Carrerahill

Watch the prices rise £5K now. I remember the grants for insulation came out, insulations prices about quadrupled overnight, it never recovered. Make these things cheap, don't give out grants and subsidies. Just drive the prices down. No tax on green tech etc. etc. Grants just line the pockets of contractors and manufacturers.

Find a small independent SE and talk to him about dropping in metal between the existing and underslinging them from steels across the house (which can be put in in sections and bolted up).

Scotland.

He will if they put in new engineered or metal joists in between and just slightly higher than the existing. It can probably be done, there is just not enough thinking happening. Another consideration is replacing the ridge with a smaller steel - can be done from the inside. Not my original ideas but a very clever structural engineer friend of mine who gets things working in tight spaces!

Where are they intending to use more than 150mm? Even allowing for a makeup of insulation and PB I cannot see it needing to be greater than 150mm especially if you can make up for it in thicker insulation in other parts of the build. Even allow a worst case of 25mm for the floor makeup. If they are clever with their insulation calcs they can increase it on the sloped sections etc. letting them reduce it on the flat section, also you have your rafter thickness, even allowing for a 25mm air gap you should still have space for a decent wedge of insulation in there.

What in particular is it you need/want to prove? Insulation levels in enclosed walls and ceilings or something similar? How old is the house? Do you know who the house builder is? They might help you.

There is an industry standard (read average) given for every kW generated. I believe it is 0.223Kg per kWh, it falls every couple of years as more green energy comes online (another joke). Therefore it is based on this, and therefore it will be inaccurate. Like these firms who tell their customers their electricity is 100% green, that is very misleading because that is not true, all they are saying is they only buy energy from the renewable generation producers. What comes out your socket may very well be coal or nuclear generated power. So many of the facts and figures we are given are terribly inaccurate. I used to do a fair bit of electrical energy analysis and CO2 calculations and what not and I came to the conclusion that so many of these things are just a big circus. If I wanted to advise on energy reduction with savings and payback calculations I needed several key pieces of information, the first I always asked for was known cost per kWh, then I would review actual survey data of loads, from that I could certainly make a good start, but where it all fell down was when you would ask an estate manager for office hours or for lighting, burning hours etc and to get the reply, oh just call it 09:00-17:00, now unless you are a government entity no office only runs from 09:00-17:00 bang on. So by the time you threw in all these assumptions and "just make it" parameters you had a document that was largely a work of fiction. What I used to say to people was if you take a 100W lamp out, and fit it with a 6W lamp you will save 94W - that is a given. The cost will be the cost and you cannot put a cost on environmental benefits - you will save energy end of. Where it becomes screwed up, particularly in government & local authority buildings is the disgusting figures that the DLO's (direct labour organisations) or approved contractors will charge to fit a new LED downlight in a school corridor. Something that should save over 50% on energy consumption becomes financially unfeasible because the fit price will end up being £100 quid, so... 32W fitting = 31.25hours lit for every kWh - call that 23p. Or 0.8p per hour Replace with: 15W fitting = 66.66hours lit for every kWh - also at 23p. Or 0.345p per hour Immediate saving: 0.455p per hour of burn time. Cost of fitting and labour - £100 - Say £45 for a downlight and £55 a fitting install. So length of time to save £100 would be 21978hours at 12 hours a day is 1831 days, or 5.017 years that is assuming, 12 hours every single day - not likley. Product warranty will be up within 5 years for a good fitting, so the whole thing falls on its face as bean counters cannot allow for payback after warranty period. Having said all that, they will still come out with some totally inaccurate, often unfounded line about low energy this and environmental this. All total rubbish the lot of it. So much like your original question of how can it know, well it can't it's all just tripe, pure and simple, tripe! Where I saw a success story was on a building with 16,000 luminaires, £17.50 a point installed cost + various costs for the different luminaires - payback was about 2.5 years and product warranty was 5 years with a sort of further 5 year support package.

