ProDave

Up is the new trendy. When you see it on Grand Designs, remember you saw it here first.

Okay

Well my £15 mixer arrived today. Slight faux pas. Description on the bay wasn't too good. It turns out the outlet is on the top and a larger diameter thread. I suspect it was intended to connect to a rigid pipe to a fixed shower head, not a hose to a handheld. Never mind, I soon discovered the outlet boss screws into the main body,and the thread in the body is nearly * the same size so I swapped them over from the old to the new. All now working, and i won't grumble about the hose coming out of the top instead of out of the bottom. * they were the same diameter thread but a slightly different pitch. The boss should screw in, until it bottoms out on an O ring flange. But due to the slight thread pitch difference it only goes in about 3 turns and binds before the O ring reaches the flange. Solved with ptfe tape.

MDPE is okay buried in the ground. It's what Scottish Water do here. The only duct is where it passes under the road. I see my neighbour is having "issues" with SW. they have refused his connection. One of the reasons being he put his toby too far from the road. I wonder if the fact he put the water pipe in a black duct under the road is the other issue?

There's a lighting shop in Inverness that has lots of posh light fittings, but every one seems to have an extra 0 stuck on the end. We did buy one fitting from there in their "bargain" corner, but everything else was simply over priced.

Up here it would seem the planners are trying to push the local vernacular back in time. When i built my present house 13 years ago there was no trouble getting planning for a house that generally followed the local vernacular but used concrete tiles on the roof. This time round the planners pushed me hard wanting real slate on the roof and I had to fight for the one and only concrete tile that looks a bit like slate that they would accept.

We have three different widths of gardening spade. The narrowest one the "lady spade" does a wonderful job on the building site for just such uses. My favourite general purpose shovel is now about an inch shorter than when new due to wear, but I like it as it's so light weight. It's like triggers broom, it's on it's second handle.

I carried them up the ladder, 2 at a time was all I could carry. SWMBO stacked them on the scaffold. Later she passed them from the scaffold up to me on the roof. 1800 tiles so 900 trips up the ladder at roughly 10ft up the ladder per trip = 9000ft of ascent up that bloody ladder or 3 Munro's up a ladder. My knees knew it. And that's not including the cut tiles, a fair few more trips up and down the ladder (though before the windows were in, I was climbing into the house to cut them upstairs) The only reason I did it myself is lack of money. I had a quote of £3000 to tile the roof and I would gladly have paid that if I could have afforded it. At my own hourly rate that's 120 hours. I am sure it took me a lot longer than 120 hours to tile the entire roof.

I tiled my first roof 30 years ago when I built a garage in a previous house, totally different sort of tile. This one is interlocking concrete tiles. Same technique as present house. I just watched the roofers when tiling the main house and copied what they did for the garage roof. So when it came to this house I had already done it before. As above the setting out takes some working out. you have to measure the total length top to bottom and work out how many rows of ties you need. There is a stated minimum and maximum gauge for the type of tile, and as it worked out the best solution was almost on the maximum gauge for the tile I used. When setting out the battens, it's easy if you cut two bits of 2 by 2 to just the right length for the gap between battens. I have never tried a slate roof, that would ne doubt be harder, or a different skill to learn. the planners here really wanted me to use slate, but I argued no, the houses either side, in fact all but one in this road had concrete tiles so that is what I wanted to use. the compromise is they approved Marley Edgemere Riven, which is a slightly thinner than normal concrete tile with a surface finish to look ever so slightly like slate when viewed from a distance by someone with less than 20:20 vision.

There's a lot about the Chichester canal here http://chichestercanal.org.uk/about-chichester-canal/chichester-canal-history/ There's only a couple of miles of navigable waterway now and the houseboat moorings are very close to the sea lock into Chichester harbour. They say the sea locks are still operated occasionally to allow houseboat movements. They face a very big challenge if they ever want to re open more of the canal as a couple of major roads have been built with just a culvert where the canal was, so would need major work to allow boats to pass.

There will also have been size limitations on the berth, they mentioned a height limit (which is why they had the sunken roof deck so not to exceed the height) so I am sure there will have been length and beam limits on the berth as well. It was certainly a lot larger and a lot nicer looking than the other houseboats adjacent. Maintaining the wood cladding is a logistical exercise in itself.

