ProDave

Did you do full plans approval? if so why was this not picked up then?

Can you post the floor plans of your house?

Mine had them. The "noggins" were just short bits of the same I beam construction. Here's the ground floor being assembled with some in place already.

My present car (bought second hand) came with a towbar that looked unused, but no towing electrics. Apparently it was fitted just to tow the wheelie bin to the end of the drive once a week.

Is that a selfie (runs away to hide...................)

I asked what they were going to do with the contaminated waste and apparently there is a designated contaminated landfill site somewhere.

We are higher up the hill than them and about 200 metres away so have no fears of contamination here. Scottish Water have been down looking, no doubt SEPA have had a look as well. They will be interested to make sure none ends up in the burn and then into the river.

This is an interesting one going on at the bottom of our road. They had a delivery of heating oil. Unfortunately instead of filling the new oil tank as instructed they filled the old, now disused tank. Even more unfortunately that must still have been connected somewhere with the result 400 litres of heating oil leaked into the floor void under the suspended timber floor. The owners have moved out into a caravan. I have just spoken to the contractors starting the remedial work. The plan is to dig down and underpin the foundations, to then enable them to dig under the house and remove the contaminated soil. At least a months work they estimate. Being paid for i understand by the delivery companies insurance. It will be interesting to see how this works out.

What is your reason for not adding the extra smoke alarm? Upstairs where presumably you can add the extra cable in the loft without problem I would just do it. If they wanted an extra alarm where it was impossible to install a new cable then I would be arguing the case.

My approach is even more simplistic. The cables to every room are not terminated. Merely installed in the wall and accessible should they ever be needed by popping out a socket box and the network cables will be found behind there in the service void. At the router cupboard end, they are all coiled up and labelled. I work on the principle that when a need is found I will install the socket in the room and terminate the cable at the router cupboard.

Do you even know that building was made of SIPS? so it seems to have started in the roof, I wonder what caused that? Once a fire gets hold like that, it is very unsuual indeed for the building to be saved, regardless of construction method. This near us, an entire brick / stone built primary school completely lost due to a fire thought to have been started by a laptop computer catching fire https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-51614060

Don't forget "engineered joists" also includes JJI I beam joists. This sounds like a typical new build where it was done properly on the one house that was inspected for building regs and all the corners cut for the rest..

I ran CAT5 from the router point to every room. So far only ONE is in use, the room where my desktop PC is used. The Printer and Pi Music box are also hard wired in Cat5 but they are in the same cupboard as the router. The firestick that is used occasionally for watching tv over the internet connects via wifi, which makes the Cat5 cable going to the tv redundant. I ran a spare phone cable and a few Cat5 cables from my router cupboard to another cupboard, just in case the router did not give wifi coverage throughout the whole house in the first cupboard it gave me the option to try it in a different location. I have not needed to do that. Much easier to install lots of cheap Cat5 cable just in case. It is so much harder to install it later and often impossible to fit it later and keep it hidden.

In the early stages of our build I had nothing. I told the builders the loo at our house 2 doors down was available should they need it. They all chose to pee behind a tree. Then one lunchtime, one of the builders announced very loudly "I'm off for lunch and a sh1t"

What you have is a screw terminal DIN rail relay. Why have the sent you a spade terminal screw mount relay as a replacement when they say the Finder one is "okay"? I would personally replace with another DIN rail mount of another better make and higher current rating but then you have the thorny issue of warranty even though you would have fitted a better part. I used to build industrial machinery and we quickly found Finder were not the best. Of course you can fit the one they have sent just by crimping spade connectors onto the wires you have. then you have got to mount it somewhere.

Yes keep the loft warm, i.e. no insulation above the bedrooms. Having just built a 1.5 storey house with a warm roof I would say having a warm roof is the single biggest improvement over any house i have previously owned in terms of ease of build, ease of detailing insulation and air tightness and performance.

The entire volume WILL be heated and there will be a lot more wall area for heat to escape from, so anything other than using the entire wall area would give a false idea of heat loss.

Ask them specifically about a temporary building supply. Up here SSE do (or at least used to) a deal where you pay for a supply connection and pay a small amount extra (it used to be £90) for a "building supply" For that they would connect to a temporary meter box, and then later come and move the supply into the house once built and the building supply fee covered that work of moving it later.

Nope, not seen that before. Usually only 2 and laid flat. A stack of 3 like that vertically is usually used as a lintel over a door.

Drill 2 holes side by side, one for the SWA and one for a 20mm conduit. 25 would be better if you had a slightly larger drill bit.

Just drill diagonally with your 1M long SDS bit, nice and slow. then dig outside to find where the drill breaks through. No need for duct, it's SWA. What size SWA are you proposing that won't fit through a 24mm hole? Your SDS drill should have a clutch in case the drill jams. I didn't know mine did until the first time it operated and I thought I had stripped the gearbox.

Get the supply to the site ASAP. Water co's responsibility ends at the boundary box. Just connect a stand pipe for now, and run the pipe to the house when you are ready.

Yes that's a different switch fuse in a metal box. Where do the tails go that exit the centre white cable gland in the bottom of the meter box?

So you will have to dig deeper than you need, keeping some of the top soil to put back on the bits remaining as garden. Otherwise you will just be left with subsoil as your garden finish.

No, that's just an isolating switch. But you have space in the bottom right of the meter box to put one of these https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/CGMSF100.html