ProDave

If you have a neighbour that you dislike, put it on the side facing their garden.

Begin by costing the build on a cost per square metre basis. I am hoping to get mine for £1000 per square metre but that is with me doing a lot of the work myself.

You are approaching your spare garage door problem from the wrong angle. You have the door, so you obviously need to build a garage. All you need is 3 walls and a roof to complete it.

At £1K for a building that size, that you know will be sturdy, that appears to be good value per square foot compared to a matchwood ready made shed.

Hi and welcome to the forum. I am one that bypassed an architect, because my experience was they based their fees on a percentage of the estimated build cost. I don't know where they got their figures from but their estimate of the build cost was about double what it actually cost us (so of course that means their fees were double what they should be), but others have had better experiences and there are some architects on this forum who may be able to help.

Yes it is very solid. the pallet planks that make up the cladding are about 3/4" thick. The frame is quite sturdy and has diagonal bracing on all sides so it won't start leaning when the wind blows. It's staked down to the ground so it won't blow away. It's all been painted with the modern version of creosote. the lighter brown on the rear was the first to be done and the front, looking darker was the most recent. I suspect it will all lighten up fairly quickly. I like creosote for stuff like this, so easy to apply (and re apply) and effective at repelling water and preventing rot. I forgot to say, the roof timbers are 6 X2 and 4 X 2 timbers that have previously been used as shuttering for a concrete slab, so again, re using previously used timber.

I was in town today and called in at the big orange shed. Out of curiosity I had a look at the sheds they had on display. To get a shed the same size as my pallet shed, would have cost £400 all bar a few pence. I wasn't expecting it to be wonderful, but it was far worse than I had expected. The cladding timber was probably little over 1/4" thick. The frame appeared to be little bigger than 1" square sections. There was no diagonal bracing relying on just the nails in the flimsy planks to give it rigidity. If you leaned on one corner of it, you could flex the structure and make it wobble. If I bought one of those and put it up in my garden, I would be amazed if it lasted one Highland winter without collapsing in a pile.

It's just about finished. I went into town today and bought the roofing sheets, a cost of about £100 so that's the total spend on this shed.

The 12KW will give you a better shower than any electric shower will.

Great video Ed. But that drone footage. Are there NO hills where you live? that really re defines a flat landscape where you are.

I filled mine in August (it's large enough to last a whole year) Traditionally that has always been the cheapest time to fill it, I usually use Boiler Juice to look at the price and decide just when to order a fill. I hope this is the last time I will fill it (hoping it will have sold before the tank is empty) but I said that when I filled it last year.......

What I want to know though is the cost per unit of electricity and gas from each supplier? THAT is what is important. Could it be you have just been over paying and built up a large credit with them so they are reducing the monthly amount to slowly pay down that credit (i.e no REAL saving?) I plot the weekly electricity and solar PV meter readings so I know how many units I use and generate each week, and there is a definite correlation, good week of high solar PV = reduction in usage reading for that week.

I take it from the pictures that your plot is the last picture that has had extensive ground work and the bit you would like to buy is the overgrown similar strip to the left in the last picture? The fly tipping can be dealt with by a decent fence along the top of the stone wall, and I can see with relatively little work it could provide an interesting shaded bit of garden just be thinning the lower branches of the trees and creating a path through, perhaps to a shed / summerhouse at the end? My guess is, that seeing your house being built by digging into the steep bank, the neighbours may view their bank as another potential building plot.

The voltage drop issue is nothing to do with fooling the metering. It's that inverters are set to trip or limit output at 253 volts. With many UK supplies being 245V there is not much headroom for volt drop (which perversely is voltage "rise" in this case) before the inverter trips. So although a 2.5mm cable will handle the load, it is wise to fit a much larger cable to minimise the risk of voltage issues.

You can buy coffee tables made out of pallets. When I suggested that for the left overs............ NO

I see a bottle of beer is now the standard forum yard stick to show somethings size.

Making progress. All it wants now is a roof (I am going to have to spend some money) then I can put the OSB floor panels down. The windows are some secondary double glazing units I have had for ages, just a single pane of glass set into a plastic frame. We used to use them as cloches for growing vegetables. SWMBO came to have a look at this creation, and she has named it the "Steptoe Shed"

The inverter might as well go in the services room in the loft. Provision for a conduit to take the dc cables from the inverter onto the roof. Include a dedicated cable from the inverter to the consumer unit, 2.5mm is okay as long as it's not a very long run but no harm in putting a 4mm or even 6mm twin and earth in for it. When you chose your consumer unit, get a "high integrity" one. This usually has two banks of mcb's each covered by an rcd and a couple of ways not covered by an rcd. Feed the inverter into one of the non rcd protected circuits via an rcbo. What you do NOT want is the inverter feeding into an ordinary mcb fed as one of a bank from an rcd.

It would be very hard to get to to fit something to this one, it's more about knowing what to fit in the new house to make all things water work quietly.

I don't think there is one in the cistern? If there is point to it. Part opening the ballofix valve just makes the noise from a different place.

That's been my findings with bought sheds. As well as being flimsy, they never incorporate any diagonal bracing whatsoever into the frame. We do have 2 shop bought sheds but both have had the frame upgraded. See my Pallet shed thread, that has a far more substantial frame and thicker cladding than a bought shed. It might not look pretty but it is far more robust. My other pet hate is a felted roof. Absolutely the last thing I would put on a shed roof. If you don't like Stone's container idea, how about a static caravan? Our local dealer will sell you a "worn out" one for £500 that's suitable as a shed or storage or workshop and you can sell it on when you are done.

NOT my experience. I didn't know such things and the concealed cistern in the next door en-suite is screwed to the studwork of the wall. the flushing noise is not to bad but it's the 10 seconds of "WOOOOSH" as the cistern fills up that is the irritating noise. We have very high water pressure and no flow restrictors. Is there anything EASY I can retro fit to make this silent?

Actually there IS already a solution to kettle energy usage and we have one. It's called an ECO kettle. It has two water chambers, a reservoir and a boiling chamber. So you fill it whenever it is empty from a tap in the normal way. Then when you want to make a cup of tea, you press a plunger to allow water to flow from the reservoir chamber into the boiling chamber, you let in just as much as you want to boil, then turn it on. It boils quicker and just boils what you need. Of course you can do that with an ordinary kettle (just put in as much as you need) but people are to lazy and it means a trip to the tap every time you want to make a cuppa. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eco-Cordless-Kettle-White-3000W/dp/B000XJ1OAS

But by then we all all be using kettles with a 100W element because that "saves energy" Even more cynical me.

I might add some extra planks to make it hit and miss. But probably only on the south and west more exposed walls, and when I have dismantled some more pallets.