Carrerahill

How did this pan out? I will be in Taynuilt end of the month.

He is bang on - 60A - 48A = 12A - you could draw that 12A through your oven alone - so that is your service maxed out. He is probably the only electrician out of all of them I would now trust - he is clued up. This is why a move away from natural gas over the next couple of decades and electric car charging is going to be problematic, the grid is not ready!

2mm wall would be fine. If you actually go and see this steel you are talking about, stare it in the eye, you will see what I mean. I recently did a project with 2.77mm wall steel tube - I needed it for cantilever strength in my situation but it was solid - like seriously solid. Compared to 4x4 timber a 80x80x2 would be stronger. Get the posts capped with a welded plate on the top and galvanised and set them in stone for drainage with a ring of concrete around them further up. They must be allowed to fully breath right through - have a decent hole circa 20mm around 75-100mm above ground level and another about 100mm from the top. You need holes for galv anyway. Alternatively - flange mount bolted to concrete. Pads with J bolts sticking out would work well. Same breather holes apply and make sure it can drain out at the base via the flange.

It sounds like I am spoiled then! There are 2 tips I can go to, 1 where they would not let me in with the Land Rover, as mentioned earlier in this thread; and I only went there because the other was closed for renovations, and another one not far from my house. I have never so much as seen a queue and the guys really don't give a hoot about anything - their attitude is just dump the rubbish and go. If you show up with anything remotely valuable looking, like bits of twin and earth, they will "help" you. I have so far, during this build, dumped my entire sunroom there - from the roof to the skirting boards, PB the lot.

Yeah, you mist it while you drink icy beers.

Well done!

The insulation is nearly done on the extension so the next stage will be to run in services and the floor make up impacts how I do this. The plan was suspended timber frame, I even have C24 joists sitting temporarily on treated plates on top of block dwarf walls, all I really need to do is clean out the solumn, lay in any services that will go under the floor then fix the joists, fit PIR and away we go. However I am thinking that to be honest I could probably get it filled up fairly easily, 150mmPIR then 100mm concrete slab and it's got me thinking. Option would be to get some more hardcore down there, run waste pipes in with appropriate clean-outs etc. and then do a 75mm channel in the concrete across kitchen floor with a lip so I can have a 18mm panel sit back in - other option would be just to chuck in some 75mm corrugated duct that I can push 15mm pipes through. I could probably have the solemn filled by the weekend and order concrete next week. I am installing UFH so this sort of goes hand in hand. I think I would need to duct 3-4 vents to the original house but I have plenty 4 inch soil pipe and will buy the vent adaptors. I also have a lot of old concrete block, I could "lay" these like mono-block as infill, and then grout around them with a sharp sand/cement slurry, then 100mm of hard core, sand, DPC, PIR, conc... It lets me get rid of some used but clean and otherwise OK concrete blocks - it would just take too long to remove all the mortar to make them viable for anything else - I feel like this is an environmentally good option too. The rafters I have will not be wasted, mezz floor in garage? use them for building bulkheads in the kitchen etc.

I wanted this sort of install too - but every time I spoke to glaziers and window manufacturers they seemed a bit disinterested. I have a window "splashback" to one elevation of my kitchen - basically from just above counter to just below cabinets there is a 300mm x 2800mm window. I wanted it to just disappear into the reveal with no real frame as such. The closest I got to this was a glazing channel set into the timber frame that the double glazed unit could be fixed into. I could then simply render/plaster up to it but this created issues such as drainage, I would need to have drainage outlets on the outside, I would need the frame watertight at the bottom corners so seep-past could not run out the end of the channel, then I would have a frozen piece of aluminium channel in the winter which would condensate. I then decided to buy a double glazed unit and make a timber frame myself but for time I decided not to. In the end we just bought normal windows and will take the finishes up to as close to the bead as possible so you just have a little piece of frame, then the bead then the glass. If someone had been a bit more interested in what I had to say I think they could have done something for me but I was losing momentum and the window order helped me regain momentum so it was a time/speed thing in the end.

I would say 1-2mm is going to be fine, the man will want to put a 2-3mm skim on the wall anyway - a good plastered can do a lot to sort issues - bear mind every trade before a plasterer claims "the plasterer can fix it" going all the way back to how level a stud is! Although this is a bit lazy, there is some truth. If you want you could chip, drill, etc. some of the brick down to get the box in further - the further the box goes in, by the time you add skim, you end up with a few more mm of wriggle room for wires.

No it didn't really make any sense. It is like wearing some heavy rubber boots to do electrical work then putting an earth bond down the side. I don't really get too carried away with earthing things in my house. I let the electrical system take care of it all and don't fuss with pipes and whatnot.

BS7671 states that as near as possible to the entry point you should protectively bond metallic pipework or services - part of the protection is about what may come in from external sources. What is your water pipe made of as it enters the property? The gas will certainly be metallic so the answer to your question is probably yes to water and for sure to gas. I say probably yes to water because if you have an MDPE pipe in, a metal valve and a PVC pipe out, there really is no point - and the regs do say "metallic".

