ProDave

I would agree with all of that. The specially designed leak around the window that drips down on your right foot when driving, which of course you can't move out of the way. For all their faults (and there are many) I still like them. I regretted selling my first. I don't intend to sell this one. There was a brief period a few months back when I though our pot of money might run out before I got ther house wind and watertight so I actually advertised the Landy for sale, and felt very upset when someone enquired about buying it, but thankfully he was too far away and didn't bother. Oh and my first Landrover was the only car I have ever sold for more than I bought it for, and this one is going up in value and is easily worth more than I paid for it. Here's my largest "tow" though it's actually not that heavy.

The Irish roads were indeed "interesting" you could be driving along a beautifully surfaced stretch for a couple of miles (with those EU signs along the side of the road) and suddenly, without warning, you transitioned to the "old" rough pot holed road that threatened to shake your car to bits until you slowed to third gear. I loved the "accident black spot" signs as well.

Possibly. I can get it locally from Highland Stoves at Cromarty, but I am sure they are more expensive than some of the on line suppliers. What I found is the stove is the cheap bit. Twin wall flue's are about £100 per metre, so the flue and terminals etc will cost twice the cost of the stove or more.

Re the "blackening" or darkening. Another self builderr near here has clad his garage in larch and is planning the same for parts of the house. Some of the garage has got large areas of black staining already after just 6 months rather than turning silver. He describes it as "sap staining" and is in "discussions" with the supplier about the matter. Personally I hate untreated "silver" timber, as it never weathers evenly. The small amount of timber cladding i will have on the sun rom will be treated (oiled probably) to try and keep it even and wood coloured. Just about the only house I have ever seen where it "silvered" properly and evenly was one on Grand Designs at Dungeness. It had almost no overhangs and that coupled with the windy and probably dry costal climate helped, so Stones' house on Orkney may be the same.

OP asked for a "dry" stove which I took to mean a room heater only with no water heating capability.

I have had a holiday in the south of Eire and know what you mean. Where we live is in the township of Ardross. A term I had only perviously heard used in South Africa (with a very different meaning) before I came to Scotland. Our little group of houses comprises about 10 dwellings that will probably in time rise to maybe 15 when all the available land in this group is built on. The local planning policy has a presumption agains new houses in the "hinterland" unless they fit within an established group of dwellings like ours (ours was an infill plot in that group) It is a strange concept to get so many small groups of houses compared to the south of England where there are more concentrated villages, but you soon get used to it and I quite like it. As to footpaths, one memorable occasion in Eire we were looking for a path that should have existed to climb a mountain. While we were parked in a field entrance some farmers came by driving some cattle up the road to another field. After having a chat and all that he simply offered that we leave the car parked in his field entrance and cross 2 of his fields and we would find the path. I can't see many farmers in England offering that. In Scotland we are years ahead and have the right to free access to the countryside (with a few sensible limits) so if you want to walk accross a field you can do so and generally nobody worries about you doing so. There are not so many footpaths up here as arguably they are not needed as you don't all have to stick to the same path. That does present some challenges as climbing some mountains up here, you won't find anything resembling a decent path until you are some way up and all the different approaches converge.

Springdale 3KW stove with room sealed kit, traditional look. It's what we are planning to use http://www.stovesareus.co.uk/burley-springdale-wood-burning-stove.html

That link works, but the one in your original post still says private.

As a business, if you want to use Parcel Force infrequently, use senditnow.com That's a subsidiary of Parcelforce but at a much cheaper price than the standard parcelforce prices. I used to use them a lot when I was selling stuff on ebay. You book it on line, they come and collect from you. I can;t see why any business can't do that infrequently for H&I orders.

The scaffold link tells me this is a private video.

I paid less than half that per roll from SIG so look again. (I bought 65 rolls) Delivered on their own waggon, one with a forklift truck hanging on the back to unload it.

Feel free to start asking questions about treatment plants etc.

In the case of my old digger = "cheapest howdens kitchen"

Hi and welcome (back) glad you found us in our new home.

Interesting. One of those was my thread where I arrived at the detail I now have. The other concludes you don't need to ventilate a warm roof and I needn't have bothered.

