Carrerahill

Well done! This reminds me of the time a friend had an issue with the DNO. When he moved into his smallholding there was a 250litre immersion heater in the loft, this had 12Kw of plate heaters in it connected to a Horstmann radio teleswitch meter. He informed the utility provider of the readings on move in date and all was well. Soon after moving in he ripped it all out and fitted tanks and pipework for a solid fuel appliance in the kitchen, he had the DNO fit a new meter getting rid of the Horstmann, he told his supplier and that was that... or so he thought. Bills kept on coming in for estimated readings for the Horstmann, which was quite a lot, which he refused to pay and even invited them to come and look at his shiny new board with a single meter. This didn't happen and eventually they said they were going to come and fit a prepay if he didn't pay his bill (he was still sending money for his normal meter amount). As you can no doubt imagine this went on and on, however they were messing with the wrong man here - they were dealing with a seriously expert amateur lawyer with the legal back up of a friend of ours a judge! The DNO were now threatening to get a court order to break in and do these changes, so he went to the sheriff court and took out an interdict against anyone who wanted to get a court order to enter his premises, not only did the sheriff agree, but insisted this was done due to the nature of my friends business. The DNO now could not get in and could not disconnect his power because he and 1 other property were fed off a single pole transformer and to split them would mean digging up his road - they were stuffed. Eventually the fools at the utility worked it all out and it went away but it is scary how inept the council or local utility etc. is.

Seriously? Some little twerp from the council BROKE into your new build to prove council tax could be levied? That is unreal! I'd have had him in court for that! Anyway, I digress.

The path has public access, there was talk of closing it off before I bought the property and taking the land but as it's been a right of way for x number of years it must now be left. I think you have all confirmed what I was thinking, this is not an exact science, as long as the building I build is more or less what I said it would be and where I said it would be we are all going to be happy. Unless I go and build a 2 storey garage or something, planning are never going to care really. It makes me wonder how many structures exist out there with planning consent that were not actually built 100% as planned and no one will ever notice. I have no intention whatsoever to try and flout the rules here but I was concerned as a first time builder that I would build my garage, kit it all out for some jobsworth to come and tell me it was 300mm to tall at the back and 43mm too far to the left or something outrageous.

I spoke to planning last year and explained where I wanted to build the garage and asked did I need permission, he came back and said yes because the path constitutes a road - I was going to argue this it's not a road, it's a 1500mm wide path and I own half of it but I didn't want to get my relationship with them off to a bad start. Also the garage sits beyond the front elevation of my house albeit about 10m away to the left where you can't actually see it from the road, it was only a small corner of it that came forward of the house but I would have ended up wasting a 1900mm strip down the side of my garage so I was not keen to lose that. I had to put in planning for the extension anyway so I drew up the plans, gave them to the architect who re-jigged them a little and submitted them as part of the application thus costing me no more anyway. Another argument I made was that if you look at the house and draw a line along the front of it to where it ends fronting a road, then drew a line perpendicular to first line down to the road, that according to PD is a permitted build area as it doesn't front a road. But he said no because the path was a road, so the line had to extend right along the front of the house. Anyway, application is in now anyway, so fingers crossed. I think what is being said above is the case, be careful, lay it all out and just build it without being stupid on any of the dims to prove I have done my best to adhere to the plans.

On the side elevation boundary it is a path (which I actually own into the middle of) and to the back it is my neighbours garden, the neighbours know about the garage and have seen plans and only stipulated that they wanted the hedgerow left alone, which is fine I don't need to touch it and want it to remain anyway.

The location plan simply shows the garage sitting on the site on the scaled block plan. On the proposed elevations plan it just shows the 4 elevations with a dimension showing the length, width, ground to soffit (or is that slab to soffit?) and ground/slab to apex - picture of the actual planning application elevations drawing attached.

