ProDave

Reminds me of my AEA days when one of the site chauffeurs would take me from South Oxfordshire to Heathrow, and collect me on my return. That took a lot of stress out of travelling.

It's not just blighted by crime etc. We have none of that. But because we live in a remote, sparsely populated region, with plentiful land supply, land prices are low. I am near certain the rebuild cost of my house would exceed it's market value, so I can look forward to £0 land tax. Perhaps it should be like wholesale electricity prices, and we should have a negative land tax, i,e they pay me for living in such a deprived area? My house is only viable in financial terms because of all the uncosted labour I have put into it. If it had been built as a turnkey build, it would be very marginal if it was financially viable. Add on the demolition cost if rebuillding I am certain a rebuild would cost more than the house is worth. The only houses you see built for sale round here are estate houses in the towns, where they build small houses on cheap plots and with the economy of scale can probably turn them out for a small profit. It is a long time up here since I have seen an individual detached house built for speculative sale.

Like I say, very little of my "energy use" is under my control. So don't go blaming ME for MMGW, blame those who seem to use a lot more on my behalf than I do.

It's a good job you had only ordered one of them.

This 125KWh / person / day figure. I think we are doing badly if we use that in a WEEK. Okay I am only taking about house electricity, so I guess there is road fuel to add but my road fuel bill is not a lot higher than than the house electricity bill. I guess I "use" energy elsewhere for powering "infrastructure" which must be shared equally among the population. If that figure really is correct, it shows how much of the energy use attributed to me is beyond my control to do anything about.

I would stand it up at the back, lay the mortar / sealant and lower the front down. The purists will say the back couple of inches might not have much muck under it, but that's what I did in our last house and it never gave problem.

Burning wood at DRAX has to be the most stupid "green" decision ever made?

I have mentioned several time the new house built in our road in about 2007, marketed initially as an "eco house" but actually got an EPC of D and the last 2 owners have complained how high the heating bill is. It is always the first house in the street for the snow to melt off the roof, barely staying for a day sometimes.

He did mention "crappy housing" (his words) and showed his 1930's semi as an example, and how little could really be done to improve it significantly. We live close to the old "Dounereay" overhead line that was built to take power from Dounereay down south. It was redundant for years, but recently has been upgraded with new larger conductors to take some of the wind power generation up here down to the south. Had things unfolded differently in the 1990's Dounereay would be one of our home grown nuclear power stations still operating. The decisions made then are coming home to roost?

I have no idea. I have only used joist hangers to hang joists onto wood. If I were doing this I would have asked here what hanger to use and how.

That was my thought. But with no holes in the hanger, just what is the correct way of making sure it stays where you put it?

That's the old return bit of landing that was 2 steps lower. That is being removed to be replaced by the new bit of floor.

I have a feeling they are not involved.

Not a serious question, more a bit of "how the others do it" light hearted discussion. I saw this on my job today: It is a house being renovated. They have turned the stairs around and in doing so had to create a new bit of return landing. There are 3 new joists supported like this. So they have found the mortar joint in the brick wall and slotted the joist hanger in there after raking out the mortar. That put the hanger a bit too low, hence the packers under the joist. That will be "fun" when plasterboarding the ceiling But what struck me is no fixings. I would be worried there is nothing to stop that hanger just walking it's way out of the wall. There is nothing to fix it in place, and there are not any holes in the hanger anyway for any fixings. I can't help thinking I would want to drill some holes and screw it to the joist so it stayed in place, and proably some holes and screws into the wall so it could not just walk out.

I planted a Laurel hedge in front of the last house. It has yet to reach 1M let alone 2. On the plus side hardly ever needs trimming. Perhaps not a plant for the Highlands?

What really matters is actual annual energy bill, and I suspect Jeremy would get the prize for that one.

The law on fences and boundaries seems to have been relaxed. Now it just states "on a boundary" Before, it used to be anything between the building line and the highway could only be 1M high. so previously any fence, even one 6" in front of the house over 1M would need PP. Now it is a very grey area. If the wall was built 3-4 feed from the road (and the road surface now seems to have crept up to the wall) is it the case that your "boundary" is 3-4 feet in front of the wall? If so it is now arguable that putting a 2M high fence just behind the wall is not "on the boundary" I might be inclined to put up a fence. If challenged by planning, get them to give a definitive answer how far back you have to put it to make it "not on the boundary" and move it to where they say.

I would just do it. The trouble is, you really really don't want to be planting Leylandii But just about anything else is going to take some time before it is a useful hedge.

