ProDave

You definitely can't discharge to a dry ditch here. It's like pulling teeth just to get a permit to discharge to a flowing watercourse. One of the things they take into consideration is the minimum flow rate in a dry summer. I even made a temporary V notch weir to measure the summer flow rate.

Neighbour "disputes" and access can be a real problem. when I lived with my parents, the front drive where I parked openned onto a service road with double yellow lines opposite my drive. It ws a very common occurrence to get up in the morning and find a car parked, on the double yellows, blocking my drive. Phone calls the the police were a regular thing, but usually all they did was employ some grunt to push the car along a bit and left. They hardly ever put a parking ticket on it, and even once when I pointed out the tax disc was out of date, they took no action. I got so fet up I printed a slightly rude note I used to leave under people's windscreens telling not to park there (not quite the exact phrase I used ) until one day the police knocked on my door and cautioned me for "distributing obscene material" He could be bloody minded and carry on parking there even without a marked space, then it gets messy.

Yes sorry, holes or gaps for wiring in the battens that create the service void, sorry for the confusion.

Rather than delete it, could the space be turned 45 degrees and slid sideways so it is to the north east (assuming north up) of the space outside No 16 Is there any scope for creating an off road parking space for No 14 in the course of the work you are doing? It's ther sort of thing where I might sacrifice a couple of feet of the plot if it enabled No 14 to have his own off road parking next to his house. Can you get the Highways to come in one day when he's out and "delete" or move the space or would that be a red rag to a bull?

He's screwing through the battens, through the insulation and into the stud of the timber frame. So if he's got his measurements wring and the screw does not go into the stud, leave it in place and try again.

I remember a strange thing about the big thermal store in the straw bale house. It had no water feed to top it up. It was just a VERY big bucket and you hat to periodically check the water and manually top it up to allow for any evaporation.

I wired a straw bale house that had a similar setup. Massive thermal store. WBS that put 12KW to water and only 2KW to the room. The theory wa you light the stove about once a week.

Hi and welcome to the forum. I have moved this to the "introduce yourself" sub forum as that seems more appropriate. The technology exists to build near zero energy buildings already, it's the mass house builders that seem disinterested in doing so. And will any EU directives in 2020 have any impact upon us?

Seeing all the complications of a cavity and board+render system, have you considered what I have done, wood fibre direct onto TF with no cavity, and render onto wood fibre board?

The Vortex was one that I considered. When I was looking for one, nearly 2 years ago now, the Votex, Conder and Biopure were the three that were best in terms of cleanliness of the effluent. (others may have come to market since so don't assume these are the only "good" ones) I ruled it out because on my wet site it would have required a lot more concrete to encase it.

That's certainly one to look at. Not only would 1.6 metres deep be above our water table, but probably above the level of the burn much of the year. Interesting it seems to use a standard Graf tank (discussed recently?) and the final treatment tank contains worms, also discussed a while back. It seems to use the chimney effect to aerate the water without a mechanical pump. I wonder how that works on a still day?

Yes, it's all about "safe zones". Once you have fixed an accessory to the wall, you can run cables horizontally or vertically from it, but NOT at an angle. It's quite common with a TF house with a service void to just run cables around the room at socket height *. It's a lot less common to do the same with a light switch as that normally goes up, but there are plenty of cases where running a light feed horizontally from one switch to the next is a good idea. * I had a big argument with the joiner on a job last year. He was trying to tell me I must run socket cables up the wall, along above the ceiling, then back down to the next socket. I had to educate him about safe zones including NEVER put screws through the plasterboard at the same height as sockets because there might well be wires there. That was the gist of his argument that if I ran them horizontally he might put a screw through them. It still bugs me that no other building trades seem to have heard about the concept of safe zones for wiring.

I am assuming the battens will run vertically fixed to the timber studs. You (or your electrician) might want to do some of the wiring by going horizontally from socket to socket for instance, which will be in a safe zone for wiring. So it's a lot easier to preempt that and drill a horizontal hole through the battens at switch and socket height before you fix them to the wall.

