ProDave

Without a doubt I would say consider a third option, Aluminium clad timber. All the maintenance free advantages of upvc, can be painted any colour you want, and much much nicer looking than upvc. For that crisp look you want, I would highly recommend the Rationel Aura plus windows we have, the external profile is so clean and crisp.

Looks good. One man's "shed" is another man's "warehouse"

My point is, it's not completely de skilling plastering. It would be no good just spraying it on unprepared plasterboard, the tapered edge joints would show. So you have to do something, tape and fill the joints, so it's not a "lot" of saving in skill is it? Perhaps it just hides slight imperfections in the taping and filling?

So it relies on you taping and filling all the joints first to present a flat surface, and presumably all the corners as well. So is little more than a thick paint?

Bedroom 1 is going to be a cold uninviting room with only a window to the north. Get an east facing velux window in the sloping roof, if necessary pushing back the boxed in eaves space to fit it in. That will brighten up the mornings. Likewise get a west facing velux in the en-suite. And put a window in bedroom 4 Make the door between the kitchen and the "back passage" a sliding pocket door. I am willing to bet you will never shut it and it will just be in the way.

Which way is North? more importantly which way is South?

Do get the access checked out and a legal right of access from MK council drawn up. We had a potential access issue buying our plot. The plot was last sold in 1980 (with PP but was never built on) and then, the road was a private track. The plot came with a right of access to use that private track. In the intervening time the track was upgraded and adopted as a public road. My solicitor made the point of checking the new public road was indeed in the same place as the old private track. Had the new public road been built to a different route there could well have been a strip of land between the plot and the road that we did not own.

You normally dig alongside the existing foundation and down until you just find the bottom of the concrete.

I understand what they are doing, but if they have been using it for access for more than 10 years, would Adverse Possession not apply?

Thanks Grosey I have re jigged it slightly, this is what I want. Looks a fair price to me. http://www.stairbox.com/stairbuilder-staircase-designer/?dmVyc2lvbjIuMy1zYy0yNzAwLTEzLTIzMC42Ny05MzAtOTMwLTkzMC1sZWZ0LWhhbGZfdHVybi1ub25lLTNfd2luZGVyLTUtTmFOLWxlZnQtc3F1YXJlLUxCdWxsbm9zZS1tZGYtc3F1YXJlLTAtMC0wLTAtMS1waW5lLW1kZi1waW5lLXBpbmUtcGluZS1hc3NlbWJsZWQtY29sbGVjdGVkLS1mYWxzZS0xLTAtMC0xLTAtbm9uZS0wLTAtMS0wLW5vbmUtMC0xLTAtMC0wLTAtMC0wLTAtMC0wLTAtMC0wLTAtMC0wLTAtMC1kb3VibGUtMC0wLTAtMC1TVEQtLWZhbHNlLVNxdWFyZVNwaW5kbGUtNDEtMTQwLTU4LTAtMA==

If you have an UVC then the flow rate from the shower is a product of your water pressure, pipe sizes etc and not related to boiler output. If you have a combi boiler then it's a function of how much heat the boiler can put into the water, and how cold your incoming mains water is. A combi gives priority to HW, so while showering it temporarily stops feeding the space heating.

All my pallets got turned into a shed. I did previously have a scaffold staircase set up, I had to take that down as it was in the way for a few jobs, but it could go back up again, but SWMBO did not like climbing that either, it was a small number of very big steps.

Transport from Plymouth would kill any Howdens staircase. I will get a price from them for a new one, if it's cheap enough to be throw away then I might consider one. It would have to be bodged due the floor to floor height being wrong so would not meed BR but would do as temporary if it were cheap enough. I shall have to research stairbox. Do you have a link?

Not really. The thing about a small budget, is you don't want to waste money on something that would ultimately be scrap. So it's either find a way to make something decent out of the cheap parts, or get SWMBO more used to the ladder.....

