ProDave

That pillar is shocking. I would want to very carefully re point it and fill in every crack and crevice with cement mortar, and put a brick or at least a part of a brick in that gaping great hole.

I had in mind the alternative as a row of strap on boss's, Is it okay to go into the side of a run or does it have to go in the top? Re combining several items into one pipe. I would hapilly combine the two (back to back) showers, or the two basins, but I once had a very bad experience with a basin sharing the same run as a shower. Not quite "swapping contents" Water would come up the shower trap into the shower every time the basin was emptied. Not wishing to repeat that.

So, following on from this, I have had a day mostly of thinking and planning things, rather than doing things (always a bad move) which brings me onto my next "whacky plumbing idea" As well as connecting the aforementioned two WC pans, I have some showers and basin's to connect, and I want to keep it all within the width of the posi joists. in the last house I used one of these http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FLOPLAST-110mm-Ring-Seal-Single-Boss-Soil-Manifold-Grey-/182280025263?hash=item2a70bc74af:g:R3EAAOSwmLlX142C The hopper was placed in the stack before the branch to the WC's. I could do that in the last house because there was a large boxed in space in the room below and the hopper sat down in that boxed in space. But this time I don't want to do that, it must all go in the joist space, and there is not room for a hopper and the branch. So what if I used one of those hoppers in one of the horizontal runs of pipe? the 110mm bit would just pass straight through, and as long as the smaller inlets were above the centreline of the 110mm pipe I can see no reason why it would not work? Give me a reason why not please?

But he hasn't come back yet to confirm he actually has power on the motor terminals.

Use your mains tester screwdriver. Does it light up when touching the brown (terminal 1)? Does it light up when touching the blue (terminal 2)?

Are you looking for something like timber i.e planks, perhaps plastic or other "non timber" material, or are you wanting something that can be rendered and hopefully give a maintenance free finish that way?

.... And Munster will only do supply AND fit, and NOT to Scotland.

Sounds like it is a dangerous bend, and the highways ought to sort it out and use a bit of the verge to widen the road then. A situation where the only "safe" way to negotiate it is drive on the verge, is not acceptable.

So you would rather he didn't put anything there, and the lorries use the "verge" as part of the "road" and it turns into a rutted, muddy chewed up mess? That is what he is trying to avoid, to make the place look nicer. Try and see it from his viewpoint. I had this discussion with the highways about what is "the road" and "the verge" and it appears in the case of unfenced land, they can claim the first 3 metres from the edge of the road is "the verge" and therefore part of the highway. If, as we do, you own the land right up to the road, then the solution is to fence it right at the edge od what you own and then it is no longer "the verge" I have a row of large stones along the edge of my plot at the moment to stop cars and lorries driving onto the grass until I decide how and where I am going to fence the edge

Another revision, would moving the vent cause an issue: Taking the vent straight up, would mean more "boxing in" If instead, I made the turn to pan 2 a branch, that could then continue and turn upwards to the vent through a bit that is already being boxed in. Would that cause issues?

I thought if I did that, then when you flush pan 2 it might suck pan 1's trap dry unless you have another AAV. I thought it best to not have any shared horizontal runs?

My drawing skills are not as good as Nick, but this is what I want to achieve: the left hand branch follows the front of the house (in between two joists) and then turns 90 degrees up through the floor to pan 1. the right hand branch travels a short distance, through one or possibly two posi joists, before turning 90 degrees to run between joists, then turning up 90 degrees to go up to pan 2 in the other bathroom adjacent. I can't see there being a "swapping incident"

Well I have just ordered one of Nick's first link, but from a different ebay seller. And it was a bit cheaper. I can see the "swapping contents" issue if you just branch at pan outlet level, and have two very short runs to the two pans, but I am branching under the floor, 2 runs under the floor then each turning up and through the floor to it's respective pan. I HOPE I won't be starting a "swapping contents" thread in the future when it eventually all goes live.

That's exactly what I mean. as usual it's a case of knowing the correct name for what to search for. I had a feeling it must exist, I could see no reason why someone could not make one, but I have never seen one, and they are not in the common places like TP, Screweys, toolstation unfortunately, that one "does not post to Scottish Highland" But I see several people selling the same thing, so I am sure one of them will post it here. Question. Looking at that, it appears both branches are push fit with a ring seal, but why are the details of the two branches different?

Did you just get the one quote? I had about 6 quotes in the end, with Internorm being the most expensive at double the cheapest. Rationel were cheapest and only very slightly poorer than Internorm in terms of Uw values. I chose aluminium clad, as sanding and painting or varnishing wooden windows is something i wish to consign the the "used to do that" pile. I ended up paying £8.5K for 10 windows, two single doors and one double door pair.

I can't see that happening unless the stack is not well ventilated. One toilet will be close to the branch, the other about 3 metres away. the two branches will run within the posi joists then turn 90 degrees to go up through the floor to each pan. What I want to avoid is the two toilets sharing a common horizontal pipe run. that's why I want them to branch at the stack.

