Stewpot

OK. Somebody mentioned Thames Water, and I thought your comment related to that. You do have much higher charges, but even so, a bill of £800 per person per year does represent quite high usage. But on the subject of dog shit... I don't have a dog, but I am a dog-lover, know several people who have them, and often walk with them. One of my pet subjects is the bags of dog shit that some owners seem to think will improve the amenity of a place if they hang them on fences, branches and gate posts for other people to admire. Or leave them in car parks, by benches, or just put somewhere nicely where we can all benefit from them. I just don't get it. What are these people thinking?

Maybe I misunderstood the line of the thread - I thought SteamyTea was complaining about Thames Water's prices. I did wonder what the reference to beaches was about.

Just to be clear - is the glass steaming up on the inside of the outer pane, or the outside? If it's the former, you have failed DG units.

Seriously? This suggests you have a leak. Extrapolating from my last Thames Water bill, yours equates to a daily usage of 900 liters per person per day. I'm only in a small terrace house at the moment, but my annual bill is a small fraction of yours.

The whole thing looks a right pig's ear, to me. Having the ridge not quite match the original like that looks badly thought out. It results in everything being out of kilter, and bodged, and makes me think there will be a stack of other problems we can't see. The original facia board seems to be continued along the extension, but the gutters don't quite align. The perpendicular line of the pantiles is askew, which implies the roof may not be square, and because of this it looks like there isn't enough room to tuck the bottom pantile under the original, so flashing has been used instead of a tile. And what's going on in the bottom right corner of the roof? It looks like the hip does a dog's leg. Then look at the far right corner of the wall, with its projecting corner bricks - another sign that things aren't square. And there's that narrow Velux squeezed in next to the dormer, and no real attempt to match the original bricks. It looks badly planned and badly executed.

I think it'd be hard to compare - spray foam out of a can is pretty uncontrolled. The density would be variable at best, and it may have little integrity. I once had the idea of taking a casting mould of a motorbike fairing using spray foam; it didn't work, and my main memory of it is that there is surprisingly little of the stuff in a can. When using it for gap filling, etc., it seems to go a long way, but in a modest void I got through many cans of the stuff. I'm assuming by 'spray foam' the OP is meaning spray cans of the stuff.

As far as I can see, things like camera mounts, laser levels, and other optical sort of stuff that may need tripod mounting, tend to use UNC threads (American). I suppose you may get away with Whitworth, if you can find any these days. Except for my telescope tripod, which is an M10.

People have build sheds from stranger things, but I don't think spray foam would be at all economical. You will use far more cans of the stuff than you imagine, and it ain't cheap in that form.

No nastiness here. Weirdness and strange ideas, for sure, but mostly just helpful people. It's a nice idea, but I think it could cause all sorts of problems. The neighbours may be OK with that idea now, but the neighbours will change at some point, and the new ones may say 'get orf my property', or words to that effect. Or one of them may want to pull down their building. Or what if damage was caused... Boundary disputes ensue, and as my old dad once discovered, the only people who win from boundary disputes are the lawyers.

I've emailed the solicitors, asking why they're even asking the seller the question. Maybe there is a good reason. It won't be to do with any plans or design, though, as the plot only has outline permission.

I've been downloading random planning applications from the planning portal to see what I can learn from them. One of them included a nailing schedule. I suspect it was more to mandate the contractor, rather than for regulatory purposes. Bottom left of this sheet: AGREEMENT_OF_RECOMM-3238667.pdf

No CIL or Section 106 Agreements in Scotland, but there is a Section 75, so check for that. It doesn't apply to me, so I can't tell you too much about it, but it's part and parcel of the planning process - it won't have been hidden away so that you remain ignorant of it.

Well, that's what I thought, but I've never bought property in Scotland before, so I did wonder if it was one of the differences between Scottish and English law. I'm not really worrying - for reasons I may go into after completion, I have quite a lot of confidence that this part of the project is going to work out OK. As for solicitors - well, I have an increasingly decreasing opinion about most of them. So far, this one's proved pretty OK, but this did seem a strange thing to say.

