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I’m looking for a large wooden outdoor dining table. 10 or 12 seater. Any recommendations for suppliers? I would prefer something unfinished, so that I can stain and oil it myself. But this is not a must.

Sure, but for a similar reason, an architect who works in Scotland likely lives there too, so their living and working costs will be significantly lower than if they lived and worked in London.

Do you fancy a visit to London? I have 700kg of gravel to move.

Not sure how common, but unless you get PP first time, it can get expensive. We were badly advised to reject the LPA’s requests for concessions, and were advised to instead take the rejection and appeal. This turned out to be a questionable choice. We ended up getting more or less what we wanted about 2 years later, after a failed appeal and two further applications. Also spent a lot of money on a planning consultant to help with the appeal. All in all, close to £12k to get planning. Had we accepted the request for concessions, we would have ended up with a smaller extension, but probably a slightly nicer rear elevation and a much quicker approval, such that our build would have almost finished by the time COVID came. Instead, we started building mid way through lockdown.

I asked a question here to get some reassurance. I then got further clarity from the builder as to what the plan was, which probably negated my question, but I posted the info here for info, in case helpful to others in the future.

What’s silly about it? He had a m3 of clay soil to get rid of, which he hadn’t factored into his original pricing. If it can go in the ground underneath the driveway, what’s the problem?

Postscript: got some further clarity today: above the clay they are putting in, they are putting in more rubble, above that and about 40cm below the finished driveway line, they are going to put a load more MOT in and pack it down with a compactor. So I’m more relaxed now.

Two weeks in, and they have made good progress. The retaining wall (made of steel reinforced concrete) has been cast and they have started to fill the diagonal volume now bound by that retaining wall with a layer of concrete rubble and then sand which they have been compacting with a compactor. They have maybe filled the bottom third of it. What has surprised me a little is that on top of this, they have put in some clay soil which I wanted thrown away (from the back garden). I wasn’t thinking it would end up in there when I asked them to dispose of it but it has now ended up in there as well. In all, it will only make up about a tenth of the volume, probably less, but it concerned me a bit as I would have thought this is not really a building material appropriate for the sub-base of a driveway. There is of course compacted MOT below all of this which was laid for the original driveway. I asked the foreman if it was okay to use soil mixed in with the sand, and he said it will be fine as they are compacting it. Some of this clay soil (less than 5% of it) is grass, which will surely shrink to nothing once it decays. Thoughts?

Can you share a photo or link?

We couldn’t agree a price. What I want is fairly involved as on top of the foundations, there are 3 walls to bring it to 90cm high, then a concrete platform, then the brick walls and firebox to bring it to around 1.9m. Then he just had to stick on the hood and flue which I will order separately. But I’ve had one of these built before and it took two semi competent guys a whole week to do it and even then it wasn’t finished, and I had to finish it myself. So he’s just doing the foundation, and then I will see whether I progress it this year, or next.

Yes, this was the main reason I went for this boiler. I was advised that if I had this boiler, I definitely wouldn’t need a buffer tank, and that’s proven to be correct (we also have a low loss header), even when we are heating just a very small zone of our UFH.

No idea yes, Viessmann Vitodens 200w system boiler, 32kW.

The distance from the street to the boiler is about 12.5m as the crow flies, or about 18m once you take into account the actual type of the pipe, which has to travel diagonally downwards (fall of about 1m down and run of 5m across) then up to get into the ceiling, then down again once in the boiler room. This isn’t that different to the original location of the boiler when we bought the house, but that was a much smaller boiler, serving a smaller 3 bed house. We are now a 5 bed house with a bigger water tank (300L vs older 180L). Does the pipe length I’m describing, as well as the fact it has to go down diagonally, then has a few right angles, raise any warning signs?

I guess that’s a possibility. Will do nothing for the time being. Who knows, the gas board people might be reasonable!

No, nothing dangerous so everything continuing as it was. I shall wait and see what happens. Hopefully get an answer soon as we were due to fill the planters with soil and new plants next week.

Thanks. I will ask for figures once Cadent gets in touch.

Thanks @SimonD, very helpful. But given from a performance point of view, I’m not noticing any issues, do I have to do anything about this, or can I just tell Cadent I’m not interested in any work that needs to be done on my property, because it will be too disruptive? Appreciate this is ultimately a legal question, but given you are in the industry, I wondered if you had any real life experience of a situation where a gas board wants to rectify something but the owner of the property doesn’t want them to enter his land to do it.

