ProDave

I would be phoning around looking for a local joiner to come on board with you. He should have more experience of this sort of stuff and all the tools needed.

What is going on the outside? I don't see enough detail in those drawings. There should be some drawings that show more detail like joist plans and details of important junctions. If you don't have them ask the designer / TF company for them.

Has he gone because of CV-19 or gone because you have fallen out? Do you have all the jousts and the rest of the timber frame kit? Do you have the drawings from the architect / TF company showing how it aall goes together? Pictures of where you are now?

The style of house was with a hipped roof. It will no doubt be in a street of similar hipped roofed houses. To try and convert it to a gable end would be most out of character and I can understand the council saying no.

Just caught up with this one. A bit close to home with the house sale problems, sales falling though, house worth a lot less than she was originally advised etc. Then the tight budget meaning paying labour was not an option. I would have been interested in the furnace heat recovery heating system proposed but not yet fitted. Oh and did I spot a non BR compliant staircase? (open treads)

Yes Hager is another make I have a great respect for, particularly their consumer units.

Just good quality at a sensible price. The "unique" thing is the switches allow you to unscrew and move the actual switch modules, allowing you to mix intermediate and 2 way switches in the same faceplate. The only way to do that with any other make is grid switches.

We have an oak worktop on our island, and that has been coated with 3 coats of 2 pack varnish from Howdens (I forget the make) I think that is a better finish for a worktop than oil as spills just don't soak through, even red wine does not make an impact and just wipes off.

I found the thermostat on mine at max was way too low. "Don't do this at home" I filed off the "pip" that limited the travel of the adjusting screw, and slowly turned it up further than it was supposed to go and have presently arrived at it switching off at 69 degrees (as measured by the ASHP's temperature probe). I might just try a little more see if I can get it to 75. I would have simply swapped the thermostat for another, had I been able to find any published range of adjustment.

It has certainly been good solar PV weather. I chose to have my shower this afternoon rather than the evening, because the immersion heater had maxed out and it's thermostat had switched off at 69 degrees, so electricity was being exported. So I had to draw some hot water off to rectify that situation.

Have you spoken to the neighbour? if so what do they say? I presume it's a privacy issue you are trying to address?

The rules changed a while back but generally now if a fence is "adjacent to a highway" then anything over 1M high needs planning permissions. I can't tell from your description if this fence is "adjacent to a highway" Perhaps a quick sketch would make it clear. I would probably just do it. The very worst that can happen is they try and enforce it, in which case you replace the 1.8m fence panel with a 1M high fence panel. then plant a hedge behind it to grow to the height you want to give the screening you want.

My brickies insisted on bridging every pipe opening with a proper lintel.

I would try and measure the angle with a protractor to be sure before ordering one. Unless you want to order a 10 and a 15 degree?

As long as the relay is okay a bit of soldering will fix that. I would lay a bit of copper cable on the track to reinforce it when repairing that. It reminds me of one make of solar PV dverter that a friend has. I have twice repaired it where PCB tracks have failed like that. It has not failed again since I laid a length of 2.5mm copper cable along the track to reinforce it.

Inlet is supply. You supply air to bedrooms and living rooms. You extract air from kitchens, bathrooms and utility rooms.

I would have thought most brickies would be signed up as self employed under the CIS scheme?

I would say for BR your snug and kitchen are different rooms.

I did not mean not declare it. I meant work for yourself for a change rather than as an employee. The job I did today, I sent the customer to the cash point to pay me in cash as I did not want a cheque that I then have to go and queue at the bank (on limited hours) to pay in.

Would a brickie in such a situation do it for cash?

What I did for a kitchen / diner is put an MVHR inlet at the dining end and an MVHR extract at the kitchen end, and balanced the 2 so the flow rates matched so there should be no net flow into or out of the room. The snug I would treat as a separate room with it's own inlet. I would consider balancing so that snug + dining inlet rate = kitchen extract rate so no net flow into or out of the combined kitchen / dining / snug.

It is certainly nice to have that flexibility. One thing I would say is fit a treatment plant, not a septic tank. I don't know if you have done percolation tests yet, but it would not surprise me if that land has a high water table. A treatment plant offers more options.

You do have interesting development potential there. With the ag tie gone, you can justifiably say the whole plot is your "garden ground" (as long as you don't sub divide it with fences. One of the exceptions up here that does allow building in the countryside is if the land is already "garden ground" So I quite easilly see later on the potential should you so wish for at least 2 more self build plots there, if you didn't mind having neighbours.

How did you remove the agricultural tie? I thought that was hard to remove? It is certainly good that he "started" and got written proof of that.

But why would that stop a bricklayer working alone on a self builders site, or just him and a labourer? Take your own lunch and sit in your own van to eat it?