ProDave

We negotiated the planning permission to keep the static caravan permanently. You might ask why? Well not for accommodation. For more work / storage space. The one we bought (partly because of how well it lends itself to other uses) basically has 3 rooms. the larger one will get used as an artist studio and a music room. One bedroom will get put to use as my ham radio "shack" and the third at the moment is just going to be a store room. As such it represents tremendous value per square metre, and to add that much extra space to the house itself would have stretched our bedget too far, not to mention extra council tax etc (which does not apply to a "garden outbuilding")

You could get away with the "caravan" (portable building) exemption and thus be building regs exempt if you did not use the "upstairs" The caravan exemption has a maximum ceiling height and must be single storey, but it doesn't say you can't have a loft space. Just don't use it for sleeping in!!! Whether you can use it all year or 11 months depends on planning, if it has planning as holiday accommodation, then the 11 months may apply. If it has planning as residential then it should be all year. i.e you could probably put one of these on a holiday park that has planning for "holiday caravans" (as long as you don't use the upstairs) but would probably be subject to seasonal use only.

Tread carefully and wear a snorkel.

In case it didn't prove good enough there, I have installed a phone and cat5 cable from the stair cupboard to where the coat and shoe cupboard will be in the entrance hall. That will give an alternative location for the router on a shelf high up by the ground floor ceiling. On the subject of hiding stuff, a filing cabinet will be going in this cupboard. By raising one of the dwangs a bit higher, the filing cabinet will recess into the thickness of the wall so it doesn't stick out too far which would otherwise make the coat and shoe cupboard too deep.

So why not use a chrome compression elbow, that should grip the chrome pipe okay and look better than a brass nut being seen.

I get the impression gardening is not one of your pastimes?

Yep, under my stairs. All tv and satellite cables enter via a hockey sick built into the foundations which comes up in the under stair cupboard. Still a work in progress but nearly there. The hifi unit is in pieces as I am still awaiting the bluetooth receiver to incorporate into it so the girls can play their music from their phones. Everyting is remote controlled, just out of shot high up on the left is the receiver part of a powermid IR extender set, this re generates IR remote controls and sends them to all the stuff shut in the cupboard. CD storage built into the thickness of the stud wall. The broadband wifi router is up in the ceiling structure of the half landing pretty much right above my head where I was taking the photo from, as near to the centre of the house as possible and seems to give a good wifi signal everywhere. I am only using the built in LAN ports on the router at the moment, but LAN cables is installed to each room and if I need to use more I will install a switch, again mounted high up out of the way. Just out of shot to the right is the tv aerial distribution amplifier. 3 satellite receivers, the Sky HD box is the main one that will link directly to the 2 main tv's via long hdmi cables already built into the walls. The sky mini box above that is essentially there just for satellite radio channels and it's audio links to the hifi. Above that is my "other satellite" receiver for Astra 1 and hotbird for such things as watching F1 live via the German channel RTL on the days when channel 4 are not showing it live here. Network printer sits here out of the way can be accessed by wired or wireless lan from any computer. This is all part of the strategy of keeping "clutter" out of the main rooms, without compromising quality, i.e. I still insist on a half decent hifi and decent speakers in each room, even though the unit itself is hidden away. It has all taken up a lot less space than I thought, so there is still a good amount of useful storage space in the under stair cupboard.

Other rebranding of a well know and respected brand to something new was CORGI to Gas Safe. and the humble Marathon bar to Snickers. Being very cynical I can only assume some marketing consultancy got paid a fortune for that re branding. I saw a lot of that happen in the dying days of my former industry where a fortune was spend trying to rebrand and refocus, all in vain. An excercise at the time we all likened to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Best start a new thread otherwise it might get lost in here........

Most treatment plants need power. Mine is one based on the air blower principle and a measurement when it was first installed confirmed it uses 2KWh per day, though it has a lousy power factor as the current measurement suggested it would be more, but thankfully the meter measures KWh rather than KVAh You can also get them that have moving mechanical parts but I would not recommend one of those. There are some treatment systems that claim the same level of treatment, without using power, these tend to be 2 stage plants, basically a septic tank followed by some filtration or secondary treatment system. These tend to cost more and take up a lot more space. Then there is the question of where will the liquid effluent discharge to.

If it really is a cess pit and you have never had it emptied then where is it going? Surely it is a septic tank? that should really be emptied about every 2 years, though some people seem to think they never need emptying. Emptying it is not A DIY job. Installing a new treatment plant might be, but finish the bathroom first.

