Ferdinand

I love that that is questioned before semi-housetrained.

I think that Fiidif... is an IPadded claim to be Henry VIII whilst eating Thornton's Special toffee. Fidei Defensor and all that.

F

I always understood the P as a wheeze to be able to claim ip through being non-generic. It topped the singles charts in Canada.

Our Appeal officer came onto my housing estate plot where people had complained about the "eyesore", and said "where are these houses - can't see them" and went away to think about something else. On objections, I have made several objections at PP or Appeal level that have worked, and lost a couple.

Forum names are fun. Who knew that one was on MSE so early he might even have conversed with Martyn Lewis before his ascension to the rich list. And that our resident semi-housetrained architect has a strange taste in small cars. ? F

Oh. dear. Now I'm itching to post the Hampsterdance.

Actually there should be a lot of stuff at archive.org, but you would need to jigsaw and triangulate. Difficult to automate, as archive.org will not welcome spiders. eg - Temp, DIYNOT and JennyHicks. on July 11 2008. https://web.archive.org/web/20080619140818/http://www.ebuild.co.uk/cgi-bin/forums/discus.pl Bit more "Last 7 days" http://www.ebuild.co.uk/cgi-bin/forums/search.pl?method=last&number=7&units=1440&tree=ON&where=all

Interesting. Mine was Mon, Jan 31, 2011, 12:59 AM Ferdinand

There are actually all kinds of pricing comparison threads - but you have to dig, sometimes using Google and +buildhub or site:buildhub.org. F

OH = Other Half. She means hubby is a broke man walking who does not know it yet . Or alternatively thinks he is broke for the wrong reason ; she may have mentioned something of benefit to OH in passing but carefully avoid stating a definite link so he will just assume it was him. The only rule against mentioning prices is case specific and to do with household harmony. Mention away. That bottom piccie ... are you a friend of Jeremy Clarkson?

Remember that facing distances are between HABITABLE rooms .. not kitchen, bathroom, store, corridor etc. And they are also adjusted for rooms at angles or offset. I think you should be fine, but there will be a detailed rule somewhere.

Buildhub was created expressly up to pick up the Ebuild job, but in a more robust format as an organisation so that a couple of people being busy elsewhere or going under a bus would not kill it. The Ebuild close was a classic internet setup, then success, then stress, then implosion, story for one individual. Exasperated by a legal threat. Thanks for the compliment. F

I did an analysis piece on this recently on another thread. If you want to dig out membership etc around 2005-2008, all you need is to look up the home page at archive.org. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- That's a very good question to ask. Let me try to add a little data that I can see from the outside (I am not a Moderator or Admin). I need to emphasise that quality of engagement and direction of travel of numbers is perhaps more important than actual "total"; the total number of members includes a lot who have "passed through", which represents people who have reached a stage in their dream / project where they consider they need to enroll to ask questions, rather than passively read or lurk. Or perhaps it means people who can answer questions, or want to promote their businesses or fish for links. Like a medieval castle, I understand there are murder holes just inside the portcullis, from where @Nickfromwales dispenses boiling oil on spammers. So for the current community we need something more like "who has posted in the last 12 or 24 months?" (people ask a bit about plots then go away, then come back and ask about Planning, then come back a year later when they have Planning etc). So the 3000 member number is "who has been interested enough to join now or in the past", Within which we have "who has stuck around", or "who has posted and been thanked". The "Leaderboard -> Reputation" options tell you that 45 people have been "reacted to" more than 200 times, and that 48 people have more than 670 posts. The "Users Online" menu option will tell you that the number of "guests" ie non-members "online" (which usually means requested a page from the site in the last 30 minutes) is about 4-8 times the number of logged in members (usually), though some of those may be members too lazy to log in or on the wrong device, or being incognito. The "new join rate" is perhaps more indicative of the rate of impact, when compared eg to the number of self-builds per annum in the UK - though probably a significant majority of dreamers never get to build. Self-builds in the UK are of the order of 10,000-25,000 I think, and have grown perhaps 20-30% in the last couple of years. Somebody else can probably take a guestimate at "how many people are considering self-build more than idly in passing"; my guesstimate would be 100k-250k. So I estimate that you can say we are reaching maybe 10,000-20,000 individuals per year relatively seriously, and an unknown larger number casually. On the "new joiner" metric we are now roughly where EBuild.co.uk were towards the end, though that had its heydey in 2005-2008 roughly. Ebuild members. June 2014: 12996 (https://web.archive.org/web/20140625091853/http://www.ebuild.co.uk/) December 2014: 13504 https://web.archive.org/web/20141222205444/http://www.ebuild.co.uk/ August 2015: 14356 https://web.archive.org/web/20150809080853/http://www.ebuild.co.uk/ Ebuild existed from about the year 2000 so the long run average once established was about 1000 per year, perhaps declining as a rate at the end. Someone needs to look up 2005-2008 to check what I expect to be the peak rate of new joiners. A snapshot of how many "crawls" the Internet Archive-bot did of the site is perhaps a good proxy for "how prominent it was" and "how interested the internet was in Ebuild". (Buildhub has hardly been crawled at all by the Internet Archive, so I wonder if we keep them out for performance reasons. Or perhaps we are all boring in our old age.) Just musings. I haven't gone to the trouble of running the site through any serious monitoring services - imo not necessary as it is clearly a very healthy, thriving community, and that is what matters most. Ferdinand