Sounds like parasitic loads, 2.5kWh is a little over 100W at any given time - if you assume every electrical appliance i.e. the boiler, oven, alarm system, fire alarms, TV's & receiver boxes etc each use a couple of watts you will very quickly find 40W in a modern home, so the next 60W is not going to be difficult to track down really. What do you leave on, do you have any lighting loads, external lighting, garage door opener etc...

Not to sound cheeky, but, is it older and or a more budget model? Maybe not, maybe it is just noisy. I would say most fridges/freezers now are more or less silent... Linear compressor models are usually quiet.

Which was why you could not be an electrician if colour blind. I believe the HSE still says you cannot be a electrician if colour-blind however I think you can still actually train as an electrician but you are meant to be aware of your limitations and take steps.

This is the LD's fault, they ought to have written a commissioning schedule with the clients input, then attended site with the commissioning engineer to set it all up with a final sign off hour or so with the client also present to confirm. Get that right and Lutron system are in fairness easy enough for each party involved. It is like trying to launch a rocket without the rocket command crew and no one to authorise it.

I have experience with Lutron from entire office complexes to the Grafik Eye and even the little Rania stand alone units. It is good stuff, I always quite fancied a Grafik Eye for lighting control but realistically I have always managed to achieve the same or better for less money. I would also say that really it is not really at home in a domestic setting, apart for the Rania stuff and Grafik eye I suppose but anything more than that is a bit OTT. I have automated a lot of my house with Shelly, they do a little standalone module and a Pro module which is Din rail mounted, so far it has enough I/O capability to control lighting schedules, garage doors, automatic blinds (not that I have any right enough but the interface is there if I did need it - same as a garage door actually). They cost about £9 for a little standalone unit and about £50 for the din rail mounted options, you have heat and humidity sensors, gas sensors, basically everything. I automate the lighting in the house, mainly external and some internal circuits mainly for security and convenience, such as knowing the main living spaces will all be lit when we need them and go off when we are off to bed, external lighting is a collection of semi-automated and sensor driven lighting which is all connected so at the flip of a switch I can light all round the house and the external lighting on the remote garage. I can control the heating, other circuits if I need and the system can be scaled and programmed by just about anyone. Lutron... try a commissioning engineer at £800 a day - £1500 is Lutron send them.

If it was me I would get some access & a harness and go and remove all the roughcast, and then deep rake out the joints and repoint it, then roughcast it. Or I would get a roofer/builder type to do the same if I was in the right mood. I would not get rid of a chimney. I think the costs you have provisioned are about right.

Where have you been asking? Non-reusable pallets are a waste product of the logistics industry. The country is awash with them. I build log stores with them and break up into kindling or use the big blocks as firewood. The blue/red/green stamped ones are reusable pallets which will stay in service for x number of trips however they are used by logistics routes where return journeys or repeat services can keep the moving back and forward. I know a security guard our business estate and gathers 400-500 odd at a time then sells them for a pound each.

I think the issue with this request is that it is very time consuming. I've QSed 3-4 of my own builds now varying from extensions to loft conversions and garages and a couple for friends and family and to do it accurately (so far I have always been very close to final built cost) it takes a long time, you would need to provide full warrant drawings to know full spec's etc. In my build one of the single most costly things was insulation, but looking at your build it will be glazing. The best thing is to get your drawing package, it will need to be the building warrant to understand details, and start to break it down into blocks. Price up the walls, price per block/brick plus laid price, volumes of concrete, cost to prep and pour, get your glazing quote, roof area, get roof material cost. You will need to apply standard labour costs for your area unless you are closely in tune with labour costs. You will probably work out a figure that won't be that far off, always remember daft stuff like joist hangers and fixings, chemical anchors. Another option would be a small one man band QS or building surveyor etc. They may do this for a keen price and it will help you understand where you stand.

Great strategy, but 1 more care point, the battery shorting on something and causing a fire. There are numerous reports of batteries in boxes and bags catching fire when shorting on things like a collection of screwdrivers or steelwool in the case of one plumber who nearly lost his van. I've seen a 2 foot piece of wire in flames in as little as 1-2 seconds after the two ends became lodged in terminals of a 12V battery after being thrown in a toolbox. The house stank for days too. Made me a real advocate of LSF cable too!

