ProDave

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.

Hi and welcome to the fourm. Sounds like an interesting project and you will get plenty of help and advice here I am sure. I would definitely fit triple glazing (I just did) and choosing the correct type of wall insulation will make a big difference to soundproofing.

Brown and blue are L an N to the motor to activate the valve. Green / yellow is earth. Orange and grey is the contacts of a microswitch that closes when the valve is open. Used for feedback or to turn a pump on in a typical heating set up. If you have no use for them, ignore them.

Yes but what is the qualifying length of time before you can claim lawful use?

2 port or 3 port valves? Very different wiring depending on the answer to that.

Has your neighbour actually formally applied for a certificate of lawful development? If not he should do so immediately without further communication to the council. There appears the be a nasty clause that you can't apply for a certificate once enforcement action is in place? What Re council tax. If it is a holiday rental, I believe business rates may apply not council tax? If it is let to someone on a longer term then it will be council tax. The same would apply if (as we are) you bought your own static caravan and sited it on it's own plot. It should be put in Band A for council tax. From your perspective, if your neighbour gets that application in ASAP then they won't generally take enforcement action or evict you while that is being processed. It does indeed sound like your neighbour does not currently have PP for residential use of the 'van. We will be in the same position once our house is complete as we have the planning condition that residential use of the 'van will cease upon completion of the house. That was a compromise to allow our 'van to remain and become a studio and workshop, and be treated as a garden building. What " full approval from local council" did he have 14 years ago? it sounds like it was like ours, not for residential use?

I think it's only the big 6. I had to sign up with SSE on the standard tariff to get the meter then transferred to ebico. I was on that zero standing charge contract for nearly 2 years.

Re a pre owned house that does not meet expectations. This has always been my philosophy. When buying a house it is important to get the things you can't change correct, like location, access (meaning for off road parking etc) views etc. Once you find the right location, it is of secondary importance if the house is right, because if it is not, you can change it. No point buying the perfect house and then complaining there is no off road parking, no view, the garden faces north and never gets any sun, because you cannot change those things.

That is strange re Scottish Water and Road crossings. All our services had to cross a single track road. I got a price for a road crossing from an independant contractor, most expensive. Then I got a price from SSE for the road crossing, a little cheaper. Then I got Scottish Water to quote and they were by far the cheapest for the road crossing. So we got the water connected first with SW (or rather their appointed sub contractor) making the road crossing. Before, or rather as it was being filled we laid in ducts for electricity and telecoms then they closed up the road and resurfaced the road. So definitely go back to SW and ask for an "all works" quote. The road crossing added £1000 to the water connection bill (which was similar to yours) but everyone else wanted nearly twice that for the road crossing. It took 2 guys with a mini digger and a concrete breaker half a day for the road crossing so £1000 is still plenty for that. No road closure order or traffic lights needed, just a steel plate they could slide over the trench when someone wanted to pass.

Do NOT use a DPC on a garden wall. On the occasions I have seen a brick garden wall blow over in a storm, it always topples at the DPC which created a weak bond to the brick. Probably not an issue with ICF a you would be filling it?

And THEN make sure the builder puts them in the right way round. A house I wired last year, 2 steels were both put in backwards, meaning the nice row of holes opened up into a full height void space where they gave access to nothing, and there was only one hole where it was of any use. They had to get the steel guys back on site to cur some more holes.

Don't mark with a sharpie on plasterboard. You WILL curse when you try to paint over it. (updated, Ian )

The rain water harvesting is interesting in the context of comparing it to Australia. Rural properties there routinely get all their water from rain, and store it in huge above ground tanks. My In Law's place in Queensland collects water from the roof of the house and the roof of a big barn, stored in 4 large above ground tanks. They can select with valves which tank to draw from to feed the house. About the only criterea is the tanks are light proof. They prefer using the water from the two corrugated steel tanks as these have been encases with a concrete skin so deliver much cooler water than the other tanks. All the time I was there I never got ill, the water tasted nice and it was clear. In the dry season if they run short on water, they buy in a tanker of water to refill one of the tanks. I suspect the reason it woks there is the weather pattern. They have a wet season where it rains a lot and I suspect they collect most of their water in a short period. I don't know if they have a system of letting the initial rainfall just run off to clean the roof before collecting it, but it would make sense if they do. Another factor is they have moistly tin roofs, so they probably wash clean and then deliver fresh water a lot quicker than a typical moss covered concrete tiled British roof would.

Only a few weeks ago, Howdens were offering a single fan oven for £120 and a non fan oven even cheaper. I would be asking them first what deals they have.