ProDave

Does the basin tap pipe run go next door and back first? Why the difference?

You would still have needed a road opening permit though. We found it was cheapest to get Scottish Water to make the road crossing, the utilities have a permanent road opening permit, any private contractor would have had to apply for and pay for one.

I suspect it is a quirk of how road closure orders work. You can't apply to close it for one unspecified day within next month, so faced with that inflexibility, they apply to close it for the whole month knowing it will be closed only 1 day. There is a small development in the town here with a "road closed for 6 months" sign. I think I have counted 2 days closure so far. So your sign is as close as they are able to say, when they mean "will be closed for 1 day, some time in the next 25 days"

This must be a regional variation thing then. My only concern is how long will the P5 be exposed to the weather? Another poster on here had his sag and swell due to exposure to rain. I have only known one stick build where the first floor deck went down early and they used a truly waterproof chipboard because it was going to be exposed for a while. for working on, we had a temporary OSB deck as soon as the joists were down.

Buy a boundry box or 3 (known as a Toby up here) Cut into your pipe under your land and use one or more. I used three, one to feed the stand pipe for building water, one to feed the static caravan and one to feed to the house.

Related to this withdraw the application thing. I will tell the cautionary tale of someone I used to work with. He applied for a massive extension to a house more than doubling it's size. It met with several objections. He was advised to withdraw and re submit. What he actually did was submit a second slightly different application, which got a new application number. THEN he withdrew the original. Nobody noticed the new application number and when it came before the planning committee, there were "no objections" and it was passed. I think his planning consultant knew the system and played it.

The Knauff Earthwool products are a lot less nasty to use than many types of glass wool insulation. I don't know which one is recommended for loft insulation.

Basically the downstairs wall panels went up first. Then all the floor joists. Then the sole plate and first floor wall panels. The floor deck gets laid some time later when it has a roof on and is water tight. This is how every timber frame that I have seen has been built.

I have to ask why the TF company wants to do this. Normally the upper floor's walls are built off a sole plate laid onto the joists. This is how ours is done. The floor deck then plays no part in holding the walls up. How about a strip of 6" by 1" as a sole plate / packer that fills the gap the TF company is expecting to be made up with the P5? I would be worried in the event of a leaking pipe for instance that the P5 could swell or disintegrate.

Perhaps the newer ones re less good? Mine has a plywood top, finished in a very hard waterproof covering. It makes a very handy "hop up" and is used regularly for that purpose.

Well if it is wired according to regs, then all junctions will be accesible, so follow it back to the previous junction where it was looped from and test there. If that's not the issue and you think you have a severed cable, then there is no option but find and repair the break, or replace the whole leg of cable.

15.467p per Kwh does not sound blindingly cheap to me. It perhaps confirms my suspicion that some of the cheap deals on offer are only possible because they are subidised by those paying less good tariffs. Take away those less good deals and the cheap deals go as well?

Yes I was meaning get all works in or under No 66 complete before you sell it. I don't see the Fire Hydrant as an issue. My Sister's house has a fire hydrant set into the pavement right in front of the dropped kerb to her driveway. I assume you are creating a parking space in front of No 66 so any adjustment the the hydrant cover could be done then. Water can be connected to the site just to a stand pipe, then routed into the house later. Likewise electricity can be connected. You can either get a "building supply" and have a meter and consumer unit in a temporary box on the site boundary, then have the supply moved into the house when ready. Or you can do as some of us have and make the meter box on the boundary a permanent fixture to avoid moving it later. At least if you get all the connections done before you sell then the buyer knows there is a bit less disruption to expect. It should be pretty obvious where the new house is going in that situation with or without footings to show it.

What I learned was you can plan everything in the finest detail, then be completely derailed by circumstances outside your control like the old house not selling, or not selling for enough. It's always going to be a tricky one. Selling a house where you are carving the garden up and building a new house is bound to be tricky. Not everyone wants to live next to a building site, particularly one that might take a while. It would be a lot simpler if you could find a way to finance all the ground works, i.e. foundations and all service connections and the basic levelling / landscaping of the plot before you have to sell the house. That way at least you can repair any disturbance to the garden that goes with the old house, the buyers will know their garden does not need to be dug up, and they will clearly see at least the foot print of the new house. As a guide it cost me about £10K for the foundations for my house and another £5K for service connections. It's no bad thing to have the foundations in before ordering the timber frame, at least it can be built to "as measured" dimensions and you know it will fit.

A bit of "thinking ahead" is also worthwhile. E.g in my house in the upstairs bedrooms I have left a short run of floor board adjacent to each end wall as a "trap" i.e not glued down, just screwed down with enough clearance that they can be lifted later on. These will allow me if required to fish new cables across the ceiling of the room below at any point. It should also be possible to drop new cables from these traps down into the end wall service void of the room below, and down into the AV / media cupboard under the stairs. The theory being when the next nee fancy AV connector comes out to replace hdmi then I can pull through the required cable from the av cupboard to the televisions in the main rooms.

Drain runs first, they have to go in straight lines and downhill so have first grab at available space. MVHR runs next. They don't need to go up or downhill but take a lot of room. Normal pipe runs next. Electric last. Cable bends easily and does not mind taking a more tortuous route to go around all the other more fussy stuff.

Get a halogen G9 lamp. The fittings may not be rated to take them due to heat, but a short test won't hurt. My guess is it won't light up at all showing you have a wiring fault somewhere like a poor connection.

Another one using 2 trestles and 4 scaf planks as a site workbench. Oh and my 25 year old Workmate 800

It says "LED G9" So could it just be they have provided a very low power LED lamp and it's not living up to your expectations of light output?

Need more information. Leaving the earth disconnected should not stop a light fitting working, but may make it unsafe so go back and connect those earths. You can NOT use an earth core for anything else don't even think about it.

I have a customer who (she claims) gets a headache under flourescent or LED lighting so is now on a mission to stockpile filament bulbs to see out her days.

Slightly related to this, the Scottish government announced is is to launch a "not for profit" energy supply company, the theory being if you eliminate the profit, then consumers will get a rate closer to the wholesale price. It will be interesting to see what that offers when it launches.

Make sure the power is off and long nosed pliers will extract that. Done it many times. I thought you were going to talk about silly light fittings, the sort where it is impossible to to get two 1mm cables into a terminal etc.

Well my stairs arrived from Staribox today. Managed to get the top flight in. Unfortunately there is a problem with the two newel posts that join the top and bottom flight. They don't fit and they have finished the top detail incorrectly. I have emailed stairbox with pictures. Unfortunately, until that is resolved I can't fit the lower flight (which in itself looks correct)

It arrived today. Fitted easilly and all working again. A big thank you to @Onoff