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I really like this pendant, but I don't like the price (over £12,000 plus VAT which is just bonkers). Ignoring the fact that is is made from black patinated brass, how would you go about making one out of powder coated metal tubes? Say my budget is £1000 plus a couple of hundred for the powder coating. The link states that is is made from 200 pieces and that it rotates. I don't want that. I just want the metal tubes necessary to make a T-shape, the wiring and the glass orbs at either end that conceal the lightbulb. I'm indifferent about the suspension ropes that feature on this model. If it's going to help the structural integrity, that's fine, but I don't think they necessarily add to the aesthetic. Dimension wise, it needs to be about 1.5m wide and be suspended about 1.75m from the ceiling.

I agree the contract could have been clearer, but the point of me buying certain items is that I buy the items which aesthetically will have an impact on the look of the house. So the contract specifies I buy all facing bricks, tiles, floor coverings, paint, kitchen units and bathroom suites, etc. and he installs them. There is good reason for that, because take a tile for example, there is a cheap tile and a much more expensive tile, but the labour involved is the same. Take flashing for example, that is not only relevant to the installation of a roof window. There are flashings that he will need to install on other bits of the refurb, but surely he's not expecting me to pay for those in addition to what he's already quoted me. Insulation is another example, the contract required him to insulate the house, in between floors and in the loft etc. He has priced for that within his overall price, and is not expecting me to pay for insulation separately, so why would i need to pay for the insulation collar on the veluxes?

My contract with my builder is fairly detailed. We used a RIBA standard form contract which annexed about 50 pages of detailed drawings and an excel speadsheet of some 100 rows long which clarified which items the builder was responsible for purchasing and which items I was responsible for. In respect of roof lights, it states: customer to supply roof lights, builder to install. One of the roof lights I purchased is bespoke and so it came with an insulated upstand which the builder installed no problem. The other two are simple veluxes. After purchasing them, I sent the builder the links for the Velux insulation collars and flashing kits. He is saying this is my responsibility because I'm supplying the windows. But in my view these are not part of the windows, they are insulation and flashing details which he needs to install to make it watertight and to comply with the U values required by BR. I am already paying him a considerable amount to re-tile the whole roof, and with that the contract stated that I would purchase the roof tiles and he would fit them. It was silent about the other bits and yet he is purchasing new roofing felt and battons and not making an issue of that, so why is he making an issue of the insulation collars and flashing kits? What do you understand by: customer to supply roof lights, builder to install.

That's interesting @Oldsteel. It really daylight robbery. Reminds me of the silly fees the council charge to run a dropped kerb application consultation. How long did it take from first submitting your application for a quote and Thames Water quoting? And did you go via Thames Water direct to get a quote, or go via a third party?

So I still haven't ordered these two enormous tiles because the price of getting the specialist tile cutting company was putting me off and I haven't had a chance yet to discuss it the alternative plan with my main contractor which is to get him to do it and see what his reaction is. I agreed a fixed price with him for tiling 3 bathrooms, the sizes of which he could take from the floorplans. Now maybe it's unfair to expect him to cut and tile a series of floor to ceiling tiles, each made of one piece, arranged in a curve as shown in the render. Those thin slivers in the curved corner of the shower enclosure are 40mm by 2520mm and there are eight of them. Those, along with the cut out for the shower valve, are probably the hardest to do and the riskiest in terms of potential breakages. I don't know, never cut a 6mm tile in my life, but I imagine that although porcelain is super strong it is also quite brittle and mabe a 40mm by 2520mm piece or a cut out of a 150mm by 60mm piece from the middle of a much larger rectangle is taking the material to its limits and risking breakages. At £500 a tile, each breakage would be rather expensive! We had dinner this evening with a friend of ours who is a seasoned project manager and interior designer. I showed her my tile cutting plan (attached to the original post in this thread) and the below render and she thought I was mad - and she tends only to do super high end stuff that is pretty much at the forefront of design, so this really surprised me. She said I deserved the price the tile cutting company had quoted for coming up with such a crazy idea and that my architect had made a mistake in not including this detail expressly within the tender package to make it crystal clear to the contractor that this is what he was signing up to do. To be fair, this actual design was not my idea at all, albeit I have now fallen in love with it. Am I mad or is my friend overstating the difficulty of cutting and installing such thin and long pieces? There are 32 pieces which are 40mm in width. 8 of them are 2520 long, 12 are half 600 and 12 are 1000 long.

I also took a reading from the garden tap and I think it was similar. There is now just one tap in the hole property, effectively the mains pipe, but prior to A, B above being upgraded. I will do another bucket test and see what the flow rate is.

Unfortunately it wasn't really possible to do this and get a reliable reading. We bought a house that was in a really terrible condition. We knew the plumbing was awful because although the kitchen tap gave a pretty decent 20L/m, almost every other tap in the house gave much less than that (this is only measuring one tap at a time) and there was even one tap on the first floor that literally gave a drible. Our pre-purchase survey had concluded that much of the electrics were incorrectly installed and identified various damp issues, at least one of which was caused by a suspect leaky pipe. So we always knew the plumbing was awful and we needed to redo all of it. So I actually only took a pressure measurement after all taps in the house (together with the plumbing) had been removed.

Kitchen tap, which was at the back of the house, although now that we have extended it the new kitchen tap will be even further back, so about 4.5m further away from the mains supply - although that's probably only a relevant consideration for cold water given that before we didn't have an UVC, just a combi boiler, and now we will have a UVC that will store all hot water in the loft.

