ProDave

All downlights need to have free space above them. That means removing a section of insulation. In a cold roof that means creating a huge hole in the insulation and worse still an air gap for heat to escape. The latter is a little less bad if you use bathroom IP rated downlights that have glass in front of the lamp so less space for air to escape. For this reason I am not a fan of downlighters. I have seen them where the loft insulation monkey comes along later, covers the whole lot in insulation, then they get so hot the plasterboard scorches and crumbles and the light falls down fom the ceiling. How it did not catch fire beats me. My honest opinion is only fit them in a warm roof.

My desk is a shade over 700mm high. At 1200 high it would be about level with the top pf my pc monitor. At your proposed 1450 high, it would be well above the pc monitor and completely out of the way.

In Scotland consumer unit height is not covered by building regs, I checked when a new build I am wiring wanted it high up, out of reach of his Autistic son, and BC said it can be any height you want. Ask your local building control to be sure. If it did have to be a specific height, I would expect it to be 1200 like light switches for accessibility (that is the height I have set my own)

If you want them to turn into bananas

Our Rationell windows came screwed to the pallets with a lot of very good torx head screws, some nice brackets, and some sheets of plywood. All got saved and used, why would you not? Then my neighbour had his Rationel windows delivered. The screws were just dropped on the ground. I went and fetched my large magnet. (A variation on skip diving I suppose) I can't abide waste.

Except the drawings show 4 bedroom houses. How many spaces will that need per house?

I am pretty sure they will not approve an application until everything including drainage is detailed and approved. That letter was a nudge for the applicant to provide details.

You need to kick the bottom tile up, just to get it to the same angle as the others as it does not have a tile to sit on. some do that with double battens, some kick up the fascia boards and rest it on that. Take a trip to TP and buy some lengths of easy tray, a 1.5 metre long plastic strip with a formed rolled edge exceedingly cheap . This goes along the eaves and forms the entry into the gutter (not explained that very well) On a normal roof you would have an eaves vent strip as well, but probably not on an uninsulated shed roof. but it it's a proper insulated man cave then you want the eaves vent. Here is my roof. The fascia is set at the right height that together with the easy tray and the OV10 vent strip, the bottom tile is in line with the rest.

Can you not tell if it's outline or full from the planning ref No? in your case there's a V in the number is that significant (up here they are either PIP , planning in principle, FUL for full and there's another one for approval of reserved matters) Make your observations to the council exactly as you have highlighted here to try and prevent a "fast one" I could not even see a site location plan or layout plan so has he submitted those?

Hopefully it has. this was back in 2006

I hope the fact that my frame will have been up nearly 2 years now, and I am only now plasterboarding, means it has already done most of it's shrinking and settling.

I did my own last time. Filling in the list of items and submitting invoices is the easy, if time consuming bit. It's the daft questions on the form, like how many cubic metres of timber did you use? Has anyone had a claim rejected because they used too many or too few cubic metres of wood? I did a VERY rough calculation just to put a figure in the box and filed it under the "stupid question" category. There were a whole host including how many litres of paint etc.

I assume this is a timber framed house? It looks like the builders took the easy way out and despite being recommended against, have indeed put joints in line with windows etc. Chances are, the building has done most of it's shrinking / settling by now, and simply filling with a flexible decorators caulk and painting is all that is needed.

I have just measured some of mine and I will be needing 180mm, 130mm and 95mm thick liners. Some hope. I wonder about making mdf liners, with ply backings glued on where the hinges will go so you screw through the mdf into the ply?

I have yet to get this far but it is something I just know is going to give me grief. On my last build, the house was built of standard stuff, mostly 4*2 or 6*2 frames, clad in plasterboard. But could I find door liners to fit? NO. the standard offerings were a few mm too big or too small. This time round with some 8*2 framing and an OSB racking layer as well as the PB I am expecting to similarly find no standard door liner fits. And yes I had problems with wood warping. This time around SWMBO wants white painted "woodwork" which means I can use MDF skirting and architrave and eliminate the warping issue. If I could do the same with door liners I would . I might even consider making my own from scratch if, as I expect, the standard offerings don't "work" "Cherry Picking" did not work. I personally went to the timber merchant and selected all my skirtings and architraves to get nice straight ones. With in a few days of being on site they resembled bananas. What I see professionals do is bring all the linings into the house and ratchet strap them all together (with a LOT of straps) to force them to stay straight while they aclimatise to the buildings environemnt. They often leave them like that 2 weeks before they dare unstrap them and start using them.

