Ferdinand

@bigreadie Welcome. Well done on the plot - they seem thin on the ground in Oxfordshire. I would make 2 points not covered yet: 1 - Take the time it takes, and don't regret doing so. There may also be opportunities with Brexit about to happen, or us staying in mid-air. The climate is unstable, and contractors may find their order books changing. 2 - There are various direct routes eg some building societies do self-build mortgages (eg Ecology, Melton, Ipswich iirc for three). Have a skim through this section of the forum: https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/forum/112-self-build-mortgages/ Ferdinand

Personally, I sometimes feel like I AM the original of the missing link. Now, where's that banana ...

Cheers. We have been spraying a storeroom this week, which has a ceiling up to 4m+, which I had undercoated and only just reached with a 1.8m extender for the roller. I have been out to the garage and my hoover is in fact Aldi not Lidl ... it is like a mini dustbin on wheels, and was advertised as an Ash vacuum. On dehumidifier, I started out with a big domestic one (10l at 25C approx), which does work OK and has a humidistat + thermometer. I then had the experience of this hired one to dry our a water leak. Then I kept my eyes open for several to use for drying out plaster/ tenant floods should one happen, and swooped when a drying company was closing, so now I have a 40l one and a 60l one, weighing approx 30kg and 60kg respectively (absolute buggers to move anywhere) with a couple of supporting fan heaters. I guess these have been used significantly 5 or 6 times in a couple of years. looking at the new prices, they would be nearly eye watering. I wish I had and more of the smaller ones. technically these are specced (i.e. The chap said he would use them for) for rooms of approx 400sqft and 800sqft. I think I will get a PB lifter this year, and start keeping my eyes open for a tower. Ferdinand

Sorry, no. On Wickes as above they would deliver, but you would need to order instore to use the cashcard. I see that you are Carlisle or Lancaster for the nearest.

I think if you catch Wickes with all their discounts lined up, and use a Reloadable Cash Card e.g. From your employer or Westfield Rewards, you may beat that by 5-10%, but you would need to wait for the day. I am not sure if they still do a standard bulk 5 for 4 type discount on plasterboard, however, Consists of £7.20 base price for 8x4 12.5mm 10% off for Trade Account. 5 for 4 if they still do this, and I have not bought plasterboard recently enough to have seen it 5% extra for Trade Customers via the newsletter e.g. There was one last week 10% off for the reloadable cash card. They may have deals for the monthly offer, Half Term or Easter. Ferdinand

Looking good. I'd like to ask you a bit more about dehumidifiers later, to get an idea of costs of hiring vs buying. The last time I had a commercial dehumidifier, it came on a wheeled trolley and cost the insurance company £50 per week. THis may be teaching you to suck eggs, but are you using an extendible-pole roller (Wickes do a good value system) and sander? I find them a massive help in avoiding bending; so much that I have a couple of spares to keep compulsory volunteers happy (or at least not rebelling). Did you hire or buy the scaffold tower and PB Lifter? I have my beady eye on one each of those for this year. Is that a Lidl Hoover I see? G

I'll just wait for @Onoff to find this thread. ? But for now I am off to collect a person from hospital.

So was I ?.

On the Rainwater Harvesting - yes, but we (or at least I) were talking domestic systems, and in particular their use with a second set of plumbing installed. On the US, IMO the biggest issues are 1 - inefficient us of energy in general, 2 - wrt water entrenched interests eg farmers with historic rights. Distorting effect similiar to all our savings on pension costs having to be met from people not yet being paid. The sunk cost cannot be reduced for political reasons. Ferdinand

MOre complex systems, especially when you consider maintenance costs, have a very long payback if you have a good quality fabric which reduces your annual energy bills to say £500-1000. I would say that the era of Code for Sustainable Homes was all about complex ways of achieving things, That is often now done more easily by a fabric-first strategy, and leaving out the complex gubbins . IMO GSHP is now very niche, and imo things like Rainwater Harvesting have mainly had their time, if you do a high quality fabric approach. SImilarly for complex control systems - if you can heat your whole house with a few kilowatts, then room stat timers cease to be economic. Ferdinand

What type of windows? Are they original? How old is the house? Alu frames are relatively recent, and in this country mainly post war. Looking forward to the detail. I think in the US they go back to about 1930 .. around the time of the Empire State Building. There is a company Called the Heritage Window Company who may advise .. but that is not a recommendation, just a note. Or a body called the Historic Houses Association, but if they are Alu and original I do not think it is likely to their territory, as the house will be relatively recent. F