That picture above seems to show what you do if you have the felt above the counter battens, Then the vent strip can go under the support tray. That won't work if you have the membrane on the sarking and then the counter battens, which is why i have the vent strips on top of the support tray. The bottom of the membrane gets sandwiched between the tray and the vent strip and then the flapping edge I cut off with a knife. Thinking more, that picture is reallty a detail for a cold roof, where you want to ventilate the whole loft space and it doesn't matter where the air gets in, as long as it gets into the cold roof space. I am talking of a warm roof where I only want to ventilate the small gap between the membrane and the under side of the tiles or box section roofing, so there is nowhere else for the ventilator to go but above the membrane.

It's not uncommon to get a still, cold, sunny spell here in winter. Open the back door and the air is warm and the ground is frost free. Open the front door on the north side and it's like opening the fridge, and there's permafrost building up where the sun never shines. There is one road near here that I avoid in winter. It's in the shadow of a hill so never gets any sun for nearly 3 months of the year, never gets salted, and that can build up a really thick layer of ice that stays for weeks. There is a huge differene here between north and south sides. Granted when it's blowing a hooley from the west it will make no difference.

Related to this, the easiest for me would be to put them both through the east facing wall. It would be harder to do, but part of me says to put them through the south wall as the air there is more likely to be warmer. Likewise the worst place to put them would be through the north facing wall as that's much more likely to suck in very cold air. Or am I talking nonsense?

Yes that old chestnut. Fire door to go between the house and the adjoined garage. So needs FD30 or preferably FD60 rating. But the house is warm and air tight, the garage, although insulated will be a cold space and draughty (partly due to the building regs requirement for ventilation) So what I want is a good, well insulated, well sealed door that's fire rated. An internal fire door just doesn't cut the mustard. Howdens do some of their exterior doors with a fire rating, but they don't quote U values and it will just be a timber door in a timber frame and I doubt it will have much in the way of sealing so probably hardly any better than an internal fire door. Any suggestions? this seems to be a "gap" in the market.

It's that strip above the eaves protector and the membranne This is the detail for my sun room. The box profile sheeting (mocked up with the spirit level) won't quite touch the ventilator strip. The eaves filler for the box profile roofing will fix (probably with glue) to the top of the ventilator strip. I'm not yet sure how you ventilate the ridge of a box profile roof.

I can't see exchange rates as the cause for higher UK prices. The item still has to get from its factory in whatever country, to the UK and is therefore subject to exchange rate transactions. If anything, going via a third country could add another exchange rate transaction and commission, so logically that ought to be a more expensive option, not a cheaper one. The transport one also bugs me a LOT. A lot of couriers charge a big premium to ship something north of Glasgow / Edinburgh. It has been the cause of many lost deals, when a particular supplier will not even entertain the idea of using a different courier that does not charge silly money to deliver here. They are so stubborn, that's the courier we use take it or leave it, so I usually leave it. One can only conclude they have plenty of business without us in the far north.

Perhaps the law has changed? We had to go the 0% credit card route about 7 years ago, when a certain bank that uses a dark coloured horse as it's logo shafted us and having verbally agreed a small extension to a small mortgage, when it came to do the paperwork they had "tightened their lending criteria" and we no longer qualified for any mortgage with them, let alone a small extension to the one we had. This was after we had paid the deposit for new windows and doors so a 0% credit card became the best way to finance it. The T&C then definitely said payments went first to paying down the 0% ballance. If they were the last bank standing I would not give them, the pleasure of any of my banking business again, having been a trustworthy loyal customer for 30 years before they shafted us.

Attention to detail is the one that gets me. That really costs nothing apart from time. My neighbour is having built what he hopes will be a low energy home. He has cut some corners like only having 2g glass in his rationel windows, and not having mvhr so trickle vents and extractor fans. But while I have been working in there wiring it, I have felt it was never as warm as it should have been. It didn't take long to realise (pre plasterboard going on) that a draught was coming in all around the windows. The windows had been fitted direct into the timber frame with no visible means of actually sealing them to the frame. In the end I felt compelled to mention this to the client as I didn't want to see his house being built with a "plasterboard tent" with cold air behind the plasterboard. I don't know if that got back to the builder and he actually did anything to seal the windows.

If using a 0% credit card, transfer your ballance, then put it in a drawer and DO NOT use it for general purchases. That's because any payments you make go first to paying down the 0% balance, so if you just paid off what you spent in a month, that balance would not go down and you will be charged interest on it at the normal higher rate.

It was even easier for me. I had been using Screwfix before they launched plumbfix and electricfix, mostly buying electrical stuff,. so when they launched electricfix they simply asked me would I like to join? and that was it.