Carrerahill

He is a builder, not a civil engineer or drainage expert. Builders think water is easy. Say that to a water engineer.

It is not your soil pipe as soon as it leaves your boundary, it becomes a sewer after this point and is the responsibility of the water board. You have the right to continue to discharge via this pipe, you can continue to and it is their responsibility to resolve. You can wash your hands of this situation. Why is the pipe not fit for purpose? Did it work before?

Get the shell up and some services in, then re-price everything later on. The prices will come down, or the building trade will just slow so dramatically that manufacturers will be forced to drop prices if they remain greedy.

Agreed 100%. Reduce the population and all the earths issues are solved. Covid was the earths way of trying that - it failed because nature didn't expect Astrazeneca and Pfizer to come along! Something will get us though. There should be no social support for any more than 2 children. Give them the cash, they will have the kids without a care in the world! Those of us who pay our way in life will self regulate because more kids = more cash! The real population problem countries will need another strategy mind you. China actually had the right idea, they just didn't make it work very well in their commie way. I am not controversial, I just say it like it is.

The issue is that Great Britain will do and are doing their bit, however, we contribute such a small amount to the problem even if we came up with the ultimate solution, the world would still fall to pieces if left unchecked. We must lean heavily on India, China etc. they must get their house in order. I do my bit by not buying cheaply made tat, particularly from China, I have a real dislike of materials, read earths resources, being use to make poor quality things be it a radio or a house. If the planet gives us resources to make or build something, we owe it to the planet and humankind to use those materials effectively, efficiently and in a way which guarantees longevity. I would, tomorrow, given half the chance ban all throw away type party accessories, balloons, plastic rubbish, solar garden lights sold in supermarkets and DIY stores and frankly just **** we don't need. Here is an example of the problems we face/create - I pick this example because as an argument it holds water and it is relatable and something we can do at home. On Christmas day I have come to expect a dining table likes of that the Queen would sit at, placed on the table is family silverware dating back over a century, plates and bone china over 125 years old, silver candlestick holders, crystal and silver flower holders holding locally sourced seasonal foliage etc. (Holly & pine from the garden, perhaps some Poinsettia from the florist), the table cloths and runners are cotton and silk. The table looks a million pounds but uses things that will be used for decades to come and in some cases these items may have seen over 100 Christmases. Then on the flip side you get the table made up with loads of junk that will get tossed in a bin on Boxing day. This is an issue. We do not need it, we did without it up until 40 odd years ago and all we have done is cheapen our "decorations". When I buy Christmas lights I but the most expensive I can from manufactures I recognise, I am hoping to get a commercial string of warm white LED soon for Christmas, they will cost about £80 but should last 25 years and are serviceable. I have a set of multicoloured green string Christmas lights which are 21 years old and are still used every year. I bought a set of warm white LED's 7 years ago which go on the Christmas tree every year, we used the same pine tree 2 years in a row and planted it out this year as it is nearly 9 foot tall now. The previous collection are in pots or planted. Some may say I am cheap, some may say I am wise and saving the planet. I would agree with both counts! But seriously we can have beautiful thing without waste. We must start looking at things and thinking, do I need that. I saw there was a shortage of paddling pools this year, what happened to all the paddling pools bought last year when there was a shortage too? Well, I will tell you what happened, they are so cheap and "throwaway" that they got left in gardens up and down the country and tossed in the wheelie bin by about November. Why are they so cheap? Charge £25-40 for one and people will maybe think about wasting them. Don't get me started on youths at festivals with tents. All tents, minimum £60 and worth the money - that will hopefully solve that issue. Why are kettles £9 in Argos? I went and bought a Bosch kettle and toaster for our new kitchen, however, only when the old stuff died. The old Russel Hobbs one literally blew up, so I binned it and bought the Bosch one, the toaster didn't make it to the new kitchen and caught fire in the old kitchen burning out the elements, it was very tired, but it gave good service and it was replaced with a Bosch one to match the kettle. I expect long service from these. I hope the earths resources were used wisely. I moved our integrated dishwasher into the new kitchen, it is a Siemens unit, I stripped it out the old kitchen and gave it such a deep clean my wife thought it was new when installed in the new kitchen. I even serviced and checked it out electrically and mechanically, deep cleaning the waste pipe etc. If it goes wrong I will fix it. 2 years ago I replaced the run capacitor on the pump. We waste SO much. Stop the waste and we could burn petrol and diesel till our hearts content!