As the title says, I am thinking about cheap stairs. We are trying to get the house partly habitable for the winter, and I don't think climbing a ladder to go to bed will cut the mustard. So I need a staircase and it must be cheap. At the last house we paid a joiner to build the stairs, he did a very good job and it fitted perfectly with every detail a we wanted. But this time,. at the moment, it has to be cheaper. Howdens do a standard cheap staircase but only in one size, 2600mm floor to floor. Our house is 2700mm floor to floor. Rembrand keep pestering me so get a share of my joinery business, and I see they do this flat pack stair at any floor to floor height, and is in line with how much I want to spend http://www.rembrand.co/products/Kwikstair-Straight-Flight.html However it's not that simple (it never is) For a start I actually need 2 staircases, 13 steps in total, first run 6 steps to half landing, second run 7 steps to upstairs. Now I though I could achieve that with a standard 13 stair straight run, and a saw. Even if I achieve that, it doesn't get me the stairs I really want. For a start that basic stair has no newel posts. We need short newel posts at the top and bottom of each flight, on the left hand side when ascending. Now to me with only basic joinery skills, fitting a newel post onto the top and bottom of a stair stringer is a proper joiners job, at least if you want it to look nice. I would also like a half bullnose to the bottom step of the bottom flight. Of course this customising to get exactly what you want is what you pay a joiner to do to make a stair that matches your needs. So am I barking even thinking about doing this myself with standard cheap parts?

Who owns that? More importantly, do you have a right of pedestrian and vehicular access over it? Usually in the case of a grass road verge the first 3 metres is regarded as "the highway" so what about the rest beyond 3 metres?

Let's just say it's a 6 hour drive from here to the border. Is that big enough?

I wonder what membrane they use? Protect VP400 plus kept out house dry all bar a few drips for months before I got the roof tiled.

I am confused about the waste water drainage. If there is no mains (everyone else seems yo have a private system) then you will be looking at a waste treatment plant. Nothing difficult about that. BUT the processed water that comes out of it has to go somewhere. That can be a watercourse or an infiltration field (soakaway) You need to do a percolation test (well documented, dig a hole, fill it with water and time how long it takes to drain away) and from that you can calculate the area of soakaway you require. If your soil drains well it shouldn't be too big, but you have to find somewhere for it and building regs put limits on how close to a building, a road, a watervourse and your site boundary that it can be located. A common solution (which we used at our last house) is to get an agreement from an adjacent farmer for the soakaway to go under one of his fields. If you try to connect to your neighbours system, building control will very likely insist that is upgraded to current standards so that brings you back to all the same issues to solve. I can't stress how important this is to solve. It caused us several weeks of worry as building control rejected our first drainage proposal, then SEPA rejected our second, it was only then, that SEPA gave us permission do discharge into the burn, something they only do up here if there is no other option (and by that point we had exhausted the other options)

Hi and welcome to the forum. I'm over on the other side near Inverness but there are few on here over on the West. Look forward to hearing about your project.

Try and pre empt the conditions by providing as much information in the planning application as you can. Anything not completely defined is an open door for a condition to approve those details later. Site levels are easy. You can use an Ordnance datum if you can identify one. Otherwise make or choose any feature as a "Temporary bench mark" and reference all your levels to that, this is what I did. You need to show existing site levels and finished site levels. What are you going to do with all the excavated soil? in our case we used it to build up the ground levels so our site now slopes less than it did. That's the sort of information they are after. Also is there ant flood risk? look at the EA flood risk maps, make sure your finished levels are above any flood risk level in your area. You can use a laser line or rotating level and a detector on a staff. If you are really tight like me and did not want to buy a detector then you can use just a level and staff, and do all your measurements at disk when you can see the laser with the naked eye over some distance. The third was is the good old water level. A length of hose with a clear section at each end, the water at the two ends will always be level with each other. Note the point above about drainage, that can be a show stopper.

I am 99% sure my Conder has a small drain hole in the bottom of the pump chamber, so if rainwater did get in, it would drain down into the main tank.

That's good to know. Different areas have different rules. We had to jump through all sorts of hoops to eventually get permission to discharge into a burn through our garden. Re treatment plants, before you get too far, I think most on here, including me, would suggest you get one based on the air blower principle. There are several that people on here have used and can recommend. I would avoid a plant that works by having moving mechanical parts down in the smelly stuff. You really don't want the job of fixing failed mechanical components in that environment.

What are you doing for drainage, both waste water and surface water? What has next door done? Are you allowed to discharge anything into that field drain? You need to decide that before you get too far in your plans. you might be surprised / shocked at how much land you need for drainage so often it forces you to put the house over to ne side just to leave enough space for drainage infiltration fields.

@Onoff will make a scale mock up soon out of used beer cans and report the findings. It may take a while to complete though...