Barney12

No! Bit of an incident in the pub tonight - some strange person threw a bottle of Omega 3 pills at me Luckily I ducked and my injuries were only Super Fish Oil

Crikey this is all getting rather depressing. I think ill go back to the pub and have another pint, discuss pointless nonsense and laugh at the local farmer who when presented with some free left over roast potatoes from the evening food service said "Ere these teddies has got grass on em!" (They had a sprinkling of Rosemary!) (Teddies is a Devon term for potatoes!) (for clarification: that was an attempt at humour to lighten the mood! ) Yours Aspiring Eccentric (and ever so slightly odd)

In my uneducated opinion I'd say thats pretty impressive!

And that is the absolute nail on the proverbial head! Modern housing is now very much in the realms of "consumer purchasing". Developers build what people want to buy. Full stop. To quote the HBF 2016 survey: "In terms of the design of their new home, 92% of buyers were satisfied with the internal design of their new home and 86% were satisfied with the design externally." Yes, legislation can help shape energy efficiency, design, house sizes et all but ironically if the government or the big developers do too much of that then the accusations of nanny state would fly in. As @Crofter has said this forum is far from being an accurate cross section of the wider community. Anyway I don't want to be part of the 'common herd', I aspire to being just a little eccentric

Roof for a pallet shed I re-purposed one recently. I took a 9" grinder to it and cut it on into 4 so it would fit in the back of the van to go down to scrap merchants!

A wad of 00 wire wool and quick wipe round, inside and out. A decent cutter cuts pretty darn clean anyway. but hey I'm a DIY'er so I likely no nuttin'

Like I keep saying. Marry her quick!!

It's only that good because of Fays help cutting and sorting the half bricks. Without that it would be pretty average

Looks great!

I haven't got round to updating this thread for a while! This weekend I finally made the hinged covers for the cloche storage at the side. 5m long by 0.7m wide and already full of various garden related crap! Storage is like lanes on the motorway!! You'll note that the cladding is now painted dark brown as required by the National Park. I'm not sure I like it but my choices were limited....to dark brown or black!

We did something similar in a refurb a few years ago. You don't state how big the void below the floor is but we had enough to crawl under. We attached two battens to opposing walls. We then stapled pallet banding between the battens and then sandwiched another over the top to hold the strapping tight. We then laid 200mm of loft insulation on top of it tight up to the bottom of the joists. Then 50mm celotex between the joists. This didn't compromise the air bricks and left a good level of ventilation below the floor. There was no real way of knowing exactly how effective it was but the house was warm and draft free.

You are not alone. I have a 27" monitor and an A1 printer too that lovely noise as the cutter slides across and cuts the paper still makes me smile. i know, I know.....get a life

Workshop doors and windows are coated in Teknos Aquatop. https://www.teknos.co.uk/brands-and-products/ It's a very good product and what Rationel use on their windows. Not cheap though if your serious about doing you cladding in black in black then there is good old 'barn paint' by Bedec. Plenty of farmers swear by it.

Actually I quite like the Screwfix concept where you buy a metal case and keep it topped up. i bought my "Goldscrew" mixed case donky's years ago and I just top it up as and when I need it. its been thrown arround the back of the car, van, site and is pretty bullet proof. Of course i have have countless other boxes of screw n stuff. In fact shelves full of the blooming things.

When I posed this question to a kitchen designer recently who is the wife of a friend (she works for the company that used to supply Next's kitchens before they pulled away from the market. The name escapes me) she suggested it would be very hard to do as everyone has a slightly different set of components in their kitchen range. Its also frustrating (when you have a wife like mine who has absolutely no vision for what something might look like when finished) when the designer says "right tell me the door and worktop you've chosen and ill do a design".

You are not wrong! I sometimes think it would be easier if you simply paid someone for design and impartial advice who had no vested interest in selling you one of their kitchens!

Oh come on everyone knows the answer to that question. "where you can't find them"

So who would you put in your top 3 of German kitchen manufacturers? The vast array of choice is bewildering!

Very, very hard to comment without knowing the size/complexity of your build. But, very broad brush it sounds very expensive!

When I did the vaulted ceiling In th flat I used a plasterboard lift sat on a wheeled tower. Fairly labour intensive (especially doing it on your own as I did) but cheap ! Lift came from eBay. Exactly the same as this: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dry-Wall-Plaster-Board-Lift-Panel-Sheet-Hoist-drywall-Panel-plate-lifter-jack-/371550153001?hash=item56821d6929:g:eaIAAOSwZG9Wjhxb

An interesting reply. I guess the question is; where should the design sit between the fairly poor standard of current regs churned out by the major developers and the fanatical (I think that's a fair description) passive house? It it seems the low volume market (and especially timber frame manufacturers) want to trade off the ph band wagon. Many do it so they can command premium prices.

They do indeed. Just Google 'Mastic Contractor'. Good ones are very fast and very accurate and worth every penny. Its normally quoted at linear meter rate.

As long as you're comfortable with going to hell

I think that would be a great sticky. I've downloaded it and went cold and shivery! Feel free to drop me a copy 'my forum name at gmaildotcom'

Wolfgang Feist would appear to own a number of EU related marks for both "passivhaus" and "passive house". Figurative marks with letters provide protection against the use of the words too. [insert blurb about the technicalities of trade mark law] Of course registrations are class specific but he has registered class 37,41 and 42 which is a pretty good catch all for what they do.