If the OP has safe secure storage space and money then I agree this would be very prudent.

What is commonly produced for construction projects is a gantt chart. It is more or less what you are talking about, a week by week planner with all the stages and overlaps and sequence etc. all laid into one plan. The issue is, no plan survives first contact. However, they are done, and they are common. They can sometime also list deadlines for things such as material and equipment date and time requirements including when they need to be ordered. More often than not because a Gantt chart may cover 10's of contractors they often leave that contractor up to doing his own ordering to suit his schedule. So in other words if there is a 2 week period programmed in for first fix electrical, then the electrical contractor obviously knows they need to arrive at site on day 1 with some materials to get rolling.

I would put together a report and cover letter and email it to your planning officer. Me being me I would probably also go and knock on the neighbours door for a friendly little chat.

You were too busy trying to sell walk on glazing!

Those are Outfox the Market tariffs - I'd say those are the cheapest I have ever found.

Have you tried Energetics? Maybe they will be the same. What if you say you are the developer? I'd be tempted to twist the truth. We once used my wife's maiden name on an order form for ventilation equipment so that I could claim I was the installer and she was the client as they would not sell to the end client because their product was soooo specialised only a trained pro could possibly install it. BS. We even have the full warranty because I registered the MVHR as I the installer and wife the end client.

12 is a little low for future proofing for an electric future.

Have they given you a price for the contestable and non-contestable? Often doing the monkey work yourself will save a fair bit. Why 35kVA TPN? 20-25kVA SPN would probably be fine and is more or less what most people get if they buy a house 20kVA is basically a 80A supply, 25 being 100A - almost all cut-outs will show 100A but can be fused from 60A. Also, have you approached some IDNO's for prices? If not, I suggest you do.

That is not a restrictor, in a sense that it was installed to restrict, but yes it will be causing a restriction. That is just a piece of the old copper pipe which someone has left because they didn't want to interfere with the valve, didn't have the right coupling etc. etc. Renew as much of it as you can.

What you are seeing their is shrinkage, either from direct sun, high temps, or a breeze blowing over it. I would not be too worried about this given the application, the cracks will not be all the way through.

You can split concrete block with an axe. Doesn't mean it is a good idea.

What are the spec's of it such as product thickness, how thick is the wear layer etc. How much are you talking about per m­²? We have Amtico, as for feel underfoot it is good in the winter as it never feels cold, more forgiving if you drop things as it's not as hard, it does scratch, but so does all hard flooring. With Amtico you can buff small to medium scratches out with a repair chemical which as far as I can tell softens (melts) the wear surface a bit so it blends back together. I would not believe that it would reduce a house value, I think perhaps what might be true is that hardwood floors are known to increase value, the oak flooring we have is often mentioned by name in house listings if it has been used. In fairness I would do exactly the same to indicate to buyers a high quality fit for life floor was in existence. Sadly I am sure people will still come in, decide they don't like the colour or something and rip it up! So perhaps LVT just doesn't add value the same. Having said that, I know of a small development of near us where the private house builder used Amtico throughout the ground floor and it was a big push in the selling literature. It was stunning with all the motifs and borders etc. I reckon good hard flooring is going to add value over a carpet unless it's Axminster, Wilton, Brintons or Voverk to name a few of the potential lifetime quality carpets.

“Annoyingly” because people don’t like paying for design services, even at the top of the construction pile, contractors and developers don’t like paying for things to be designed, they knock you down on price and want everything they see as “non-essential” taken out the scope. So, what will happen, in reality, and what happens currently in other changing playing fields is that the installation will be done without design or without proper design. The net result is inefficiencies or inadequate or poorly functioning systems. You will also get the boiler installer who diversifies into ASHP as his boiler installs fall off who will go on a training course then claim to be the expert, this is true for a small minority but many just become so called “experts” then throw about poor information and worse, install systems based on said poor information. If more things were designed then we would be in a better, more efficient, cost effective world in the long term, but many want to see the capital costs lowered, particularly developers. I know for a fact that a developer is currently installing 164 No, 305W Peak, solar panels on a building, connected to nothing. Reason being that the LA accepted their existence, but little do they know they don’t go anywhere. Why on earth I hear you ask, well what is the benefit to them? They saved £40,000 or something on the inverters, connection back to the MSB etc. etc. and the install time. If that is their attitude, why would they want to waste any money on things they can just slap in without design?

