Alan Ambrose

OK what is suitable for the small claims court, particularly the money claim system? Any simple undisputed claim for money. Client hasn't paid bill / deposit hasn't been returned / you've paid for materials or a service and they haven't been supplied. Any simple 'contract breach', especially one where there's a reasonable way of calculating the cost to you. That is, the other party promised to do x and hasn't e.g. they said they would finish the job by this date and they have not and they've stopped turning up on site (claim for a reasonable amount for someone else to finish the job). Or, they promised to use this material and they've used a cheaper substitute without your agreement (claim either for the cost difference if you're prepared to accept the work or the cost for someone else to redo the job using the right material if you're not). Or, they promised to fix a problem and they've failed to do so and they've given up and are not responding - again claim for someone else to conclude the job. In all of these cases, someone else's quote for the remedial work can be the basis of your claim amount. What isn't: Anything less than, say a hundred quid. Anything greater than, say, £10K (by yourself), £100K (with a solicitor). Anything very complex or needing expert opinions. Yes, you can do that stuff in the small claims court but you'll probably want a solicitor to guide you.

I'll give you my 10c on this subject. Feel free to comment and disagree. This is all my opinion and the experience of participating in half-a-dozen small claims and a couple of bigger claims. I'm not a lawyer but the wife is and, in addition, I was well schooled by a litigation lawyer on a bigger case. OK the preliminiaries: Do the dull work to avoid getting into disputes. Be clear and thorough, read contracts, check materials, dimensions, specifications. Describe jobs thoroughly. Use contracts or detailed job descriptions. Think about and document insurance, timescales, liability, accidents, contingencies (what happens when things go wrong like illness or absence), disgreements over quality, delays. Think about dispute resolution e.g. mediation up front. Try to spot what's going to go wrong ahead of time. Often, you'll have an intuition about a risk, a person or a behaviour - follow it up, even before it's caused a problem. As a defensive policy: document as much as you can. Emails, photos, dates, text messages etc. If you have an otherwise undocumented call, then send an email 'confirming' the details so that it gets documented. Be business like, polite and prompt at all times. If you're worked up, don't respond until you've calmed down. Take the time to 'plead your case' with cold facts and logic. Try and eliminate any emotion from your argument. Be reasonable. Projects overrun, get delayed, work is sometimes not perfect, mistakes happpen. Address them promptly, be understanding and prepared to meet the other party half way. That is, try to negotiate disputes away even if it means sometimes taking small losses on the chin. Encourage the other party to explain and propose a solution, listen and try to understand their point of view. Be sure who/what the legal entity is (and their formal address) that you're considering taking to court. This must be accurate. If a person or sole trader, you need to know their legal name and home or business address. If a company, you should be able to find their registered office address on companies house website. Beware social media arrangements - you may simply not accurately know who the other party is. Do a fair amount of polite (or increaasingly less polite) reminding, badgering, invoicing etc until you conclude that you've exhausted all non-court options. The courts expect you to try very hard to sort our your disputes and only come to the court as a last resort. Write a 'letter before action' with a date that you're expecting the other party to respond, pay up etc including a short description of the 'claim' (e.g. you had 30 days to pay my bill and we're now at 60 days and it isn't paid).

>>> You won’t usually get much through a small claims court It depends on the other party and the nature of the dispute - some people will pay up straight away, some people will argue and lose, some people are experienced / clever / shady and you may not get a result. But ... it is a very quick, cheap and simple process, so worth considering. I'll write up a guide on this when I get a few mins.

Ah, good point. Anyone else available? Same place?

+1 Ask them to check with their accountant. They usually have one for income tax and VAT returns.

Yeah, if it’s too narrow for several people to sit out on with drinks, then it’s ‘not fit for purpose’ 😄

OK, I’ll say it: The council, by and large, can’t control what planting schemes house owners have for any housing except for new builds. By and large, bigger developers, get away with turfing their buyers lawns. BBBUUUUTTTTT - new builds like ours get put through the wringer. Any of my neighbours ever had to submit a planting plan and promise to retain it for 5 years? Does the council have any control if my neighbours decide to paint their house purple or plant 200 leylandii or keep several broken down cars in their driveway? Total BS and should be outlawed by Labour in favour of less planning red-tape.

Unfactored, if I remember rightly, means no safety factor applied i.e. the actual calculated numbers. (Because, you only want one safety factor applied - if the timber frame guy applies a 2.5x safety factor and the foundation person applies 2.5x also, then you soon end up with something much stronger / heavier / more expensive than you need. ‘Dead’ is loading of construction materials, ‘live’ is assumed load from people, furniture, dancing, your grand piano etc - usually taken from NHBC assumptions. There’s also wind load, not listed there.