I have been putting up the stud walls that define the bathroom and en-suite rooms. That means having a think about the layout of both rooms so I know everything will fit and the doors are in the right place etc. At the same time I have been thinking about how I will plumb all the wastes, and have hit a problem. I can't seem to find the waste fitting that I will need. I will try do describe it: Imagine the 110mm waste stack coming up from the room below (the utility room) right in the corner. as you stand looking at that corner, I want one 110mm pipe to branch left along the front wall of the house to serve one toilet, and I want another 110mm pipe to branch off to the right, along the side wall of the house to serve the other toilet. So I need a 110mm branch that will take TWO 110mm pipes in at 90 degrees to each other. I can't find one. I have seen a double branch with inputs 180 degrees apart, but not 90 degrees apart. It has to be all in one fitting as I want both branches to travel to their respective WC's within the posi joists, so stacking two branches one above the other won't work. Any ideas?

Another thing that skews the market tremendously, is the "help to buy" initiative to lend buyers the deposit. It only applies to new builds. The result is the few new builds in town seem to sell quickly, but "second hand" houses, even modest ones in the town seem to take a long time to sell. Initiatives like this are probably seen as a "success" because they get houses built and occupied, but they do nothing to stimulate an active property market at all levels where people can sell and move up when they need / want to. Is the next generation doomed to be stuck all their life in "starter homes?"

In Jewsons today 6 * 2 regularised £1.72 per metre 4 * 2 regularised £1.28 per metre Same as I paid in December, so it's not gone up yet. More worrying for a self builder was the notice saying from 4th January, cash sales under £150 ex VAT will incur a £17.50 + VAT delivery charge. They waived the delivery charge today and I brought home with me a Self Build trade account form to avoid that in future even on small orders.

That's an interesting one. Just because a house is built as a "portable building" does not mean it has to be rubbish. Yes you could build little more than a shed as you don't have to comply with building regs, but you could equally build a really well built super insulated building that far exceeds what building regs would require. This is one area where mortgage companies should take the findings of a surveyor, who might well report it is a well built house, rather than saying "it's non standard" or "it's a park home" and we don't lend on those. Re the portable buildings thing, it is perhaps a loophole in the caravan's act. As already linked to by Crofter, the Highland Council make it clear a "caravan" does not have to actually be on wheels, and lifting it by crane is an acceptable means to qualify as portable, as long as it fits within the size limits. In point of fact you can actually build a larger "caravan" in England and Wales. That's because at some point the Caravan's act was updated there, but the Scottish version never got updates. Surely one of the English or Welsh councils will have a similar document that will give the maximum sizes there.

My actual build cost for a bare shell is currently under £100K I am confident however it will go over £100K, there are a lot of big ticket items still do be bought and having to wait until we can afford them. To build it for absolute minimum, then it would have needed cheaper much less good windows and doors, no luxuries like mvhr just basic trickle vents on windows, no en-suite, just one bathroom with a very basic bathroom suite. A very basic cheap kitchen, no nice wooden floors just chipboard and cheap carpets everywhere, no UFH just ugly radiators, no attempt at being green and using an ASHP, just a cheap basic oil boiler. It would not end up as the house we want. There are a lot of costs associated with building a house these days, like detailed drawings, SAP reports, structural engineers reports, drainage reports. A mass builder will win here because one set of design costs gets spread over perhaps hundreds of identical houses. I still don't know why more people are not using the "portable house" model to avoid building control and a lot of these costs. you can build a single storey "portable" building up to 100 square metres without a building warrant, that is plenty big enough for a 2 bedroom bungalow.

You might not mind if you were just living in a completed house, and if you ever sold it you know the replacement house would also be 30% lower. BUT if you were living in a house and trying to sell it, while at the same time part way through building the replacement, and a 30% drop in value of the old (5 bedroom) house would mean the sale value of that would no longer cover the costs of building the replacement 3 bedroom house, then you WOULD mind VERY MUCH.

Did they say WHEN it was going up? I need to order some 6*2 and 4*2, sounds like I had better do it sooner rather than later.

This still brings me back to my pet gripe. houses are NOT overpriced HERE. If you build a new bespoke house now, I think you would be really lucky to sell it for enough just to get your money back. That's if you CAN sell it. Yet again though they tell me house prices here has risen 4% in the last year . I DO NOT SEE THAT AT ALL. So please don't talk to me about house prices need to . Not here they don't.

A lot of the new builds I see, I see money being "wasted" by inefficient layouts and a lot of wasted corridor space or over larger entrance halls etc. That was a "failing" in our current house. I always said the large entrance hall and galleried staircase was a waste of space. I was told it gives the house a "wow factor" Shame none of the few people that have viewed the house have been wowed by it. The new one is a lot more eficcient on floor space with the hall and landing being much more modest, and my rather quirky combining of the utility room with the downstairs toilet. Having just built a house with a vaulted warm roof and now see how something as simple as moving the insulation from the upstairs ceiling, to the roof line can so dramatically improve a building, I would not advocate deliberately making "cold" parts of the house. I am actually staggered how little I have spent on insulation for my whole house, so the savings would be quite small to make one bit a less well insulated space.