Alan Ambrose

FYI - a guy who's doing a little photomontage work for me is using Enscape.

OK here's my longer response: Firstly, the cheap stuff is very 'consumer-grade' - cheap and cheerful and it won't last long. Second, there are various sizes of pipes which are close. They don't mix and match. Choose one from one of the main brands with matching fittings. I wouldn't use 'micro-irrigation' (the little 4/6mm tube and baby sprinklers etc) on anything but clay pots or, say, a roof terrace. Putting the tubes and fittings together is a major faff, use a kettle of hot water, pliers, zip ties and two kinds of seal (say tape and gunge). Put a bunch of garden taps around on black MPDE 25mm pipe with decent fittings (Plasson etc), shut off and drain down valves, and a pressure reducer and non-reversible valve. That all works fairly well and is robust. If you're going to use consumer grade timers, provide extra 3/4" outlets for those and shutoff valves. You may still need extra pressure reducers for those - the ones generally available are hopeless and will fail. You'll need to remove the timers over winter otherwise they'll freeze up and burst. They'll fail anyway and you'll be lucky if they last for 2 years. Don't use this style, or anything which looks similar: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Aqualin-Outlet-Electronic-Garden-irrigation/dp/B01N6RJRZ2/ref=sr_1_30?crid=25E1QTCSQUX8P&keywords=water+timer&qid=1688402729&sprefix=water+timer%2Caps%2C71&sr=8-30 - I've had two fail on install and another fail since. You'll still need to watch the timers - because they fail and because you'll want to adjust the times depending on the time of year. Otherwise you'll lose plants in the hot weather or get mould in the autumn. The fittings on the timers will probably leak anyway. If you look at garden centres / south of France gardens etc, you'll see they do use 13/14mm drip line. The Americans also have proper motorised valves in sunken chambers and get contractors to blow the water out of the lines every wintertime.

p.s. so you could just try asking them

>>> It can be very expensive to prep the site for lorries. If you do it half baked then you will need to keep putting more stone on top. Yes, that's why I was trying to get it right. It'll mostly be driveway, so it'll also be advance driveway prep. >>> I have measured the distances for you in the hope that they will give you confidence ... So the distance from the gate to the car port structure is 19 metres. If you were to include the bellmouth [driveway approach] and the width of single lane thereafter, the 19 metres becomes 25 metres. Thanks, super useful. Never underestimate how helpful BH members will be Let me lay that out on my plot and I'll report back.

What software do architects use for (a) design & drawings, (b) rendering? I was recommended D5 for rendering and I'm wondering if there are other options too.

>>> A decent driver will get into places many would struggle to get a car, the turning circles are space needed without shunting so forget these That's not really helping. You're telling me I'm wrong without giving me a clue what the right answer is . Surely somebody here has some rules of thumb for what the dimensions required are for (a) absolute minimum and (b) reasonably comfortable access? I'm trying to figure out whether I can build a garage to the front of the property early on or whether I really need that space for access.

Unlike our planners, our local CIL people are very easy to contact and have a practical discussion with. But no time limit to my knowledge, so anytime between getting planning permission and starting to build.

Conventional stuff is at e.g. waterirrigation.co.uk Some cheap no-name kits on Amazon. None of it is great imho. You typically use a water timer - check out e.g. Orbit products. I’ll write more when I get a few minutes.

OK thanks - I have a space about 20x20m in from of the house. FYI I'm seeing numbers like: + 7.5T - 8.35x2.5m - 12m turning circle + 26T 6m^3 concrete truck - 8.7x2.55m - 16m turning circle + 32T 8m^3 concrete truck - 9.2x2.55m - 22m turning circle Viz https://www.hanson.co.uk/en/ready-mixed-concrete/technical-information/truck-information https://www.cemex.co.uk/documents/45807659/46067062/Readymix H&S leaflet_2019_Latest.pdf/ I'll have to get out the protractor...

>>> I usually do windows 2100mm from the floor, 1200mm high. More skylights than windows then?

You can get ply with a known face quality and material - sapele etc - the kind of thing that boatbuilders use for cabins. I wouldn't order online unless I had seen the quality before. The best shed I've found for standard ply is Wickes - at least you can see what you're getting. Wouldn't 12mm do - 18mm is awful heavy? Also 'exterior' ply to deal with damp well. You can also protect any bits you're worried about getting too hot with thinnish (say 1 or 1.5mm stainless sheet).

Thanks for taking the time to post those. Bit tricky to see what space is needed tho. I even googled gate and a bit sizes - and found out they'll make you what ever you want.

I've always been a cynical xxxxxxx and a glass half empty kind of guy The benefit of that (!) is you assume everything that can go wrong will go wrong and you don't trust anybody to do a good job

My build is off a single track road, with entrance to the plot through a farm gate sized entrance. I'm trying to figure out how much space on site I need for truck unloading / turning. Anyone have a rule-of-thumb? Ta, Alan

>>> MBC are spitting out houses at a fantastic rate, so I doubt they’d need to steer their business off its current model. May be a different story if they were struggling to make ends meet, but I guess they’re not. Yeah, I get that this requires persistence, but if all of us asked suppliers for protection against default where large amounts of money are being lodged on trust - then they will slowly get the hang of it. Some - the more grown-up ones - might figure that it's an additional benefit that they can sell. OTOH if we all just take it on the chin without making a fuss when a supplier goes bust, then nothing will change. Your choice.