Hi All, Simple question; but a bit drawn out, regarding my planning permission and the setting out and heights of said proposal onto my site. As an engineer I work with CAD on a daily basis, everything is mm perfect, everything very precise - now come to my site and the location for my new garage - this seems to be a little bit, rough shall we say. I know from my drawings that the garage sits 800mm in and parallel from one boundary and 400mm going up to 1200mm on the rear elevation (site is not square and it made sense to align the garage with the side elevation boundary). So I go out and start to work out the physical location and bang in pegs and what not so I can see where I need to dig out and dig services trenches. Now the boundaries of my site are set out in traditional estate wrought iron fence which have been there forever, so I am going to use these, as my physical marker of boundaries. Now the question is this, if I measure 800mm out from the side fence, check it is square to said fence then measure 400mm in from the back fence and bang a peg in I now have the completed outside corner of the garage location, I can then measure 5000mm across and at that point 1200mm out from the back fence, by ensuring the 5000mm line is square to the side fence I now have the opposite corner of the back wall - the rest is the case of staying square to the side fence and marking out the site. That all sounds fairly easy and with some careful measuring and squaring off it will be fine - however, old fences are not perfectly straight and things do undulate a little, with care and attention I can allow for this and I will be fine. But really what I want to know is how much out could something be and planning would not care, and secondly, planning don't actually come and look do they? How would they ever know if I, through genuine error, ended up 40 or 50mm off course? The next part of this question is regarding ground level, from the front of the garage to the rear of my garage the ground slopes down to the rear about 450mm. My plans show the soffit at 2.4m, if the site was flat then all elevations could easily enough be built to have a ground to soffit height at 2.4m however I cannot do this, I am going to have to have the back end of the garage about 2.8m from ground level to soffit, I may be able to re-grade the access to the front of the garage a bit to lower it, maybe go down 100mm and put the slab in level at the front bringing it down a bit at the back but what is deemed as "ground level". I don't want to build this thing as I said above, only to find that planning say I am too high at the back. Thanks

Bloody brilliant! What a complete fool and time waster who phoned that one in! I hope planning start filing these complaints directly into a bin!

No not a Canadian thing but a North American thing. They have been into fitted bathrooms long before we, i.e. UK, started to include them mainstream.

I am now a big fan of bathroom units for the sink etc. We currently have a traditional suite with no storage in the bathroom, as a result there is no where to keep any bathroom essentials out of sight, so there is bleach hidden down the back of the toilet, cleaning stuff hidden behind the sink pedestal, whoever installed it also liked boxing lots of things in at lots of different depths and heights which was then tiled over creating some sort of highly slippery climbing wall! I know why he has done various things but to be honest had he just battened out the wall, hid all the services and installed to that he would have only lost 50mm on that wall and then had a much easier life. Anyway, 2 years ago my fiancee and I stayed with family in Vancouver who had just moved into a new house, our en-suite was a decent size but what made it so smart and tidy was the sink unit, it gave lots of decent space for toothpaste and shaving stuff, it was about 600mm deep and 1200mm wide, basically a 1200mm kitchen carcass in terms of size and build, with a big stone top on it. There was loads of space for bathroom stuff and the place looked neat and clean. I think every bathroom in the house, including the powder room had this sort of setup for the basins. The only place I have seen them in real life for sale so far is B&Q and some of them look like an MFI storage unit with a basin bolted to the top, but I know I will find the right one when I come to do our bathroom (after the garage and extension). I am a bit of a stickler for neat work, so I would make the plumbing neat anyway, but the idea that I can have it all sitting there exposed but hidden in the unit with isolation valves etc. seems like a great idea to me. I think North America has a lot to offer in terms of how they build houses, they have been doing bathrooms like this for decades and we only seem to be catching on now, also there laundry rooms, great idea, they think it is plain insane to have a washer or dryer in a kitchen, and thinking about it, it is a bit!

Hi guys, I am looking for a bit of advice on a external wall insulation system and where I can buy it. I am thinking of insulating part of my house and a recent extension (within past 10 years I think) which seems to have shocking insulation, part of the house I would just want to render over and possibly the extension would end up with Marley weatherboard or something on the external. I have seen this stuff going on, it looks very easy to install yet everywhere I look they want to sell and install the product. So, can anyone advise on a system and where I can get hold of it. Thanks

I think it would be easier jut to to get a note of comfort from the engineer and shove it in the inspectors face, some careful polite discussion with him should suffice though, which to be honest is all a nonsense given that the re-bar going in is heavier and will offer more support, not like they used A192 or something! It is just a bit over the top - like using a 6x2 instead of spec'ed 4x2! I do really wonder about the inspectors sometimes.

Right, I have just wasted too long reading borehole reports!! Very interesting stuff. I guess the confidential ones hit gold and diamonds!

