ProDave

Been there, done that and posted the saga at the time. What I did also notice through a lot of peering into water filled man holes, is what a decrepit, fragile, 19th century network it is. It's a wonder it works at all for voice telephony let alone (slow) broadband.

10% off at https://www.bathroomsupastore.com/ I just made a purchase and the service was good and quick delivery. With my purchase came a flyer offering the following: "Create an on line account and use the 10% off code on your next order. Please tell your family & friends" 10% off code SUPA10 Enjoy.

At a recent ceilidh in the village hall, one of the parents was notable by his absence. He was apparently at A&E having missed with the axe and hit his foot (no steel toes) They were stitching his foot back together. His wife has now vetoed his purchase of a chain saw.

Don't tell me, it "fell off the back of a lorry" you know nobody believes that.

How close are you building the garage to the Willow tree's? Our house is less than 10M from Willows. The Structural engineer that designed the strip foundations specified we must dig down to the sandy clay sub soil (he had witnessed me dig 3 test puts so he knew the ground conditions to about 2 metres deep) and specified a strong (I think it was C35) concrete mix, and reinforcng meshing in the pour. The reality was when digging the foundations no tree roots were encountered. Our site is unusual that we have a burn running through it and the Willows are all along the edge of the burn, so no prizes for guessing where they get most of their water from.

We have been living in the 'van since last April, so just coming up to a year. Our old house is now rented out. It's only me working on the build now. Site office and laundry is in the part built house. If you are planning on living on site it's normal to include temporary planning permission for the static 'van on your planning application and you pay band A council tax for it. Though we negotiated that the static 'van can remain after the build for use as a workshop and studio (not for habitational use once the house is complete)

Because for the last year i has been what we call "home" And for that use our 28 ft 'van is at the smaller end of the scale, but we bought it for it's unusual room layout.

No 4 by 2 on the gables. It didn't quite go to plan as I detailed that before I got the tile end caps, and when I put it all together, it left a sliver of wood exposed, and in keeping with my low maintenance goal I did not want that, so I fitted a plastic strip before the tile end caps went on to both protect the wood from getting wet and create a drip bead (much as there will be a drip bead when I add the aluminium cladding to the fascia)

@Dudda beat me to it. They are braces for the long sides, might even be the ones meant for 6 foot ledgers if they are too short for an 8 foot setup. I have never seen really short braces for the ends. Your "solution" or a bracing tower on a longer run :

It is just style. Ours are not like that. Just lengths of 6 by 2 regularised timber, that will eventually be clad in an aluminium profile (so painting or varnishing wood is not a regular chore) This is typical of how older cottages were built for instance. It did create an "issue" with the downpipes. The standard bends were too bulky and I had to trim them a bit to get a small enough offset

Can you squeeze that 8M to 9M? A small static caravan such as the one we have 28ft by 10ft (8.5 metres by 3 metres) might fit and would provide all your needs. You can get smaller static 'vans but they are not so common. An old (and hence cheap) large twin axle touring 'van might be a better bet.

On a former job I visited a factory regularly. Visitors had to wear steel toes and if you did not have your own, they provided a pair of very uncomfortable steel toed wellies. So I got my company to buy me a pair of steel toed shoes for the next visit. When I told my host at the factory my shoes were steel toed, he stamped on my foot to "check" I was telling the truth. My boots on site have saved me many times from standing on a nail (steel insole) probably more times than the steel roe caps have done anything.

A bit of a re plumb, but to me it would make a lot of sense to have a decent sized buffer tank for the heating, and divert excess PV to heating that. Then as well as your tank of DHW, you would have a tank of heating water for the evening.

We had this sort of anyway. The planners made it clear they wanted us to use a slate roof. I made it clear I did not (both houses wither side of us for 2 or more houses are concrete tiled) In the end they said they would "accept" Marley Edgemere Riven finished concrete tiles. So that is what went on the plans and that is what was approved. So they didn't strictly enforce a single product with a planning condition,. rather the discussions during the planning application made it clear that was the only concrete tile they would accept.

This all started a couple of weeks back when I was asked the question" What toilet cistern are you going to buy" "The same as in the last house" was my reply. They were cheap, easy to install, dependable and (when one did play up) easy and cheap to service. What more could you want? "but I didn't like the flush plate, choose a different one." I then had to explain you can't just fit any make of flush plate to any make of cistern. So that took me to the start of this thread. The next "discussion" will no doubt be where to fit it, left, right, or middle. I suspect middle, to force one to close the lid in order to reach the button.....

In our house the Tumble dryer is actually the towel fluffing machine. If you dry towels any other way they fail the fluffyness test. That is it's sole reason for existing. We now have a condensing dryer, so at least we don't shove 3KW of heat out through a big hole in the wall any more. However the condensing mechanism is very poor. It takes in room air at floor level to pass through the condenser. That might work okay in an old house with no floor insulation so the floor is always cold, but in a well insulated house with under floor heating, the room air it sucked in was simply not cold enough and you could run the thing for ages and the towels came out wet and warm. I swear in the new house the TD is going in the garage where there is more likely to be cold air for the condenser. Perhaps we need ducted air from outside, over the condenser, then back outside again?

Our builders handled them all by hand picking them up with those suction cup things.

The "problem" I am having looking for parts to make that DIY one is the 42 - 54 reducer. You need a "slip" version to allow the 42mm to pas through.. Normally there is a stop that won't allow the 42mm all the way through.

One of my favourites

Don't know about paper blinds, but we are setting up cardboard doors.

A quick costing on ebay (almost certainly not the cheapest) and it comes out at £167 for a 1 metre long copper 42/54mm heat exchanger for the pipe and all fittings. If I could get that down to £100 I might give it a go.

Thanks. I will go and cost it up. This might have to be well and truly hidden and not mentioned for BC sign off.

Don't like the idea of the shower waste being reduced for that run. I will have a look at available pipe sizes. But a nice simple idea. He has plumbed the heat recovery into the feed to the hot water tank. I think it would be better to connect it to the cold water feed to the shower thermal mixer valve?

The idea is you pre heat the cold water feed to the shower with the wast recovery, and the thermostatic mixed adjusts to use less hot and more of the pre heated cold to maintain the same temperature.

That would do. At the moment I have separate 40mm wastes from each shower to the stack (my philosophy to only have a single item on each "small" pipe) so that would either mean 2 of them, or combine the 2 showers onto one 40mm waste. I am actually more inclined to try and find a length of 40mm copper pipe, some 10mm annealled copper coil, and get soldering......