Andeh

How did the damage happen? Wet vac to suck water out, and I'd be tempted to do as you say. It's a slight niche vs replacement, but as long as done carefully and checked before dealing over.... Its just a drain.

A month! I realise when discuss passive, that's prob an important differential! Direct debit was at £175 but just dropped it to £150, October will be the 12th month for us to see where we end up, but I think £150 should be around the sweet spot, albeit sitting on £160 credit already. What also impacts that is we use dish washer daily, and washing machine daily, tumble dryer couple times a week..... at the very least. We also have octopus cosy for the ASHP.

We built the most inefficient home possible, by the nature of a large bungalow in the shape of an 'H' effectively, with a lot of glazing, very high ceilings everywhere and simply put an extra £6500 ish into upgrading insulation everywhere we could and 'try for good airtightness (2.7)..... Then hoped for the best! (incl MVHR, ASHP, UFH, PV) End result is bills of somewhere between £150 and £175 for our electricity for a warm house. There is a pragmatic middle ground in everything, but don't compromise on a home design for the sack of savings £50 a month on bills....

I have a central network hub, cat6a all over the place. hard wired internally is mostly complete. The next phase I am planning is some external POE cameras. I am looking at Annke as cost v capability. We have 2 x CAT6a poking out the wall sin various areas. Cables are expanding foamed in for Air Tightness, then rendered as well. In terms of the physical install of the cable, what should I expect in terms of manually wall mounting them & plugging in the cable? I generally use keystone CAT6a jacks, for ease f installation but these are quite bulky. How do you hide the cable & jacks behind the camera? Thanks,

Nope, nothing at all! So accept it and move in. If you can't change it, don't think/worry about it....

It's the future! Expect this to become more common in future, smart grids with micostorage and intelligent control of devices buffering erratic renewables. Automotive batteries are also very over engineered from a degradation point of view.

Your 95% to the top there. You're fine 😉

As said above. That would not be a job you'd want to redo, chalk it up as 'encouraging fast drainage, woz' done intentionally'

Depends on how deep they went. If its deep enough, no need to have it to the tippy top with concrete. The fact they used concrete posts and gravel boards is a def positive, and you are not in an exposed location there Reality is.... you'll be fine. I really wouldn't be worrying about that. I'd keep your powder dry for others areas, rubble under your lawn?

Don't do what I did and and add insufficient water (distracted, rushing and wasn't thinking) then dump it, and half way through spreading it realise.... Then over work it... Then try and spray on water..... Then rip it all up. Bastard thing.

Easily done can't see there being an issue for a floating floor. If you tired... Just stick a layer of flexible over the top.

150mm is 'high end' unless substantial renovation and major project work is undertaken. Realistically the difference between 50 and 150mm in an extension is probably a couple hundred ££ a year? We put in 160mm....but forever home and total newbuild biased out decision. But a degree of pragmatism is required if this isn't the case for you. My parents had 75mm UFH put in several years ago in a total refurb old stone 4 bed house, (no cavities, but PIR plasterboard), and their bills are 75% more then ours, even though we put £1000s into upgraded insulation everywhere in our high end new build.

Dripping off the chimney! It's amazing how 'loud' it can sound on a roof. We have it from our stove pipe onto the lounge flat roof (bungalow).

Insulation works both ways, it will keep your very hot loft from heating up the house. Your only realistic option is air con... Our master bedroom has a 4.5m ceiling one side and 3.2m ceiling the other side.... Still gets warm and stuffy... Your only realistic option is air con. Either portable or full install. We went with a full system and it works brilliantly well. Running costs are prop average of 15- 20p an hour?

HDMI in duct for room to room runs, ie sky box in corner TV in the wall. Cat6a for central house distribution. HDMI is more fragile then most realise, and gets very patchy over several metre. It's also a bigger cable, with a thicker plug so harder to route and protect. Just run lots of Cat6a everywhere, they less fragile and more flexible for use 5.

Good luck! We've all had those stinky feelings ourselves, we all get through it on the end.

Alternatively.... From those photos you can measure them, with the bricks and mortar gaps giving you a pretty good idea of where they are. Drill small holes to see if you can find/break through... Even if it you miss a few, a magic man will guarantee to make those holes invisible (or use grout yourself)...... They've hidden far worse damage on and in our house!

If you're going through hell.... Keep going! This forums exists more as a self help group for these bullshit times then anything I think. We've endured some horror periods over our build. For what it's worth, I also opened this thread and went....'oh wow, that looks nice'. Are you to tap the porcelain and see if you can detect hollow spots in the general vicinity of the drainage holes? Or even a thermal camera might detect them? Blow heat over them to detect temp change/discrepancy maybe?

Damn, that does look good!

Would be interested in the labour rate you're accounting for in your time and yours wife's time!

We installed a big Stovax, with an external air supply to underneath it. Mvhr in the bedroom area and seperate one for lounge/kitchen etc area (bungalow split in two halves) During long periods of inactivity, I just stick a foam blocker in the outside. That being said in 18months I've remembered to do this never....

Modern 2 part polymeric sand 1000%, I used some stuff from Nexus and was impressed with it.

Wish if known this several weeks ago, when we had normal block paving sand laid.... Ya win some ya lose some. No idea on sealer yet, it's a minefield!!

Polymeric sand is great between patio slabs, I think it's be too thick for block paving. We are also considering a sealer, though good advice apparently is 'you get what you pay for' apparently '.... 5x longer lasting costs you 5x more etc....

We just had 305sqm laid! I must admit, it's comforting knowing it is repairable should we have any sinkage, which around a new house is reasonable to expect! Tarmac was the other thought, it having spent so long living in new build estates with tarmac driveways (which my 4x4 would leave indents) we ruled it out quickly.