>>> the way they're implementing the self build exemption is outrageou Yeah, agree. The LPA fear is apparently something to do with people ‘pretending’ to self-build, getting the exemption, and then maybe selling the plot to a developer. Doesn’t make much sense to me as this will, by definition, only be for one house, and surely wouldn’t happen that often, and they could probably just deal with it with a simple clause in the PP.

>>> Would one find these on Autotrader? For me, eBay, Autotrader & Machinerytrader - but I know v. llttle about these things.

>>> Pure Carnot thermodynamics I haven't heard that word for .... 40 years since engineering school Knew it would come in useful one day - well it would if I could remember what it was about.

>>> Seems a warranty provider won't accept me doing my own drawings anyway I'm in the same position - possible to say who wouldn't accept that setup?

I only just twigged: it's the end of the tax year. So what? So, plant hire and owner operators are selling their old gear and have bought brand new stuff before the end of the tax year. That means there's a flood of 3-5 year old equipment on the market. Their finance deals are often 3 / 4 / 5 years and capital allowances for tax often incentivise companies to buy new stuff.

That’s because you’re on a mission, and they have all the time in the world. Those facts haven’t escaped them.

>>> I'll just end up with 150mm timber posts (probably oak) on steel brackets in concrete If oak, they probably want to be A4 stainless.

Very topical, I’ll be wrestling this detail in about 5 minutes… Resin anchor into side of slab? Also, it’s struck me that the fixing strips around the top and sides of the door could take some shear load - I think generally they just hold the door in place against wind loads etc.

If you decide to duct, make it larger than you think, min 50mm, preferably straight but definitely not crushed or with sharp bends. If it’s just lights, the smallest 1.5mm SWA: https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Main_Index/Cable_Index/Armoured_SWA/index.html … will handle lots of lights together with, say, one outdoors socket. Have an extra slot in your consumer unit you can use?

There is an argument that an oversized heat pump may tend to cycle which is inefficient, so you may want to deliberately not have much headroom. Also, how many days are at -3C for 24h in Berkshire? - so there’s already some headroom built in. Ask them to re-run the calc (should take 2 minutes) for a more realistic cold day, to see how much real headroom you have?

>>> I can model with Therm and would be happy to save the cost, but I don't want to do all the work just to be rejected that I am not accredited. There’s the rub. If they won’t, then apart from general interest / investigating design options / double checking - there’s an option which says ‘if I’m going to be paying anyway, I might just as well let the ‘expert’ do it in the 1st place. @JohnnyB - yeah, can do. I’ll see if I can’t find the time to put up an example on here as well. Do have a simple example we can use as a test?

I’m guessing that CIL isn’t relevant here, otherwise there’s a CIL gotcha for ‘start one development and then reapply for something else’.

>>> Not just write some stuff that satisfies the planners That’s not what I was suggesting. The op is caught in a catch 22. I’m suggesting breaking the circular condition: 1 - design something convincing (best guess) that will let the planners tick their box and allow you to move on. 2 - do your demo and get the SI people to do their job. 3 - design your mitigation for real. 4 - if necessary, file an NMA with the planners detailing your new design and saying what you learnt from the SI. Common sense really. If you got the LPA, yourselves, and the SI team ‘down the pub’ for an undocumented conversation, this is the practical solution everyone would agree to.

Interesting, the text smacks of intentional legal BS. First off, did you actually send them something in October asking them to remove the line? Sounds like wayleaves department shadow boxing. Someone here on the hub found a 3rd party working on commission to negotiate with the DNO.

Hi, can ayone recommend a fire engineer? I have two things I need help on: For a small block of flats - risk consultancy re reduced risk following cladding work vs. backup genset and stairwell pressurisation system. For my single storey timber frame new build - plans check and recommendations for fire stopping detail etc.

For Therm you need to get the 2D CAD details of the junction into the package together with the thermal values of the components. Then you apply the boundary conditions (i.e. temperature) on the inside and outside of the structure. Run the calc and it’ll give you the heat flow across the junction. Now, you need to take the heat flow in the idealised junction used in your overall heat calcs. Subtract Therm’s number from the idealised number and you end up with the psi value - that is, the extra heat loss per linear metre of junction that you need to add to your idealised calc to cope with the actual junction details. Once you’ve got the hang of it, the hardest part is getting the CAD into Therm (either redraw in Therm or figure out how to transport DWG/DXF from wherever your drawings are now). The Therm UI is a bit basic but OK. It does produce some pretty pictures which are interesting and enable you to better understand how the junction is working thermally.

Is it possible to split the big dormer into smaller individual ones like the front? The it would ‘fit into the street scene’ better?