Gone West

Lenleys, Roper Road, Canterbury.

In our last self build in East Kent, we had Amtico LVT tiles laid in the bathroom and ensuite. The supplier in Canterbury used an Amtico recommended installer and the result was superb. This was several years ago now.

Very attractive house and plot. We saw your property on 'Canal Boat Diaries' on channel U the other day. We recognised it from the pictures you've previously posted and said you were on the Llangollen Canal.

I find talking to 'people' and doing things 'myself' a lot less stressful. The limit of my use of 'intelligent machines' is a robotic vacuum cleaner and a robotic lawn mower, neither of which is perfect. Maybe the software was written by ChatGPT.

I expect you know the answer, as ChatGPT is the only thing, of the four, I have ever used.

Wish I understood what all this is for.

Yes, we've moved house several times and most times the band had gone up one step. The Council recommends a band to the Valuation Office, who generally accept it in my experience. We have challenged these increases with the Valuation Office and been successful. The Valuation Office have backed down when the appeal hearing date is close.

We were in a very similar situation to you. In our case I think the District Council suggested a banding to the Valuation Office. We disagreed with the valuation and suggested a band two lower than they wanted. We ended up at the band halfway between the two.

That is all we used to keep the house cool recently. It was 32.8C outside at the hottest and we closed the curtains on the west facing windows. The walls are mostly shale cob 650mm thick and the temperature inside was 25C. Opening the windows in the evening when the outside temperature was below the inside temperature, cooled it down. It has taken a while for the fabric of the building to return to normal, that's good old 'thermalmass' for you.

Found it. I was actually thinking of your pergola, which I think is excellent.

I've got a vague recollection that @JohnMo built a freestanding covered area with timber louvres.

The thickness varies from 40mm to 90mm over diagonally opposite corners, over existing concrete slab. To be tiled with porcelain tiles.

OK, I've got a small area to screed and tile, around 8.5m2, and I was thinking of using a semi-dry mix and tiling within eight weeks!!

How wet was the mix and how long before you could tile it?

We were the first Isoquick installation in England, sixteen years ago. The Isoquick part was very straightforward, unfortunately the concrete laying didn't go to plan.