Just had a look at the BGS site for borehole scans and nothing showed up, however one down the road shoes the makeup of the ground and it's similar to my findings at the depths I am at. Boulder Clay seems to be prevalent. That would help explain some of the rather nice big boulders I have pulled out the the ground, I am hoping to find enough to build a little wall or rockery section next to the new garage.

If it dries up I will have a dig about tonight and let you know. I would hate to concrete over a fallout shelter or something, if it is, perfect location as my garage can become the new secret entrance! Am I being to hopeful?

The thought had crossed my mind! There is no pipe running into it and I cannot work out what it would be soaking away being where it is, unless it is the remnants of one. Our house is built on the highest point of a hill so I don't see someone trying to improve drainage as such, and the house is old enough the gutters would be connected to the main sewer. If it was a home made soakaway then it's a poor attempt. I will probably use it for the garage roof gutter catchment/soakaway system I am going to build.

Where in the country are you? I may be able to help with IBC's.

Update: Saturday it was pouring, first rain in 6 weeks, typical! It dried up in the afternoon and I went back to the trenches, got my levelling pegs in and scraped one end down a little to make sure I got a minimum of 150mm - but probably more like 175/200! I went to Trade Point and got 6 bags of cement (already had 4) and some sharp sand and all in 1 - I have loads of aggregate already and the 'quarry' remember! So Sunday I fired up the mixer and went for it. I was using a whole bag of cement which is more than '1' in the standard C25 ratio so should be well over a C25, slump was good too, I could tip a bucket and it kept it's shape well - I was happy. I ended up doing about 8-10 mixer loads, just kept going to get a good pour. I exhausted my 'quarry', and was left with some sharp sand and 2 bags of OPC so that's a bonus. I am still not sure what the 'quarry' was all about, once fully excavated it appears to be a piece of plastic storm drain pipe about 400mm deep, 1200mm dia that was sat into the subsoil then filled with sand and aggregate. I wonder if it was a way for the them to contain their materials at the time, then it was membraned over and the whole area covered in river pebbles... Anyway, it's all been used in the concrete and also means when I come to scrape that site I have an area to dump some of the spoil to make it back up to a reasonable height. I am tempted to take the pipe section out and use it elsewhere in the garden for a soakaway catchment area if I fill it with gravel and cover over.

You are thinking more of a resistor which will dissipate energy as heat - yes wasteful. This is also a common 'fix' that was used for dimming LED's but was not ideal as you now have a resistor somewhere getting hot! Anyway, capacitors are connected across the L and N of just about every electronic device or device with a motor. Usually they serve to suppress spikes helping to smooth the power, but can also actually improve the power factor which reduces consumption. Large factories sometimes have a bank of huge capacitors connected across their main incoming supply phases to improve power factor which means machines run more efficiently and therefore reduce consumption - it can make massive savings. So in this circumstance the capacitor sits between line and neutral, the induced voltage is absorbed by the cap, then when the current alternates it empties the previously charged side, so all the cap is doing is really temporarily storing the energy. There is some inefficiency but it is tiny.

You could dissolve it. Reduce it to a little bit of goo, bag it up and bin it. There is stuff you can buy to do it, but it's just a solvent (cough Petrol cough), acetone works too. Building waste is a massive issue and one that on commercial projects annoys me when you see 10-15 sheets of brand new Celotex in the skip!

This phenomenon can be caused by quite a few issues, it can be if your lighting cable sits near other live cables there can be induced voltage on the line. If two way switched the runs become significantly longer as power goes from switch to switch and back again etc. so more chance of induction. Another cause can be if the earth and neutral is combined or separate at the cable head, for example, if combined small earth leakages can then give the neutral a potential voltage which can then in turn back-feed circuits. Other things can include digital dimmers, which now even includes some rotary dimmers which have microprocessors in them which use the closed circuit through the load to power itself. A capacitor on the lighting circuit can often solve this, usually simply connected in at the back of the switch - easy to get from lighting suppliers and wholesalers but a good quality 400V capacitor with sleeve on the legs would do just fine.