Whoever "wrapped" that up should be shot! What a waste. Is any saveable?

I understand that but you said that you were getting blank expression from sales staff when trying to buy a toilet, they will not have a clue what you mean. Internally in any factory there is always a grading or quality control system, maybe all produced items are saleable but at different prices depending on defects or maybe it is just a pass/fail. So the guy you spoke to would know his own factories QC system.

I am going to suggest there is no such thing as a grade 1 toilet and a grade 2, 3 etc. in terms of a marketable grading, maybe within a factory certainly. Perhaps it would be like saying a Clio is a grade 3 car and a BMW 5 series is a grade 1 - it doesn't really work that way but we all know a BMW is going to have far better build quality, will go on longer and is frankly a better car. So buy a £45 toilet in B&Q and you get what you pay for. What you notice about hotels and restaurants is they always use the likes or Armitage Shanks etc. I am sure if you called them up and explained what you are talking about they would be able to tell you the difference between the quality they make vs a £45 pan - however, like most of the better brands, they had to compete in the cheaper markets, BMW brought out their 1 series and Armitage Shanks probably does a budget cheap pan, so do your homework and shop about but don't listen to sales personnel!

A cut joint to the floor is also not great, first time it gets damp it will swell up. Unless they take time to properly seal it then clear silicon it to the floor with a very thin clean bead.

£250 to get a panel painted? Go and find yourself a little back street automotive painter or if you use a local independent garage who are decent ask them if they know any auto painters. Where are you located? Not in Scotland are you?

Take a sample of the current kitchen (door or something) to an automotive/industrial paint supplier and ask them to match it - or better, take it to an automotive paint shop and ask them to do it. Even the medium sized firms will have a colour-mix system in house. When I want to match things, like say a light fitting to a piece of furniture for example I take a sample and leave it with them, they go and play with the colours and usually give me 5-6 options to pick from, they basically make up tiny amounts of paint and dab it on a card. I've got some excellent results including some very difficult colours including metallics. For house stuff I get the colours in a solvent-borne basecoast and coat them with 2K satin lacquer to get the final finish I need. Good thing with 2 stage paint systems is that if you get the finish too glossy you can alter ratios and settings and re-laquer without messing with the basecoat, or some may call it colour coat. Lots of thinner in a gloss lacquer and a really wet coat can give mirror finishes, less thinners and applying a "dry" mist can give a much more satin look, then you get satin lacquer which again can actually be made quite glossy or even more satin through ratio and gun control. An intentional light orange peel on a paint finish can also give the colour a variance to it as you look at it which can help hide colour match irregularities. Another thing to bear in mind is the primer, use a grey primer on a metallic silver for example and you will get a light, sparkly finish, use a black primer and you will transform the final finish because part of the depth of colour comes from the primer, black can leave the silver looking slightly darker but also washed out as the layer build is wrong. Do something like use a blue primer and you can create some really interesting finishes. So sometimes even if you have a close colour match but it doesn't look right, then the chances are maybe the prep was not right to achieve the tone or depth you need. I could apply the same paint to 4 different primers and make it look like 4 different tones of paint.

1. Not a chance in hell - they need to deal with it on their side. 2. As above. 3. As above. They need to redo their drains and leave the manhole alone because that is serving your house, in fact, they have no right really touching said manhole as it is not theirs! They must leave a system in place for your house.

Indeed. I suspect that is why the builder is trying to put the onus onto the OP. He knows this is an issue, perhaps didn't allow for it and thinks the OP can now be made to foot bill. Well I am sorry but this builder has been caught out or didn't do due diligence. Interestingly, this could now delay the neighbours build until this is all agreed and new warrant drawings approved. Time to get real with them.

I can say with absolute certainty, your neighbours are dealing with a sewer in their garden, not your soil pipe, a soil pipe is a private water waste line, a sewer is a public duct for water waste. The builder will know this too, he doesn't want the water board to know. I would call the water board.