I'm in the process of purchasing a plot in Scotland with Planning Permission in Principal (Scottish for Outline PP). My solicitor emailed me today, saying Have I been wrong to assume that PP goes with the land? I didn't think there was any question of the seller being able to withhold the transfer of it. I didn't even know we had to ask the seller if this was OK. I realise that the PP documentation is all addressed to the seller, but can the seller decide against its transfer?

I downloaded this leaflet from Wyre Forest Council a while back - I guess the rules apply across the country. Alas it's undated, but I see that the same information is still available on their website (though not, seemingly, in leaflet form). AL14_Caravans.pdf The first paragraph on page 2, "Within the curtilage of a dwelling", would seem to apply to you. And... would probably be covered by page 6, "Building and Engineering Sites". In any case, it's hard to think that any of the cash strapped councils would be able to get around to serving you with an enforcement notice in the time scale you're talking about.

Not yet, but I do find it an attractive idea. I'm half way through reading The Hempcrete Book. Are you planning cast-in-situ? The book lists typical U-values as follows: Wall thickness: 250mm 300mm 350mm 400mm U-value: 0.23W/m2K 0.2W/m2K 0.17W/m2K 0.15W/m2K Apparently there are quilts which have higher performance, and also pre-cast blocks and panels, but I couldn't comment about these. I'm hunting around for a training course, to see if I can learn more.

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I'd use Gimp for that. I'm pretty sure it available cross-platform.

You would really be well advised to talk it over with an accountant. Professional fees can give pause for thought, but really this would be a couple of hundred pounds well spent if you're serious - even if it means you decide against doing anything. To progress with a plan, and then find, too late that you are crushed by bad tax planning would be worse.

I've read that somewhere, and I nearly posted about it earlier, but then thought, in reality, it just didn't sound plausible. It's certainly counter intuitive. But then I also read that a flush will travel down the pipe as a wave (presumable in a near horizontal pipe), which I suppose is different from a shove. If the phenomenon does exist, it may be exacerbated by modern low volume flushes.

I though PU foam was closed-cell.

Has anybody here prepared their own plans for building regs approval? If so, how did it go, and how did you know (or find) the information to include. I'm not worried about producing the actual drawings - I can be a pretty good draftsman when I put my mind to it - its the details. Secondly - Scottish building regs are different from those in Englandandwales, but when that translates into a drawing, what are the differences then? For example, if I used one of the online services that take your planning drawings, and convert them into building regs drawings suited to E&W, would they still be acceptable in Scotland? And has anyone used one of those services? Are they any good? Does anyone know of one that operates in Scotland?

In addition to what people have said above: 1) If you rent out the new place, any tax relief will be at 20% even if you are a 40% tax payer. If you then sell it, it will be wholly subject to CGT at a higher rate of 28% applied to residential property. I'm not sure how they would assess it's initial value. I have a feeling this may not apply to a holiday let, but you will have to be able to convince HMRC that that's what it is. 2) If you move into it, you can sell your old place and claim the PPR exemption from CGT (provided, as has been said, you complete on the sale within nine months). If you move into the new place and let out the old, when you come to sell it, you will pay CGT pro-rata on the period it was not your PPR, So if, say, you lived in it for eight years, then let it out for two, you would pay CGT on 20% of any gain during the whole time you owned it. You can mitigate the taxable amount by deducting any capital expenditure after it ceases to be your PPR. This does not include general maintenance, or replacing like for like items (which would both be deductible against any income - rent - from the property), but for example, if you add a carport where there wasn't one before, you can deduct that. But if you replace kitchen units, no matter how much more expensive the new ones are, they are not deductible (except as maintenance). You can also deduct legal and administrative costs involved in the sale, plus there is the annual exempt amount - currently around £12k, I believe. The CGT manual - the one that HMRC use themselves, starts here: www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/capital-gains-manual It's not that hard a read, but you do have to stick with it, and spend the time to understand it. As ever, IINAL, YMMV, Information On The Internet Isn't Worth The Paper It's Written On, and all that.

Never heard of Wagos before - real or fake. I've just been watching Big Clive[1] take one apart, and he seems to like them. Can you put more than one wire into each slot, as you can with a choc-block? [1]A man whose opinions seem trustworthy.