I don't have a water meter - the water is unmetered, we just pay a standing charge. Technically you are probably right in that Thames Water is not responsible for anything on my land. I think my builder is just being cautious because pipe C is very short, about 30cm before it goes into public land (i.e. the Council's land, i suppose, in that it is under a pavement) so whilst he could technically replace most of that as soon as he crosses the boundary he is nervous and for some reason he is not keen even to replace that last 30cm. Maybe I should tell him I'm not happy and that we agreed the £200 would be to replace my pipe and that that black bit is my pipe as well.

Thanks. I'm already doing that: builder is only charging me £200 to do it, so it was a no brainer. He's also going to remove the weird restriction at B. My question is whether it is worth the bureaucratic hurdles and cost of getting Thames water to increase the pipe at C and it's entry point into the mains thingy, whatever that's called.

A company I spoke to just now says that actually all the independent contractors can do is process an application, the actual work, apparently, has to be done by Thames Water at a cost of "about £2500". So if there was an increase in standing charge as well, that would be daylight robbery squared.

My builder is laying a new 35mm plastic pipe from the water mains at the property's boundary to the house (a distance of about 8m). We currently have 22mm but with an odd restrictor close to the connection which looks like it is reducing it at that point to 15mm. My builder has said that he doesn't know what the restrictor is but will remove it. He said that replacing the current 22mm to a 35mm pipe will improve flow but not as dramatically as if I paid Thames Water to modify the actual connection to their mains. He said he's not authorised to touch their property. I have had a quick look at Thames Water's website and it seems it's a lot of bureaucracy and cost to get them to do the upgrade of that bit. They do list about 150 suppliers that they have authorised to do works to their network as an alternative, but I've called about 15 of them and either they don't cover London or they don't cover individual residential properties. I will keep trying, but wondering if anyone can make a stab at whether it will actually make a huge difference, as my understanding is that my existing pressure (which is between 2.8 bar and 3 bar, depending on time of day) won't change, it's just the flow rate (which currently is about 20L per min) will improve. We are going to have an UVC. Photo below of what's installed at the moment, showing the weird 15mm narrowing (at point B), the 22mm plastic pipe we are upgrading to 35mm (at point A) and what I presume is the black outlet pipe from the Thames Water connection thing (at point C). That pipe is only about 30cm long then it hits the Thames Water connection

Does the same apply if laying engineered wooden boards on sand and cement screed? The Wood Floor company we are going with also recommended Sika glue.

No, my builder is doing all tiling. I thought he was unlikely to have the tools to do such large format tile cutting. The cut out for the shower valve looks pretty tricky to do. We are behind schedule and there is a lot of tiling to do three bathrooms plus a kitchen, utility, hallway and feature wall, so I thought I would speed the process up by getting the tiles cut by a specialist company. I will speak to the builder. If not, @nod do you fancy the job?

I am about to order two large format tiles which are 1600x3200x6 each, made of porcelain. I have designed a tile cutting plan (attached) that will enable me to fit these on the wall in a nook to make a shower enclosure. Red lines show the outline of the tile, black lines show where cuts are required. The tile cutting is pretty intricate, but I was still absolutely gobsmacked when the first company I approached quoted me £2400 plus VAT, just for the cutting! Maybe @nod or someone else with large format experience can recommend a company that will price this more reasonably. I can't imagine it is more than 1 day's work tops and whilst I appreciate specialist equipment will be required, I really had only budgeted about £500 for the cutting. Thanks people!

Is that the same recommendation regardless of whether one is using plastic or copper pipes?

@Loz I have opted for SN 70/35 on all of my west facing windows and sliding door and on the only rooflight that is over a bedroom. Details here: https://www.guardianglass.com/gb/en/products/brands/sunguard/super-neutral/70-35 It wasn't that much more expensive that the regular glass, and was the easiest addon to negotiate down in price. The rooflight company eventually gave it to me "for free". If all the glass on the same wall / orientation is the same, you won't notice the colour difference - or at least that is the logic that caused me to specify it on the sliding doors as well, which are about 40cm away from the kitchen window. I am hoping that I won't really notice the colour difference between this and untinted glass as there won't be any untinted glass in the same room and my eyes will just adjust to it. If however you were to have two windows side by side and one has solar control and the other doesn't, you will notice, as with the picture of @SteamyTea bling wagon. I know one can go darker than SN70/35 and block out more solar gain but for me this was the right balance between letting enough light in but not too much heat. Haven't had it delivered or installed yet, so fingers crossed it looks good when it comes. I will upload some photos, probably in June.

Did you end up finding a air source heat pump to suit your requirements? Anyone else have experience with the Ochsner?

I like them too, but I don’t like their in frame range.

This is the reason we didn’t go with Dekton.

That’s good to know @ToughButterCup. I was going to get one, but avoided it as was convinced there should be a catch as given one of the main points of a wall hung pan is to save space, you’d think everybody would want them as slim as possible. Was the one you bought marketed as being sound insulated?

Surely Plyboard is more stable and durable than chipboard?

For a unit that is about 750mm high, 450 wide and about 500mm deep how much space do you think is necessary? The area I have in mind is about 2m high and 1.5m deep, but very narrow. Probably around 1.1m in width.

I’m trying to figure out whether it’s a bad idea to site my MVHR in a hard to access part of my loft. If I need to access it once every 4 months or so that would be fine, but any more regular than that would be annoying (in which case I will change my layout).

The only internal walls adjacent to the utility are a hallway and the TV/lounge/kitchen openplan area. That hallway also leads to the TV/lounge/kitchen area. It's all fairly compact so distances aren't huge. The issue this presents is that any holes to supply air from these adjacent spaces will also facilitate sound leakage into these spaces. Hence why I wanted to seal the utility room off from these areas and give it its own extract and supply. @PeterW or anyone else reading this: do you see a problem with my suggested approach?