Roys

In the place I have just renovated I put PVC window cills in the rooms with taps, so the kitchen, util room, en-suite and bathroom. Dead easy to keep wipe down and clean and no painting. It was also only about £30 for 4.8M of it. The rest of the cills are MDF.

Was more thinking about fitting surge protection for strikes nearby as they are at the top of the hill, sorry I should have been clearer, the point I was trying to make is for a few quid you will get a bit more protection against lightening, granted not for a direct strike.

Good question, think the risk is low and if you fit a lightening conductor it is going to be beefy to draw away from your roof but I’m afraid I’m no expert on this. One thing that probably will be prudent is getting surge protection fitted in your consumer unit, probably about an extra £50 to £100 but has to be worth it.

House looks brill, agree with your bill approach, wait till he comes asking and have a chat, I would probably end up paying it just to stop bad feeling, even although he let you down.

Not quite You are get a payment for 100% of your generation Plus a different rate of payment for 50% of your generation The exact monetary amounts depend on your FIT contract

As far as I am aware Smart meters are not set up to detect how much is or is not exported, so as it stands just now it wouldn’t make much difference, however personally speaking I would avoid Smart meters for a different reason. My reasoning to avoid Smart meters is that it enables variable tariffs to be implemented in the future, so what the electric provider could do is say charge you 10p a unit during sleeping hours but say at dinner time charge you £1 a unit so as to discourage usage at certain times of day because of possible lack of generation capacity. Only my theory so don’t quote me on that? Anyway in the grand scheme of things there is no advantage to you getting a Smart meter.

FIT payment is paid on the total generated, each quarter you submit your meter reading which then gives you the total generated for the month. They then work out your total payment using a 2 part sum, say you generated 300 units for the month then depending on the contract the sum might br something like: 300 x 12 p = £36 plus a presumed export back to the grid payment usually an additional 50% so £18 gives you a total payment of £54 The presumed payment for export is just that, presumed, so it doesn’t matter payment wise if you use it or not, that is why solar diverter became popular as it uses up the the surplus electricity diverting it to water heaters or similar.

Thankyou for the reply, does it have to be as big as 90cm with the hob only being 730mm so would a 70cm or even smaller be ok? When I looked on line on TLC they were coming in at around the £200 which I am fine with but when I looked at the depth of the units I would have been struggling to fit it in the 270mm depth of the cabinet. Never done a in built extractor before it has always been cooker hoods I have done in the past.

In the final stages of a whole house renovation, in fact we moved in ten days ago. Loads of odd jobs still to catch up with. One of them my kitchen splash back and in built cooker extractor. Got my splashback supplier sussed just need my wife to decide on colour. Anyway when I built my Howdens kitchen at the start of year I didn’t fit the extractor. I have a 730mm gas hob, the unit to house the extractor is 900mm wide and 270mm deep. Anyone one know of a good extractor that’s not too dominating and will fit nicely into the unit above the hob. That is on an outside wall so it will be extracting externally. All advice and suggestions gratefully received. Cheers Folks

I used 2”x1” tile battens perpendicular to the joists to overboard old Artex ceilings then the 12.5mm plasterboard.

When I did my the slate roofs on my byre and workshop I did a fair of research on fixing slates to the roof even phoning up the membrane company tech line. The two roof constructions were roof trusses then sarking, then breathable membrane, one set of sarking was 18mm the other was 22mm bought them as different times as the projects were a year apart. Anyway we came to the conclusion that it was sarking with a 2mm gap between boards then the membrane then nail the slate directly on. When the sarking gets a couple of years older under the slate the gap has grown slightly to 3 or 4mm which is what the breathable membrane people were wanting. So I can see why your roofer is suggesting batten then sarking as it will then in effect be a slate nailed direct job.

Disclaimer, I am a spark and not a roofer although I have done two simple slate roofs, (double garage size), in both cases about a week or two after I had done them I noticed either a slate on the ground or in the gutter, I was unsure if I maybe cracked a weak one when I moved the ladder for the last time or if it was just a weak one and the first decent wind caused a very slight movement which caused it to break and slide off. You certainaly bin a few flawed ones when you laying the roof, but since the two or three “settling” ones I have had no more come of, that has been 4 or 5 years now.

Totally your call and sounds like builder is good with whatever your call is, I just really like it, looks good to me and shows a skill level and pride in their work which is sadly lacking at times now.

Never seen or noticed that 45deg on end slates before, must say I think it looks smart as buttons.

I am a believer in karma, in that bad things tend to happen to bad people and good things tend to happen to good people. I am fortunate in that I have good neighbours and we help each other and pool resources, it is so much easier than being awkward with each other. We have had a brief experience of an awkward neighbour and it is just so counterproductive.

The patches don’t bother me in fact I like it as it shows a natural product ageing. I suppose it depends on the look you had visualised, my wife would prefer the almost artificial one colour shiny look.

We have just fitted Krion which is similar to Corian, can’t voice an option on its upkeep but it does look good, wife wanted invisible joints hence the choice. It did double the price of the kitchen, I got and fitted Howdens base units. I do like Howdens base units and any issues the depot is just along the road and issue is usually sorted right away.

I have found that when you start to go into the 5000 to 6000k range the white is very much too blue for me. i like 3000 to 3500k in bedrooms and living rooms 4000 to 4500k in bathrooms and kitchens

Yip I use 47kg propane bottles for gas hob only, think it is in its 2nd year now, wait and see it will run out tomorrow now that I have said that. As for hiding them, we don’t even notice it as it’s always been there, just by the kitchen window.

I could have in hind sight, but it ain’t happening now, as I spent two horrible days fitting it, so it’s not coming out now?

Bit tight, en-suite bathroom.

I have just fitted10 Fibo panels. The quality of the panels is very good but I did find it super awkward to fit as none of the walls are plumb or square in the renovation project I am doing. There was a lot of panel scribing involved into the corners. We also used the tile effect panels which gives you the added complication of having to line up the “grout” lines. I used Styxall for sticking the panel to the walls and a hybrid sealant for joining the t&g. Think I ended up with more on me than on the panels. Looks fab but I wouldn’t be in a hurry to do it myself again, think I would pay someone to do it the next time. Panels are only 600mm wide so can be quite expensive when you price it up. Make sure you store flat as they can distort ever so slightly in storage then they become a huge pain to interlock, I had one odd panel not in a pack and not stored flat and although it looked fine it wasn’t funny.