This is the tariff you want to end up with https://ebico.org.uk/energy-plans/ebico-zero/ We had to initially sign up with SSE to get a meter installed, on their no contract standard variable rate, then as soon as the meter was physically installed, we switched to ebico for the no standing charge tariff. When we finally moved into the static caravan we switched again to a cheaper supplier.

I installed a Mk1 Solar Immersion for a friend. I have since repaired it twice as there were serious engineering flaws. Lets hope the latest version (which looks completely different) has fixed all those issues. The issue with a long distance from the hot tank to the taps is the annoyance factor when you turn on a hot tap and have to wait for the hot water to get there. You could install a circulating system but then you do have to super insulate the pipework to save waste.

The worst ones (from a tradesmans point of view) are kitchens with soft vinyl flooring that rips as soon as you try and pull a unit out. That coupled with the socket it plugs into hidden behind the machine so you have to pull it out (thinking PAT testing for rental properties here) Why can't people put the socket somewhere you can reach it with the machine still in.

If that is a marked out parking space allocated to you on the deeds, I would say no. Isn't the issue one of occupying and potentially blocking the public highway? Putting a skip in a marked parking space off a private road does not sound like blocking the highway. The skip company probably know the law better than the council and I would take their advice.

Before you put the new one in, tile the recess, or at least put a sheet of plywood in to bring it up to the same level as the tiles.

Are you saying someone tiled the kickboard?

Standard part. You need a new complete hose, just a standard cold fill hose variously described as washing machine or dishwasher hose. It's done well at 18 years even if it had not broke, I would replace it at that age.

Well spotted. So I will ignore the fact it is described as a "180 degree" hinge then.

While I admire your bending skills I would have done that differently. Ditch the obsession with keeping both right hand pipes at the same level. I would have made the left hand one an inch taller coming out of the ceiling. That left hand pipe could then have crossed over above the right hand one and both taken a straight line to their destination with no crossover. I think you regard it more as an art form than a practical means to get water from A to B. Actually scrub that. If the right hand pipe had turned right as soon as it appeared at the bottom of the photo it could have gone to it's destination all on the same level without any crossovers. I suspect my obsession is keeping pipe runs, particularly HOT pipe runs as short as absolutely possible.

The one I linked to originally hinges 180 degrees as well. The only difference the one you linked to wants to return to centre, which is not necessarily what I want. I will also have to look at that more complicated cut out and run it past the glass manufacturer.

Back to tradesmen. I did the wiring for a major refurb of a derelict bungalow last year. It was a complete gut and replace everything so the owner employed a lot of all sorts of trades directly to achieve the end result. At the end she said something rather interesting to me (bearing in mind my location and she was Scottish). Of all the trades she had on site, she would hapilly employ all the English ones again on another job, but would only employ ONE of the Scottish tradesmen again on another job. Draw your own conclusion. P.S. Please keep the thread clean, this is a respectable forum.

I suspect you are wanting a timber framed house that behaves a bit like ours. Well insulated so heat loss is low. It takes a very long time to heat up or cool down in response to changes in outside temperature, days usually. Some may mistake this for "high thermal mass" but it is all down to the decrement delay of the insulation used, in our case a mixture of earthwool and wood fibre. Not a concrete block to be seen. As has been mentioned, plasterboard has quite a high heat capacity so helps a lot. I am already noticing a difference in how the building responds since we have plasterboarded the big room downstairs.

You are doing a good job od talking me into using 6mm glass instead of 8. Will that still be strong enough for a 1900mm high by 900 wide "door"? I might also reduce the height to the more normal 1800mm to save a bit of weight. I was planning on 3 hinges, one at the bottom, one at the top ant the third perhaps a quarter of the way down so it shares a lot of the outward pull at the top. Yes I have dedicated 4 by 2's for the hinges to screw through into.

Interesting thread, speaking as an electrician. In all the time I have been a sole trader I have never had a falling out with a customer (falling out with another trade yes, that's another story) I think the lesson from this is seek personal recommendations. Almost all my work comes that way, I don't advertise now. And as has been mentioned before people will only recommend you if you are up to their standard. I don't "do" facebook or the like, but aparently I get recommended there a lot. Someone just asks "anyone know a good electrician" and someone pops up with my name. As for electricians and certificates, I always issue them and have never had an issue with building control not accepting them. Perhaps you need to retain the final payment until you have the certificate?