Ferdinand

Welcome. If you read a few build blogs on the site, and Jeremy's offsite blog here, you will see that slightly obsessive attention to detail, and good "write it all down" practices, repeatedly saves current and future issues. You really cannot overdo the staff work in advance. Unfortunately for rapid reading, the most important lessons of all the blogs are also all in the miniscule details so you need to read it thoroughly ?. Ferdinand

Clearly you need to triangulate the single quote you have. OTOH you now have a detailed spec - can you get one of the online cost / QS services to give you a number as a target. They are not very expensive compared to the differences in quotes - a couple of hundreds iirc. Ferdinand

Sorry to hear your news, @Simplysimon. I don't think I can see a way round it short of finding the party who got it wrong - or cutting a deal. But I like the sound of that. Self-build beer goggles work the other way round. ? Minor disasters are an excuse for a series of medicinal beverages.

Not until later. It does not become known until you find out that your your cat / car / pallet of paving slabs has been replaced by an empty space. F

Um. These events never happen. My bath's plughole had definitely not been disconnected from the pipe since 2009 or so :-). To be fair that is not a Schrodinger - it is more like a mugging; our cat which was our cat but we did not know it yet a the cat had not moved itself in. That is more an unknown unknown. F

Thanks all. Always useful to have a range of opinions. Unfortunately since having a range cooker, all the drawers are now at the far end of the kitchen from the food prep areas ?, so options may be limited.

Yes, however cars have a far shorter replacement cycle. 83% of cars are less than 13 years old. (Daily Telegraph), and therefore benefit from improvements far more quickly. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/04/12/average-age-car-uk-roads-highest-level-since-turn-millennium/ Only about 15% of houses are post 1990.

Agree in some things - however, I have no mass data on that and its impact. However, even if you assume they are all actually Ds as well, then the huge bulk of the issue is still legacy stock, just on sheer numbers of houses (90%). This is rather different in other European countries, either because more of the old stock was destroyed in WW2, or because the culture is more frequent replacement.

I don't think carrots always work either. Free loft insulation has been continually available and has not been taken up widely. I think it needs elements of both - perhaps a neutral stick that gets equivalent carrots post-facto when implement, but that causes a cost if not done. Sticks worked on car fuel consumption. Witness how when VED was based on CO2 emissions, within about 15 years half of the new cars were paying £30 or less. Or that overall efficiency is far better than it was in 2000, despite the quarter ton (?) of safety equipment we are all forced to carry around now.

The thing there is that newbuild is basically irrelevant to reducing emissions. * Already newbuilds are a B on the EPC scale (give or take). And newbuilds only add at present - after output has almost doubled from the lowpoint - around 0.6% to the stock. As the BBC piece put it (or the background work) 90% of houses were built before 1990. A newbuild - even a bog standard building regs newbuild - uses roughly half as much energy as an average legacy house. And 85-90% of them are legacy houses, which are therefore responsible for perhaps 95% if emissions. Legacy houses are responsible for virtually the whole housing elements of emissions. And even if my assumptions are some way out, that is still the landscape with which we are working. * I am ignoring workmanship and attention to detail factors. Ferdinand

Welcome to the Madhouse. It looks like a project - and a nice looking pub within staggering distance. I would say one important thing is not to rush too much ... allow yourself plenty of headspace and time, so that you catch potential mistakes rather than having to live with them for 25 years. Ferdinand

Nice to see some media catching up and talking about it, but some holes in the report. I would make the following comments: The headline is imo misleading, as the C target is 10 years in the future and only applies to rental. Saying that 2/3 of houses fail as they do not meet a 10 or 15 years ahead future target therefore end of the world is poor. But the BBC Shared Data Unit is not the most comprehensive source of analysis (ie they leave important things out). The original background report is much better. The claim that a C is "just above average" is controversial. In fact only 25% of Owner Occupied properties are C or above. And Social Rented is substantially better, which will throw the claim off more. PRS is slightly better than OO. The Beeboids forgot to mention that of the 62% of houses below EPC Grade C, three quarters are Owner Occupied (three quarters of approx two thirds of the overall housing stock). That is the elephant in the room that needs to be slaughtered, and that imo they should be highlighting. Probably only addressable in year one or two of a Parliament for political reasons. One for this year's budgets, which need to change the agenda. I think there is some UK self-hate / self-flagellation happening. Across many even of the advanced EU countries EPCs (with all their limitations) are not even fully public data (eg Austria, Belgium, Italy, France, Germany, Finland). Meanwhile, Germany gets more than 1/3 of its energy from coal (UK: 3%). Solutions? I very much agree with Tim Forman's comments, though they look to be rather large cost numbers; I think we need to look initially for a return to pre-Green Deal volumes of retrofits. I don't think they will put it on energy prices, though imo they probably should. Ed Milliband drove up energy prices massively via his green taxes and got a hell of a lot of stick. Personally I would like to see a price ratchet as we had on petrol/diesel. More preferably a single carbon tax on everything. I remain skeptical of "can't afford it" arguments. If a quarter of us can afford £500 to £1500 a year per dog (PDSA numbers), and more of us cars, then we should be able to afford to do at least small things to our houses, and small things make a huge difference, and loft insulation is already free to the user. I've posted about Stamp Duty and Council Tax before, so I'll leave those alone, though imo it needs both as Stamp Duty only comes up when we move. Probably combined with tax relief on improvement costs or similar. The cost needs to be leveraged out of a slightly reduced value forced on the property. 1-2 years of house price increases would cover most of the basic improvement costs. Ferdinand

