ProDave

I think the WC door issue is a little more complicated. The WC has to be "accessible" and that means a certain amount of "activity space" in front of the pan, and nothing is allowed to intrude into that activity space (except a basin may partly overhang that space) and the door must not swing over the activity space. So unless you have a very large WC, the door would swing over the activity space, hence solving it by hinging outwards. Our downstairs WC is unusually combined with the utility room, and the door into it will be a long way from the pan, and will open into the room. building control have confirmed this is okay as it will not interfere with the activity space. They have also agreed that the door through from the utility / wc into the garage, would not normally be used by anyone in a wheelchair (due to the mandatory step between the house and the garage) so it does not matter if THAT door swings over the activity space, so that too can open inwards if we wish.

Main house has triple glazed doors and windows, no letterbox (or cat flap) We were originally thinking of an external post box on the wall. Due to the tight budget, when I built the garage, I left out the doors for now (both pedestrian and vehicle) Yesterday I noticed my neighbour was having a new front door fitted. A quick word with said neighbour, and that door is now the pedestrian door into my garage. Remarkably they got the frame out undamaged and it fitted the hole left for a door almost perfectly. It's a good quality Swededoor in good condition, so it might well remain as the permanent door. So being an ex "front door" it has a letterbox. So now we are thinking to just educate the postman that the post goes through the door on the side of the garage and no need for a box on the wall by the front door.

I think the radio interference issue will depend how close you are to your local radio transmitter. At the moment I am sold on using GU10 downlights with LED lamps. You just can't beat the simplicity. The only caveat being the variation between brightness and colour of different LED lamps, so the plan is to buy enough to do all lamps in the house plus a good number of spares to keep in stock. The new build I have just finished wiring has all GU10's with 6W LED's and it's very bright indeed. Downlights about 2 metres apart.

So have I. What a shame that first thing this morning I submitted an order. I now have until the 18th to make another order, large enough to get free postage, in order to use it.

^^ and that shows the substantial gusset plates either side of each beam at the joints.

But you very craftily hid the strikethrough button way over there with the superscript and subsctript buttons. Not with the bold, italic and underline buttons where most people would look for it.

True. I have seen this type of construction, and there are were gusset plates bolted at the eaves and ridge joints.

I doubt that CE mark means anything other than Chinese Electronics If it has a flying flex as it's input, is should be double insulated, as in a sheathed flex. That's glorified speaker wire there. I would be tempted to replace that speaker wire with some proper 2 core sheathed mains flex and then into a choc box or wago box if it's going to be in an inaccesible location. I would put one on an extended soak test to see how hot it gets.

You will almost certainly need to have it all detailed by a structural engineer. that is similar in some ways to my build, and the SE specified that on some walls, I had to have two layers of OSB with staggered joints to give adequate racking strength.

When you do that, try adding the 2 digit suffix to the order code from the latest weekly offers flyer. A surprising number of items that are not in the weekly offers do appear to be discounted if you care to try.

What provides the racking strength? Is that meant to be a layer of OSB on the inside of the frame for that purpose?

As I said in the OP, it was knowing what to call it. It's obvious that it's not am 8mm hex drive socket, but it's a magnetic nut runner. Why didn't I think of that? I will order one of those and one of the socket adaptor sets so I can do other sizes with a standard socket. P.S you might have noticed CPC's website search tool is not the best.

I need to buy a tool. I know they exist, but not knowing what the correct name is, I can't seem to find one. It's ever so simple. I want an 8mm hex socket, but instead of it having a square female drive (to be used e.g with a ratchet) I need it to have a male hex drive so I can use it with a cordless screwdriver to run in coach bolts that have a hex head. I can't seem to find one. but that's because I don't know what they are called (hex drive socket didn't get me very far) It would be great if CPC had them as I am about to place an order from CPC. But the bext I have found from CPC is this http://cpc.farnell.com/hilka-tools/37955003/socket-adaptor-set-3pc/dp/TL17207?ost=tl17207&selectedCategoryId=&categoryNameResp=All%2BCategories&searchView=table&iscrfnonsku=false which would do what I want in conjunction with a standard square drive socket, but I really want the dedicated tool, hex drive to 8mm socket.

