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I'm not sure I agree. It all comes down to probability and actuarial calculations, in that the guarantee of a major manufacturer (and supplier in this case) is a form of insurance in economic terms and so the accountants at ikea will work out how much it costs to give such guarantees. Take this scenario for an example: These carcasses are sold throughout the EU and UK, maybe throughout the world. Let's estimate they sell 10 million carcasses a year. Let's estimate that the percentage of buyers who are careful enough to keep their paperwork (all online these days anyway, so not very difficult) AND go to the trouble of dismantling the wardrobe, taking it to ikea and making a claim is only 4%. That is 400,000 customers a year. The chance of product failure must surely increase the longer the product is owned. So it is more expensive for ikea to guarantee it for longer, it's just that the difference will be fairly minimal in the grand scheme of things. However, for a smaller company than ikea, a 4% return rate each year becomes more costly. Hence why they limit their guarantee to a shorter period of time.

So my plumber mis advised me again! I didn’t think to challenge his recommendation as I thought it was standard.

This is going to look v. good. Maybe even “sexy”. You don’t need to paint then black though. A slightly darker colour will be fine, as there will be some shadow there. Black might be too contrasty, though.

As far as I know, but someone like @Nickfromwales will confirm, you need three manifolds, one per floor. You can have a small height change between two levels and get away with one manifold for those two, but we are talking about a level different of up to 50cm or so, not a whole floor. The floor area will dictate how many loops you need, so for a very big floor area you will need a manifold with more ports so you can run more loops. But it’s still one manifold. Also, there are suppliers that will do a design for free, or for a nominal sum if you don’t buy from them. I wish I had done that. My design, which was cobbled together the day my installer installed the pipes, has one mistake in it: two rooms on the same loop, but the two rooms have different heat losses, so one gets a bit hotter than the other. A properly designed loop layout would have avoided this.

It won’t short cycle if designed properly. We have a boiler that can modulate to something like 1/18th of its maximum and we have a low loss header. No buffer tank. It never short cycles.

Yes, I agree with this, especially with the emphasis on your use of the word “just”. But as soon as you do something else, like open the window, you’re wasting energy. I agree with @Roger440. I think the only solution is to put a greater focus on training of plumbers, electricians and other installers. I will give you an example: the plumber/gas engineer that plumbed my house and installed our heating was, on the whole, fairly competent. But when I asked him for advice on which type of plumbing layout would be best, or how to get the most efficient secondary hot water loop, he had no idea. He thought all pipe should be 15mm or 22mm thick and that there was no use for anything smaller whatsoever. He didn’t insulate any pipes, and when I asked him to insulate the hot water loop, he did but with a very very thin insulation. Maybe these aren’t such bad mistakes, and you could argue he was not a designer, just an installer. But he made some really stupid other suggestions: 1) i did a heat loss calculation and tools him I was buying a 24kw boiler for him to install. He thought I be was mad. He literally said that I shouldn’t be taking the risk with a five bed house and that anything less than 32kw was madness and that really I should get at least 35kw. I started to doubt my calculations and got a 32kw boiler. A couple of weeks ago, we had a situation which caused us to run all the heating in the house plus heat the hot water tank. I checked the display of my Viesmann Vitodens 200W 32kW boiler. The gas burner was modulating at 54%. My boiler is massively oversized. I think even 24kW was an excessive heat loss calculation and then I remembered that in my calcs I erred on the side of caution and rounded up most uncertainties. 2) when I asked him what times I should hear my hot water and for how long, he said “well you have a thermostat, so I would just leave it running all day, because the cylinder will never overheat”. If professionals give this sort of advice to somebody who bothers to do their own independent research, like me, what hope does somebody less interested in these things have?

But more seriously, I think the problem identified by this badly reported study, is that you can’t just change one thing and expect it will fix all people’s heat loss issues. Of course insulation is important, but it won’t fix everything unless it is accompanied by changes in behaviour. Smart thermostats, extensive zoning of heating circuits and MVHR will all make environmentally friendly behaviour easier to happen naturally. E.g. rooms won’t get stuffy if the heating system is properly zoned with enough smart thermostats installed and MVHR keeping the air fresh. So there is less scope for stupid behaviour, like opening the windows in the middle of winter.

Indeed. However stupid a person you will find, there will always be one person who is more stupid. E.g.: I thought Farage was stupid. Then came Cameron, who made Farage look clever. so I thought Cameron was stupid, but Johnson was even stupider. What next?

I am not sure this is allowed. Council tax is banded depending on the value of property at a specific date: 1 April 1991 (England) or 1 April 2003 (Wales). Unless there is a change of use, the only time it can change is "A property that’s increased in size may move to a higher band when it’s next purchased." So unless the person you purchased from did any works to expand it prior to purchase, it should not increase. If you expand it, then upon selling it VOA can revalue the band but that will only affect the person who purchases from you. That is why I made my comments about not deleting in from the register if it was going to cost you more to have it revalued when it comes back on the register. See this for more detail: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/understand-how-council-tax-bands-are-assessed#visits-from-the-voa

I don't mind paying a bit more to be able to change the sizes. Anybody know of such companies?

