ProDave

Well I tiled our roof (concrete tiles) on my own, with a lot of help from SWMBO to help lift the tiles up onto the roof, so if you can practice and master the slating bit, I see no reason why not. P.S don't use the nail gun on the slates

Plenty of time for you to wait out firstly for an official enforecement action, then for his planning application, then for the appeal. Even when that fails, a court order will be needed to evict you. Just pay you CT and settle in. You will hopefully move into your new house and leave the mess for your neighbour to sort out. P.S was this the neighbour that gave you so much grief over your planning?

You don't order enough. I got an advent callender and the £10 discount code. Since the code does not seem specific to any particular account, I thought it worth sharing. I don't think you can use that code in store as the instructions say "hand over the card" but on line you just type in that code.

Would / could it still have an impact on future planning applications if you first get a certificate of lawful development?

£10 off an order at Screwfix Enter the code ADVENT17 when placing your order. Valid until 12/12/17

Our old house has UFH upstairs and ordinary carpets (i.e not especially low tog) and the bedrooms warm up okay. It takes a little longer than downstairs that has wood or tiled floors.

My vote would be a switch fuse in the meter box to feed the house, and a CU inside the piggery for it's own stuff. Keep the piggery CU within 3 metres of the meter box to prevent that too needing it's own switch fuse (i.e just put it on the inside of the wall backing on to the meter box) So out of isolator into a pair of henley blocks, from those to the switch fuse with one pair of tails and through the wall into the piggery with the other. By the way, is that one of those smart meter thingies? Did you choose that or was it forced upon you?

It's all done with mirrors

I have just finished wiring a house all built of I beams. All I know is where they cut large holes in the web for soil pipes etc, they reinforces on both sides of the web with gusset plates. That tends to suggest a large hole would otherwise loose too much strength.

It is complete nonsense, not helped by the surveyors. At least in our case we still have the building control completion certificate and also the nhbc warranty certificate, though that has now expired so of no value other than to prove they were happy with it when built. And no alterations have been done since. Honest.

You would need a serious silencer on the chain saw.

Interesting. When I did the comparison, well over a year ago, Frametherm was half the price of celulose. Perhaps the installers that blow it in charge a lot more up here?

There has been a lot of EWI applied up here, mostly to social housing. They always seem to take the EWI right down to ground level. They also seem to cover any air bricks in the process. Obe can only wonder what trouble this is storing up for the future. A suspended timber floor can be well insulated, but unless you have a really good crawl space, you would not want to do it from underneath, in fact you would not want to even wit a good crawl space. It really is a boards up in every room job.

This is applicable to home improvements only. In the case of a self built, you WILL have building control sign off, so any tom dick or harry (or even Dave) can fit the windows and BC will sign it all off at the end/ Like @Onoff just because you have paid in to be a member of a competent person scheme does NOT mean you are a good tradesman. We see this regularly with "approved" electricians. Lenders do seem very risk averse. I was reading on another forum of a case where the mortgage application had stalled because there was a 30 year old extension that they could not find any paperwork for, WELL beyond any enforcement period for anything. Anyone sensible would just look at the survey which did not indicate any obvious problems with the extension and accept it.

I made 2 changes that were outside the scope of the on line designer. One was to increase the going to make them less steep (beyond the max the on line design tool would allow) and the other was the short newel posts with the top detail for the Fusion system handrails. Those changes added about £180 to the cost. When I queried why I was told the extra going forced the stringers to go up in size a little.

Well my 2003 house has an EPC of C (forget the number) so it was ahead of it's time already?

All finished now. There is a blog entry at the usual place http://www.willowburn.net/ Look for the entry "the stairs are in" It took 2 iterations to get all the correct set of parts. The first replacement pair of newel posts one was fine but the other did not have the rounded top detail for the Fusion system handrails, so that had the be re made a second time adding to the delay before I could complete the installation. But now it's finished, apart from handrails of course they will be much later.

Re the "carbon neutral" aspect of burning wood. Even if that were true, if you instead made the wood into something useful, that's not just carbon neutral but carbon capture (see how I introduced a new buz phrase) which is infinitely better.

@Crofter house is built as a "portable building" so comes under the caravan rules so no building control needed and no EPC needed. Indeed try as hard as you like (I did) you won't find anyone prepared to issue an EPC on a "caravan" You can build a single storey building up to 100 square metres (as long as you stick to the maximum dimensions of length, width and height) that is legally a "caravan" so EPC and building regs exempt. There was one featured on Grand Designs a couple of years back where they replaced an old static 'van with a new timber framed modular house built to the maxiimum "caravan" dimensions

Actually the government COULD do a lot to reduce wood burning. For a start they could stop paying the RHI for wood burning devices. I have lost count how many domestic oil boilers I have seen removed, and replaced by pellet boilers, because of the salesmen pushing the RHI payments they will receive for doing so. And the salesmen make the problem worse by selling it as a "green" , renewable and environment friendly source of fuel. Even those just installing a WBS withour any RHI are doing so largely because they perceive it to be a "green" and environmentally friendly fuel. Also, virtually every school and sports facility here, now has a container sized building alongside it, housing a big pellet stove to heat the building. Even those in town where mains gas is probably available. These large scale projects have no doubt been installed under the guidance that they are environmentally friendly. THAT policy needs to be reversed.

Yes. I wonder if there has been a backlash from users with older phones phones threatening to cancel their contracts?

You have yo adjust your mindset. Forget wanting to keep the stove in overnight, and forget a long burn. If your house needs 15 KWh per day, then a s,all 3KW stove running at full tilt, nice and hot for a few hours, then let it go out, will do that. and being a well inulated house it won't cool down much until you do the same next day, or whenever it has cooled down to need some more heat input. I think people talk of a stove overheating a well insulated house must be trying to run the thing for too long. There is certainly no need to run it long and definitely no need o keep it going overnight.

I assume it's priced "not to sell"?

I have a similar sized old velux window that I intend usinng vertically as a shed window some time in the future. I won't even bother with a flashing for it.

@Onoff It sounds like you would be better off in our caravan. This last week has been a bit testing. Well below 0 every night, barely up to 0 in the day, and a strong northerly wind. Oh and a bit of snow to add to the interest. With the WBS and some electric heating we can keep it warm, but it goes cold very quick when you turn the heating off. I have been working on an old 1920's bungalow for a week or so now. It has no insulation in the walls or under the floor. About 2" in the loft. It's been very cold in there while the plumber has been upgrading the central heating, but soon warms up when you pump 20Kw of heat into it. The owner does not seem at all bothered by that.