PeterW

Clean it up and slack off the gland nut a quarter turn with a decent proper sized spanner. This should let it move slightly and using a couple of bits of copper pipe over the ends of the stopcock ends will give you some leverage. When you get it moving, big squirt of dry lithium grease and tighten the gland nut back up carefully.

At a push the soil pipe will fit into about 150mm. The catalog shows the min/max of 90-135mm for the centreline of the soilpipe. If you add 55mm onto that then you’re at 145mm or about 25mm thicker than the cistern itself. https://catalog.geberit.com/public/product.aspx?cat=GB_GB-en_1&ch=CH3_100902&p=PRO_100833 If you are putting them back to back you may struggle with soil pipe separation to meet building regs.

They just need to circulate - how far are you talking ..?? If it’s less than 5m then I’d expect it’s fine.

Sadly not the case any more with TfL and then benefits are far less than they used to. From 2018 it will have significantly reduced support from central Gov so will have to find a lot of savings and the first to go are the freebies for staff. There is also a massive transformation programme underway across their entire business ....

@Dee J -£1500 sqm is very doable if you look at the main costs carefully. Labour gets more expensive the more specialised or non mainstream that you go. Most good bricklayers can do brick and block in their sleep - go to ICf and although it’s just big blocks, ask @recoveringacademic how it can go awry ... A good joiner can do lots of studwork, but ask them to do a Larsen truss frame from a pile of timber and you’ll probably regret it. What you can do though is work out where you can spend now and then in the future put in what you want. Bathrooms and kitchens can be changed - there can be a factor of 10 difference from low to high so buy wisely. A lot also depends on your skill - if you can do things like the plumbing then a pair of decent cutters and a box of fittings you can probably do the first fix in Hep2O. A lot about budget is down to how much your labour is costed at - look at Grand Designs last night, what they built for £100k was amazing but it took 10 years ..... you could double your £180k budget based on what you can do, but that’s for you to decide ..!!!!

Not unusual for them to use google earth and street view to do valuations. I had one a while back where the front looked “ordinary” but the back was a full double height extension and basically looked like a different house. Valuation came back at £25k more than it’s value 5 years previous, and this was a £100k extension ..! Customer went back and complained and valuation company admitted they had literally “driven by”...... and that is what you get for a £175 valuation “fee”..!! I would nearly insist they come out and look especially if you have done extensive internal work. Our interim valuations are being done by a really good surveyor from a “proper” company who have already increased the values due to the change of layouts internally from the original estimates.

Depends on the height of the wall where the pitched roofs are, and if you need planning to change it. You could just do another pitched roof parallel to the main one with a valley but that would need PP I expect.

These use a fairly standard process of reclaiming old plastic into a new product - this would be classed as an end of life recycle though as once you’ve mixed the plastics you can’t separate them. Essentially this is a regrinder creating a mix of different small plastic granules or chips of different types feeding a steam heated injection moulding machine. Of the list of plastics, there are a number of thermoset plastics (the PETs etc) and some thermoplastics (the vinyls). Mixing the two and heating them allows the thermoplastics to melt around the thermoset waste that will create a blended product that solidifies and locks in the different types of waste plastic. We do this now in the UK - it’s just formed into stuff you wouldn’t recognise such as bollards and park benches ...!! It is also usually an extruded product that is less dimensionally tolerant than injected waste. These guys have been at it for years. http://www.ecoplasticwood.com/ The big issue with it is that it needs a very close tolerance on the mix - too little thermoplastic waste and the matrix doesn’t form and the product drops to bits. In the UK they tend to manage this by using known regrind waste from plastic manufacturers (such as uPVC windows etc) and then add standard colours to it to make it uniform. Those bricks look like they are relying on the volume of pvc in the waste to be pretty uniform and that could be a real challenge with mixed plastic waste. Its unlikely it could get a UK BBA certificate as by it’s very definition it is an unknown mix so from a flammability and durability perspective you would not be able to guarantee what it was made from to meet any standards.

I’d ditch the rebar and go for 150mm concrete - much easier and 100mm isn’t that thick when it comes to a garage floor Ours is 200mm in the middle and has a 300mm thickened edge as we used it as the dumping point for the rest of the slab when we ordered the concrete ..!

