ProDave

What a sad state of affairs. It just makes me feel lucky I had such a good mutually trusting relationship with our builders. Before you just sack them, I would call a meeting, and highlight to them your exact concerns in every last detail. It might help them to agree that parting company is the best way forward.

Welcome to the ranks of caravan dwelling self builders. Winter is not much fun. We are hoping to at least be sleeping in the house by then as it will no doubt be a lot warmer, even if that's all we are using the house for this winter.

If you can (in effect) run the cables on the surface, between the insulation behind them, and the plasterboard in front of them, then I don't believe they need derating. I stand to be corrected as the regs are ambiguous, but derating applies when IN insulation, not when ON insulation. For the sake of making a narrow service void, you can totally avoid derating, and I waa suggesting a way to achieve that may be in effect to chase a channel into the insulation for the cables to sit on. imho if you sink a conduit into the insulation then foam over that, then the cables are IN insulation.

Do you even need duct? Surface mount the cables on a tiny recess cut in the insulation. Note to anyone reading, do NOT do that if using EPS or XPS, pvc cable and polystyrene do not mix. +1 to 35mm boxes. Don't be fooled by some flat plate accessories that claim to "fit" 25mm back boxes. I found some that just came with a spacer for use with a 25mm box. Hardly the flush look you were hoping for,

We have been having this conversation. In our last house we had two hifi units, one in each of the living rooms. I thought it worked well. But this time SWMBO doesn't want "stuff" like that on show. In her world, music would just appear from "somewhere" probably streamed from her phone (yuk) The compromise we have come up with, is one of our existing hi fi units, the one that has remote control (not my ancient 1980's amp) is going to be put in the "electrical" cupboard where it will be out of sight, but readilly accessible. A couple of remote control extender senders in each room will ensure it can be controlled from anywhere. We are still having proper speakers, my floor standing pair in the snug living room and a wall hung pair in the familly room. I hope this compromise means we can have the "no clutter" look and still be able to listen to proper quality audio. Independent of this, both rooms will have a surround sound system for their respective tv's with all speaker cabling for those built into the walls.

Let us know how you get on. Ebay seller bookmarked for future use (unless you tell us the service or product was rubbish)

It's SWMBO who has decreed "No sealant, no channels" EVERY shower door, screen etc we have ever had that has had some form of channel that the glass fits into usually with a rubber bead strip of some form, ends up going mouldy unless you keep spraying it with bleach. It's a wet room we are having, so I don't see an issue if there is a few mm gap between the glass and the wall and the glass and the floor with just a few stainless feet and brackets to hold the glass.

We will be wanting a similar look to that. BUT I don't want the glass to touch the floor, and I don't want a channel where it joins the wall. Instead I want the glass to stand a few mm above the floor on two stainless steel feet, and similar stainless steel brackets to fix it to the wall with a very small gap (absolutely no channel or sealant to attract grot allowed) the only ones I have found seem to have one to many zero's on the end pf the price tag.

Of it's a COMBI boiler (most oil fired outside boilers I see are) then you are going to get hacked off at how long the hot water takes to reach the tap.

You should be okay with that. Getting permission for discharge from the EA seems a whole lot easier than from SEPA up here in Scotland. I had so spend months proposing different schemes, which each got rejected before SEPA would give permission to discharge to the burn, something they only do here as a last resort.

Drainage is the key. If there is no mans sewer then you need a treatment plant. That has to drain somewhere. So you very first test is get some test pits dug and get a percolation test done. The results of that (and the size of the house) will tell you what area of infiltration field (soakaway) you need to provide. Then you need to work out if you have room for that and still have room to build a house. Or are there alternative arangements like a soakaway under an adjoining field etc. No drainage solution = no house so this is crucial.

We frequently drive form the Highlands to England or Wales. The one thing you miss out on wanting short stops to speed up the journey is there are usually 2 of us in the car, both drivers. One can hapilly rest or sleep while the other is driving. The only stops are to refuel the car or empty one's bladder. Eating and drinking by the resting driver is done in the car on the move. For this sort of journey, the EV would not cut the mustard. This is where the deal of offering a period of free rental of an IC car comes in perhaps?

I has no stress with mine. Perhaps I approached it differently? I directly approached half a dozen quality window suppliers. After the first round of quotes I had pretty much settled on Rationel for the reasons I have already mentioned. There followed a bit of fine tuning of the spec and a bit of shaving off the price. Then, instead of just ordering the windows, I got the builders that had just built and erected my frame to supply the windows on a supply and fit basis. This had the benefit they could supply and fit free of VAT so there was no VAT sum tied up until I could claim it at the end of the build, and I would after all need someone to fit them, it's not a 1 man job. At this point they took most of the responsibility. They came and checked all the measurements were right. I had to pay 50% of the window cost up front (as I would have if ordering direct) and then paid the ballance of the cost and the labour for fitting them once they were all in.