I take a different view, but perhaps that is because of my history of having worked in civil litigation (which I have since retired from), where the winners of disputes don't tend to be the party with the best hand, but the party who has the confidence to play their hand most confidently. Here you have the advantage that your opponent is unlikely to have the legal resources (or human resources!) to fight this very hard, very efficiently or very effectively. Accordingly, I cannot see the Council taking this to Court. @richo106 has enough to formulate a cogent case that it was derelict. He doesn't need it to be strong enough to win in Court. He just needs it to be strong enough to create enough doubt in the Council's mind, that they eventually back down or come to a reasonable compromise position. I can't see there is anything to lose by trying, but do the maths first. If you were to live there for the next few decades, the increased band of a 5 bed house could be significant.

The above two sentences contradict each other. Did you mean to write that or is there a superflous/missing "not" somewhere? Although not a quite a slum dunk, I think there are sufficient grounds for you to pull together a very cogent argument that the place was derelict. The gov.uk guidance states: "Your property’s only considered derelict if it: is not possible to live in it, for example because it’s been damaged by weather, rot or vandalism would need major structural works to make it ‘wind and watertight’ again" Let's take each bullet in turn. First bullet: Clearly, with holes in the roof and mould everywhere the place was "damaged by weather". Although it is not made express in the guidance, it is to be implied that whether it is "possible to live in it" means "whether it is possible to live it it safely". That is the only sensible interpretation. Otherwise the council could argue that as homeless people live under bridges, it is possible to live everywhere. Clearly it is not possible to live somewhere safely that is mouldy, not weather tight, has ceilings at risk of falling down and no heating. In your letter make the list of reasons why it was not possible to live there as long as possible, including all defects, as even if a defect on its own seems a bit trivial, together with all the others it compounds an already bad situation. So in my view, you pass with flying colours on the first bullet point. Second bullet: To meet this bullet point, there are three requirements, all of which need to be met: major structural works wind proof water tight On (1) There is a photo of a wall with a diagonal zig zag crack through the mortar joints. Clearly that is a structural issue that would need addressing. Whether or not there is really a difference between "major structural work" in this context and just "structural work", I don't know. I'd be interested to hear @Gus Potter's views on this. But I think there is enough doubt as to the utility of the word "major" in this context, that you could argue that any structural work required would meet this first requirement. Presumably, that crack is not the only structural damage and there are other issues which a structural engineer could identify. Same point as before applies, even if a structural defect on its own seems not "major", whatever that means, together with all the other structural defects, it compounds an already bad situation. On (2) and (3) given the holes and mould it's clearly neither, so these are easy. I know mould grows when there is an absence of ventilation, but the Council won't be clever enough to work it out. Make reference to "damp ingress" as that sounds more like not water proof and is closely related to mould and I'm sure you have some of that as well. So I would have thought that if you provide all of this information to the Council you have a strong case. It just doesn't look like a safe place to live and I would be making these points as assertively as you can. To put it from a different perspective: if you rented out that place as a landlord as somewhere fit for human occupation, the tenant would have every right to sue you for it. BUT: think very hard before you apply for it to be removed from the valuation bands if you are planning any form of extension or loft conversion. That's because if after the property is declared derelict and removed from the valuation bands, you enlarge it, then once it is habitable again it will need to be revalued. At that point, your council tax band will jump up and you'll have to pay the higher rate. Do the maths, what's cheaper: the big bill now and then cheaper council tax for the duration of your ownership, or a saving on the bill now, but then a higher band until you sell?

Well hopefully a simple matter of logging onto your online account and cancelling the direct debit, but you usually need to do it at least 24h in advance, so get cracking if you've not done it already.

Ikea appear to have reduced their range of wardrobe carcasses. The internals for example now only come in a choice of two finishes: white or oak colour finish. Also, as far as I can tell from their website, the available widths are limited to 100cm, 150cm and 50cm, although there is one arrangement which comes as 175cm wide, which appears to be made of 2 x 50cm plus a 75cm unit, but I don't think you can buy the 75cm wide carcass on its own. Just wondering if anybody has made wardrobes with carcasses from another supplier at more or less this price point. Would be good to find 80cm wide carcasses, or as close to that as possible but in quality that is at least as durable as ikea. This company for example, https://www.larkandlarks.co.uk/fitted-bedrooms, do make bespoke size carcasses, but rather than the 10 year guarantee that comes with ikea carcasses, it's only six years, so I'm guessing it's not as good. If anybody has good experience of other suppliers, please share.

