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Indeed. But I wonder if I’m over complicating things. If I fitted a battery underneath the sofa, something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07WV2WB9T?ref_=cm_sw_r_apin_dp_KMY4V9EPJZ3RB0WCE7GC how often would I have to recharge it, given I’d be using a 2.5w or 3w LED bulb at most, for maybe 8 hours a week? 3w would mean 24Wh a week. But what is the conversion to mAh? i know the formula is mAh)*(V)/1000 = (Wh) but the voltage requirement is confusing me

We have a large open plan lounge that has very atmospheric lighting; in other words, it’s a bit dark. There is no ceiling lighting, just wall lights. In the middle of the lounge there is a large L shape sofa. I would like a floor lamp or possibly a table lamp on a small side table, to be able to read more comfortably on the sofa. To achieve that, I either need a battery powered lamp as suggested by @Mike(which is an option I’d entertain if I found one that I liked which had decent battery life - Lots of searching had not yielded results for me yet) or a way of concealing a cable. There is an area of the floor to the right of the sofa which is about 1m wide and acts as a sort of passageway. A rug/runner would work quite well there, and there is also a wall socket I could plug the light into on the other side of the passage. But I don’t want a trip hazard, hence wanted to conceal the cable under a rug.

Marazzi do a 6mm thick large format porcelain tile in this style. It’s called Grande marble look, I think, and the particular black marble with the amber/rusty veining is called Saint Laurent: https://www.marazzitile.co.uk/collections/grande_marble_look/ I bought these tiles in the giant size. They were 1600 by 3200 in size. People on here said we couldn’t achieve what we wanted to with these tiles. But we did! I need to update that thread.

Wait, there is a fourth option, perhaps… This is a bit Heath Robinson, but there is a company which makes “washable rugs” called Ruggable. They are effectively rugs with very thin (thin table cloth) decorative covers. The rug “pad” itself is not washable but the cover is. The pads come in two thicknesses. The thicker one is 1cm thick. I could cut out a channel thick enough for a normal cable, then cover it with the rug cover. Anyone have experience of hiding cables under rugs?

But it’s made in Japan, the pioneers of advanced electronic engineering. My options are: 1) try my luck with this weird Japanese invention (Link above); 2) go for safer option of rigging up a PoE supply and then find a floor lamp that can be powered by PoE (I expect that finding something that will match our interiors and lighting scheme in PoE will be nigh on impossible; or 3) accept that the bump in the floor runner is going to be bumpier than ideal and use one of these under our floor runner: FFS, should have thought ahead and write in a floor socket!

I have a very thin (essentially flat) cAT 6 Ethernet cable, and it made me think that if it’s possible to power stuff through this using PoE, it should be possible to get a flat 13A power cable. Googling around, I found this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Koumeican-thinnest-world-Flat-Code/dp/B00SNK6AG2/ref=pd_aw_ci_mcx_mh_mcx_views_0?pd_rd_w=EHXab&content-id=amzn1.sym.f2aca063-8a8b-49d1-9be7-42a31a3f7e53&pf_rd_p=f2aca063-8a8b-49d1-9be7-42a31a3f7e53&pf_rd_r=196GYCZWK2WTPQM3SKW4&pd_rd_wg=62WQa&pd_rd_r=ab9ee858-7c2f-45c7-b427-c63193ed2f93&pd_rd_i=B00SNK6AG2 Apart from the extortionate price, is this too good to be true? Safe?

If it is a 38dB reducing window, that is not top spec. There are soundproof windows that will reduce by 40dB or even 41dB, though you might need to go to 3G to achieve 41dB.

SBx board. It has a honeycomb membrane within it which is filled with sand! Here’s a link: https://soundstop.co.uk/products/sbx-10mm?gclid=Cj0KCQjwxMmhBhDJARIsANFGOSuUofF911Xb5-vuMPuTv5_ByxA80S3ltPhXskG_yBBuB7MLEeSr1ekaAu3eEALw_wcB

Pointless question of the day. A bit like asking: ignoring the temperature issue, can humans walk on the sun?

Section 75 only applies to purchases below £30k.

If that is correct, then you're fine, as you can just say it's not been "completed" yet. Presumably you haven't been able to get a completion certificate yet, so easy to prove it's not completed yet. But it would surprise me if that was correct, because it would be an example of legislation with retrospective effect, which is pretty rare in a modern democracy.

Were they holding themselves out to you as a member of the Chartered Institute of Architectural Technologists (CIAT)? (Check their website, any footers under their email signature or letters after their name in their email signature. Also check the CIAT register. If they were, then yes they probably have some duty of care to you. You definitely can use a fire curtain. You may need a fire engineer's report to satisfy to BCO that this woudl work, but that would be required with a mist suppression system anyway. Just more paperwork and fees, but such is life. Yes, but the BCO has also been incompetent here, so you need to start taking everything they say with several pinches of salt. There are some pictures here: https://www.coopersfire.com/sectors/domestic-housing/ You basically need to cut out a recess for the curtain, which is more like a roller blind. That needs power. In the event of a fire a sensor releases the blind and it drops down to effectively create a fireproof barrier between two spaces. Simples.

It’s called compressive strength. also, keep in mind that the layers above the Celotex spread the load, so there is never very much point loading onto the celotex. You do however need to calculate if there are likely to be any heavy point loads on your floor. For example, if you had one of those Japanese style deep baths which you sit in (as opposed to lie), and if that bath were made of cast iron, that, plus the water plus a fat bloke like me, might increase the load beyond what the celotex is designed for. You should be fine, but Check which celotex your builder is using and what is compressive Strength is.

