ProDave

I saw this done in a house where someone had created a bathroom in an impossible space where cupboards used to be. they put the taps at the far end so you had to climb into the bath to turn the taps on. Solution as suggested, but a bath without taps and have taps coming from the wall at one side. I suspect this would fail building control. Are they inspecting this?

I am personally not a fan of "smart" wiring and not every buyer would be. For a half way house, I would wire all the lights and switches to a central point in a well accessible cupboard where you could put all your smart controls in one place, with the flexibility that if a future buyer wanted it all "normal" you just replace all the smart controllers with one big junction box and normal light switches. Documenting everything will be key.

This thread details how I made my own Oak door liners

Purely heresay, but someone else once said install the duct and drawstring and then accidentally the overhead cable mysteriously snaps. The pole must be leaning and putting too much strain on the cable. Encourage the replacement to go in the duct provided.

You wait until you are the sparky tasked with "add an extra light switch there please". You carefully drill down into the wall from above, expecting as usual to just find it full of some kind of glass wool, only to find it stuffed solid with all the left over plasterboard offcuts.

If you are planning to keep a car a long time, a sort of rust coloured brown is good.

In the early days of the build SWMBO said she wanted an interior designer. When questioned why and what she wanted it seemed her No 1 thing was "I don't want every wall plastered and painted" I quietly resisted, but made a point of showing her on Grand Designs every "non plastered and painted" wall they featured, and when I said I can do one like that bloke with strips of old pallet wood (really that was what one guy did on his new build) I got a firm NO. As it happened everything in the house was planned by us as we built it. It meant a LOT of visits to the shops as everything was individually chosen. Wooden flooring, tiles, multipanel for the wetrooms, doors, door handles, kitchen units, worktops, taps, basins, toilets, lights, and so it goes on. So we ended up with an interior designed by us. And all the walls are painted plaster........

I have just watched tonights episode. £300K for the plot and over £500K build costs for a retired couple, or rather a trying to retire couple. Over time and over budget leaving them with no savings and still working when they expected to be retired. This just emphasises what I worked out 20 years ago. WHY when you retire and no longer need to work, would anybody want to remain living in one of the most expensive parts of the country? You coul build your dream house comfortable for half that in a cheaper place and have the proper retirement you dreamed of.

For completion, you need the required level hard standing parking area and a hard path from there to the main door without steps (a ramp) and all the other doors need steps or other means of access. It was pretty obvious the steps from our patio door were not permanent but they were accepted. You also need the trivial things like bin storage space and a washing line. Apart from that, your garden could resemble the Somme and there would be no reason to refuse a completion certificate.

Basically safe and livable. We had a working kitchen, one working bathroom, working heating, but a lot of internal work needing finished. This was Highland council. I have heard some say that some Scottish council's wont issue a temporary habitation. We also used the temporary habitation as "proof of completion" for the VAT claim.

We moved to normal insurance when we got a certificate of temporary habitation when the house was nearly finished.

Strictly speaking they all just have to be "non flamable" it's just that nobody yet has certified a plastic one as being non flamable.

And don't forget above a certain height handrails will also be needed.

It sounds like batteries to me. the flyer says: "It would comprise of a compound of electrical equipment, battery units, transformers, store and energy meter building" There was one company on the news recently building a trial storage plant that literally wound a stack of concrete blocks to the top of a tower to store energy then let them back down again to generate energy.

Last night was forecast to be cold here with possible a light frost. so I took a meter reading at 10PM and another at 8AM this morning, so a 10 hour cold overnight period. In that time my LG ASHP use 0.2kWh I chose this cold night as I knew it would be cold enough to trigger the anti frost water circulation function a few times, so that will have been 2 circulating pumps and 2 motorised valves energised a few times. When we get back to some proper weather with warm nights I will repeat that test when I know the anti frost function is not triggered.

I had to fit a second pump inside the house because I could not get enough water flow rate to keep the ASHP happy. If you are determined it will run entirely on the outside pump, then plumb accordingly, i.e. 28mm main flow and return to start with (mine is only 22mm)

Lucky you. Try managing with 3MBPS on a good day.

It's about a mile from us, over the brow of a hill, and not upwind (prevailing wind) of us. In fact there is only one house close to it, and that is a croft. I would not be happy if I was that croft, but it would not surprise me if it was their land the plant will be on, and they will be adequately compensated so they don't worry about it.

An interesting flyer popped through the door today, sent to all houses in the locality. Just over the hill from here, on the way into town, they are starting the initial planning of a grid scale battery storage plant. The proposal is to take over a field next to a local substation, and fill it with battery storage. Details are scarce at the moment but the companies website talks of short term storage, up to 4 hours, to charge at times of surplus renewable energy and discharge at peak demand times. It won't affect us, it will be well out of site and probably not very visible either from the road as the substation it will be adjacent to is down in a dip. Someone thinks it is now viable to spend a lot of money on a lot of batteries.

Yes it is and that is mainly where is is used on my build, but I used the leftovers to line the walls of my sun room. If it's good for a roof I can't see why it would be no good for a wall was my thinking.

You might be very lucky and find the metal one you linked to has the same thread as the original plastic one. That is if the plastic one ecen screws in or is fixed some other way. That rose is probably meant to be used with a decorative metal cowl so the appearance of the plastic cable grip does not matter. Are you trying to use it without the cowl?

So what stops you getting the "temporary" meter in a kiosk, and then never quite "finishing" the house so never asking for the meter to be moved? Are they actually going to come and check and insist they move it?

Coach bolts is what you are looking for. Big wood screws with a hex, or sometimes square head. Probably best to drill a small pilot hole to make them easier to screw in straight, and definitely a larger pilot hole through the brick slips and backing board.

My stairs were difficult. It is 2 strings joined by a half landing. The one insurmountable design feature is the lower string had to be slightly shorter than the top string so that meant an odd number of steps, so we ended up with 13 steps total. That pushed the rise to close to the maximum, 202mm iirc, I compensated for that by making the going as long as the space I had which ended up with a pitch of I think 40 degrees. I couldn't go up to 15 steps total as the bottom string would be too long then even at the minimum going.

My sun room was left for about 4 years, just the bare frame covered in VP400. When I eventually got to cladding that, the VP400 was well faded but still sound, and an exploratory lifting a bit revealed the OSB cladding of the frame was as good as new underneath, so I just fitted the cladding. I doubt anyone will actually guarantee their membrane for 4 years exposure, but that was just my real world findings.