But you are saying that from the land of common sense. I don’t think regulators and gas networks live there.

I think this is a load of regulatory bollox, but here goes: Moved into newly refurbed house a year ago. All good with my new boiler, save that I always thought the boiler engineer had oversized it. Per my calculations we needed around 24kW boiler, but the boiler installer laughed at that and told me to go bigger and so we went with a 32kW. Over winter I don’t think I ever saw the boiler output more than 25kW, so my calcs must have been about right. A year later the installer calls me up and says: is it ok if I use your installation as part of my regulatory checks; meaning an inspector will come and check his work for his ongoing certification. I said yeah sure, thinking it’s always good to get extra peace of mind. Today, inspector attended. He says everything is fine with his work, but the gas supply itself is faulty, as it is not supplying enough gas for the installation. He suspects the gas “Governor” might be faulty, but notes that this isn’t my installer’s responsibility and that it is Cadent’s responsibility as they own/manage the local gas supply. Cadent turned up an hour ago, ask me to switch all my thermostats to max and to put my hot water on. We don’t have gas hobs. They check the gas supply and say it is within their range of (about) 19 to 25 (I think it was about 20). They speak to boiler installer who says that is not a reliable test because the cylinder is already hot (it was heated a couple hours earlier). And that the proper way is to put boiler in test mode (which is what the inspector has insisted on Earley in the day). This appears to be technically correct, given that with everything switched on boiler was modulating to about 21kw or so, whereas once in test mode, it shot up to 32kW. In test mode it failed Cadent’s test, recording somewhere below the bottom range, not far below, but below. They installed a new Governor but this makes no difference . Conclusion: insufficient gas supply. Cadent tell me they will pass on my details to the “works team” who will advise what needs to be done, but it could involve digging up and replacing the gas supply pipe. He reassured me that they will reinstate everything they have to disturb. I don’t know the exact route of the pipe, but i think it goes under some concrete planters, some very expensive external paving and a concrete platform and retaining wall that separates our bin storage area from part of the planters. Even if they pay for all the works, am I obliged to do this? Can I just accept the allegedly inadequate gas supply, which in my view would never have been an issue if the installer went with my initial preference of a smaller boiler?

I have a wall light that was fitted 18 months ago. It worked fine but I found the 3W G9 LED bulb that I was using with it too bright (it's just a night light in a bathroom). When i replaced the bulb I managed to break an internal glass diffuser that covers the bulb holder, when trying to fit a 2.5W ikea G9 LED bulb (which was too long, causing the broken glass). It took a few months to get the replacement diffuser. I sourced a new bulb, this time a megaman 2W G9 LED bulb (which apparently is a "new" design from them, making it shorter. Fitted the bulb and diffuser and closed up the light fitting. Tested it all worked fine. Later that day the light failed. I don't have another G9 light fitting to test whether the issue is with the bulb or not, but given it was working fine earlier in the day, I'm assuming the bulb failed for some reason. Is that a safe assumption, or could there be something wrong with the light fitting? The specs of the light fitting say "RECOMMENDED LAMP: 3W Max LED G9".

+1. I agree that fighting the existing topology is an uphill battle (pun intended) and that you are much better keeping some of the elevated ground as a design feature, that will also save you money and hassle. If you were to flatten the whole thing, the high fences either side might make the garden look like a prison yard.

If it’s cheaper, pea shingle is absolutely fine. Remember you will see it at the perimeter, so if that’s important to you, pick something that works with your garden design scheme.

Bloody good job I insisted on over engineered foundations. Look what they found: A rather large tree root (diameter is about 9cm), almost certainly from an apple tree we cut down almost 5 years ago. Had I gone less deep, we might have missed this root, it would have eventually rotted and caused moree movement that my barbecuing skills can cope with!

I stayed at a friend’s house in Melbourne once, which was designed not a fancy architect. Their kitchen/open plan living area was done in polished concrete. It was quite dark, but with coloured stones in it, that were red, yellow, green and pink. It looked good, much more interesting than our microcement. But it also had a couple of cracks in it, which are part of its “charm”. The walkway/bridge between the two sides of the Tate Modern has a much more sleekly styled polished concrete floor finish; I walked over it a couple of weeks ago and liked it more than the art I was seeing!

Well, polished concrete still needs to be polished. So that is a double job in a sense. Microcement can look industrial or it can look very homely. It all depends on the way you use it, ie the colours you choose, the other finishes in the room.