ProDave

No "off the peg" solutions as yet. But I think a bit more searching as found what I want. http://www.unishower.co.uk/uniclosure-900-hinged-wet-room-shower-screen.html It mentions magnetic strips as though it's intended to be a door closing into a door frame, but the picture shows it exactly as I want it as a hinged screen next so a shower not attached to anything other than the wall. Oh and they won't deliver to the Highlands. So that shows what I want, but they nay not be able to supply me. So keep looking folks.

Our main bathroom will be a wet room. The ladies have just decided the layout needs to change which has presented me with a challenge. The new layout will put the bath and shower next to each other. A fixed glass screen alongside the shower area will create 2 issues, poor access to one end of the bath at floor level for cleaning, and insufficient "activity space" alongside the bath (Scottish building regs for accessible bathrooms) A solution would be a hinged shower screen. But I can't find one. It needs to be full height (no more than 2 metres) and about 900mm wide. It needs to be entirely supported on hinges that fix to the wall. The bottom should not touch the floor though I would accept a rubber strip or similar. It will be completely free at the other end, i.e. it will not close onto a frame. So friction hinges so it stays where you put it? The problem is I can't find one that does not expect to close into a frame. This just literally needs to be a piece of plain toughened class mounted on 2 hinges.

I would never pay the full price for poor work. I would give them the chance to come back and do it properly, and I would be there to watch them. If they refuse I would be telling them I will get the council to inspect their work and see what they think of it and see if they still think them fit to have a street works permit.

My BIL in Queensland is called Bruce. The first time we went, he met us as the airport. I had never met him before. My nightmare was going up to the person I thought was him and asking "are you Bruce?" in my English accent.

I think creosote does soak into hardwood. I have been chopping up some old "rotten" oak fence posts for fierwood. It is only the outer half inch that is rotten and in the middle they are solid. I suspect they were soaked in a vat of creosote as it seems to have penetrated a long way in. As an aside, I had to drill some floor joists in an old cottage, and by the smell as you drilled them, they were soaked in creosote. First time I have seen it used indoors.

I have passed a sales yard on the Bruce Highway several times that has a field full of second hand houses for sale ready to be moved to a new plot.

The fact it comes in 2 pieces that bolt together, and each fits on a flat bed lorry sounds like it has been built to fit the legal description (in planning law) of a "caravan". The fact it does not have wheels is irelevant. I would offer it for sale. It would make a great temporary home for a self builder who has a plot big enough to fit a "twin unit" mobile home during the build. To move it, you crane the 2 sections onto 2 flat bed trucks. It might just be possible with a flat bed with a decent hiab to self load. It would be a job for a haulage company. Forget the caravan movers, they are only set up to deal with things on wheels and don't have the lifting kit. Off topic, but the fact this building is there, then at the very least you could replace it with a modern portable building built to be withing the legal "caravan" dimension without planning permission (though I would seek a certificate of lawful development if choosing that route) That could be a handy fall back position if you can't get planning for a proper house.

Have you paid them yet? You need to get them back to do it properly.

I have often thought that "turn it off and wait" would be a much better defrost method, providing the air temperature is above 0, and you are not in a hurry to got your HW tank up to temperature. Something to experiment with when it's all built and I suddenly have "spare time", something I don't recall having for a while.

Depends what controls are there? and what the boiler has connections for. There must be some sort of programmer already or at least a manual switch to turn the heating on?

Has it EVER worked? You don't want to keep the fill loop valves open. Where is the circulating pump? is it running? The Right angles valve coming out of the bottom of that black thing (someone will tell me what that is in due course) looks to me to be turned off (it's not in line with the black thing)

They don't like making a connection if there is nothing to connect to. Even more so the meter monkeys Up here SSE accept a mini CU with just one circuit feeding a site socket as a valid "installation" to make a connection, and an EIC for that with dead test results is all you need.

To me the saving sounds too small for the capital outlay. Might a new more eficcient condensing boiler make more sense?

That's a scary one. Just logging what you do on that site or anything? e.g if you had another tab open and logged into your internet banking?

I wonder how secure that is? could have some fun?

Have you ever been to that central London car park near Whitehall that has a robot that picks up your car and puts it into a pigeon hole? I went there once, not in my own car. I can't say I would have been impressed with the thing picking it up by squeezing the wheels. The potential for throwing the tracking out seems emense.

I suspect you thermostatic shower mixer has failed. This is exactly how ours behaved when it failed.

I have a friend (my best man at my wedding) that had a similar bungalow to that. When he first bought it, he extended at the back. Just recently he had the roof off, extended at the side as well, and a new room in roof upstairs put on. He jokes that he spent most of his working life in a "retirement bungalow" and now he has retired it is extended into a proper grown up large house. At least you have a 2 storey house next door so I should think you would be okay getting planning for an upstairs. A compromise that I have seen up here, is put a new timber framed upper floor on top, and then render the whole lot so you can't see the join. Again your neighbour sets a prescient for that. External wall insulation on the downstairs before the render would be a good plan. And insulate the timber floors while that is all going on.

Only 3 observations. I doubt anyone can say for certain that you can use the existing foundations for a new build without at lease an exploratory dig to see what foundations are there. Take a surveyors estimate of build cost with a large pinch of salt. When we built our previous house we looked at engaging an architect, but the 2 who we met and discussed the project with both gave a huge estimate of how much it would cost to build. Way more than we had. We ended up building it for not much more than half their estimate (surprise surprise their fee was based on a percentage of the estimated build cost) Is the garden large enough to split it, sell the old bunglow with a small garden and build a new house on the rest of the garden?

+1 to all of the above. If you only have a small loft and need to use a ladder to get to it, do NOT put your mvhr up there. I just know nobody will bother to change the filters. Upstairs, I have left a strip of floorboards at each end of each room as "traps" i.e. not glued and just screwed down so I can open up both ends of a room and fish new cables through. Thinking of when the next high tech AV cable comes out to replace hdmi etc.

It costs us about £150 to have the tank emptied every other year. A local contractor SureClean are the cheapest but Scottish Water will also do it. How remote are you and what do they charge?

They are the ones part way through the build. The ones in the cafe, probably wearing clean clothes, have yet to start. Oh what it was to be naive.

Not too late to change it?

Do you WANT one, or has someone told you you must have one? Personally Wen we cook anything with fat, I pour the resulting fat into the wheely bin (only when there is enough rubbish already in there to soak it up) then wipe out the pan with a couple of sheets of kirchen towel ans put that in the bin as well. Virtually no fat goes down my drain. No doubt someone will tell me this is a bad idea.

I am not familliar with that manifold controller. But in general they all work in much the same way. Each zone has a room thermostat. When any of the zones gets a call for heat from it's thermostat, it will tuen on the manifold pump., open the appropriate zone valves, and send a call for heat TO the boiler. You have not mentioned room thermostats. With none connected, it won't do anything.