Yes that's right, it was not fixed. They also made the "house" a little bit longer than the float by mistake so it overhangs a little at the ends. It would not be hard to bolt a substantial timber block to the underside of the house floor right in the corners of the bilge so it could not possibly move. I asked about sewage. There were two visible "pipes" from the house to the shore, but only small diameter. I can see that being for water and electricity supply. all I can think for drainage would be a macerator type pump that would then cope with a small pipe and perhaps a slight uphill run to some mains drainage point. I think I would want a floating pontoon "patio" ourtside those doors. This is on a short disused landlocked bit of canal, so there won't be any padding boats. Though I do here rumblings about restoring navigation to the Chichester canal and restoring the sea locks.

But with building land, you own it, and you usually get a garden, parking space etc. With a floating home you don't own the water, you pay rental to whoever does, be that a marina, EA, CRT etc and you have to pay to use their facilities. The "limit" on floating homes is of course finding a mooring with residential permission. this sort of program never tells you how much rental they pay for a mooring, and if they need to buy the lease of the mooring to start with.

@Nickfromwales Yes we do want a rainfall shower in the new house. BUT we also want a walk in shower with no doors just a big shower and a big fixed glass panel. That creates it's own problem in that the shower head needs to be remote from the controls so you can turn it on and wait for the hot water to get to the head before you step in. Our present shower works as you can open the door, put one hand in, turn it on, withdraw that hand quickly until the hot water gets there. you can't do that with a big fixed glass panel, hence needing remote valves. Another topic for another day when we get nearer to that decision.

Just go and say hello? Ours was a bit different, our first plot was large enough to have a static caravan on to live in during the build. The first time we met the neighbours was when we had just completed the purchase and came up for a week and stayed on the plot in our touring caravan.

The house I am wiring at the moment has the floor slab cast as one, with no expansion joints. There are two large cracks visible in the slab, and not at the points where you would think was a "weak point" As he is planning to polish the concrete and varnish it, an expansion joint or 2 would probably have been better than 2 cracks.

I watched the first of this series last night. They were trying to say that "floating homes" is a new concept, but houseboats have been around as long as i can remember. the only difference this time was they were trying to make a nice looking well insulated home, compared to some houseboats that are just slum boats. As usual over played drama, and lack of any details. What they were building looked like a standard SIP construction with 100, maybee 150mm thick panels, and they claimed it would not need heating as the 700W given off by two occupants would be plenty to heat it. No details of how a houseboat on a permanent mooring deals with waste water for instance.

Well I have just "ordered" a new one from flea bay for £15 including postage. I will let you know how I get on. If it lasts 4 years again at that price, then a £150 Grohe one would have to last 40 years to be better value.

It's the way it was always done in the 1960's, known as the spider method. There is nothing wrong with it apart from you have to put the junction box somewhere accessible. The wiring regs don't specify how to wire a lighting circuit so still perfectly legal. Make sure you label everything and do all your switch drops from the junction box in 3 core & earth in case that switch is ever used for 2 way switching, and label every cable as it enters the jnction box, a sharpie pen is good.

I will be interested to see what render system you are using and how it compares to what I have used. All looking very good so far. Are the hen's laying?

I would take the Frametherm and Celotex topping all the way down in the habitable bit of the roof, thus insulating the voids. Then no need to insulate them as well and it gives you a warm storage space if you care to put a couple of trap doors in.

Re the warranty, we used NHBC last time and their surveyor had to comer for a final inspection before they issued their completion certificate and start of their cover. for some reason it took them 6 months from the final visit to produce the paperwork which effectively meant we got 6 months longer cover.

But my point is BC have approved nothing more than 100mm of insulation, so why would I bother with all sorts of extra bits of fiddly metalwork? If the furrings on their own were a "solution" then I might have considered that as it would leave the void clear so future cables might be possible, but if it's furrings and insulation then why bother. I am not a "typical tradesman" it is just in this case I don't have a problem, so I am being forced to "solve" something that is not a problem to me and just looking at what I thought might have been an option.

For completion, your BC officer would normally inspect it and draw up a list of anything he feels does not comply. to move in before it's finished, up here in Scotland, you can request a "certificate of temporary habitation" from BCO. for that the house does not need to be complete, but basically safe. It has to be wind and watertight, have a staircase and banisters that comply, have at least one functioning bathroom, a kitchen, and functioning heating. In our present house we moved in like this with just one of the 5 bedroms and one of the 3 bathrooms in a working state.

Personally, I have never had a problem with sound insulation between upstairs and downstairs. I don't have a "complaint" with just plasterboard direct to the joists, floorboard on top and nothing in between. So this is one aspect of the regs I find is "solving" a problem that I do not have. My spec says 100mm and that is what I will fit, though I see it as an unecessary expense and it will be in the way if I later decide to add extra cables for anything. I was merely asking as what I understood was being proposed in this new build I am wiring is just these furrrings and nothing else extra.