A screw through the air tight layer is okay. If by chance it misses the stud, do bot remove it, leave it there filling the hole and just fit another one. Pre drill the studs at 450mm and 1150mm above finished floor level to allow for cables, or leave small gaps in the studs at that height.

Yes Leasehold is rare in Scotland. When we owned a flat, we jointly owned the land it stood on with the flat above. We were both jointly responsible for "common parts" i.e foundations and roof. We owned a 1/8 share of the entrance area in front of the flats, we owned the whole of our garden and a parking space. But the issue is not about ownership, it's a covenant issue and who / if can enforce it or how to get permission. Very often if the covenant was put there by the builder, it was to protect them from you doing something stupid while the development was being built that might hinder sales of the other units. Quite often when they have finished and gone, they have no interest in enforcing the covenant, but it is still there, and "unlikely to enforce it" is not the same as saying you can ignore it. On a much more trivial level, I kept a caravan against a covenant for 3 years with nobody bothering me, but it would have been simple to move it if there had been an issue. The annoying thing about this situation is it demonstrate developers total lack of interest in providing a window where it might enhance the property with a nice view. Instead it's probably one of their standard designs and they could not be bothered to tailor it to better suit the location.

The only way to be sure is lift some floor boards in the small bedroom immediately above the wall you want to remove to see what it's doing. Chances are it is only built of block because "that's what they did" or are there other walls in the house built of stud and plasterboard? It was common in the past to have load bearing walls upstairs that are not immediately below the load bearing walls downstairs so there will be some bending forces on the joists, but hopefully they will be sized for that, if not there may sometimes be some sag in the joists.

This time insulating my ground floor. Blog at the usual place http://www.willowburn.net look for the entry "insulating the floor"

Our SE visted the site and I dug 3 test pits for him with the digger, down to 2 metres. What this showed was once we got through the organic top soil, we were into a sandy clay with a lot of rocks and boulders, but didn't hit bedrock even at 2 metres. So he was happy to specify strip foundations, the only depth stipulation being we were down into the sandy clay, and he specified the concrete mix and reinforcing mesh to be used. I never questioned the reason for the mesh as the present house, build 2 doors away on much the same ground has strip foundations without any mesh.

My thought is to build in such a duct and a fan costs very little at build stage. So I will almost certainly fit it. If it ends up not working or not getting used, you have not wasted much. By comparison, if you decided to fit it later, it would be a lot more work and a lot more disruption to the building, that's if it's possible at all.

I would like to see that in court, how you did unauthorised work on their network.

Now shoot me down on this one, but I have a "cunning plan". On the assumption that a WBS in one room may overheat that room, and mvhr won't re distribute the heat very well or very quickly. What about an extract vent in the ceiling above the stove, ducted to another room in the opposite corner of the house, with an in line fan that you can turn on, to move head from the room with the stove to other room(s) A sort of blown warm air heat distribution system?

Another issue. Who owns the land you are going to have to stand some scaffold on, to get up to fit this window?

These days it's normally a structural engineer that specifies the foundations, type, depth, type of concrete, reinforcing mesh etc.

What's that about, non habitable buildings only?

So I was working in the house this afternoon and an Open Reach van pulls up. Out got the same chap I saw nearly 2 years ago when he gave me a drum of cable. He had a look at the end of the cable in the house ready for a socket, and the other end coiled up on the grass verge right above their trunk cable. That's what I like, he said, a nice easy straightforward job. He assured me someone will be here on the 22nd to dig the hole, connect the end under the verge and connect the socket in the house. It's all going too well so far. P.S I forgot to say, I had to pay a £65 connection charge for the new line. I have not paid anything to OR. The BT operative I dealt with said it's normally £130 connection charge and his system has let him discount that. Apparently some days it lets them discount it to £0 but not on the day I phoned. Compared to the cost of getting water and electricity connected I am not grumbling at £65