Finished it today: And here are those plastic headed screws:

(loosely) on the subject of French Lavatories, where I lived as a boy there was a coach company called Crappers. And they were. And on the SEF subject, wait until you turn 50 (In Scotland at least) and every 2 years receive a Bowel Cancer testing kit. No I won't describe what you have to do, just wait and see.

^^ I need a lot of 9mm OSB soon. VERY disappointed to find their "offer" on 9mm OSB3 is only 1p cheaper at £14.99 if you buy 3 sheets. That's about double what it should be.

The Baumit website I did not find very helpful. So I'll give you a leg up. The base coat is MC55W, mixed from powder and lime based. then a painted primer DG27 is painted on. Finally the "Silikon Top" top coat is applied that comes ready mixed in a tub. You can buy that in different colours and different textutes.

Yes. The "plastic cover" is moulded onto the screw head and not removable If I had known there was even a choice, I would have specified proper screws with a metal head, and a separate cover. I will photograph them and post a picture tomorrow.

Well my roof sheets arrived on Friday, and today we got most of it up. the main sheets of roofing on both sides and the main length of ridge piece. Tomorrows job will be cut and fit the verge cloaks, and cut and fit the second, smaller section of ridge capping. No photos yet as it was just about dark (before 4PM) when we finished today. just one observation, I encountered man's worst invention today. Plastic headed screws. Yes all the screws that were supplied to fix it down have plastic heads. Just about okay if screwing into a lovely soft bit of wood, but hit the slightest hard bit and the head strips, leaving me to finish tightening it with a pair of mole grips. Perhaps that's one thing to look out for, is avoid plastic headed screws.

What is the substrate you are rendering onto? i.e is the building clad with a blockwork skin, or some kind of board. If blockwork skin then without a doubt I would say cement made with snowcrete to give a white finish. If onto some kind of board, then the render system has to be considered as a whole depending on the board used. e.g in my case render onto a wood fibre board using the baumit.com render system. That was recommended to me as it's less prone to cracking than some other thin render systems. I can't comment on life as it's been on less than a year. A lot of these thin render systems are based on lime, and can't be applied at less than 5 degrees and it must remain above 5 degrees for a couple of days. That would rule out applying it in a normal January, certainly up here.

Yes some form of upright corner block is what most people use around here.

What is an "eyebrow roof"? I dislike flat roofed dormers (I dislike flat roofs in general) and I dislike the side detail of most dormers (which is why on my new build I extended the pitched rood of the "dormers" all the way down making them more of a "gable end"). But you have what you have so need to make the most of it. I would definitely strip it all off and convert it to a warm roof. You could always do it like mine, 100mm wood fibre board over the rafters (which is strong enough to span the gap without a support board under it) and then also fill the gap between the rafters, in my case with Frametherm 35 earthwool. And I would definitely NOT replace the roof with felt, that is the work of the devil. Get a fibreglass roof cover put on it. No reason not to do the same on the sides of the dormer as well and replace with new cladding, or just put the hanging tiles back if you can, at least they should last a long time unlike timber cladding so that's a detail I would seek to retain. I think the reason a lot of dormers are so poor, is they just build them with sticks of 4 by 2 timber so there is never enough room to fit anything like enough insulation so they end up being the coldest part of the house. So over sheeting with external insulation is an easy way to improve that.

I am struggling to understand what the point of this question is? surely you will set the FFL of the house to match the ground levels either existing or proposed on your site. I can only assume if you must set your FFL to the same as next door, then this must be a planning condition, and the difficulty you are having to establish that just shows how difficult it would be for the council to also establish that and check if you have complied or not.

I only raised the idea of no buffer, and no temp control on the UFH manifold as this is what the mitsubishi packaged system appears to do and on the face of it, it seemed like a good idea. Another thing to consider is the big difference between a lot of you with UFH in a concrete slab with a high thermal capacity, compared to me with a timber floor and quite possibly UFH pipes in spreader plates. That's another thing to consider when deciding which way to go. I can't see any benefit whatsoever in keeping the UFH flow going with no heat input in my case.

That's a good warning about the condensate drain from a BOILER, but as already stated it would not apply to condensate from an mvhr unit.