65c for a standard boiler. Liquid ones are better than the gas ones that are knocking about but cheaper usually. Teddington are still about too ...

Western Red Cedar can be pruned into a really nice cone or pinnacle but needs doing annually - the trick is to take the tip leaders out as it will develop 5 or 6 main branches that will form the cone. RHS is always a good source of guidance. Here Easier if there are two of you - one standing back and giving direction, and Mrs JSH up the ladder with the secateurs ....

I would steer clear of this approach - the PM will have VAT rated and non-VAT rated services on the same invoice as she should be recovering the VAT on the sanitary items but not her services. Isn’t this the same PM who wants to retrospectively add VAT to all her old invoices..?? sounds like she needs a new accountant .......

Guy next door who owns the nursing home is really interested in what we are doing - sees it as a real positive. Old boy opposite tells anyone and everyone “eee it’s costing a lotta money ...!” despite him having no idea what it’s actually costing ..!! He’s soon there though when there is something for free ...!!

I can wire a 24 port IDC rail with cable management and everything labelled in less than an hour - very therapeutic and easy to do. Metal krone tool is your friend, and a cable cutter to take the last 25mm of sheathing off. Split the wires, lay them in the clips and punch down. Small cable tie as strain relief and then on to the next one. Then buy some cheap patch cables from Amazon at about 30cm long and you can connect whatever you need. I’ve got a 24 port PoE switch, all patch panel, NAS, Routers and UPS etc all going in a cabinet under the stairs. Most expensive bit was the cabinet as the rest is ex-company stuff ..!

If your cladding is going vertical, you need a horizontal batten to fix it to. This needs to be attached to a vertical batten over the insulation to give you the airflow. Or am I missing something with your build up ..?

I may be old fashioned but for stuff buried in the ground I only use decent brands - I use Plasson for all that stuff. Pipestock do it all at decent prices. https://www.pipestock.com/plasson/mechanical-fittings/coupling

Nope the pipe should be fine - slack off and pull the joint apart, put the insert into the pipe and do it all back up. Be aware though that some of the joints won’t come apart easily unless you remove the outer nut and take it completely apart. As you have very little pressure as it’s just the static pressure of 1m of water. .

It’s crap..... Used it to lay a big sandstone patio and did it properly and compressed and pointed all the gaps. Just over 2 years later it was breaking up and weeds growing through it. I use the premixed sand and cement mortar on a dry day and just pour it into the gaps - old 4pt milk container with the bottom trimmed off makes a great scoop. Brush it into the gaps then clean the excess off and a light going over with a hose on a fine mist sets it nicely.

Most need inserts - the Floplast ones definitely do. Dont use a catalogue description as the fitting instructions ....

Whats the purpose of that ..?? Did he find old artex ..? If so, ideally you should put a warning sticker / marker somewhere that it may contain asbestos.

+1 to Billy ! They are easily built and can be changed about if needed. There is very little on show of a book case when it’s full of books so unless you are wanting to replicate the Bodleian there isn’t a big need to go for expensive ones.

Welcome ..! Check very carefully how long it’s been closed. For at least a year it cannot be anything but a place of worship. Following that, it’s at least 6 if not 12 months to be declared as no longer required, and then it transfers to being the same class as nursery’s, community centres etc. Finally, you can start the process of applying for residential conversion with the council. Expect that to take 9-12 months as you have to prove their is no demand for the previous class of use. Its a long process with no guarantee ..! Unlikely you will get a mortgage either unless you can get outline planning for conversion

Have you seen his hands ...??!! Anything smaller than a 6mm cable and he can’t get the sausages round it ...! Maplin used to do those punch down boxes but stopped a while back and they are pretty good - easier to wire up than cat6 into a plug.

Not a bad shout - they would be quicker than mucking about with crimp no plugs.

If you haven’t already got one, get an RJ45 plug crimp and tester from eBay or Amazon. Most come with 10 plugs so you should have spares for about £7 Pack of these from eBay gives you the neat box to put stuff into. Open the box and solder on your 4 core to/from the lights to 4&5 and 7&8. Do one both ends and you’ll have a pair of splitters that allow you to inject the LED signal to the cable and retain Cat5 data - double check the wiring at the router end to make sure they have used a standard color convention with the plugs though and if not, match them all the same ...!!