Alan Ambrose

You may be underestimating the likelihood / cost / ease of find a plot that you can get planning on / has got planning on by a factor of 50-100. More opportunity / cheaper / prettier in Scotland, of course, than Bucks. 😎

They can experiment on a single door of course to see if they can find a paint scheme that works.

OK as en ex-designer & software developer, I'll bite. Yep, you may be asking the wrong people, although self-builders often do spend a lot of money themselves, so they could be users. In fact they may have their own particular requirements compared to builders. My 10c: + there are a lot of 3rd parties who want to do 100% digital disintermediation and take a margin. And that's against the general transparency thrust of the internet, so you have an up-hill battle. Every time I Google 'concrete pipe suffolk' (or something) there will be a bunch of sites wanting to take my lead info and sell it to someone for a margin. Yeah right. + So if you want it to work, you need to offer a significant benefit to warrant the customer's set-up time, difficulty communicating with the end supplier, difficulty checking delivery status, restricted UI, limited list of suppliers etc etc etc. And you need to understand the customer's buying process very well. For instance, as self-builders, when we buy taps, yeah we may want cheap, but we also want quality functionality and at least a little bit of design quality. I may choose mid-range, or I may go Vola. If we're a small custom builder working for a client, we will need to show these to our customer and get their buy in. A lot of trades will get their customers to buy 'customer-facing' items like taps directly to cut out all the buying and ordering faff. Yeah the plumber may buy the pipe, joints etc without consulting the customer but they'll often get the customer to choose and buy their own taps, baths etc. A small builder, building houses on spec will make their own choices, hoping their eventual purchasers will like them. But if the plumber is working for a larger developer, the developer's design and buying people will make the selection. Are you seeing there are different 'user journeys' here. They're all 'builders' though. + So, it's all in the detail. I don't think anyone buys taps by specifying a search radius. Do you think we don't buy anything from the general internet? And, if we're in a rush, do you think we don't know which local suppliers have good taps? Not that there isn't value add you can deliver to this segment: selecting, ordering, checking and receiving deliveries, disposing of packaging, keeping the paperwork under control, returns, customer billing, maintaining inventories of small parts and regular consumables, reconciling and paying supplier accounts, visiting 'sheds' to pick up parts etc are very time consuming. And we spend a lot of money. But I don't think a generalised shopping cart is what we want or need. Maybe you need to do a bit of market segmentation and focus on a chosen segment's buying processes for various kinds of products.

Well I still can't fathom how you can do that with a conventional diamond disk. Certainly, if I did it it would end up being a bit of a mess . I'm always impressed with a contractor who can do that good a job and I can't even guess how.

>>> How about I run my required cable inside an MVHR duct. You'll need to convince your spark as it's a bit unorthodox, but can't think of any real reason why not. Some fire reg detail maybe? SWA cable possibly?

Unlikely unless it's within an existing village boundary. You could ask a local planning consultant or your LPA (if they are friendly) for a first-cut impression.

>>> it's Planning (potential breach of PD conditions) that the OP is concerned about, not BC. Yeah, you’re right. Presumably, if pd, it’s not recorded in the planning system. So, planning will only be interested if neighbour complains to them. If neighbour can’t measure without trespassing, then presumably not a problem. I did though once have a neighbour that complained about a beautiful pd oak cart lodge I built. (Neighbour was a bit slow, but had an evil sister.) Planning had to check, and asked for the drawings. Well it was a cart lodge so there were no before-hand drawings. The drawings, after the fact, met pd though.

Re the Norslo boxes - good find.

That looks very neat. Know how he did that?

If these are not on the wall already and you feel you can mark them out accurately (even better if you can cad them up), then your local waterjet place may do them in a few mins for cash. A good option, especially if you have a few to do.

Whether they're standard earthenware tiles or porcelain, you probably want diamond bits. Those big holes would be hard work in porcelain. As in, you might prefer to get them cut outside - say by a granite place.

Even in these tick-box times, you would have to have annoyed BC a lot to get them to get stroppy over 4cm. BC shouldn't be involved anyway for a shed. Your neighbour presumably doesn't have access to measure, so ignore.

The two in parallel should be fine - say 47A in free air. I think the resistance arguments, while theoretically correct, will be irrelevant as the cables with be roughly the same length. You probably can't measure the length of each cable exactly as they're buried, but if you have the right equipment, you could measure the small resistance. I still think the calcs will get you v. close to the theory for 6.5mm^2. However, they'll be some who find that 'it doesn't meet regs' (although be hard-pushed to say why) and some will rightly point out that 'it isn't to manufacturer's spec'. So your decision and your responsibility unless you get a spark to sign off and use his/her PI.

Heard of a brick manufacturer closing recently for 5 months break as their yards are full. Less demand I guess.

You can make little cutouts at the back of the plasterboard very quickly with a plasterboard saw to make them work, particularly if there's not many to do. Some of my walls here have two sheets of PB, so 25mm thick. Alternatively, for a few mm, you can just be gentle and pull the screws up tight without the tabs latching, and they'll hold the whole thing in place fine.

Well start with the simple stuff - I had one circuit that was always open because the actuator wasn’t clipped on properly. Easy fix. Next take off the errant actuators and observe whether they operate when the whole thing is switched on i.e. is the controller ‘telling’ the actuator to be on all the time. If you’re handy with a multimeter, you can also check the ‘signal’ from the wiring centre. (Note some actuators are 240V, some 24V.) If so, you have a wiring (or maybe a programming) fault. BTW you’ve shown good fault-finding technique so far, just keep up with the logical debug and you will either (a) find the fault or (b) prove good some of the components.

You can put them all on the same ‘profile’ in the app - so you can use only one schedule.

Ah interesting points from Gus (as usual) - the larger picture. Maybe you can post up here the drawings from their planning application for interest and to give a clue about the necessity for piling. In my book, not bothering to tell you about the piling (you will have seen planning detail though, no?) beforehand is majorly unneighbourly. Contractors that (apparently) don't speak enough English to talk to a concerned neighbour - and obviously didn't ask their boss / client to contact you - that's another couple of black marks. So, everything may be fine in the end, but it may not, and you've seen the warning signs already. Worth the legal missive and the notification to the council - if only, to head off the next piece of potential nonsense headed your way. You still have a chance to modify their behaviour for the rest of the build. Do you even know which legal entity is doing the piling and who their client is?

I have a couple of 1600mm Reina Diva Electric Chrome Towel Radiator from Luxus Design. I was less than impressed at installation time that the 4 mounts are 'chromed plastic' - but in practice you don't really notice that. I can't actually remember how they're mounted but the mounts obviously need to be into something strong-ish.

There are companies, of course, who’ll cut slate etc to a drawing / CAD file. Not crazy expensive.

>>> THINK it is when I have two profiles controlling the same room at over lapping times. Sounds likely. There is a sort of Heatmiser web location for bug reports / feature requests but it's noddy at best: https://feedback.heatmiser.com/

I think there's a minimum standard for hearths, this kind of thing: https://stovefitterswarehouse.co.uk/pages/hearth-regulations#:~:text=Put simply%2C a full constructional,hearth from the combustible material). Doc J apparently.

There's some high temperature cement / mastic stuff used for sealing joints in flue pipes etc. A small amount of that maybe? Or else maybe get stainless cut and bent to fit - with or without powder coat to your taste. Slate hearth - but then the fire should probably sit on it?

Interesting, I wonder if you could use them into a basement.

Yeah, if this is in the countryside, some LPAs like a kind of minimum lighting set-up.