Agreed - I am not personally a mechanical engineer (I'm electrical) but I work in M&E so my colleagues are mech guys and in M&E project meetings we must sit and listen to the other disciplines discussions - needless to say, you pick things up to a point you are familiar with other building services. We are currently the stage 4 M&E design consultants and checking engineers for a D&B hotel, our guys designed it with one system but the M&E contractor wants to use Mitsubishi for the ASHP's, now this is for heating 4000 litres of water with pre-heat cylinders and heated buffers and all sorts, its a big system but the change to Mitsi is a nightmare, the whole system is having to be redesigned and re-calculated by the M&E contractor (who is now regretting it I think because they are spending more manhours on design than they will save on kit). They are also going to need to have a booster immersion tank to bring the water temp up to the hotel spec temp because the Mitsi system won't get it hot enough. Things got a little heated recently between the PM and the M&E contractor, where the main contractor PM wanted to know what exactly the issue was, we stated that the system we designed was based on various temps and figures and flow rates from manufacturer A - but M&E contractor wants to use manufacturer B - because of the massive variances in the way these things all work, its not just comparing apples to apples and I think it is this issue that is creating the minefield. Gone are the days where anyone with half a brain could spec a gas boiler or cylinder etc. and as long as they got water volume and BTU's etc. right it would probably work, I think annoyingly we are entering an era where these systems are going to need to be properly designed, at least until they become more common and more importantly widely understood by all.

What a mess of a situation - not good what has been done. So many things you could do here from correct and proper solutions to sort of bodges that might work. In an ideal world you would dig up the drive for about a 500-600mm section, waterproof the walls, and then rebuild the drive with gravel infill and a channel drain. Next sort of OK option would be to pull up the solider course of paving, dig down and fit a channel drain and divert the water into a drain somewhere. I suppose bodges could be done too - not sure what, I don't like bodges and cannot think of a good one.

It seems to me that something is going out of true towards the end and rather than the blade cutting through it is putting a load onto the tile which is cracking it. It stands to reason that a good blade spinning fast will remove material thus cutting through, if this remains straight, level and true then the blade will continue on it's path, if at some point something tilts or turns or rocks, I could see the above occuring. I had an issue with vibration, once the tile was nearly cut, the last bit was just cracking off - I ended up needing to get the tile to sit more firmly so it couldn't vibrate the backs of them their quite rough so sitting flat and firm was not an inherent characteristic of the tile. I would perhaps get some scrap tiles (looks like you may have a few!) and investigate how square everything sits in relation to each other particularly at the last section of the cut. If the issue is limited to the last 50-60mm then could you try cutting it with a wooden spacer to move the tile out further, if that cuts no issue then you know that something is happening at the final stroke. Is the blade running dead straight the whole way? It is not by any chance taking a lean at the last section due to a loose rail or bearing or bent bit?

This sort of stuff is already happening, we are providing M&E design services on a restaurant build, they have just converted it to a traditional brick build because they could not get the cladding and and the portals and things for reasonable money.

It would be pretty good if you could export the results and use them on a QS spreadhseet, when I priced my builds I just used an excel and manually entered the data, things were more stable then, if that could update with an input from this that would be epic. I am not suggesting that you spend the time and effort doing this personally but could be an option for someone who is maybe tracking a build.

Terminate the cable within your property, possibly even at point of entry, so that the joint can be accessible, if it was me I would solder and heatshrink it maintaining a good twist as close to the joints as possible enclosed in a flush box and cover, my alternative would be to terminate the cable to a flush/surface RJ45 socket, then plug another cable into that out to your intercom. This option permits you to run the new cable exactly where you want it and the connection will be accessible - do not plaster over. Even in SELV systems like this it really is unacceptable. If worst comes to worst put a 1G blanking plate on the wall down low. Only issue here might be distance, what is the current distance do you think? Is this your own system or part of a system in a multi-occupancy building?

Insulation/plasterboard supplier - do other building materials too.