Gone West

That's good to hear. Since we moved in we have had our hot water tank set at 45C. It reduces standing losses and the EASHP seems to heat the water very efficiently to that temperature. There is ample hot water for the two of us.

TBH I never checked because at the time I had more pressing things to worry about. We bought the warranty because we thought it was worth the relatively small outlay at the time but probably wouldn't bother now.

Ours runs from 1/1/14 to 31/12/23. It started from when they said they considered the build was weathertight because the build time was longer than average. It was actually weathertight at the end of 2010.

On the first floor of my house I have a 110mm stack directly connected to two toilets and it is also connected to two 50mm wastes one from a shower and basin and the other from a bath and basin.There Is a Floplast AF110 on the main stack and an AV50 on the end of each of the 50mm pipes. I also have a downstairs toilet and basin on a separate 110mm waste with an AV50. All the the AAVs appear to work normally without any slowing running.

We have also bought Elfa from "aplaceforeverything" with no problems. We first bought some back in 1998 from Homebase and it's still a good as new.

Don't be put off from doing the design and planning yourself. We had no experience of building when we started but we have managed to design and build a PH. It comes down to a lot of thought and reading before starting. Good luck.

It's been eight weeks now since we got our acknowledgement, hopefully the refund will be soon.

I don't hold out much hope for my old water softener then

We must be very lucky around here. We have taken all the waste from the build and demolition to the local tips with the exception of one grab lorry of mixed soil and rubble and the asbestos wall boards and roof tiles. We have also used Freegle and Freecycle to get rid of a lot of stuff.

Really! On a 10m frontage that would be near enough 350mm out, I'm sure I could spot that.

The odd thing is we've never had any local complaints right through from the planning stage to the end of the build. Perhaps taking eight years to build it was just too much for them.

Yup, and they're both up for sale. Must have been something I said or they don't like living near half dismantled bungalows .

As an update. We have had a complaint made to Planning Enforcement about the time it is taking to demolish our bungalow. We had a visit from a Planning Enforcement Officer who went away quite happy that we are doing as we should in the time allotted. As someone local is not happy with us we decided to have the Openreach cable removed by Openreach. It turned out that removing an overhead cable to a property that is being demolished is the only free service Openreach offer. So the engineer turned up yesterday hooked a pole over the cable and pulled it down. He cut off the excess at each end and went away saying that was the quickest job he had ever done. Five minutes maximum.

We had a resin bound entrance to our drive laid about two and a half years ago. They laid 200mm type 1 then 70mm porous asphalt and a 20mm layer of resin bound. The asphalt has to be left for a minimum of seven days for the oils to come out before the resin bound can be laid. After about a year we had a problem with a small area of the resin bound lifting. They came out and removed the faulty area and relaid. It's been ok since. As it's expensive I am going to cover the rest of the drive with resin bonded to match and I'm hoping to do it myself. Resin bonded is fine for a driveway but scattering onto hot bitumen, a cheaper alternative, doesn't tend to last very long with the chippings coming off.

Hi and welcome to the forum Cazza. We have just finished building a house in the garden of our bungalow in East Kent. We are now in the process of dismantling the bungalow after having lived in it while we were building. There are endless types of build structure and it took us a long time to decide want we wanted. Don't rush into it and think about all the options open to you. Our blog is copied to this forum so if you want to see what you may be faced with have a look. Good luck.

@willbish okay I'll dig them out (it was just over eight years ago) and PM you later.

I have an Isoquick insulated raft foundation with 300mm insulation under the raft and 200mm thick upstand. The raft is constant 200mm thick RC35 reinforced with two layers of A393. The maximum GBP is 50 kN/m2. There is 200mm of type 1 compacted in 50mm layers and 50mm granite fines under the insulation extending out 700mm beyond the edge of the insulation. I could PM you a copy of my structural calculations if that would help.

I used Hunter Guttering on my last house, it has several sizes and styles with hi-flow etc. https://www.hunterplastics.co.uk/products/rainwater/125/

I used one of these http://www.vitrex.co.uk/products/diamond-blade-200mm-ultimate/ in one of these http://www.vitrex.co.uk/products/versatile-power-pro-900-bridge-saw/ to do my wetroom floor tiling. Some people have like it and some thought it too fussy.

@worldwidewebs what type of inlet vent do you have on the outside of the house? Does it have an insect screen? Could you try a test run without a vent cover on the inlet if it is easy to get to?

It's an AEG BP730402KM. Not as much as we thought there would be, but I guess it depends on how much cleaning it needs. We also put the cooker hood on while we were doing it. We also thought there would be a load of ash to wipe out but there wasn't any.

Our oven told us it needed cleaning . We've never had a self cleaning oven before. We set it up for a medium clean and an hour and a half later Wendy said she thought the fairies had been in. She opened the door and it was spotless . Who ever said things were better in the old days. Mind you the temperature in the kitchen went up to 28C and we had to open all the doors and windows, be good in the winter though.

I clad my house with cedar. I used grade no. 2 clear and better which had no knots. These pictures are of the north side of the house with a gap of around five years between them. We bought the cladding from the local timber yard who machined it to my specifications.

I'm sorry I don't.

We have Rehau Geneo triple glazed t&t frames and a couple of the sashes are 930mm wide and 1200 high. We also have a Rehau Geneo fully double glazed porch door that is 1100mm wide and 2370mm high. No problems in the last six years.