I would not suggest that it is difficult, but that it is very painful (potentially) if you get it wrong. My conservatory is similar in some ways (I left a narrow maintenance alley down the rhs, and it has a lot of roof draining towards it), and I have some problems that are currently being addressed. And I see you are taking your dividing wall out. F

Stats - usually Planning is relatively straightforward: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/812867/Planning_Applications_January_to_March_2019_-_statistical_release.pdf

I think you need PP anyway, as you are within 2m of a boundary. And I don't think it will be a "conservatory": "In the UK the legal definition of a conservatory is that it is a building with at least 50% side walls and 75% roof area with translucent glass or polycarbonate glazing" https://www.eygwindows.co.uk/lifestyle-blog/do-you-need-planning-permission-for-a-conservatory You are already under 50%, unless you make a glass wall facing his bricks. Sorry to post that. Given PP requirement, I think I would be looking at a real roof spanning from your existing wall to the neighbour (and coming to an agreement whilst his roof is still in bits, with you giving him a small benefit - once it is finished it will be much more difficult), then considering how to link to the existing, A full width room, or with perforations in the existing wall, will be much more attractive, and - given Chiswick (I lived in Grove Park for a couple of years) - you should get it back on the value. Things that matter are light to your middle room, and maintainability of whatever your build, and new drains and waterhandling (and maintenance thereof). It will be easy to create a nightmare. One thing you have not said is whether you want something warm or cool. If it looks like a conservatory you will not get the benefit on valuations. F

I think that up until recently the sprinkler industry had a claim that no one had ever been killed in a house fitted with sprinklers in the UK. Obvs that is a carefully nuanced claim, but I am impressed. I think the number is now one. So they do save lives istm. The issue in Wales was that in Cost Per Life terms as used in the public health type evaluation there were lower cost things that would save more lives, but they went ahead on a political decision. You only need to remember that it will take 100 years for half of the stock to have sprinklers with no retrofits (ie approx 1% new stock each year) to see the slowness of impact. F

I think this is another one that is in Shooters Hill And has been an Airbnb for a few years. They paid 960k for it plus the conversion, for which I cannot quickly find the budget. The one that has K in palpitations was in Southwark by a hospital and cost £360k plus £2m spent on it. They tried to sell for £6.5m but the last I saw it was priced at £3.6m. F

Unless it is a buttress as well ?. In which case I guess you say it is a decorative element around a structural element.

There are others, especially some who are Team Experts rather than the presenter. The two on "Your House Made Perfect" were brilliant. We did this to death before (Ooops. It came up with the picture of Julia Kendall climbing the side of a building in heels demonstrating her "30 years of power-tool techniques" ... beats Kevin and a model made of 28 Ryvita and Processed Cheese, anyhoo.)

Data point on Sprinkler systems. I spoke to a good local company about a system for a potential 8 bed HMO in a double fronted detached house - roughly 4 x 14ft square rooms on the first 2 floors, and 2 more in the attics. Estimate came in as 5-10k ballpark (after 15 minute phone conversation) 3-4 years ago, but I would expect the price of these to be on a declining curve still. F

Some more on this. I had a phone call this morning with a mate who lives a mile away. It seems that the flats were probably the social housing element of a large long term development, which was done between about 20 years ago and ten years ago - with the flats being the later elements. So no excuse of "old building". (Medium rise timber frame was researched in the 1990s and famously tested at full scale in the Airship Hanger at Cardington. They then did a further project about Restoring Timber Frame After Fire on the testbed which they had just burnt down. Nothing like recycling.) According to him, there is basically little or nothing left. I expect it to be about detailing and precautions to predict from the consequences of poor detailing. I would hope the consequences will be: - Sprinklers in medium rise TF flats (assuming in high rise because of Grenfell). Medium rise TF is 4-8 stories. - More detailed mandatory supervision in multi-home blocks. - Perhaps sprinklers in TF above x storeys, where x may be 3 or 4. Ferdinand

Yep. Kevin McCloud is a decorator ! His first 5 books were: Kevin McCloud's Decorating Book, was published in 1990. The Techniques of Decorating Kevin McCloud's Lighting Book were published in 1995, The Complete Decorator in 1996, and Choosing Colours in 2003. (Not to underestimate the chap, and I would not go quite so far as "menace".) F

Now this is getting controversial. St Paul's Cathedral has umpteen pilasters. A sign of good taste. Wash your mouth out in a whb (wash-handbasin), young man .