ProDave

I assumed they are supply pipes, but we just don't know do we. Surely the water co should at least be able to tell you if they are supply or drainage pipes? Of course there will be both in the vicinity, but if only one is on the map it still begs the question, where?

You need the lid off that chamber. There are no drainage pipes shown on the plan, but there must be some, somewhere. So perhaps that chamber is for the drains. I still say all would be answered in 5 minutes with the divining rods, then you know where to carefully dig for confirmation.

I did my 1/3 acre plot all on my own. Can you not do the same?

Not a name that rings a bell. Plenty of info and schedules here https://www.radiocaroline.co.uk/#home.html

It is used for streaming internet radio (mostly Radio Caroline) playing music from it's own memory, or from a phone (via Hi fi Cast) I would not know how to set up two Pi's to talk to each other like that, but the advantage of a hard wired audio link is they all play in sync throughout the house, no lag between one and another.

An example of "under engineering" In the tv's I only put power, 3 * coax and a cat 5 cable to the bedroom tv points. We then decided we wanted sound in the bedroom, from the same Pi Music box as downstairs. A quick bit of lateral thinking I repurposed the 2 spare coax cables as audio left and right to the bedroom.

I had the opposite. Scottish water subcontracted our water connection. The plan said the water was in the verge the other side of the road. The subbies dug for it and could not find it. They dug deeper and further from the road into the field, still no sign. They were on the verge of packing up and going home when I got my rods out. You could see them sniggering as I slowly walked further into the field and my rods reacted, so I said "here it is". Just to humour me they dug a bit further and there it was.

Frametherm 35 is quite stiff. I left this test piece for 6 months without any support and it did not budge or slump. But I would want something under it to support it.

I am interested in the cantilevered second floor. Is that what the external piers are for on the brickwork?

If you start talking galvanised conduit, then you need a die and cutting compound to thread the ends. Never worth it for a one off job. Use PVC instead. I question the circuit design, it sounds like spurring from and existing socket to then feed a CU in the garage. The total load will be very limited, and a real chance of overloading the 2.5 t&e. A spur like that is allowed to feed one socket, that will be limited in current by the plug(s) plugged into it, not for feeding a CU for multiple circuits. Look to get a feed from the main house CU in proper sized cable for this.

Go divining to locate the pipe. Yes I AM being serious.

There is no joined up thinking. We are building the wind farms where there is no more grid capacity, before the grid is upgraded to cope. 4 more are planned near here, soon there won't be a hilltop without a wind farm on it. The planned additional 400KV overhead north / south line is barely passed planning stage after nearly 10 years, yet to start construction. There is a hydrolyser plant about to be built. Being built to use the surplus power the grid can't take to make hydrogen to be trucked by tanker (hydrogen powered I hope) to feed local distileries. The hydrolyser needs water, a lot of it, so a new 15 mile pipeline is being built to pump it from a local river. Now my little brain says 2 things, surely it would be easier just to build a local distribution network to feed the distileries directly with electricity rather than have the losses making then transporting then burning hydrogen? And if you are going to build it, surely it would be easier to build it near the river and transport the electricity to the hydrolyser with a new cable, rather than lay a new pipe and pump the water up hill?

It will need planning permission, but the fact you already have a tall brick wall on the boundary should make that much easier.

That is strange. What little I can see of the exterior wood and paint looks okay. Almost as if water is getting in at the top, perhaps from the cavity that does not have closers?

I had multiple hdmi cables to our main tv points. They all lead back to the AV cupboard under the stairs where all the set top boxes reside so there is no (or little) "clutter" under the televisions. Wall hanging a modern flat screen tv raises the question where do you put any set top boxes, that previously would have gone on a shelf in the "tv unit" It also means the same set top box can serve both tv's downstairs so a recorded program can be watched in either room, and only one firestick for all the on line stuff. hdmi splitters and 10 metre long hdmi cables. Install more cables than you need in case one fails or you want to add something new.

