ProDave

I'll complete this thread with how it panned out, though strictly it's not "finished" yet. So we were waiting for traffic lights to access the awkward junction box. I was originally told "up to 2 weeks" for those. While waiting I took Stone's advice and raised a complaint about how the install was being handled. I was allocated a complaint manager. I soon found his task was just to try and placate me and keep me happy and informed. I do not believe he ever did a single thing to speed anything up. Anyway, he told me the traffic lights were booked for 17th April and there was absolutely nothing he could do to speed that up. Note that date. I didn't realise at the time but that was Easter Monday Bank holiday. So while waiting and fuming, something else happened. We moved out of our old house and into the static caravan on our building site. No we haven't sold the old house, we have implemented "plan B" and the old house is now let. So that left us in the 'van with only a poor mobile phone signal and no interned. So if you wonder why I have not been on the forum much for a few weeks..... Anyway on 12th April, unexpected, the traffic lights appeared. They sat there from 9AM holding up the traffic until OR eventually turned up at mid day. By the time they took the lights away at 3PM they had done the connection in that awkward junction box. But that was not the end of it. That only got a line from half way down our road, to about 3Km towards town. It took 2 more days, until mid day on Friday before they had pieced together a working line from our house to the exchange. Note that was Good Friday, a Bank hoiday, but they still seemed to be working. Lesson 1. Do not believe any date given to you even by your complaints manager. So we had a connection. so the line will be on very soon? NO. The OR engineer departed at mid day on Friday saying "I will submit the request for connection when I get back to the exchange" My complaints manager could do nothing to speed it up, pointing out the Bank holiday issue, saying it could be up to a week to get connected. Lesson 2: Open Reach as an organisation know nothing about project management, and the concept of getting the stuff ready in the exchange in parallel to the line work so it could be activated as soon as the line was complete, is obviously something they have never even considered. Wednesday 24th I get a call from the complaints manager. Your line is active. I was out at the time, so I phoned SWMBO to ask her to go and check the phone and then the broadband. Sure enough the phone line was working, but no broadband. Back on the blower to the complaints manager. Ah yes, you ordered just a line to start with, and added the broadband to the order a week later. That will be treated as an upgrade, and the broadband won't be ordered until the line work is complete. That can take up to 2 weeks. Yes of course I blew my top at him. again. Thursday the complaints manager phones me to say the broadband will be active next Wednesday. Then, half an hour later, I noticed the broadband light on the router was on, and we now have broadband. The closing bit of incompetence was then on Friday, I had a phone call from someone else at BT followed up with an email. telling me our broadband would be acivated on 8th May. I didn't dare tell hime it wa already active in case they realise their mistake and turn it off again. Lesson 3. considering they are a communications company, Open Reach and BT have the worst communication I have ever come across and you simply cannot believe anything they tell you. Still some "issues" to sort out next week with the complaints manager, one being the very slow speed "broadband" It's barely making 1Mbps download. The previous house, 100 metres further from the exchange was almost reaching 2 Mbps and we considered that slow.

There are two junction boxes that our line passes through down our road. Both are cast iron boxes set into the ground next to the road. Both were full of rainwater with the cable junctions under water. Let's hope the tunction boxes are truly waterproof as in submirsible? Vfast does not cover our area, but that sounds exactly like the system the Community council are looking at getting installed up here.

At the very least, choose a window with the handle at the bottom, e.g a top swung Velux? The other issue with small (short) windows like that, is if you lower the bottom of the window, you might then bang your head on the top of the recess. Stones solved that by having nice tall windows so you get the view low down, but there is still head height clearance. At this stage, probably the easiest solution is replace the windows with taller ones. Then the top can stay where it is and the joiners just have to cut some of the rafters and re frame the bottom. A lot easier than keeping the same size and moving it down.

Tell me more about this Vfast thing. Is it available everywhere? i.e in the Highlands? After the pain I have had with OR in the last 4 weeks I would love to tell them where to shove their useless antique copper cable with junctions sitting in pools of water......

I think I would want to know more about the type, age and condition of the cable. Worst case scenario is the cable fails after the extension is built, and you have to somehow get a replacement in. It might well be worth getting a quote from the DNO to at least replace the cable with new, and route the new cable in a duct so in future a replacement could be pulled through, or even better re route it around where the extension is going.

This is really a multi part question. There is no issue with having the supply routed into the garage, and the supply head and meter in the garage. Then have a local consumer unit in the garage for the garage circuits and any close by outside circuits. Next a submain run in SWA cable from the garage to the house. That is best done with a switch fuse, the good old KME is the usual candidate with an 80A fuse. This is better in many ways than feeding the submain from one of the circuits of the garage CU. At the house end it's a separate question about where to locate the house CU, and the utility room looks like a good candidate.