Plus 1

So if you don't have enough money in your account to cover the direct debit on 3rd Jan, there are two options: Your bank decides to let you use an unauthorised overdraft. They charge a lot for this, but it is unlikely they would do this if the shortfall was more than £500 or £1000, depends hat you authorised overdraft is. Your bank doesn't process the direct debit because of insufficient funds. You certainly want to avoid the first of these options, because according to Experian, which is a credit information provider (amongst other things) "Regularly using an unarranged overdraft can affect your credit rating because it shows potential lenders that you struggle to manage your finances." It's also just bloody expensive. Natwest's current interest rate is close to 40% EAR. You have no control over whether the bank does (1) or (2). Hence my advice earlier in the thread that you should try calling them today and tomorrow to instruct them to cancel the direct debit, or better still log on to online banking and cancel it yourself. If you cancel it today I think you might just be in time. If none of those ork because of the festive period, call their fraud line and just say you think the Council is cheating you out of money and you want the fraud team to cancel the direct debit. Possession is nine tenths of the law, so just easier to win your dispute with the council if the money is in your account, than to have to force them to credit or refund you. I don't know the answer to this, but I doubt it. VAT and council tax are two separate taxes collected by different agencies of state (HMRC in the former and your local council in the case of the latter). The chances of those two agencies being joined up is minimal. But others who are familiar with the VAT reclaim process may be able to advise. I just can't see any public policy reason as to why one relates to the other.

Most conveyancers are barely competent at advising on conveyancing. Wouldn’t ask them about anything else. Ultimately, although many aspects of the rules vary council to council, there are rules which apply nationwide, regardless of where you live. This is from gov.uk, it applies nationwide, even in Rushcliffe: If your property’s derelict Your property’s only considered derelict if it: is not possible to live in it, for example because it’s been damaged by weather, rot or vandalism would need major structural works to make it ‘wind and watertight’ again You can challenge your Council Tax band if you think a derelict property should be removed from the Council Tax valuation list. So I think you should challenge the council and claim that it should have been removed from the valuation list for the time it was uninhabitable as a result of being derelict.

Can you explain what your concern is. Will them taking the money put your amount into overdraft? Or are you worried about the consequences of cancelling the direct debit? If the latter, please see my response above.l; you are perfectly entitled to cancel the direct debit.

@Seren161is right. There are lots of ways of saying a house is not habitable, particularly if you had no roof! You’ve been there for 18 months. I assume if it wasn’t habited for the 12 years prior to your purchase, it would have been in quite a mess. If that assumption is right, then gather all the documentary evidence you have (e.g. surveyor’s report, estate agent’s particulars, all paperwork related to your roofing (and any other works) that supports your argument that the place was not habitable for a number of months and send it to the council, and demand the 200% difference between the 300% premium they have charged you and the 100% you sold have paid, be credited to your account. if they have charged you 3 x 300 for the 18 months since you moved in, a chunk of that time it was legally considered uninhabitable, then you are entitled to a chunk of that back. I had a similar issue when I sold a flat that was empty and had no furniture in it. I was charged c tax for a few months, but managed to get a month knocked off by sending the c tax dept paperwork relating to the sale of my furniture to support my position that it had no furniture. Objectively speaking, I don’t think my papers were particularly probative. But they are not lawyers, they don’t have the time to fight. They just need enough to justify their decision (to their manager, not to a court). So keep fighting. And if you can get through to your bank on Sunday or a bank holiday Monday, you should cancel your direct debit. That won’t affect your credit rating. You have a dispute with your council as to the amount due and are entitled to withhold payment until it is resolved. If the council were to get a County Court Judgment against you and that is not paid or set aside by you within the relevant time, then that will raise a red flag with the credit files. But you didn’t mention a CCJ so I’m assuming it hasn’t gone that far . (They would noted to notify you that you were being taken to Court and you would have the right to be heard at the trial, before the judge could make a judgment.)

I know this isn’t the right sub-forum for this thread, but I never introduced myself when I joined in Oct 2020, just 2.5 months before our RE-build started (which I’ve decided is a tad harder than a new build). In those first six months I spent so much of my time on this forum that by March 2021 when it was my birthday, the forum’s name featured in a gift that SWMBO made me (basically a framed miniature model of all my favourite things, and on the miniature tablet within the miniature model was the buildhub logo - hope she hasn’t committed a copyright breach!) So just wanted to say thanks to everyone for all the support, particularly for making me feel less alone in this journey. Self building can be a very stressful, difficult thing that not many people do; I’m a terrible perfectionist and often my own enemy which makes it all the harder. But I can’t imagine how I would have done it without all the people here. Happy New Year. 2023 has simply got to be better than 2022. Or at least let’s just believe that.

So I don’t know if it’s a genuine discount, but currently advertised with a 79% to £39.99 which is more than I wanted to spend, but a lot cheaper than Leica and Hilti! It’s accurate to 1/16th of an inch which is softlslightly less than 1.59mm. Good enough for me! Good recommendation @Chanmenie

Ouch, Hilti and Leica are expensive brands!

Thanks @Radian. What brand and model is it; do you know?

I’m in the market for a laser measuring tape. Your recommendations / models to avoid would be much appreciated.

Back to the question in issue, I discovered today that a as multi purpose lubricant, such as silicone grease, is a must have I in the emergency kit: got home on my bicycle. Went to bike shed, could barely unlock it, certainly couldn’t lock it. Rushed around the house looking for my WD40. Couldn’t find it. Found some silicone grease, bike shed lock working again and bike is safe.