Gas safe certificate from gas safe installer, just like any other gas installation. Note not all gas safe engineers are register for LPG.

Scrap the stupid CIL system. That has to be a major deterrent to builders and of course pushes up house prices as it effectively makes building land more expensive. The sustainability nonsense is just plain stupid. Up here the planning guidelines are more sensible, they want development in existing settlements not isolated individual houses. That is the guideline that allowed our present and previous self build. But we are 3 miles from the town and public transport. Yes you could cycle that, but it is uphill all the way back. Few do. But such development is still allowed. If the planners won't allow provision for an EV car (charge point and possibly PV) as "sustainable" then that is plain stupid.

My BIL lives in a house where this was done successfully a long time ago by a previous owner. His corner plot garden is now enclosed by a nice mature Beech hedge right on the boundary substantially increasing the garden compared to the small bit originally enclosed by a fence. but he bought it like that so he did not take the risk of being told to take it down, or having to wait for it to grow. And the garden was all flat to start with.

I would first pressure test the drains, to ensure the "damp" and smell is not being caused by a leak in the drains somewhere.

Have a look around the surrounding houses. Has anyone else done this? If no, there is likely to be a planning condition or covenant preventing it. You might get away with it but being on a corner visibility around the corner for traffic may be a concern. In any event I would not try and enclose anything in front of the front wall of the house. A hedge might enclose it, and if nobody complains once the hedge has grown to maturity to screen the garden you could let the wall fall down. But a hedge will do nothing to raise the ground level, for that you need a retaining wall, completely different thing, so you might end up with a bigger, but sloping garden. If you have not yet bought the house, £3 gets you a copy of the house deeds from the land registry. Find out if there are covenants or restrictions on the use of that bit of land, e.g it might be designated amenity land. Or look for a more suitable house to buy that gives the garden you want?

Is it as bad as you think? In your picture the bottom string looks at too high an angle (compared to the newel post it is trying to engage with) if it was at the correct angle it would be lower and the "adjustment" needed would be less. Still the manufacturers problem, unless they start throwing the "you checked the drawings" card at you (I know someone that got stung by that) Ours got the newel posts wrong as well, but thankfully that was all, and it then took them 2 more tries to get the newel posts right.

My BIL hung on to the end in charge of decommisioning one of the major instalations. I baled out nearly 30 years ago, glad I did doing so preserved my pension.

I had involvement with JET nearly 30 years ago now, and it was always the standing joke that Fusion power will be 25 years away, always. It was certainly an impressive bit of kit and fun to have worked on, but whether it represents value for money is doubtful. But if you don't try an idea you will never know. I still know a couple of people who worked on JET right to it's end, and in the latter years their job became maintaining a >30 year old control and instrumentation system built of now obsolete technology, so they became experts in repairing and maintaining the old kit, and scouring the world market to buy up any spares that became available.

Until recently, house buyers largely ignored EPC's and bought a house because it looked nice. Then complained it was draughty, cold and cost a fortune to heat. Landlords are the low hanging fruit, easy to say you can't let a property unless it is an EPC C, a lot harder to say you can't buy or sell one below EPC C. In recent years a lot of poor EPC properties will have been sold by landlords as they don't want or can't afford to upgrade them. What is really needed is a mechanism to make poor EPC houses genuinely be worth less than good ones. Quite how you achieve that without being "unfair" is difficult.

It saddens me how little regard people have for tradesmen. You think they are all a lazy overcharging bunch of wasters? I had always preferred to charge by the hour rather than the day, that way I do 7 hours, you pay for 7 hours. I also preferred to give estimates not quotes so again you only pay for what the job takes. Every time I have mentioned this I get shot down and told people prefer a fixed price. I always got the vast majority of my work through word of mouth and recommendations. That is the lifeblood of most sole traders. If you really have such a low opinion of them, don't recommendation, and they will soon be out of business.