Correct just a single product. For a cheaper alternative and so you don't have a tin of stuff you may never use again you could try LSX. If you only did 12 wraps of PTFE I would go for 20 and try again. It should seal with PTFE. If you stage it so you can get it threaded then it gets thicker on the tape it will bind up well, it should be a fair twist once you get going, if it spins on easily with fingers after the first few threads then you didn't use enough.

Normal for threaded unions like this not to have any seals or gaskets, when jointing iron pipe with threaded ends onto malleable iron fittings it was common to use water hawk or white hawk for gas. Those lines then last for ever. Get it stripped, dried and get a good dose of Water Hawk on it, do it up and leave it to set up a bit, it says instant and if it doesn't leak then it's good for ever but I tend to give it an hour or so. It will seal. Out of a matter of interest, how many wraps of PTFE did you use? It is common to need to use a good 15-20 on larger threads.

I quite like everything looking the same! I was a Bosch man but I ended up going Mak a few years ago. I still have my corded Bosch angle grinders, 4 1/2" and 9" and a 18V drill that gets used often. But most other stuff is now Makita.

Could be. A gardening company who used to come around our area had a "tip car" - it was a Peugeot 306 with the passenger and rear seats stripped out, no carpets or anything - it was a skip on wheels. They would literally throw stuff into this little car then go to the tip in it, no one questions a little hatch going to the tip. He used to do garage demo's and take asbestos sheets to the free asbestos drop our tip has. My attitude was, good on him, at least he had a reasonable plan unlike some people who chuck it down a country lane. I'd rather pay a few quid more in tax for the council to deal with people sneaking commercial waste into the tip than see it tipped on roads and laybys.

I am sure it is the 153Z I have, certainly a BL motor version. Really nice bit of kit. Use it almost everyday on my build and weekends, battery lasts seriously long - I also have a Mak drill and 1/2" impact driver all using the same 18V battery - I am always very pleased with their kit.

This is the sort of thing I would do. I went to the tip once in my Defender - I had a single arm-chair in the back - I went to the normal gate but knew I would not fit under the height restriction bar - I got out and told them I had a chair to bring in and that my vehicle didn't fit. They told me I could not come in then. I said can't I just come in via the truck entrance (right next to the main public entrance) and he said no. I said I was being discriminated against because I had a tall vehicle and said no wonder you guys have to go about picking up shit from the streets if this is your attitude. I went back and got the chair, and dragged it into the site, he came and said I could not do that. I said "well I am doing it" I dragged it to the general waste tip and left if there and walked back out.

I have a set of number plates you can have... Velcro on? All joking aside, I would alter my number plate by a digit using black electrical tape just before I drove in - as soon as I leave I would remove it so I am not on public highways with an illegal plate. In all seriousness it is not a crime so I would be being inventive - if it came to pass then you could start a fight with the right muppets.

This seems MAD! Surly this could be resolved by turning up to the tip and go and speak to someone who can "do something".

Same with DNO's - there are parts of the network they don't even know what it does or where it goes. There was a linesman out doing some work to an 11KV line near a friends farm - he drove out to see the linesman and suggested the overhead line ran into the middle of one of his fields and ended, what was the point - the linesman said that it wouldn't and it would be a pole drop to go subterranean. My friend knew fine well that there were two poles and a transformer on it and nothing came down the pole so after some talking the linesman agreed to jump in my friends Land Rover and across his fields they went. The linesman couldn't believe he had been sent to do some repairs and upgrade to a line that went no where! The transformer used to feed agricultural accommodation - the accommodation was long gone and the cables had all been removed. A local farmer also has a 3 phase supply that a linesman installed for a few beer tokens - it happens to end in his barn...

It certainly looks like you will build partially over the 150mm vitrified clay sewer where your proposing your turning point. I would remove all the tree's from your plan, simplify it and overlay the sewer plan onto your site plan (if you have your site plan in CAD format and assuming the scales on the SW water plan are correct I can scale and overlay them for you. Then for the looks of it all you need to do is confirm no building and just some hardcore and gravel or slabs or something and they should be grant.

We have that but also the mesh round it. Be careful that the one you buy says suitable for solid fuel - our first one was sold as such but it became apparent it was gas only and rotted out in about 11 months! The supplier gave us a new one FOC as he admitted it was not correct - but be aware!

It should be indeed... but these guys like to charge these days. I was quoted £500 to render the front of my garage on Tuesday! It's timber above the door so only the 2 pieces of wall each side of the door which are basically 4.4m² each! I think the guy may have thought I was insane. I am going to pickup the pre-mixed bags of stuff this weekend for the scratch and final coat for £28.00. £472.00 to render two bits of wall!

Even easier then - veneered and edged sheets stood off the wall to create the shadow-gap then have a joiner (or yourself) make up the little cabinets in veneered board and wood of the same type, rub down then a satin lacquer over the lot. We have an oak bed which is 75% solid oak but the headboard is a full oak panel - so it's a 2mm real wood veneer on MDF set between two solid pieces of oak and a top rail so edges are all hidden. All done in English oak so by the time it was rubbed down and coated in a lacquer it looks brilliant.

You could get a real veneer MDF or Egger or something in 18mm for the rear panels from the likes of Timbmet and then get 38mm for other bits, mitre them up so you can use all the veneer faces only and you could make that.