Had a little dig about at lunch there and found my own quarry! Looks like the previous owners builders or maybe landscapers have dumped a big builders bucket full of sand and aggregate, I carefully dug around the perimeter then started to extract it into the barrow. That will just do nicely for my concrete! I will dig the rest out tomorrow. Also, see image of the spoil from the excavations (picture doesn't do the heap justice, that is a good 900-1000mm high and 2400mm x 1800mm heap) just to give you an idea of what I have heaps of and will generate more! Just to show what I am planning on using as back fill to raise the lawn. Also, looking at it I am going to have HEAPS of peagravel and river pebbles, even if I top up some areas and keep a load for filling down the side of new paths and whatnot could I use some as the first fill before hardcore for the garage slab? I am not trying to be cheap here as such, I am trying to be smart. I just see a lot of potential from a lot of good material that I have gone to the effort of keeping separated during my digging and don't see the point in skipping it all to pay for other material to come back.

I have yes, not too bad really, with the glorious weather it has made for quite a few very sweaty grubby days. The ground is gravel on membrane, then gravelly soil and a lot of pea gravel and old building supplies from a previous extension, so lots of sand and hardcore and stuff, that is the hard bit, then it's top quality soil for about 300mm which I shovelled into buckets and dumped in a pile on my lawn which was hard going - I have a barrow now! Then it's hard hard clay which takes a lot of breaking up and once broken becomes a nice sandy consistency so does shovel well. I have now squared that trench off and checked all my lines (I will recheck again on Saturday before the concrete goes in). I will then get a block wall built up to ground level. So what do you think of this plan: Use the excavator is to dig up a fair chunk of the old lawn down to the hard clay, probably down at the lower end (which I want to raise about 300-400mm) I expect this will be a 300-400mm dig of soil, then dump all the gravelly stuff already removed from the garage site directly onto the clay, then scrape the whole garage site of the gravel and gravel containing soil and the clay sand from the trench and dump it in the lawn, I am also going to remove a section of the car parking area from the front garden which is a mix of hard core, sand and river pebbles, I will save as many river pebbles as I can to top up areas where I will retain these, once all of the sites are down to soil I can then level out all the gravelly mixed stuff out on the lawn site and compact it. Then I will go back to the garage site and scrape the required amount of topsoil off to allow for the hardcore/concrete, then I will re-level the lawn with the original soil, compact it then top it all off with the good soil from the garage site etc. Generally does this sound like an acceptable method and best use of what I have to achieve what I need, I expect the lawn will have 300-400mm of soil over the gravelly stuff so I do expect it will work well, I will for sure use pre-turf soil before the lawn goes down. This then gives me a level to work with. If it is way short I will then need to think about removing the patio and lowering it, again spreading the scrapings around to get a new general height, if it is only off by say 100mm I will just bite the bullet and buy in more top soil. At that I can lay my new lawn and install a lawn to the small section at the front, the car can temporarily park on the scraped garage site. Then it's hardcore time, shutter the site up (using the block wall for the rear shutter) and hope to get a pour in for the end of May - lets hope planning is in by then as I won't pour concrete until the garage location has been approved. I did have a thought about the concrete from the old drive, when I dig down to the clay on the lawn site, do you think I could put the concrete down on top of the clay, this will help to elevate this area quite quickly, I would even make it proud of the current level, so by the time a 300mm cover of soil is over it it will help to create the little slope I will need so the lawn can drop back down to the original level. See sketch.

Well those of you who read my introduction may well know that I am planning on building a new garage and converting a sun room into a proper room for a new kitchen. Anyway, I have started the garage, although I still have no planning permission I have started the ground works, even if there are changes in the proposed garage much of what I have done so far still needs to be done - even if we were outright denied planning I would still pave this area for parking - hence works not a waste. I have not fully exposed the site to keep the garden secure for now but I have cut in most of the shear key for the concrete and then dug the trench for the rear found - it needs squared off etc. but that was the first dig to get it all into rough shape. I will have a 1.5ton excavator soon so I can scrape the rest of the site, I am also building up the lawn/dropping the patio as part of these works so the current lawn will be dug up, then a deeper hole or trench dug that the gravel from the garage site can be dropped into a good few feet down (if it was cleaner I would have used it for the first layer before hardcore for the concrete - I guess I still could), then working carefully I will then scrape the good topsoil off and that can go into the lawn. Then I will lift a big patio, scrape the sand and whatever else is down there off, if good sand I will work that into the soil for the lawn, then basically pull the whole patio area down into the current lawn, I will then basically accept whatever level that leaves me with, but it will be the same level throughout with a very slight incline to the garage. I will keep this posted as stuff happens. This will be a true build thread and it will be slow as I am doing it after work and weekends as well as other projects and interests.

I use an airline, close your eyes first!