You need to be sure that changing the existing permission will change the CIL liability. It may be you need a new permission (potentially).

@Redoctober has that right, but also see how you go. Once you have the sprayer and can do the whole thing in a day or two, you can do more coats rather than thicker coats - as that gives you more control. Important to take time to learn and prep, though.

May help:

Progress is happening. The electric reclining sofa has gone, and the shelves are up for the prototype green wall.

I am looking for a new knife block, and have been looking at options. Of the different types of knife blocks etc. I don't think we have discussed this one before, so I thought a wider thread might be beneficial. 1 - Magnetic "hanging on the wall" ideas. I am not keen on these as they seem to me to be vulnerable to accidental knocking, and if that is going to happen I do not want my sharp, heavy knives falling from that height. If they are going to get knocked I want it to be difficult for them to go beyond the worktop. Also the blade edges are exposed - not good. 2 - Magnetic "stick to the front" knife blocks to sit on the worktop I am not a fan of magnetic blocks on worktops either though they are imo not as risky should something happen. And again the blade edge is still exposed. 3 - Slotted sections in drawers Potentially an advantage is that the knives are hidden away - but correspondingly inaccessible. But they are either stored on their cutting edge blunting it a little, or risk having the cutting edge exposed on thicker knives. 4 - Blocks with Plastic Rods No comment really on these, except that the ability to wash the rods in a dishwasher is very good - but they seem to take days to dry. And there is no airflow around the blades when stored. And little bits of plastic get attached to the knives and they need a wipe every time. 5 - Traditional Knife Blocks or Variations This is what I have at present, and I like that I can store the knives on their backs safely, or vertically. I do not like the extra space taken up by the angled block. I currently need a new one, as I need to store more than a dozen knives plus small ones ie paring, utility and steak knives. So comments would be most welcome. Ferdinand

I do not believe a word of it. You are just trying to sound more respectable than the rest of us. (Love the artwork. Some of us are very interested in diversions.) ?

Welcome. I read that Ombudswoman, and I thought we had someone to make all our decisions for us. Gin is sometimes preferable to meditation. For a bit. Welcome. We were all novices once. Judging by your name, you are either eclectic in your interests or a bus driver - both of which are advantageous. Ferdinand PS I make it 3 acronyms in your first post /pedant .

An explanation for the nickname ? . I'm punting for a Hookah pipe in the @Puff kitchen. Regrettably I am old enough to know all about Magic Dragons, though I still have to pinch myself to think of "sealing wax" not "ceiling wax", having internalised the song whilst very young and never having met seals on letters. Presumably other people things of seals as in grey seals when they hear it. Apropos of Puff the Magic Dragon, I see he made today's Google Doodle.

You've done it now ... we are going to have to have an explanation. I've just been listening to Peter, Paul and Mary (as opposed to Mary, Mungo and Midge) explaining why it has nothing to do with .. er .. weed.

Those clubs may have been given him as a freebie PR thing ? . I've occasionally run into footballers as potential property investors, and those I have known of have very much been interested only in the money. I am sure that others are interested in enviro or nice-to-live or tenant comfort questions.

Welcome to the Fun Factory. Which part of Wales are you in? High, low, windy, rainy, sunny? Rule 1: The stupid question is the one that is not asked. Ferdinand

I either bolt the posts to concrete repair spurs, or use Postsavers as above. Either way should give 2 decades of life. Postsavers work by protecting a wooden post at the point where it rots - ground level. (Vid below - they also work with square posts). Other options are plastic posts or guaranteed life wooden posts. Best of luck with your chosen method. Ferdinand https://vimeo.com/manage/262801711/general

If they are sole traders that is a nice little earner. When I was at a Council we had to pay £900 a day for Network Engineers in 2006 or so, but that was via a networking company. Who are the pricey ones - Ultra Techies or Change Managers, Interims and similar?