Good you spotted it. I reckon it will be fine - it's built to withstand a bit of mishandling on site.

>>> MBC have rejected my requests for an escrow facility, and also for any arrangement that assigns ownership of materials to me when stored on their premises. The only protection they will consider is the insurance company route. I haven't see the terms but it seems that it would provide the protection that customers want. There are plenty of trade credit insurers, but for private punters is appears for less well developed and therefore more expensive. I'd only need protection for 6 months, so a cost of 6% is an annual risk premium of 12% - that sounds expensive for a cash rich company. <<< Well it needs a few potential customers to walk away and then they might decide to spend more time on the subject. It's not unreasonable for clients to be protected against 'surprise bankruptcy'. The 'risk premium' of 12% isn't just an interest rate - it contains the likelihood of default, so maybe it's not so bad. I still think my solution of the client lodging the money with a lawyer/escrow agent up front with later staged payment to the supplier is the best / cheapest / fairest. Yes, it requires a little work to administer and an inspector-type to sign-off each stage and maybe mark the materials / work-in-progress. But there you are. And it'll probably cost less than 6%. I'm seeing 0.9% from escrow.com just for the escrow service (I mention them as I happen to have used them to sell a domain name back in 2005). To that you would have to add, say, QS costs to validate the stage has been reached. Say £1K for less than a day's worth of travel / inspection? So, for a £150K transaction divided into 4 stages that might be 0.9% plus £4K i.e. around £5K or 3.5%.

You can ask. You can also submit a FOI request. Be interesting to try.

We meed an off-the-shelf solution to this problem - it's come up several times before. Like every time a supplier goes bust. Staged escrow and contract terms like 'raw materials / work in progress belong to customer once that stage has been paid for' etc. I pointed out before that escrow.com offers this kind of service. I'm sure their are others.

Of course, it's not how long your RSJ is, it's how you use it...

>>> What you do is force ( not push or ask politely ) for exact definitions of these points in context. Except these are appeals - presumably by written representation for small stuff like ours. So that's it, and I assume you're not going to the High Court for a single BuildHub-style dwelling.

That's a 'yes' then. Clearly I am over-sensitive . A good job the proper courts are a bit more disciplined. It does change my calculus a bit, having to choose between two capricious processes .

>>> Mechanical fixings. Black Torque screws. Wasn't worth the gamble relying on tape/adhesives. Well steel is heavy - about 16 kg per m^2 at 2mm thick and I'm guessing you have 10s of m^2? It strikes me that thinner steel would be easier to support. I rather liked @markocosic 's idea of supporting all the weight on a top fold though. Your SE has OKed the fixings? As, say, 20m^2 (i.e. 320 kg) on typical timber battens sounds a bit iffy. There's a structure at Snape Maltings btw which doesn't have obvious fixings, I always assumed it was carefully welded along the seams. I will have a closer look next time I'm there: https://www.dezeen.com/2010/02/14/the-dovecote-studio-by-haworth-tompkins/ FYI: "the steel was welded together to form a watertight box"

>>> My experience with installers varies - at the current inflated prices they charge I’d like to know what to ask - as sometimes you get rather different answers . Yeah understand. An alternative is just to alight on a likely inverter/charge controller supplier and ask them (or read their specs in detail) to see whether their 3.6kW inverter boxes can also handle charge/discharge on 20 kWh of batteries.

>>> My objective is to charge 2 x 10kw batteries simultaneously at 3.6kwh - but with only 1 inverter grid connected . Hence this so called inverter behind inverter theory. OK you have single phase and therefore a 3.6kW / 16A export limit. You probably have a 100A main fuse which is primarily a protection against 100A draw down / import e.g. caused by a bad short. Otherwise you can take / draw / import up to 100A i.e. 23 kW. Note that the battery charging function is really a separate function compared to the power inverter function (i.e. taking the battery output and generating 230V AC.) - although the functions often have basic coordination. In principle, you can charge your batteries as fast as the battery pack / inverter allows - usually faster charging means shorter life. So, you could charge 20kWh of batteries at say 5kW and it will take 4 hours (i.e. 20/5=4) or at 2kW and it will take 10 hours (20/2=10). Now, a typical 48V battery (e.g. Pylontech) has a recommended charge/discharge current of 25A suggesting the fastest charging/discharging you should be doing is 2 hours to full charge/discharge. That's the fastest - you can charge/discharge as slow as you like. In short, yeah, I agree, you just need a reasonably smart battery charge controller. Keep the max inverter output to 3.6kW to keep your DNO happy. Maybe you need to catch up on some PV/inverter operation details - it can be a bit involved as you can see. The relationship between power, voltage and current is a good start, as is the difference between kW, kWh and kWp. Or just decide what you want to do at a high level, and then ask an installer.