Ferdinand

Welcome @jimboban. I can see that this is going to be a party thread. However, one initial question ... your house was built in 1975. Are you absolutely sure that there is no asbestos in it? That is nearly peak usage time. Several of us here have lost parents or partners to related diseases. Ferdinand

Somebody's offcuts? Or one roll of rockwool or similar.

AIUI Squatters Rights have never been a thing, except in rhetoric. Except for normal Adverse Possession after x years. In England, Squatting in a residential property is a criminal offence and can be dealt with by the police. As to security .. disconnect all the services, and possibly board and fit remote cameras etc. You will want those for your site, so get them now. F

If you want to chew the cud without the post-inserted elephant traps that you did not fall into, the House Planning Help podcast is probably a good option.

If you install an air-source heat pump (ASHP) to heat your property, it will attract a subsidy called Renewable Heat Incentive, which is a payment to you based on how much CO2 emissions are saved by the installation of the system. The calculation is done on the basis of the guestimated CO2 emissions numbers in your (less than 2 years old) EPC Report, taking potential savings by loft and cavity wall insulation (which you can often get done for free) into account. Naturally that means that if you upgrade your fabric by other methods, and have a new EPC done before you apply, your subsidy will be materially smaller. Here is a comparison for 2 semi-detached bungalows, one with an EPC of 74-C, and the other with an EPC of 44-E. Restored bungalow. EPC: 74-C. Annual energy for heating: 6,577 kWh. Annual energy for water heating: 1706 kWh. Total energy: 8283 kWh. Calculated RHI Payments: £530 for 7 years. Unrestored bungalow. EPC: 44-E.. Annual energy for heating: 12,283 kWh. Annual energy for water heating: 3421 kWh. Total energy: 15704 kWh. Calculated RHI Payments: £630 for 7 years. What to do: Get a new EPC report to document the poor status (about £50), and get your ASHP process done under that rule, rather than doing it later. In the case of the small detached bungalow above, the difference is worth £700. (Cynics Corner: The apparent truth that for such an install done the official way to get the subsidy - via an Approved Installer - seems to cost more than having one by a competent installer who is not Approved, by an amount which takes up most of your potential subsidy-gains, is not to be mentioned.)

I thought i had answered this q, @CC45. Apologies. Unfortunately that is not possible, as the soil pipe is fixed where the toilet is due to the routing to the soil stack. Cheers

Cheers. An approximate breakdown of costs would be fascinating. This is what I said elsewhere in an article entitled "How to build a house on your field" (you seem to have done better than this): " Paragraph 79 is an exception allowing for high quality houses built in the open countryside. Going down that route you would perhaps need a specialist architect, and a specialist planning consultant (recruit via the architect), and a planning budget of at least 50-100k, and a time budget of 3-5 years. The statistics are that approvals across the whole of England average about 10 per year, and that there are three or four architectural practices which account for the majority of those six dozen or so successes in the last few years. The practical implication of this is that the best way is to use an experienced architect, which will then give you an advantage over the probably-inexperienced Council." Ferdinand

Looks superb Eileen. Would you comment on the Design Review Panel in relation to "Selwyn-Gummer Exception" houses? I came across them in relation to Par 129 of the NPPF, which mentions "design review panels". I agree that the concept is useful, however to me to DRP marketing (eg description on home page) tries to imply that they are The Specific Organisation referred to in the NPPF, and I do that the NPPF refers to "a design review panel" rather than "The Design Review Panel". A private company trying to look like an official actor or an industry association is a marketing policy as old as Methuselah, and does not preclude a good job being done. The Companies House data has the look of a normal private company. Could you comment - is this the only such organisation and is officially recognised, or is it one example of potentially many? The query arose from a previous question and I put it on my list of planned topics for a standalone blog. Cheers Ferdinand

I would say 3 DOUBLES. In smallish houses (say trad semi) 3 double bedroom houses are like hens' teeth. Most are 2 doubles + a single. I rent one to a FOF (friend of family) couple, and it took them 2 years to find a suitable local property for me to buy. On the Gravenhill Plot 6 one, it seemed to me that one of the doubles may be splittable in 2 for when the boys reach that mutual-hatred age ?. This is a critical insight , and it accounts for perhaps 2-3 million extra households if you compare the numbers over a generation. The kind of measure that would help prevent that would be to facilitate 2-3 person shared households - the opposite of what is in place now where they are denigrated ("HMOs"), introduce tax breaks for eg Civil Partnerships / Marriages, and extend Civil Partnerships to pairs of platonics or relatives. One good example of this was actually when Oxford was one of the first Councils to go overboard with regulation of small HMOs a decade ago. Ferdinand

Change of diet should do it.