Interesting. I have yet to do this (and will only pay for it if building control insist on an as built SAP) Our design SAP was annoyingly 1 point short of an A, but I noted they had the make up of the roof wrong, so the insulation in the roof as built is better than used in the design SAP, so I am confident if we have to do it we should get an A. But as you say really a waste of paper, as generally buyers take no notice of such a thing. not that selling is even remotely in the plan. And I hear stories that if you do sell, they won't take a properly calculated SAP report and insist on a new RDSAP asessment full of assumptions and invariable a poorer result. It is a great shame that we were denied claiming the FIT when it was worthwhile, but the consolation prize is we are still collecting the FIT from the old house at the moment.

I had some interesting discussions with Highways when I was sorting out the vsibility splay for my build. Initially the planners wanted me to "demonstrate control" over the area of the visibility splay but that would have meant having control over 2 neighbours front gardens. However the discussion with highways concluded that I did not need to demonstrate control as THEY had control, and if any neighbour plants anything that block my visibility, to contact them and they would arrange it's removal. It is not clear from the pictures but it look like from next doors entrance, your low wall is already set back from the edge of the road? Or is the neigbours entrance you are talking about where the red car is parked? You already have a bush right on the wall so I can't see a whole hedge would make any difference.

Storage heaters have always been very much a compromise and very much understood by users. The simplest way to use them is keep the boost (output) knob at it's lowest setting and just use the "input" control to adjust to the heating demand. The big problem I found with them when I had them, was you need to keep an eye on the weather forecast and if it is going to get cold, turn them up the night before. the 1 day lag catches people out when it suddenly gets cold, or if it suddenly gets hot and you find yourself overheating because you did not turn them down. Treat the boost knob as just that, a means to squeeze a little more heat out at the end of the day of you are getting a bit chilly. I had one that claimed to automatically set the input, but in practice found that no better than the basic versions.

Today is the longest day. From now on the days get shorter. So it seemed a good opportunity to evaluate the first half years figures. So having just done my weekly meter readings, here are the headlines: Generation since late January 923KWh. Export since late January 57KWh So self usage 866KWh. At my current electricity unit price that is a saving of £128 If the second half of the year mirrors the first then I should be able to hit my self use target of £250 pa The total generation is well down on what PVGIS predicts. That is partly down to choosing an E/W spit in the hope that will make self usage easier. But the big issue that has come to light is those damned trees, and shading. I sited the panels on the one bit of garden that I though was largely clear of shading, and that seemed true at the start of the year. but as the sun got higher and the trees grew their leaves, it became clear there is a big shading problem in the mornings from the trees to the east of the panels that overhang a lot more than I appreciated. There is also a shading issue in the late afternoon from a tree in next doors garden. The trees to the east are mine, and I will be felling some of them, but I can't do that until the autumn as I will need to drop them into the field behind us, so can't do that now until after harvest. The total export is lower than I expected. Most of that occurs at mid day on a sunny day when the panels generate more than the immersion heater can use, and if nothing in the house is using significant power. If I was able to sign up to one of the new export payment schemes, I would have earned £3.13 for that export, or a predicted £6.26 per year. But to be able to claim that, I would have needed to have paid an MCS contractor to install it. I think it is safe to say the extra MCS cost would never ever be recouped by that tiny export payment. If you want to drill down into more detail about usage, it is worth noting that my PV dump controller has sent 324KWh to the immersion heater so far this year. That means only 542KWh has truly been used by something that would otherwise have imported power. It could be argued that the heat that has gone into the immersion heater has saved the ASHP from heating water. Assuming a COP of 2 when heating hot water, that is a real import saving of perhaps only 162KWh So perhaps the true saving is only 704KWh or about £105 actual reduction in electricity bills. Another point of interest, peak generation year was week beginning 10th May. Even this week has been lower. That may be the point when the sun got high enough to show up the shading problems, or it may just be that for the last 5 or 6 weeks the weather has been pretty lousy for the time of year?

Hi and welcome. This sounds like someone near me who bought a steading (barn) to convert but as soon as they started work they found there were literally no foundations under the walls so that ended up being a new build instead.

For a temporary supply, if it really is temporary, I have seen an old kitchen cabinet with a bit of roofing felt tacked on, and SSE were happy to put their gear inside it. This is what I used, 2 standard flush mounting meter boxes, built into a short bit of "fence" This is in fact my permanent supply. Not shown in the photo is a gland plate inserted in the bottom of the right hand meter box and a big SWA cable exiting from the switch fuse to my house.

Apart from how to build it, what about fireproofing for anything closer than 1M to a boundary? Have building control said anything?