Ferdinand

Welcome.

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These are the building materials I have on site. A pallet, unfortunately under about a ton of river pebbles. A fence panel from my bin stores, where the posts snapped in the wind in Jan/Feb. A good quantity of half-rounds, which could make a dense ‘horse fence’. Have about 20 rounds knocker posts elsewhere. Which one to use? Those pavers weigh 65kg each, so I am not playing with those on my own and they are probably sub optimal as a material.

Think I know where I am with this now. This is my veg side of the garden, though in the later years mum let one frame go to potential bamboo and another to mint; may have to deal with this. I think I'll pair the dalek with a bin in one end of one of the frames - made either from pallets (frames are 4' wide) or post and half rounds, which I have here already - then I can turn the stuff from one to the other if necessary. Presumably the soil under the movable Council Bin will be improved, so it will be good to reposition that occasionally. That bit of wall is next door’s that fell down, and is waiting for them to repair. Ferdinand

I think one of our Scottish members is doing that with a plastic tin and a dry toilet(?) I think it is fill 'er up, change the bucket, put a tightfitting lid on it and leave alone for 18 months. No idea who, though. F

If it's your only suntrap then I perhaps sun loving veggies or plants. How about tomatoes or aubergines? Something to nibble whilst sitting on the deck. Or something slightly exotic with flowers, or something scented when you are most likely to sit there.

Can you post something with details of: Where's North? Plot extent and boundaries. Neighbours, trees and views. Extent of upstairs. A sketch plan would be fine. You will get more useful comments. And welcome.

Oh. And sawing old oak can be oodles of fun.

You want them "in stick" - that is on a pallet or wooden blocks, then stacked up with 20x20mm short lengths of wood between them under cover in a place with reasonable ventilation. There may be something in sawing them into thinner chunks (but perhaps not quite small enough for your bookcase chunks in case you have to re-cut) first. If you have one that you will be cutting up to use, you can cut a "bookshelf sized plus a bit extra" length off one end and look at the cross section to see the internal condition. To dry out from damp will take at least several months imo. Perhaps one of our wood people can comment? My parents' house still had original medieval cruck beams in the wall in sound condition, that were probably oak. OTOH the ceilings were full of reused 10"x10" to 12"x12" oak beams - one poor condition one (woodworm damage) ended up in the garden as a lawn separator and that took 15+ years to decay in contact with the ground. Ferdinand

I think one approach would be to saw a few mm off the face, to remove damage and give you a good surface. Or treat it like restoring a floor, and use a belt sander. Then treat them .. or just treat them and leave the surface as is. Ferdinand

Looks great.

Welcome.

It is around, and you can get router bits to do it, but not common. F

They are answering the phone if you want to negotiate ? .

Try these guys, though it does not look quite as good as the local. £1.60 per m online incl VAT but delivery to be added for 94 x 16mm bullnose primed. That may do you. https://roncurrie.co.uk/94x16mm-4-bullnose-mdf-skirting-board-primed-various-lengths?search=skirting and various others. https://roncurrie.co.uk/index.php?route=product/search&search=skirting They are my local and I did a bungalow with their skirting.

Nice to see continuing progress. You'll have some stories to tell.

Cheers. Hoepfully you'll get something that meets your needs.

Interesting, for me Bulb are nowhere - £7 a month more than British Gas, £12 more than the cheapest minnow. Ferdinand

Found the Trailer. "The thrill of wrapping your legs around a tornado of pounding pistons". I need to sit down.

Welcome. 1 - Depending what you intend to do, you should first be aware what sort and quality of soil you have, and what is in it (eg lots of rubble that needs removing or coping with). 2 - Do you have a plan for what is going where? eg sitting area etc. 3 - On the wall, there are lots of ways of doing retaining walls - and you need to think about retaining the soil round the outside - fences won't do that for long. (As am aside, we are in process of starting a Buildhub Gardening Blog which may - or may not - be useful for you. It will appear this bh weekend. I hope.). Ferdinand

That rings true - my Grandfather's family used to have a toolmaking company in Sheffield.

Tend to think that BG is the wise option here. Martin Lewis has been arguing for a few months that it is fairly unique to have such competitive offers from the big players.

I see that I can leave my current long term fixed rate deal from 12th April. My current annual bill is approx £1100 for both fuels on a long-term fix. Usage about 3200 kWh elec, 16000 kWh gas, for a 2000 sqft house. Should be falling as mum passed away last November. I am with Co-op Energy, who have just been taken over by Octopus. The best offer they have for me is about £970 excluding energy use reductions. 1 year fixes. Some with no exit fees. The best offers I am seeing are about £830 from the minnows (Orbit, Yorkshire Energy etc), and £890 from British Gas. 1 year fix. No exit fee. Does anyone have any hyperintelligent opinions about how to play this? (*) (I am probably inclined to go with British Gas, so I have a big player but cans still jump both ways depending on what happens as we come back on stream after the current restrictions.) Ferdinand * I would ask a Hoovooloo, but my sunglasses are filtering it out.

There is an excellent Flush Toilet article on Wiki, which covers a ludicrous amount of ground. And there also seems to be a thing called a "pressure assisted flush", which works at .. er .. higher pressure. F

These are normally amongst the trees I think.