I was familliar with mobile grades, I was one for many years. There was always the threat of a posting to Dounereay if they wanted to get rid of someone. Strangely it was only when leaving that employment and working for industry that I found a regular need to change job and that involved commuting, but never felt any job offered enough security to make it worthwhile moving house.

My 1972 Landrover was rebuilt a few years ago on a new galvanised chassis. As far as I know everything else is original though I expect the bulkhead will have been repaired and probably new floor pans in the process. A friend of mine has a similarly rebuilt early LR90, that pre dates the "defender" name. He even went as far as a galvanised bulkhead. If you are so inclined these vehicles can be repaired and rebuilt much easier than most other classic cars. And the best bit, if they still look a bit tatty, well nobody ever expected a Landrover to look all nice and shiny. This present LR of mine I am sure is worth more now than when I bought it. No "ordinary" car can do that, and I don't have the money for a true classic.

Om the basis my last Subaru cost me £3500 to buy, and I sold it 9 years later for £500 my answer would be £27.77per month

It would be interesting to drill down into the details of why cars now go to the scrap heap. When I was a young boy, I remember my dad's Ford Anglia van getting scrapped at 10 years old because the tin worm had turned it into a colander. There was no underseal or any other anti corrosion measures then. If cars now with all the fancy paints, under seals and other protection, plus better deign to avoid rot spots are rusting out at 14 years then the improvements in body protection have largely failed. I suspect rot is the reason for scrapping in only a minority of cases. I wonder what percentage are scrapped due to electronics failure or emissions failure? Plenty of things have changed. I can recall major engine breakdowns being common and expecting a clutch to last only 50K miles. Apart from servicing I never touch an engine now and have not needed one repaired for a very long time. I don't believe my last 170K mile car had ever had the clutch replaced. The other factor may be that car leasing is so much more common than owning now. Nobody will want to lease a 14 year old car, so as a "business proposition" it is worthless so more likely to get scrapped than if in private ownership. The clue to this ownership model is you never now see a new car advertised as £xx,xxx for sale, rather advertised as £yyy per month.

The next environmental issue is disposing / recycling millions of end of life batteries.......

My experience of Scottish water is the local surveyor is "GOD" and what he says goes, or does not go. He would not accept a pipe buried that HE had not inspected the track for. They tried to refuse to connect a neighbour because they had not put the toby in exactly the right place. In any case, the pipe across the field will be theirs ans they will choose the size. Your pipe does not start until after the toby which will be on your land. On the good point, SW were the cheapest of all the people we approached for the road crossing. If any of your other services have to cross the road, install appropriate ducts ready for them while the road is up. I laid ducts for telephone and electricity while SW had the road up. If you need that, insist on a cut trench, SW were mooting the idea of molling under the road until I mentioned I wanted to lay other ducts at the same time. Also, knowing now how fussy SW were, I would recommend ALL you have on your site when they come for your track inspection is a standpipe very close to where the toby is going, nothing else, and you must have an in line double check valve connected to your stand pipe or they will refuse connection. Regardless of farmers good will or not, SW will get a proper wayleave to lay the pipe and that might delay the process. In my case they dug up a bit of the field while in crop to make the connection.

This splashing issue, and not wanting screens with channels, is why we have decided on 2 wet rooms. The screens will be minimal glass, supported on 2 stainless steel feet and some sort of bracket at the top. No channels to attract grot" is the design spec.

I am struggling to understand the economics of scrapping it for the price of a new battery? My last car I sold a couple of months ago was a 170K miles Subaru Forester that had given me 9 years of reliable motoring, but the tin worm was eating it. It had to have a cill welded to get through an MOT in March and the tester pointed out the long list of other bits on the verge of rotting away but this year only still an advisory. Because it was such a reliable car I replaced it with a near identical one, a bit younger, a lot lower mileage and a lot better condition. If that gives me another 9 years I will be happy. I do wonder how EV's will be treated when they get to the 15 year old "banger" category? With so much of the capital tied up in the battery, I guess it will be battery end of life that sends them to the scrap heap as the cost of replacing the battery would not be worth it?

There is a triple glazed window manufacturer 20 miles from me. I wanted to support them and use their products, but their EX vat price was more than the inc VAT and delivery price of my Austrian windows, and they would not negotiate.

The unusual detail there is the roof biting half way across that upstand. What is the reason for that? This is our previous house. The two thin pillars were built of cut blocks. It still makes me cringe that these two thin pillars support the lintel and blockwork above the dormers with only the wall ties stopping the whole lot falling over. But they show no signs of distress. It however was a detail I did not wish to repeat on the present house.

Pretty much the same movement gap you have to allow with a timber frame and masonry skin. Wood moves and shrinks I am aftaid.

A problem with that trap is it only has a very small seal. You would have to disconnect and block it off to pressure test the pipework. I had this argument with building control on my last house. the final pressure test I could only pump it up to 75mm, not the required 100mm. At that point it started blowing bubbles through the shower traps. BC tried to insist I disconnect and cap off the shower traps for the test but I refused as that would have meant ceiling down. In the end he accepted the test. But that trap looks a lot less than 75mm seal even?