WHatw as the actual situation on that roof. Was it actually built too high, or did the street view give a misleading impression. IF the latter, calling it "an illustrative street view" may have saved you. Ferdinand

Why not use the method the first used for setting torpedoes? They put a long prodder on the front of their boats and submarines :-) A bit like Sir LanceLot. Ferdinand

A note that if you are doing a corporate structure the topping up the pension is a good way of takeover out money tax free. Again, specialist advice needed. if you are accepting the developer label, then Entrepreneur’s Tax Relief can come in. Ferdinand

No, but it is actually planted slightly above ground level in an old asparagus bed. We are starting to get one or two escapees now .. 4-5 years later. At ground level I would put pavers vertically down to 18” and probably use a membrane to line them. F

Yes .. I would offset it. Not least because that would then satisfy (perhaps) cycle storage requirements, as providing 1.1m useable width above a generous parking space. I bet @epsilonGreedy has considered that however. F

Good that you have considered it. Can you exploit the Ooops I Built It Slightly Too Long error margin factor to get 5.1m? F

A current transit van including mirrors is 2.474m, and Tonka Tanks such as an Audi Q7 are up to about 2.25m including mirrors. So that might argue for 2.8-3m. What about the length? However, the length is notably short at 5.0m. A perfectly normal senior salesman special BMW 5 Series Estate is 4.942m, which will give you exactly one inch at either end. I would say you want it to be at least 5.5 and preferable 6m long. That imo is an issue at least as significant. My grandad used to have a tyre on his garage back wall to prevent him nudging it in his sectional garage. Fortunately bike tyres come down to 20mm or less, so one of those would just fit ? in those circumstances. But closing the garage door would be a game of Russian Roulette with your rear bumper. Ferdinand

Not convinced that we have a full answer to this yet. We have the Building Regs saying lag all main distribution pipes. i would say that inside the heated envelope you should lag hot pipes when you don’t want them to cool, and cold pipes where you o not want them to become lukewarm in warm environments. If your bath hot water is losing a couple for degrees, then the temperature at the boiler or whatever end will need to be higher. I would lag cold pipes if they are eg in your heated slab. A drink of cold water would be cold and not require extra water to be run out of the pipe. My predecessor did not lag cold in te slab, and it is annoying. One more question .. has anyone calculated any impact on heating system controllability of having uninsulated hot pipes? There is a lot more pipe in a ufh system, but if that is running at say 30C, then a smaller volume of pipe running at 55C for a time may be material in boosting the temperature. F

Ahem. DependEnt. (/pedent) . Since he has balls of steel, @Onoff will need three of those things. Let's hope he never has an accident with all those electromagnets in his shed.

I think we have done that before. In this weather one way is to heat it up and take a lot of thermal images. The outgoing air drafts may well show.

I think this illustrates that trying to be TOO precise can be a waste of effort. If we look at Celotex, to go from 0.16 to 0.11 is 50mm extra. The current Wickes retail price is £37 for 2.88sq or £12.5 per sqm. But Self-builders get the VAT back ,(£10.50 per sqm) and anyone sensible can get 20% off at Wickes across the board. £~8.45 per sqm) And then they do 5 for 4 sometimes. £~7 per sqm. Or you can just buy from insulation Superstore for £7.50 per sqm anyway. Or buy-and-store from a seconds place for perhaps £6 per sqm if you watch it carefully. The stack I have in my shed cost about £14 per sheet, delivered, or £4.50 per sqm, and that includes VAT. About 2 years ago from Seconds & Co. I think @PeterW did even better. Currently you can buy 110mm 8x4 from Seconds and Co for £32 per sheet, which gives you a 0.9 u-value for <£25 per sqm for the materials - obv foam, alu tape etc needs to be added. Or you could use a 65mm insulated plasterboard on top of one layer for 0.11 to save labour. Ferdinand

This is a giant clumping bamboo that was put in in iirc Spring 2014 or 2015. It is planted in a former asparagus bed, and cost about £50 at the time. The plan is to block those windows, and it has thickened massively and will reach about 10-12ft this summer. IN theory it reaches 5m or more. Ferdinand

A friend who supervised the construction of one of the offshore wind fields hinted that his company would not be doing any more .. I think. But it may have been the last one they were doing in current licensing rounds. Does anyone know if more offshore wind will be built around the UK? Ferdinand

AH the planning system :-) The average U.K. House price in 1980 was 24k. It is easy to spend that much now on Planning and Ologists for a single self-build. F