ProDave

So before fixing your last sheet of PB, collect all your offcuts and stick them mosaic fashion to the back of the last board using some sticks like s*it or similar. If you want to do this yourself, look out for all my offcuts for sale in the market place soon, only a little bit more than buying a new sheet (my dad once asked a builders merchant why it was that crazy paving cost more than whole paving slabs, the reply was to pay for the time it took to break them up.)

The only thing I can add to this, if using a membrane, is Protect Barriair is a lot cheaper than Intello.

Yes but then a single 30mA rcd for everything raises other issues (hence the compromise of dual rcd split boards that "solve" that issue but are still a compromise.) I would just update the other socket circuits and shower to an rcbo, unless it's a particularly unusual board where the rcbo's are hard to obtain or very expensive. @pocster Still waiting for a piccy of the CU But this guy is going to charge loads of dosh to slap some stickers on. Another thing that "annoyed" me is he noted poor earth on a class 2 fitting, even mentioned "loose terminal" so he must have opened the fitting, seen the loose terminal, and put it back together thinking "that's another job ££££££" FFS If I opened a fitting and saw a loose earth terminal I would just tighten it and put the item back together. Perhaps that's why I am short of money? One could argue if he indeed had found a loose terminal and put it back together knowing it was defective then in the event of someone then getting killed by that item he would be guilty by his negligence? I am not prepared to take that chance and if I find a loose terminal I bloody well tighten it.

No requirement to change CU's to non combustible, bur a LOT of electricians seem to think so and C2 it then charge you for an unecessarry CU change. I was offered the remedials from a landlords EICR and that was one of the things he had put. I challenged the original electrician and he changed it to a C3. I still don't agree a missing sticker is a C2, if it is this industry has gone barmy.

In our last house, we left 2 trap doors to access the under floor void (air tightness was not on my agenda then, there are no trap doors in the new house) Under the floor we put all the spare and even the offcuts of all the floor and wall tiles used. Partly as somewhere to keep them in case a spare was ever needed and partly to save carting a load of heavy stuff to the tip. Spare PB in a wall cavity would be okay as long as it's packed tight. Loose bits may "rattle " if someone bangs the wall? If I were to do something like that, it won't be until the end of the job, and then they would probably go in the garage walls, rather than in any of the internal house walls. On a related subject, another self builder here had loads and loads of offcuts of insulation batts. He was going to take them to the tip in several trips in his car. They are now in my garage. They are all too small to be of any use for wall insulation (to small to wedge them in place) but will make perfect under floor insulation in my sun room, filled from above before the floor goes down. It's good to use someone else waste and save money at the same time. I think what @Nickfromwales was trying to describe was T*****L M**S

Because I have not yet finished, NONE of my offcuts have yet been disposed of, you never know where they might come in handy. They are free to dispose of but I won't mention how. I think my key tip to being eficcient is not to be in a hurry. Two examples, when you get an offcut, take a walk around and see if there is somewhere it would fit with only minor trimming, if so put it there for when you get there. Likewise if you come to a small piece needed and don't have one, do NOT cut it from a full sheet. Leave it. Sooner or later an offcut of the right size will tuen up and you then go back and fit the mising piece. The MVHR connects to the input and exhaust ducts, and the plenum boxes with some large semi flexible aluminium insulated duct that was left over from when my plumber friend installed his. Here is a picture The external insulation is 100mm thick Pavatex (other makes are available) wood fibre board and rendered with the Baumit.com render system

Hi and welcome to the forum. My house is clad with wood fibre (Pavatex) and rendered so in due course we can discuss that. There should be some interesting conversations to be had as this project unfolds.

What was good though with all those angles, is how easy it was to find a home for the offcut. Some people talk of filling a whole skip with plasterboard offcuts. I doubt all my offcuts added together equate to more than 1 sheet.

Sorry, you need a different electrician. "C2= Potentially dangerous, Urgent remedial action required." A missing label is NOT dangerous. His coding that as a C2 imho makes everything else he says very dubious and not to be trusted. Some observations may be true, but I no longer trust his judgement. Sorry to say he sounds like the dodgy mot tester looking for trivial faults. What does @Onoff think? Regardless, the missing rcd protection from some circuits can be fixed with a few rcbo's at a LOT less than £500, no need to change that up front 100mA rcd.

A new entry in my blog at http://www.willowburn.net/ documents the plasterboarding of most of the upstairs Look for the entry called "Plasterboarding upstairs" (i'll bet you would never have guessed that) It's actually a very short entry for what has been well over a months (part time) work with just me and Kathy fitting all the boards.

Talk to other electricians. They certainly should be able to do the remedial work. And with a recent test report to work from, their own test should not take so long.

As with all things, you have the option of a different electrician. Are there other rcd's or rcbo's in the consumer unit? (picture of your CU?) A 100mA up front rcd is usually fitted up front on a TT earth install. There might well be others e.g feeding sockets and showers. If not, upgrading by changing to an rcbo for those circuits may be the cheapest option. Hell for £500 I would expect a new consumer unit, not just an rcd change. Making such a fuss over the labels is a bit like an MOT tester saying your seat belt is very slightly worn and needs replacing. I would replace the MOT tester. Do the EM lights need replacing because they are dud (batteries dead) or because there are not enough or in the wrong places?

