ProDave

So tangible progress today. First assembly of the deck frame. this has been a work in progress for a couple of weeks. As soon as I got the timber I cut it all to length so I could get it in the dry, in the static caravan. And then I have been painting, and painting and painting. Each joist will be getting 2 coats. It takes several hours to dry, so all I can do is one coat in the morning, and then later in the day turn it over to paint the other side. And there is room only to do 2 joists at a time. So that's a throughput of 1 painted joist per day. Today there was finally enough painted joists to put most of it together to see if it all fits. That's the first time it has all been put together. Phew, i got the measurements right. The 2 missing long joists are still in the paint shop. The two end joists and most of the remaining dwangs (nogins) are still to start being painted. I have now dismantled it again and re assembled up on the scaffold, jacked it all up into position on packers got it into the exact position above the post support pads and then marked the holes through to the wall ready for drilling and trying my spacer idea. TIP: I am fixing to the wall with M12 long coach screws. I have drilled 13mm holes through the wall joist for this. I find a standard sharpie marker pen is a perfect snug fit in a 13mm hole, perfect to mark through all the hole positions onto the wall.

BCO's can be very "individual" One of the things they were not happy about was my stove, "it's too close to the wall" but they did not tell me this on their visit, only afterwards when I got the "refusal to issue completion certificate" by email. I had to email to them the stove installation manual and tell them which page to look on to find the minimum "distance to combustible materials" and then send a photograph of the stove with a tape measure showing the distance was about 1.5 times the minimum. Why he could not just have discussed that with me, I could have shown him the manual and cleared it up in minutes during his visit.

That for me is a good reason for NOT using an inframe kitchen then, some of the doors shorter than the rest would annoy my OCD.

That's an interesting statement. Something like that, if it failed, I would expect it to be repairable for a reasonable price. e,g it is easy to change the immersion heater in a normal HW cylinder. If it failed and was not repairable, that would be a big put off for me and I would be wanting to replace it with something else.

That might be true for a dishwasher,but this is a pull OUT door for a bin so should be identical. If this door really is 3mm shorter than the rest , it is the wrong door and needs replacing. P.S my dishwasher with it's pull down door operates quite normally with it's standard door exactly the same height as all the other doors. I don't believe anyone really does use shorter non matching doors.

Same with an integrated dishwasher. At least with that you adjust the feet on the DW for final adjustment.

The screw through the metal frame is in a slot, loosen all the screws, adjust the door height, re tighten screws.

What make of kitchen units? Show us a picture of the inside of this pull out bin unit, particularly where the door joins the pull out frame.

Make pipe in 2 sections the correct cumulative length to fit into their end fittings correctly, and join with a slip coupling.

If the housing association paid for this and arranged it, they are the ones that should be chasing the contractor. Complain to the HA.

Another example of how mine ended up. TIP: It is a lot easier if you buy the tape intended for windows. The backing paper is split so you tear off the thin bit allowing you to stick it to the window without it sticking to everything else, then tear off the rest to stick it to the wall.

That is probably a suspended timber floor. What does it feel / sound like if you stamp hard on the floor in the middle of the room or even jump up and down.? If you hoover out the dust there is nothing wrong with cutting the membrane to have a look and taping it up again afterwards.

Were you warned this might happen? I guess you now have a fine layer of dust on every surface to clean up now?

For levelling, work out the fall you want per metre, then with a 1 metre long level, cut a bit of packing (wood) and tape it to one end of your level. Then set the level (now jacked up at one end) for the bubble in the middle. No guessing. I think my treatment plant went in and back out of the hole 4 times until I got it properly level. On sites I have been on, it is "surprising" how many professionals seem to "forget" the pea gravel and just put soil back in the hole onto the pipe that is propped up on a few bits of broken brick.

What is that big rectangular block behind the wall the breakfast bar joins onto? I would not to see something in the next room on the kitchen designers plan? We have a gap of 1200mm between the main units and the island, I would not want less. If the gap from the units to the wall is less than 1200 I would not want the breakfast bar.

What would the gap be between the run of units and the breakfast bar? I am not understanding the detail of what is behind the wall the breakfast bar is on?

What sort of house is it that a 5kW stove will not heat a single room? Are you tacking the problem from the wrong end? Reduce heat loss rather than put more heat in?

The trouble with coal, is we shut all our deep mines and allowed them to flood, I believe they are not recoverable now, so reverting to coal would have to be imported. Australia and China have plenty, I would prefer Australia though the sea miles are greater. As long as nobody comes up with another hair brained idea like DRAX.

This country has dug itself into a hole (though less so than the rest of Europe). To "solve" the climate change issue, we ditched coal for power generation (which we were self sufficient in for I believe another 300 years) in favour of gas as it burns with less pollution than coal (the dash for gas) Very laudable intention, except we did not have enough of our own gas for that. That's okay, we will buy it on the world market, those nice Eastern bloc countries have a lot they are happy to sell to us....... Now we have a problem. That plan assumed those foreign suppliers would all remain nice cuddly friendly people. That did not go to plan did it? I don't regret buying an ASHP, we have no mains gas here anyway so it was the best option for us. But it is not carbon neutral, not until all the electricity comes from carbon neutral sources. This is the same reason I am not in a rush to get an EV. We don't yet have enough renewable energy, so to buy an EV now in reality means instead of burning petrol or diesel in a ICE, it demands we burn more gas in power stations. Just imagine if all ICE car owners swapped to EV's over night? We are heading in the right direction, building more wind farms etc, but as the famous phrase goes "if I wanted to get to there, I would not choose to start from HERE"

WHO has a right to pass and repass? Probably the owners? Does that right extend to anyone else they care to invite into their home? I have read the whole thread and I noticed this at the start "The neighbours come out of the door you see and then take a right angle to go out onto the street." So the neighbour can get to the street without passing through your garden, so WHY would they choose to go through your garden?

What they don't tell you: You dig your trenches, lay the drains nicely set in pea gravel and leave the trench open for building control to come an inspect as they demand. THEN you get torrential rain. That photo is after the rain in the trenches had gone down a lot. TIP: Put your drain test bung in at the bottom and fill all the pipes with water so they won't float if this happens.

I feel this thread is crying out for pictures.......

That makes a £20 bottle of single malt from Morrisons look fantastic value. Why would I pay Whisky price for wine?

The SA sounded like a good idea mainly because of it's lower heat losses, but the fact you can't heat it from an ASHP and the fact that if the heating element does fail (not unknown) you can't just drain it and replace with a standard immersion heater like you can any other hot water tank are what put me off.

No low down, the only couple I have seen come with a relatively short fitted flex. I never investigated if you could change it.