Adrian Flux is another broker worth trying: https://www.adrianflux.co.uk/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwuLShBhC_ARIsAFod4fLCwNBbu0lZm94gHf8MPfA2A7ZW99NRwP-b2X9Mph-vBYIJotepLmwaAu0zEALw_wcB

There is some ambiguity in @Lofty718’s post. You mention that an architectural technician drew them, but later refer to an architect. Did you use an architect or not? I think this may be pretty crucial to whether you can claim against the person who drew them. My understanding is that a technician is somebody who draws. Whereas an architect is somebody who advises and draws, and so if drawn by an architect there is implied in his service that he is advising you that this drawing is compliant. That said, if you have a paper trail clearly showing that BCO approved the initial drawing, pre-build, then regardless of whether the person who drew the drawing owed you a duty of care to not draw negligent plans, I think you would have a good claim against BC. Otherwise what is the point of submitting drawings to them pre-build. We have a very similar situation to you, but we knew from the outset because our architect told us at the outset we would either need a fire door or a fire curtain. We were going to install a fire curtain in the ceiling, but in the end, once the staircase went in and we knew the shape of the ground floor ceiling, the architect advised us that the curtain in the ceiling would look ugly. (Our ceiling is plastered with beautiful bits of Cornwall.) so reluctantly I had to fork out £5k on an imist system, but at least now I have a supposedly state of the art fire suppression system. The thing that pisses me off is the need to service it each year. Depending on the shape of the ceiling, and how much space you have, I think a fire curtain is worth considering. It will be much less disruption to provide a power supply for that, then to install an imist system which requires water pipes to several locations throughout your open plan area. We have 7 nozzles and probably 25m of piping. The tank for the mist system is also a pain to hide. We managed to hide it above our fridge, but this requires a platform to be built for it, and genie lift to lift it into position. It’s just under 60cm wide, 50cm high and fairly deep too. imist can give you a free design and quote so you understand what’s involved.

Thanks guys. It's all stud wall stuff, and in most cases both sides of the stud wall are unplastered and accessible, so hopefully quite easy. Also, it will be the same electrician who installed the first and second fix (With second fix completed a year ago). He had very detailed drawings, which he was careful about annotating and organising, so I'm hopeful he's kept those annotated drawings which will help him remember where everything is.

We have a couple of walls in the house that have been boarded up, but not yet plastered. There are a few 13A sockets in these walls where we either want to move the existing socket to a different location on that wall (moving by 1m or so) or we want to add an additional socket 40cm or 50cm above the existing socket. Are these sorts of changes fairly straightforward?

Yes, I'm minded to agree. But I also have a really nice record player and a decent vinyl collection, and some purists say that converting the analogue signal from vinyl into a digitised signal for Sonos is sacrilege.

That's good. I have a ubiquity system with a UDR plus two APs powered by PoE. The ubiquity setup is pretty incredible. Literally had zero downtime since we set it up 9 months or so ago. I still can't believe how good it is. We have one Sonos Beam Gen 2 as a sound bar connected to the tv. It works well, but the amazon alexa integration isn't brilliant. Am thinking of getting two more speakers for a surround sound system. Was going to get a pair of Era 300 but the reviews are very mixed. Some people say they are great for surround sound when used as rears in combo with a soundbar such as the the beam gen 2, but that they sound a little weird for music because they are focused on spatial audio, and not all music has been engineered for that. Then other reviews say that the best sonos speakers for stereo music are Sonos Fives, but then there are lots of audiophiles which say they aren't great.

@Thorfun, I’m considering investing in Sonos gear but still on the fence as to how far into it to go. Did you ever get to the bottom of your issue?

@MJNewton I wonder how you feel about the new Sonos Era 300 speakers as a pair of rears for surround sound. Reviews say that in combination with a Sonos Beam Gen 2 or a Sonos Arc, they work wonderfully to envelope you with sound from all angles.

I agree. You gain nothing by withdrawing. Just wait.

Right, the good news is that we went with the larger size gravel and laid it and it's fine to walk on. Ultimately we realised we'd be more bothered by small bits of gravel getting stuck to boots or flying over the edging strip onto the lawn then the minor discomfort of walking on thicker gauge stones. But it's fine. The less good news is that the 200g sample, though perfectly representative of the gravel which was eventually purchased and delivered, was not really enough of a quantity to get an idea of what it would look like installed. Now that we've laid 850kg of it, it looks much brighter in colour than the 200g scattered across a paving stone which was how we checked the colours would go well together. We're idiots. Anyone should have realised that a few pixels look different to a densely pixelled image. Fortunately, we were short on gravel, and still need to buy another 400kg to 500kg or so to finish the path. This therefore creates a possible opportunity to fix the colour issue. The 2/3 of the path that has been laid is too light. We could spread that out across the whole path area, and then buy the remaining gravel of a slightly darker grey and top up the thinly spread gravel with that grey. Is that likely to darken the appearance of the path or is this not going to work. The mix is a mix of grey, white, pink and beige, but there is too much white in it really. I had thought about removing the white stones by hand and topping up with more of the same mix (of which I would remove the white stones as well) but I think that is super made way of wasting time. There must be thousands of white stones. I sometimes think I'm going mad. Then i have to remind myself I already went mad... long ago. Does that mean I'm getting madder and madder?

I don't know which brand drainage fittings have been used, i just know they are plastic and that therefore there is a risk it's cheap plastic. All supply pipes were done by my plumber out of buteline. That is strong. But all drainage was done by my builder and who knows what he used. But my OP was to question whether a mixture of vinegar and baking soda would be milder than the type of chemicals sold online, and whether using such a homemade recipe would be safe, even for "cheap plastic". @Temp or @SteamyTea normally have the geek power to work these things out scientifically.

The plunger technique is going to be very difficult because the trap is recessed within a channel that is covered by the tiled piece. I will give it a go. Need to buy a plunger first.