That of course brings us to road design and pinch points. One of the reasons I gave up living in the SE was ever increasing traffic but no major new roads to take it. What was a pleasant drive to work when I started when I was younger, had become a stop go crawl by the time I gave up. At that point I had concluded there was not the will to "solve" the issue of private car congestion, other than to tell us to cycle or take the bus (stuck in the same traffic jam) Now I have moved to an area of low population density, there is not much traffic congestion, but there is some. The issue here is bridges. It seemed a brilliant idea to build bridges over estuaries to link "close" populations separated by water. Thinking Forth bridge, Tay bridge, and to a lesser extent (but closer to home) the Kessock and Cromarty bridges. But what then happens is people start basing where to live on the fact that it's just a simple hop over the bridge to get to work. It's not long before the rush hour demand on the bridge is too great and it becomes a pinch point and long queues form. Without the bridges, long journeys would be slower as you would have to "go round" but people would have chosen to live on the same side as they worked and there would be no need tor thousands to cross the same pinch point at the same time twice per day.

Open plan front gardens are a pet hate of mine. Since about the 1980's they have been the normal offering on new housing estates. My first house had that, a completely open patch of grass, with nothing to separate it from the road or even from next doors equally bland patch of open grass. A covenant with the house prohibited you fencing in your front garden. The result was unloved patches of grass that the house owners occasionally mowed, but never took any pride in. When I moved up from that first house, NOT having an open plan front garden was very high on my list of must have's. And I achieved that in my second house with it's fully enclosed front and side garden. A much more welcoming space with no silly restrictions what I could and could not do with it. My last self build and the current one are the same. Although I have not yet decided where and how to partition off my garden from the road, it will be somehow. At least it is already fenced from next door all the way right up to the road. There is another issue with unfenced gardens that may one day catch you out. When I was going through planning for my plot, the issue of visibility splays came up. I did have the required visibility but did not hold "control" over the visibility splay as that include part of my neighbours front gardens. When discussing this with Highways, they made the statement that with unfenced land, they can "claim" the first 3 metres as "the highway" and I was told should a neighbour plant or build something on that, that blocks my visibility splay, to inform them, and they would come and remove it. So be warned, no fence, and part of your garden could become the highway at any point. The fence issue also became apparent when doing work on my site to prepare the site entrance. I was told when working within 3 metres of the highway anyone working had to hold a minor street works permit, which of course I do not. However if it is fenced, that does not apply, so I erected a temporary fence right along the edge of the highway to ensure I did not need such a permit.

Re roadside charge points. I have yet to see a car parked and using the charge points at a motorway service station. That will no doubt change and unless they build more you could well find you need a charge, but all charge points are in use and you have to wait an hour before you can even begin to charge. I noted when I looked there were two different cords with two different plugs at each charge point. So we are in the "VHS Vs Betamax" phase where the "standard" charge point is not yet established?

Probably short spans between sleeper walls, used o be common. Why use breathable membrane, surely you want it to be air tight?

Screwfix sell a wall stand off that will clamp onto ant ladder.

So this DNO scheme to use your car for grid storage. Am I right in saying battery life in the main is the number of charge / discharge cycles, not time? So if your car is used as a grid back up it will be charged / discharged more and the battery life will be shortened? No doubt that's the small print they don't want you to read? I am indeed interested in any new battery technology. One that makes home storage of solar PV viable is the breakthrough that I want (mainly a battery life issue)

Electric cars are not zero emission unless charged exclusively from solar PV or wind power. Hybrid cars will be allowed after 2040. More green wash.

Assuming you have say a low energy 11W lamp, by the time that is converted to 12V that will draw over 1 amp from the battery, so a typical operating time of 50 hours from a fully charged car battery. Thinking outside the box now, take a trip to a caravan shop and look for a 12V caravan table light, or simply change the lamp holder and convert any lamp you like to 12V and cut out the inefficiency of the inverter.

I there anything, the other side of the wall, a cupboard for instance? I can't imagine what sort of portable power pack you are expecting? There is this sort of thing http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ring-RPP265-Professional-Power-Pack-300W-Inverter-230V-AC-Mains-LED-Work-Light-/282672441252?epid=1036522425&hash=item41d09727a4:g:zWsAAOSwZM9ZzLh3 Mainly sold for jump starting cars but some like this have a small 230V inverter built in so can be used as a portable mains supply. Perhaps if the lamp sits on a table with a tablecloth to hide this underneath? My life would be a lot easier if someone invented "wireless electricity"

SSE quote 125mm duct for anything. My single phase cable looked lost in the 63mm duct, I'll bet so will your 3 phase cable.