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ProDave

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Everything posted by ProDave

  1. ProDave
    We considered buying a wooden bungalow that had all the walls and ceilings clad in wood fibre board.
  2. ProDave
    Seeing the pictures the overlooking issue is not as bad as I thought, mainly due tot he angle of the house opposite. Do they actually use that bedroom with the window on the end? I would probably just let your own hedge grow to the height you feel comfortable with.
  3. ProDave
    I thought you could not erect any fence over 2M without PP? and it's 1M if "adjacent" to the highway. The rules have changed in your favour, it used to be between the road and the primary elevation could only be 1M. So I would think a 2M fence at the top of the bank would be okay. Can you raise the ground level there to make a 2M fence work?
  4. ProDave
    How about a strategically planted tree or 2? Thinking of something like Silver Birch that doesn't grow too dense and is an attractive tree? Plant two of those as part of your hedge? I thought having trees south of the house would make it dark and oppressive in summer but they don't, probably largely because we have thinned them out and raised the canopy a little, but they do a good job of preventing too much solar gain, yet allow plenty of sun through in winter when the leaves are off. Is your concern the neighbours looking in? If you are worried they might be concerned about you looking in, well that's their fault for cutting their trees down.
  5. ProDave
    Can you post this magical "new numbers" phone number please?
  6. ProDave
    The purpose of a Tony Tray is to join the airtight layers of the first floor and the ground floor by taking the air tight membrane round the joist ends . I can't see any difference whether the air tight layer downstairs is a membrane on a timber frame or a parge coat on a masonry wall. So yes I would do that. I am grateful for my builders for suggesting this when erecting my frame (though they didn't call it a Tony Tray) It was a detail I was not aware of at the time.
  7. ProDave
    Gawd forbid if the SNP held the balance of power.....
  8. ProDave
    If you want to see more mvhr ducting, I have just put another entry on my blog at www.willowburn.net look for the entry "MVHR ducting"
  9. ProDave
    It is up to the council to provide an official address, but it's a service they charge for. So I have abstained from using that service., We don't have road names or numbers in our little scattered community, just house names and a postcode. so we have chosen a name for the house and are using it, together with the postcode that serves the houses on either side of us. So far I have bank accounts, all utility bills, electoral roll, even council tax bill, and all normal post and parcel delivieries all using the new address without paying for this "service" so I can't see me coughing up for it now.
  10. ProDave
    As long as the SNP send fewer MP's to Westminster I will be declaring it a success.
  11. ProDave
    THIS is a plenum, actually two of them.
  12. ProDave
    Anyone have a link to how to change the "service address" of a plot? I assume this means changing it from "land between x and y" to the actual house name?
  13. ProDave
    Same in our old house with tv reception. Because we are in a glen it's not line of sight to the transmitter. So when we were building that one and living in a caravan I put the tv aerial on a summerhouse that we had put on the highest point of the plot, and it worked reasonably well with a masthead amplifier as it was then a long run of cable. Later, when the house was finished I tried moving it. I spent nearly a day. Put the aerial on a pole on the gable end of the house, making it higher than it was on the summerhouse and a shorter run of cable. I spent hours trying to get a signal. Same aerial, higher location, no local obstructions. At the end of the day I gave up and put it back on the summerhouse, and there it remains.
  14. ProDave
    Exactly what I am doing right now. If the room above is boarded, I am screwing them to the underside of the floor above. If not I am fixing various bits of wood in place to screw them to. In the case of the loft, which is boarded, they are going above the boards, so drill a big hole in the loft floor and screw them down from above. Pictures on my blog in a few days when I am finished.
  15. ProDave
    Same as us. Old house used to get about 2Mbps download. When we had the line connected to the new house (100 metres closer to the exchange) we barely got 1 Mbps, so I complained. A very helpful Open Reach engineer (far far better than the one that made the initial connection) spent some time checking the line with his instrumentation and re made a number of poor connections. Result was we now get nearly 4Mbps. Definitely worth reporting the fault.
  16. ProDave
    Am I the only one that can see a potential problem in this? When there is a major incident and the phone network dies and the emergency services have no comm's, I will say told you so.
  17. ProDave
    The difficulty is you cannot compare like for like as different companies are offering different levels of completeness. Personally, I would not want a system where the walls are finished internally and conduits left for the wiring. I want the freedom to change my mind on where switches and sockets go. I would look for a system that has a complete sealed frame, then a battened service void before the final (plasterboard?) wall finish goes on.
  18. ProDave
    That would explain why EE are going to build a new mast near us, seemingly in a location that only serves a few scattered houses.
  19. ProDave
    If your reason for choosing top hung is just because the handle is out of reach on a velux centre pivot, then choose Fakro instead with the handle at the bottom. For my plant room I bought one of the budget 3G Eco+ windows from sterling build. Yes it was cheap and tripple glazed, but it didn't exude quality, in particular the trickle vent mechanism struck me as poor. It will be interesting to see how it performs in the shut position when we eventually get round to air tightness testing. I thonl we will be choosing Fackro for the bathroom and en-suite. Just to say a friend fitted the top hung Velux 3G with upvc trim inside and I did not like the internal finish, personally I thought it looked like a cheap plastic window, and I would choose the painted wood instead.
  20. ProDave
    Of course all this could be solved, at a stroke, if the boundary boxes that the water company supplied and fitted had a double check valve, instead of the single check valve currently used. Before the water gets to my house it passes through a single check valve in Scottish Water's boundary box. A second single check valve in my own boundary box, and then a double check valve in the house. Madness.
  21. ProDave
    Jeremy wins on a technicality. You know when I said "you" you know I meant the pair of you. Anyway congratulations. I know what it's like to be building slowly with no third party help.
  22. ProDave
    You have just laid the very last brick?
  23. ProDave
    @joe90 I have laid in all my mvhr duct today. I have 13 metres of duct left over, so I doubt that is enough to prevent you having to buy another roll is it? If you don't want it then in due course it will go on the for sale forum.
  24. ProDave
    I had to fit double check valves. I have three of them. All fitted in the 25mm mdpe before the stopcocks (I use mdpe in, copper out stopcocks) One for the standpipe, one for the static caravan and one where the mains water enteres the house. Scottish Water would not make our connection until I had fitted the NRV's for the standpipe and static 'van but once fitted made the water connection, so they must be okay with them being before the stopcock. You can of course shut it off at the boundary box if you need to change the NRV. I don't think anyone is ever going to come and check the NRV is present in the house, but it is there should anyone wish to see it.
  25. ProDave
    That graph is interesting, and really confirms what I have thought is houses are no less affordable than they were when I bought my first house. I remember to get a mortgage, to buy literally the cheapest house on the market in the county (a tiny 1 bedroom new build "starter home") I had to borrow 3.25 times my salary, and they even took into account a pay increment due in 2 months. That still left me nearly 20% short of the house cost which I had to fund by savings, and selling just about everything I owned, including selling a good car and buying a rust bucket old banger. Bear in mind I was relatively well paid then, so people on "ordinary" wages would have struggles even more, and remember this was interest rates of about 10% (which then rose to 15%) And the older guys that bought their houses in the 70's for a few £000 could not believe how much I paid for such a small house in such a poor location. It has NEVER been easy to buy a house. The difference now is with less council rental property, more people who would have been council tenants are struggling to buy rather than private rental.
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