideally something that is actually stainless steel and not just described as stainless steel !

Could we see a photo of the ducting?

The Lake District has become Britain's 31st World Heritage site, UNESCO has announced. House values on the up! Plannng becomes more of a nightmare! The Lake District a World Heritage site, Is this a good thing?

Just a quick update on my mate Allan's xperience with his builder. Having insisted on a payment schedule before work started the builder has submitted four invoices for work done. Of these only one was correct, the rest included work started but not completed, the schedule was based on work completed. As a result Allan and the builder now meet on site every Friday to agree what's been completed, what's part completed and what needs to be done to get paid. After a shaky start things appear to be settling down, this has been help somewhat by the builder subcontracting some of the work to someone with more experience.

Up to last year I lived in Cheshire, their disposal sites had AMPR cameras fitted, I got pull up one day and told I'd been too many times and not to come back for at least two weeks. Luckily I was nay four miles from another site in another county, so went there instead.

The price is to supply all labour and materials required for the foundations - Excavate and level the plot as per levels Install stone drainage layer Install drainage, radon sump, service pipes and perimeter land drains Install insulation (design by Hilliard Tanner) and Radon barrier Install steel ring beams and floor mesh (Install UFH pipes - I'm doing this) Cast concrete, power float finish. The price also include a small amount of block work to form a feature fireplace and two internal walls. oh and £4500 of preliminaries (not sure what this includes). Having removed some doubled up items and the preliminaries i get the price down to around £226/m2.

Just a quick update on my DIY insulated foundations. I considered for a moment doing all the work myself, but the reality is that its too big a job for me. So after a bit of searching I found two local companies with some experience of doing insulated foundations and asked them to quote for doing the whole job. Fast forward a couple of months and I've just received the first quote and as its a rainy day here I thought I'd spend time analysing the quote. The problem I'm having is not having a benchmark against which to compare the quote with. The bottom line is, if I look at the price per M2, it comes out at £290/M2 . So how dos this compare to your insulated foundation costs?

Rain always puts me off work, I hate being wet all day. Time to find some indoor jobs, I've just got my first foundations quote, maybe I'll analyse that and try and see why it's a lot more than expected!

What is the red dial for, is that the reset, what does it say on the label ? Maybe you turn it to do a reset? What make is the white tank, what make is the immersion heater? If we knew this we could search for instructions online?

I'm well on the way to completing 1 and 2. Given up on 3. This weeks list is fit new lights in our temporary accommodation, repair small hole in wall and paint and gather together her furniture paint kit - sander, undercoat, top coat etc ( these are in my garage, she won't go in there on her own, too spooky!!).

I have two "to do" lists, one is for the new build and the other is her Ladyships "to do" list, this resides on the front of the fridge and is updated so there is always three jobs she wants doing this week. The only time I get a 'telling off', is if I fail to complete her list.

I've just blown up another large disc grinder, anyone spotted any on offer?

Let's just hope it's not stolen between now and the start of the self Build !

So I've got my insurance sorted, the cabin and the storage containers etc are on a specialist domestic policy and I'll get a self build policy once I have a start date for the build. Just one thing to sort out now, insurance for my digger, they won't cover it as part of a specialist domestic policy. Any suggestions as to how to insure a digger worth £5k?

Right, no visible gutter, then where will the water drain to?

I'm just demolishing a 1935vintage timber frame bungalow and none of the steel lintels or the nuts and bolts were painted and they only have light surface rust. The nuts were finger tight and all unscrewed using finger force only.

Rather than a caravan we built a small cabin, hence the suggestion that a domestic policy would cover us. Mind you, it's also got to cover our storage containers and the contents of a double garage. I assume my digger will be covered by the self Build policy?

Substandard and counterfeit cable, labelled with fake official standards and accreditations, is one of the biggest kicks to the UK economy, and, worse, a potential killer, say cable industry leaders. Substandard Cables After a six-year campaign to clean up cable, industry White Knights are taking the crusade to Westminster and calling for better market surveillance and for all cable sold in the UK to be independently third party approved. While cable failure can cost £millions when re-fitting large and complex projects, more importantly it can cost lives. Installers and suppliers are victims too. Buying as specified in good faith and carefully matching specifications to labels and cable markings often means nothing. Despite their best efforts, installers and suppliers’ livelihoods and reputations are at stake. The Approved Cables Initiative (ACI), which launched in 2010, investigates all kinds of suspect cable — be it armoured, house wiring flex, fire-performance cables and more. While house fire causes are often recorded as a ‘faulty appliance’ — there is every chance a fault could lie with the fake or under-specified cable fitted. So where does the problem lie: Standards aren’t wholly adhered to in the UK. There are too few checks on imported cables. About 70% of cable sold in the UK is imported and, of that, ACI believes half doesn’t meet a recognised Standard. Some distributors encourage the under specification of cable by manufacturers. source https://medium.com/@mauriziobragagni/britains-counterfeit-cable-the-ticking-time-bomb-e9fce0e38127 ........ Should we we be Worried?

The broker has gone away to look for insurance policies to cover us. Out of interest and to give me a bench mark, how much can I expect to pay for a self build insurance policy and are all such policies to same in terms of what's covered? One final thought, if living n site is not covered by the self Build policy, will a standard domestic policy be sufficient to cover everything else?

£5 or 6 k is not a lot of capital, I'd say one of the first things you need to do is start saving. Start by looking at the frivolous things you buy and ask yourself why? Look at your living costs, could you reduce any of these, switch to a cheaper tariff, ditch extensive contracts for phones, TV, gym etc. Every pound saved now will make your self Build journey easier.

My roofer is an old school traditionalist, when I asked how many slates to order he said the supplier will want to sell you more than you need, dont bother, just order enough to cover the actual area of a random with, deminishing course roof. At the end he had twenty small slates left. The supplier wanted to send my 10% extra for breakages, we had six break.

I was told that self build insurance only covers self build and not the self builder living on site.

So having spent the last couple of hours ringing around, it looks like we need two policies.... 1. a general household policy for our cabin, garage, storage containers, digger and other bits and bobs, 2. a self build policy to commence when we actually start the build. It will be interesting to see what prices I'm quoted when the broker gets back to me.

So what about the HotPoint fridge freezer that caused the fire? Will we be having a total recall of all defective appliance! ? Will we be adding appliance manufacturers to the list of those criminally responsible?