I distinctly recall that it was donated ?

Wonder If Oxfordshire is the sort of place to ban wood stoves when the pollution numbers hit the media? I did notice that Kevin McCloud mentioned Thermal Mass himself as one of the properties of Hemcrete (Hempcrete). I suspect that the different bastardised spelling has to do with Trademarks but I am linguistically scarred by the P in Hampster Dance (which I will not post), so cannot insert one in Hemcrete. In practice it looks to be reminiscent of the ‘set shredded wheat’ in Durisol. Is it? I have a Durisol block in my conservatory, but have never seen Hem_crete. I think there is a lot to be said for doing as much as possible yourself, even in these technical times. Having run a few numbers, I make Cork Bark insulation roughly 4x as expensive as Celotex per amount of insulative function provided. That is just based on u-value per ££. I do think that KM could be asking a few more pointed questions eg “How will you keep that water tank safe from Legionnaires’ disease?”. Ferdinand

I am sure that the distinction will pass the Council by should someone complain. And work going on at x time is something far easier to decide upon, whereas a noise complaint is something that takes months to gather evidence. Personally, I think there would perhaps be more loss from extra attention later when you are working quietly inside (if you have good window it would be a good soundblock) compared to the loss by grinning and bearing it now. Based on how English Councils would probably operate imo. F

I meant £30. @pocster forgot I had offered him £2 on Gumtree. Just do it and see ,-) Anyhoo 15 squid is 15 squid, anyway.

And that £1.02 was me, as disclosed previously...

that depends whether your customer knows they can get a new one for under £100. ? Stick it on eBay with decent photos and detail of the hinge and closure mechanisms, this Saturday, with 99p reserve, on a 7 day auction, and see what happens. Specify in the text where it is to village level. I’d guess you would get about 15x @pocster‘S current assessed value for his roof windows. Ferdinand

For lack of awareness of lifecycle sustainability I can't better the Extinction Rebelliion type (presumably an epitome for them) interviewed on Sky last weekend. Gentle prodding revealed that she commuted into London from "my house in the Netherlands" on Eurostar, and that what she was going to save them all was Eurostar rather then the previous flying habit, and trying to stop anyone in London going about their business with ER. Presumably there also exists a pied-a-terre in London. Meanwhile, Dutch emissions per person seem to be nearly double ours (10.3 vs 5.7 tonnes of C02), and the reduction since 1990 in C02 for the Netherlands is actually *up* by nearly 10%. Yes - Rotterdam etc but it is not *that* significant. Ferdinand

Nooooooooooo. Digger. So much to learn; so much fun to have. F

The Triangle - ie McCloud's firt HAB development - is built from Hemcrete. Go and find the special for that one. Here he is enthusiing about Hemcrete:

I would consider doing rads at the same time as boiler. They may be reasonably priced, and all the gunge could just end up killing your nice new boiler. F

Short of taking them to Appeal, a professional report or threatening to take them to Appeal can help. F

Since post saver cost about £1-£2 each, the difference is not really material, even if the other solution is free. F

Not necessarily - you could just have a variable gap underneath. Or dig out one side. Or put a suitable threshold on, and work to that level. Treat it as a fun opportunity to play with a digger for a day. F

Correct but they all do that. And all the headline stuff is a bucket of bollocks. Back in the 1990s (?) Magnet switched from a price to list to a "everything discounted by x% - might have been a third or a half - off catalogue price" system. In two quarterly lists, everything increased in price by the reciprocal of the new discount. Wish I had kept them. Ferdinand

If you only have a couple to do, there is a consumer kit which comes with a catering blowtorch. Quite a nice little blowtorch with an integrated spark. This would be the one for you. The stuff comes on a roll rather than pre made to defined size. https://www.postsaver-shop.co.uk/special-offer--includes-5-meters-of-wrap--tack-and-hand-torch-save--5-price-including-vat-2999-48-p.asp You then make lots of creme brulees and seared steaks to use up the stuff. Or build a fence. I have the bigger kit because when I do fences I do a lot, and you get about £75 of gubbins for about £50. Do NOT buy these from a retailer as they will cost more than double. Ferdinand