In the last house, SWMBO tried planting things, fruit bushes, little flower beds surrounded by stones. they were all just a damned nuisance to get the mower round, weeding them to keep them looking nice took way more time than mowing a lawn ever did. They ended up neglected and tatty. I could not be without a front lawn. the garage is alongside the house, so no front lawn would mean the garage opening straight onto the road with nowhere to park in front of it. I would not want that, I doubt the planners would allow it. In a rural plot where you have to install your own drainage, a lot of land is taken up providing for that. most of it ends up covered in soil and you would never know what lurks below, so you can't even build a rural house on a tiny plot with no garden. I did consider garden space when planning. But mainly from a point of view where am I going to park 3 cars, a caravan, a boat on it's trailer, and a small general purpose trailer, where they won't look silly or too ugly, and where they won't block the view from the house. Then there are sheds, at least 3, a general purpose garden tools shed, a wood shed and a bike shed. Oh and not to mention the static caravan that is currently our home but later will become a workshop and studio.

SLOAP to me at least = a lawn, or what most people want from a garden, a flat space to do stuff. i don't see the point in a garden so planted up there is no space to actually do anything. Or have I got the wrong end of what "space" you are referring to?

I too was shafted by a lender in the past. We previously had a buy to let flat with small mortgage from Lloyds. Had been a customer of theirs for years, had a mortgage for 20 years with no arrears. We wanted to update the flat, new windows, new doors, new kithchen and bathroom. Applied for an extra measly £5K on the mortgage. Yes sir that will be fine. It doesn't take long, about 2 weeks, come back when you need the money. We ordered the windows, paid the deposit. The window company called to say 3 weeks, so we went to Lloyds to make the arrangements. The computer blew a raspberry. "You no longer meet out lending criterea" Long story short, we borrowed the money instead on a 0% credit card. Rolled it over onto another. It was paid off in 4 years with no interest charges (but a small admin fee for each advance) So it in fact cost us less in the end. But if they were the last bank standing, I would not give ANY of my banking business to any of the Lloyds group again. Absolutely shocking way to treat a long standing customer with a good trading history with them over such a small amount.

The angle beads are for corners, I don't think that relates to the render thickness, but how much the bead goes round the corner each way. The 10mm stop beads yes I think that is the render thickness where it stops. The bell cast beads, it's normal for the render to thicken at the bottom to cause the water to drip off away from the wall. The expansion bead, that it the thickness of the expansion gap I believe.

Ar the time, I discussed it with the BC officer. Yes his opinion was the flat bit would have to be 600mm wide, otherwise the detector would be less than 300mm from a "corner" That's when he agreed it could go on the gable wall, as long as the manufacturer also said that was okay, which Aico did. I suspect it is very much open to interpretation between different BC inspectors.

It's more complicated than that. Also more than 300mm from a corner. In my case and the one I did previously, the flat bit at the top of the vaulted ceiling was not wide enough to put it 300mm from a corner. We could have put it on one side, but that would have looked silly, hence why we decided on the upright gable wall.

Any room with a combustion appliance, e.g. WBS or boiler and any room the flue passes through must have a CO detector.

+1 to that. You also get the ludicrous situation where an item is listed, with postage specified as "Royal Mail" then you click the button to buy it, only to be told "Does not post to Scottish Highlands" I have even tried arguing "but you are using Royal Mail" to no avail.

Buy Aico alarms, and the remote test / silence button station. An alternative that I will be doing on a room with a vaulted ceiling, is to fit the smoke alarm on the vertical gable wall rather than a ceiling. Aico approve this and building control passed this in a house I wired a few years ago where we did this.

Here is my thoughts. All terminal vents want to be as wide open as possible, the theory being anything that restricts flow, could create noise. Although I have not done mine yet, that will be my starting point, all vents wide open, with perhaps those feeding the small bedroom closed down a bit to start with, and perhaps the second biggest bedroom closed down just a little because it has a very short run. A question that will affect balance no doubt. Do you balance the system with all doors closed, relying on the air gap under the doors, or do you balance it with all doors open?

That's looking very tidy indeed.

We chose top hung, so they only open outwards. You can open them all the way so the inside faces out, and the outside in, so you can clean the upstairs windows from inside. As I understand it, tilt / turn open inwards. Not the best idea when you have left a window open and a rain shower comes by? In the previous house we chose side hung, as that's what we had always had, and the idea of top hung to us back then just sounded odd, but now I would not choose anything else other than top hung. Again @JamesP Interesting how the prices vary so much. The quote we had, Internorm had a very slightly better Uw value than Rationel so if the prices are near identical that might sway it for Internorm?

Keep the weather out. While waiting for windows, all my openings were boarded up with OSB sheets