ProDave

I would wait and see what the council say. My experience was several years ago with South Oxfordshire District Council and then, most definitely, if the fence was anywhere between the house and the road, then over 1 metre needed planning permission. That link you posted is very vague. It says 1 metre next to a road, 2 metres otherwise. so would it be okay to move it in 6 inches so it's no longer "next to a road" and build it 2 metres high? I think not. I think that is trying (very poorly) to describe the between a house and the road rule.

This is a very grey area. It's not usually a case of how far the fence is from the road, but if it is between the building line of the house, and the road, it WILL need planning permission for a fence over 1 metre high, even if the fence is only 6" out from the wall of the house. In practical terms I can see why you have put the fence there, and someone is just trying to cause you trouble. Unfortunately the council may feel they need to be seen to be impartially upholding the planning rules, and you don't have PP for a fence, so they would be quite entitled to enforce you to remove it. Perhaps a compromise would be to agree it is only temporary while the hedge grows and for them to grant temporary permission for the fence? I had a similar situation in my very first house. the back garden fronted onto a road. As far as planning law was concerned that garden was between the building line and the road, so as far as planning law was concerned anything there needed PP, so I had to get PP to move my fence by about a metre, and erect a garden shed. The silly thing was the real front garden of the house did not front a public road, so I could have put up a tall fence and put my shed there in the front garden without needing PP, but it would have looked quite ridiculous.

Well the best "rule of thumb" I can think of is chipboard flooring will normally be 22mm and add the thickness of a carpet. most hardwood flooring will be a similar thickness. I am allowing about 10mm for tiles and adhesive, but that is massively dependent on what tiles you choose. Another "challenge" you might not have thought of is when transitioning from a tiled floor to a hardwood floor, I don't want a step, so the under build for the hardwood floor area needs to be thicker than the tiled floor area so they end up level with no step.

That's looking very crisp indeed. Those boards that they had to break out and replace. I can only assume the new ones slotted in won't have the tongues and grooves intact, so I wonder if over time that will cause issues? I hope not. Are those the doors that TP seem to have on sale at the moment? I wish I had the cash to buy some, but don't and knowing my luck when I do, I won't be able to find such a good deal.

Perhaps one is the pump, and the other is the thermal mixing valve? Trying to make their quote look like you actually get more than you think you are getting? Pictures of what they are offering?

Were you planning to set it up and commission it yourself? If not you will need a gas safe engineer and he will be capable of changing the jet and setting it up.

@Tennentslager Are you saying your cheap Machine mart stove is just a "tin box" with no fire bricks to line the fire box? I am thinking SWMBO is thinking of a WBS for our static 'van, but I don't like the idea of one with no fire bricks as surely the sides and back will get much hotter?

The sparrow's share should be the input less efficiency so say 80% efficient, the sparrows get 20% Or have I got that wrong?

I would suggest you go for a pretty standard timber frame design which is what we mostly "do" up here. That will be the standard stock house design so should be easy to sell. If you do what we did on our last house, that is pay a builder to build the shell then do the rest yourself you still have plenty of scope for doing work yourself. 12 years time is a long time so I won't even try and predict what the market will be doing then, but if someone had asked me 12 years ago when we had just completed our present house, I would never have believed 12 years on it would be almost impossible to sell.

300mm of MOT1 and 50mm of base layer tarmac. I expected this to get trashed by all the delivery lorries, concrete lorries etc, but it hardly touched it and eventually I will just put the top layer of tarmac onto it.

I would be interested in how you find the insulating collar. Particularly with a roof with counter battens then battens, almost all of the thiickness of the roof window will be outside the insulated makeup of a warm roof, so I feel it needs something. However if that skinny black thing in the picture is the "collar" it looks a rather pathetic attempt and I feel it should be possible to DIY something better. On the one I have done so far (cheap 3g window I would not recommend) I made a surround out of 20mm wood fibre board that was left over from cladding the back of my garage. Certainly better than nothing. I found you have to pay a lot to get much under 0.9 U value for a roof window. Have a look at the eye watering price of the 4g Facro offering.

Looking at the floorplan, the facing dormers are bathrooms. As I thought, the living room is at the back, which if the plan is "north up" faces East, so your average working familly will get home of an evening to a living room and rear garden in shade. Still, the two bedrooms at the front will be overheated by the afternoon sun to ensure an uncomfortable nights sleep. I wonder what the floor plan of the other 3 is like? they at least have a south facing garden.

But the houses are mirror images, so at best one will be optimised for the sun and the other not. More likely is the orientation of the sun never entered the designers thought process so both probably get a north facing living room and south facing utility room.....

So £6400 for a 14KWh storage system. Lets be generous and say I can use all 14KWh of stored energy from it every day, saving about 15p per KWh compared to the grid, so saving £2.10 every day. That's a maximum saving of £766 every year, so will take 9.66 years to pay for itself. How far will the batteries then be from end of life and needing replacement? Numbers still not stacking up for me I am afraid.

Actually I think you can. I know a good tiler, and if the floor is not level, he will tell you, and tell you what needs to be done to make it level before he starts tiling.

Not sure if this has been mentioned before, but here is a house, 3D printed in 24 hours

The rubber washer is the seal, so it should not need anything else, and should not need to be especially tight.

I have always found it easier to start at the destination (entry to treatment plant for example) which will usually have a fixed depth, and then work that backwards towards the house, and see what sort of sensible fall you can achieve without the pipe getting too close to the surface.

Here was my list: Two foul drains into the house. Water in Water out to outside tap Electricity in Electricity out to shed and treatment plant Telephone Data cable (spare phone cable) Hockey stick duct for gas pipe to kitchen island Hockey stick duct for tv aerial cables etc to under stairs "A/V hub" cupboard The only ones that had to be super accurate where the drains.

So get the lines removed and see where he parks? My guess is he only parks there because he knows if he doesn't someone else will. If it ceases to be a parking space, he might just use his own drive. I had a friend who used to park on the road which as it happened was closer to his front door than his own driveway, simply because if he didn't park there, someone else would.

The access in that photo is not as bad as it looks from the plan. As long as nobody is parking to block the access to No 16, then even with his van in the parking space, it looks like you can get into your plot okay. It's probably only large lorries that might be an issue, and if it's in the daytime when his van is not there.... I can see why the space is where it is, to put it where I proposed earlier would block access to his own drive. I also guess even if the space was deleted, in the absence of double yellows, he would carry on parking there. On ballance I would probably just have a word about being prepared to move or not park there when you are expecting large vehicles.

Well if the plot used to belong to No 14, then I would have no sympathy with him whatsoever. He could have divided the plot a bit more logically to have given himself parking alongside his house, but presumably chose not to. He has created his problem, me must deal with it. Unless of course No 14 has changed hands since the plot was divided off?

I discounted a GSHP when I found the cost of the pipe you have to bury, and the cost of the antifreeze to put in it (which is supposed to be replaced every 10 years, where are you going to dispose of it?) Even having my own digger so the install cost would have been minimal.

The blockwork is not rendered, but yes it did burst the face of the block so I will repaint it first. Not sure I want to camouflage the pipe though, I want that to be visible.

That wire cage from ebay fits well. Just need to screw it to the wall.