ProDave

The big mistake just about everyone makes with old Scottish croft houses, is to make a "plasterboard tent" inside them. I can almost guarantee that when I remove a switch or socket from the wall a howling gale will emerge from the hole. In almost every case, the framing and plasterboarding that lines the walls is open up into the loft space from where cold air can get between the wall and the plasterboard. Add to that, most have no insulation at all in the room in roof ceilings, no wonder they are cold.

There is an electrian on another forum who was complaining it regularly takes him an hour to do 10 miles from one side of Birmingham to the other. We once (never again) set off from Oxford to the Highlands on the August bank holiday Friday after work. We gave up and went to bed (in the caravan we were towing) at Shap. I calculated we had averaged 30mph from Oxford to Shap.

Surely the simplest is divide the plot. Sell one plot (your old main residence so no CGT?) Build new house to live in and reclaim the VAT. I think as soon as you start along the road of build 2 houses you become a "developer" and different rules apply. So the issue becomes either how to fund building the new house before you sell the old one? or sell the old one first then where to live while building the new one?

I briefly questioned whether to run the UFH without a blending valve and simply set the UFH temperature by setting the buffer tank temperature, but the consensus was that was a bad idea.

And why would increasing the ASHP flow temperature overheat the UFH? does that not have it's own blending valve?

Off topic perhaps. But wasn't this change to window installs supposed to mean they comply with building regs? The old bungallow that I am working on this week during it's renovation is having new windows fitted by Everest. The living room windows only have opening fanlights. I thought it was now a requirement to have at least one means of escape window?

Those things terrify me. If just one of the 2 per rung locking devices is not latched properly, or fails, the whole lot could collapse. The very last sort of ladder I would ever trust my life to, I think they are an accident waiting to happen. Give me the loft ladder any time.

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.