No I was definitely contracting a firm of builders for one (yes rather large) part of the build, not employing one individual. Probably just a bit of aris covering on their part.

The only thing I would question in the above statement is "Self builders are not employers" Why then did the builders I contracted to build and erect my frame, insist on seeing my "employers liability insurance"

I wish I had more time, but only on a borrowed internet connection for a while, so don't bank on me seeing any replay straight away. Having a brick wall means any light objects (lights etc) can just be fitted with long screws I have a cunning plan worked out for heavy things like car ports but that needs more time and drawing some pictures, but I have worked out how I propose to do it. TV aerials, satellite dishes etc will be mounted away from the house not onto it. Feed plenty of satellite grade coax runs from every tv point, back to a marshalling / distribution point, then provide a "route out" im my case a hockey stuck down through the floor, and the sky man will never need to get his drill out. BUT you will probably have to attend and connect it for him.

That's looking great. I'm loving the "handrail" up the roof.

Check for straightness vertically. Have the studs warped?

Or timber frame...

No, Scotland will stick to the 17th as they refuse to accept a majority of the UK voted to leave.

Send that to George Clark for his next amazing spaces.

As long as the socket for the tv is 3M from the hot tub...... Why not take the "easy option" for a "garden building" Once it's done as being our home, it will be converted to workspace / studio's. We chose this one due to it's centre living room layout. One big room in the middle that will become a studio. A bedroom at each end, one will become a workshop the other a store room. The WC will remain but the shower will be removed to make a cupboard. It will get wrapped in another layer of insulation and timber clad to make it look more like a big shed.

@Crofter is your man for inspiration. Sounds very much like his build. If you make it that warm and cosy everyone will move out of the house into the shed. Didn't you ought to finish the bathroom before starting a new project?

Our Timber Frame was perfectly flat enough to fix the wood fibre direct to it with long screws and big plastic washers (the pictures just shows a few scres, a lot more were added later)

Brick plus cavity =150mm thick for almost no contribution to insulation. Wood fibre board applied direct to (thicker than normal in my case) timber frame =100mm thick, and adds more insulation to the building. The lack of cavity and hence need to ventilate it will also make the structure more inherently air tight. Battens, counter battens and render board is probably not a lot thinner than the wood fibre board, and does not add the the insulation. Plus, like the block or brick skin needs vents and expansion joints.

I didn't want a block outer skin. I wanted the whole wall make up to add to the buildings insulation. Hence why I settled on100mm thick wood fibre board. I guess I am lucky I don't need a mortgage, and not planning to sell in a hurry. One advantage of the wood fibre system is there is no cavity, so no need for weep ventilators no expansion joints. The window detail seems to some extent be a local thing. Up here they almost never continue the rough cast top coat into the ingo's, instead leaving those just finished with the base coat. I did insist my garage door ingo's which are much deeper were done with the top coat.

That's probably the rubbish my dad had. But I see the principle now.

I think I said this in another thread recently. Boy that's a big un. Our present house has 2 glulam beams hidden in the roof. I think if I had known just ho nice they can look, I woudl have asked for the design to be such that part of them was on show. My new house uses Kurto beams, aparently Glulams would have been far too big to get the strength.

If it has a hose, then is it "airless" doesn't that just mean it comes with a compressor? When I was a boy, my dad bought what I regard as a true "airless" sprayer. It was all in one. A hand held thing that had a paint receptacle you filled and screwed on the bottom,and a mains flex. When you pressed the trigger, a motor whirred and it squirted paint out. I don't recall it being very good, and he had to keep dismantling thr nozzle and unblocking it.

thanks. Page duly bookmarked, though I probably only need 10 metres of gas duct.

I know the DNO will not feed a cable through the wrong coloured duct, which is usually black,but some areas it's red. But if I am reading this correctly, if the meter is remote (as ours is) then it will be YOUR cable, not the DNO's in the duct. I uses SWA mostly buried direct in the ground, only using black duct to bring it up through the foundations into the house. I solved the half reel conundrum by looking on ebay and buying some part rolls of blue and black duct, BUT I still need some yellow gas pipe duct if someone wants to split a roll with me?

You know you will come to miss it. When done with for living in, ours will become a 28 square metre garden outbuilding. It will probably then get a bit more insulation and some timber cladding to make it look less like a caravan. I would never otherwise build a shed that large. This will give us a decent amount of work space to compensate for a smaller house. The toilet will remain, every self respecting shed needs a toilet....