Roundtuit

We had to make up a 1m2 brick panel with our chosen bricks and mortar to satisfy the Conservation Officer; worth doing if you've any doubts.

Sounds a bit savage. I did ours with an electric rotary sander (hired for £50 from the screeders). It's not a particularly quick job, so I wouldn't want to be working with the noise and fumes of a petrol engine tbh.

I'm sure your insurers would rather you gave up some land as it costs them nothing, but I can't see what there is to negotiate about. Sounds like your neighbour bought his property happily, based on the physical boundaries he could see and accepted as true. Now he wants a bit of your garden, because he's being a tw@t. I'd keep it cool and calm (on the outside..!) but as already said, I wouldn't concede a millimetre and make that absolutely clear via a solicitors letter.

I know what you mean. I'm currently battling to get grass seed down to create a maintainable 'blank canvas' before actually deciding how to proceed with the garden proper. Over the last month I've put some fencing up to deter the Muntjac a bit, put 150 mixed native hedge plants in, and a few young trees (birch, rowan and walnut). Pond liner arrived today, so that's this weekend sorted....

You're not making lime mortar. Lime mortar has no cement in it. What you are proposing is adding lime to a standard opc/sand mix, which acts as a plasticiser to make the mix more workable and lightens the colour up a bit. I think 4:1 is unnecessarily strong tbh, but we are where we are. I'd probably go 6:1, get it done and move on ?

Land is land; we describe it by its current use, but that's just a temporary convenience. Where most of us live was once 'agricultural', or 'woodland' or something other than housing. I wouldn't want an industrial unit built opposite me, but to object you need to find valid planning reasons surely? I can only really speak for fresh produce, but we only import what we can't grow economically viably in the UK. I imagine the laws of economics apply to other agricultural outputs too.

Sounds good to me! If you want proper authentic though, start with Retsina before progressing to Ouzo. I think an 'amateur' render job and a couple of coats of masonry paint should fit the bill. Someone else will be better able to advise on the mix, but not too strong, and with admix to make it creamy perhaps?

Don't beat yourself up! That's probably better than happens on many sites (particularly on a Friday afternoon). Improvise, adapt and overcome ?

Sorry, can't add anything other than 'Good luck!', but please keep us informed. Your neighbour sounds like a weapons-grade ar$ehole, and your journey through this (whatever the outcome) will be helpful to others.

We've got Rationel aluminium cills, and I've never noticed any rain noise. If this is one of those things that you can't ignore once someone has pointed it out, I'm gonna be well pi$$ed off with you lot? Back to the OP; if you're having a timber frame with brick outer skin, then I expect the cills will go on after the brickwork. (My windows didn't go in until the brickwork was finished).

OK, thanks. So as I read it, no distance restriction for fires, as long as it doesn't interfere with or endanger users of the highway.

Never heard of the distance requirement; as I understand it, you just have to ensure smoke doesn't endanger traffic, and not cause a nuisance.

Looks like you've got plenty of scope to burn without smoking your neighbours out if you pick a day with the wind in the right direction. I'd burn it all, but maybe not all in one go (although its tempting to clear the lot once you've got a good fire going!)

Have I missed something? I thought this was just about a builder ignoring in clear instruction from a client before progressing a stage of the project?

Me too. If you're 100% confident that he understood your request, then ignored it, then he's a tw@t, regardless of the quality of his work. That's not to say you can't continue to work together if the quality and price is right (I had a couple of tw@ts on my build who undoubtedly thought the same about me), but maybe a reminder that you hold the purse strings and that certain criteria need to be met would be helpful.

We've got a timber frame with a cavity and brick outer skin, so decrement delay isn't really an issue, but we do have a lot of south-facing glass downstairs (4m bifolds and 3 sets of French doors), and as I suspected, need to manage solar gain. This time of year it can easily get to 22-24C inside when it's in single figures outside. In summer, temperature can creep up during the day and mvhr purge doesn't really shift it tbh. The original plan was for an external timber pergola walkway to provide shade, but I held off making any decisions until we'd lived in the house for a while. Now I think I'm going to give internal blinds a try for the French doors, and a sail shade for the bifolds. Next stop will be an aircon unit run off the ashp (powered by the pv panels I anticipate).

Mine came from Benchmarx (also part of the TP group) via our chippie; good quality, best price, easy to finish (very fine sanding pad and osmo polyx oil), and look much more expensive than they were ?

Wasn't that his step-dad? I think JC was an early 'Influencer' and went on to be a Superstar. I belive he speaks highly of your grouting though. ?

Locally you can buy a decent used newish panel, foot and clip from a "trader" for about £22 plus delivery. I think I sold mine for about £18. Much less than that and either its a good buy, or the panels are a bit crappy.

Always traps for me inside the house; the smell of decaying rodent turns my stomach ? (I also only use traps outside now too; we've a healthy and varied owl population and I don't want to risk secondary poisoning).

I had mice coming from next door in a previous terraced house. I reckon they were getting through the crappy brickwork around the ends of floor joists, tracking across the void and then popping out around the pipework in the nice warm boiler cupboard. If there is no food next door, that's probably why they're visiting your tenant. Get some traps down!

@zoothorn I'm just back from a (covid-safe) business trip to Wales. The scenery was beautiful, when the fog lifted, but I have to agree, it's very cold and very damp! How's it going?

I've bought and/or sold quite a few thing through gumtree; heras fencing, cement mixer, generator. I like it, because if you find something local you like the look of, you can go and have a look and do a deal pretty much straight away - no messing around bidding etc. More and more stuff does seem to be migrating to Facebook marketplace though.

Sounds reasonable, but I guess it depends on what model mvhr you get. Maintenance on our is pretty much all from the front. As @Oz07 said, the ducting, silencer, manifolds etc do take up more space than you'd think, so it's worth spending some time planning it out.

Frequency shouldn't be a problem, but if 'hard to access' means 'confined space', just make sure you've enough space to be able to carry out routine maintenance i.e pulling our the heat exchanger for cleaning.