Gone West

Possibly, or something is quickly soaking up all that water.

Shame, a pile of skulls would have been a good 3D printer project.

We haven't hand washed any dishes or anything for years. Unless you've only got two plates put them in the dishwasher and when it's full switch it on, much more economical.

It will not make a huge difference but the hot water will take a bit longer to reach the tap, the house will be a bit hotter inside in the summer.

A week ago or so I finally made an abode for our hedgehog. I made it a similar design to yours but used old wooden gravel boards. A hedgehog went into it the first night to investigate and last night spent an hour or so taking dried leaves in. At 6.23 this morning it went in and hasn't come out yet so I guess it's content. I'll put the camera out early this evening to see what time it comes out.

I didn't have any problems at all fitting them, very straightforward.

Just to be different I fitted Kidde mains with rechargeable lithium backup for smoke and heat alarms.

It's surprising that changing from a Secoh pump to a Hiblow has reduced the noise level. Your Hiblow is quieter than my Secoh but mine is rated at 100l/min and is their old design, the new Secoh JDK models are less noisy than the old Secoh EL series. As I said earlier it looks as though the air is diverted for one minute in an hour so it wouldn't be a good idea to turn it off for some of the time.

The Klargester BioFicient+ system is a lot more sophisticated than my 10 year old WPL system. The air pump spec. indicates it's rated at 58W for 80l/min which is much better than mine and that it produces 36dBA which is lower than mine. I can't hear mine unless I'm very close to it, but mine is in a semi-buried housing. It could be that yours is noisy because of something else vibrating inside the pump housing. Looking at their video I was wondering whether the air is diverted at intervals to different parts of the system.

It might be that they are wanting all black panels or inset roof panels, both of which would affect the look of the build.

We only used hawthorn and blackthorn so it would be easy to keep them in check. We were lucky and nearly all of our bare rooted whips took well and we only needed to replace two from our heeled in replacement stock. It's amazing how quickly the heeled in spares rooted. It took a lot of digging to remove them after a year.

I used Buttonfix type 2 to fix a small panel in our kitchen. It worked fine but it was a small panel with only two fixings.

Do the existing clay pipes go under the foundations or through them. I had a quote for moling 4m under a lane which was quite cheap with me digging a big hole both sides of the lane.

Our neighbours have a Nibe ASHP against their North facing house wall 2m from our fence. It isn't possible to hear it running when we're in our garden, but when it shuts down it makes a whirring noise for a few seconds. I guess that's normal for all ASHPs.

Is there a problem these days with most straw bales being much larger than years ago when they could be picked up by hand. Do you have to ask the farmer to use old equipment for baling.

Hi, welcome to the forum and good luck with the building work. You might find this thread enlightening.

We didn't work on a cost /m2. We had a budget based on what the house would be worth when finished and what the site was worth. We didn't want to lose money on the build but we weren't looking to make a profit, it was supposed to be a enjoyable project ?. We researched different foundation types, timber frame types etc and costed them. We always used the highest cost knowing we should be able to improve on that. For instance stairs quotes came in at between £3000 and £30000. You can always cut back on kitchens and bathrooms and our stairs came in at the lower end of our quotes. We ended up paying just under our budget. There is a lot of leeway on second finish costs.

Know how you feel. I retired when I was 55 and spent most of my 60s self building our house, and that was only one house. I'm knackered and my working days are getting shorter and shorter. Edit, welcome to the forum by the way.

After we had installed the new sewage treatment plant and connected the old bungalow to it we removed the septic tank. We had it emptied and I hosed the inside of the tank while it was happening. I then got the farmer to dig it out completely. It was rendered brick. He back filled it with earth compressing each layer with the bucket

When we lived in the bungalow, before the new build started, we had rainwater flooding off the road and into our driveway. I complained to the Highways Dept. and they said all they could do was lay a raised bed of tarmac along the width of the driveway which I accepted. It worked and it also established that they accepted there was a flooding problem. As a result I was allowed to install road kerbs along the whole frontage of the new build.

You'll need a few drums of Dettol then when you replace your cesspit/septic tank.

Hi and welcome to the forum. There are quite a few of us on here who have done a lot of the build themselves. It's a steep learning curve but well worth it for the challenge.

Hi Tom, welcome to the forum and good luck with your project.

Here's a few points that may help. Our MVHR unit is very quiet, but it could be because it is very heavy and floor standing. External vents can be almost flush to the wall so not very visible. Wherever the unit is installed there should be ample space around it so changing filters and general maintenance is easy. This is a list of tips that I researched when installing our system. 1. The inlet and outlet grilles should be 3m apart to prevent cross contamination of air. 2. The inlet and outlet grilles should be high enough (2m) to prevent interference by animals or children but low enough for easy cleaning. 3. The inlet and outlet grilles should be on the same wall so they are affected equally by the wind. 4. The free flow area of the grill including insect screen should be at least as great as the cross sectional area of the duct. 5. The duct should be smooth wall to reduce air flow restriction. 6. Any ducting bends should be large radius of curvature or two 45 degree bends to reduce air flow restriction. 7. The ducting to the inlet and outlet grilles should slope downwards slightly to ensure any moisture drains to the outside.

Apparently we just have to build more offshore windfarms and there will be endless cheap electricity. "Endless cheap electricity", now where have I heard that before. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/24/offshore-windfarms-can-provide-more-electricity-than-the-world-needs