Ferdinand

I am just after an orientation on what happens here. A neighbour has an Application to build a house over the bit of land where a lateral sewer (ie my waste pipe through his plot) runs. There are between two and four neighbours connected to this waste pipe, all owned by the applicant. The waste pipe will have been adopted under the recent Act, but it may well not be known to the water company. Now clearly this could be accommodated using foundation bridges, rodding points and an appropriate sort of agreement etc, but I would welcome comments on how to tackle this. My preference is that it not be built over. I have no idea whether the chap knows it exists. Who do I go to? Planning, water company or building control? Cheers F

if it is a metal one you probably can put it on - will wipe down with a damp cloth, or put an offcut of batten on and put your level on the batten. Some levels even have screw holes for attachment to the batten. F

Paint that green (or brown, this week) and it can be hills for your Hornsby railway.

It takes some time to go off in the middle. I have a video of the process. If it is threatening to hit any surfaces you could put tape or a thin board there before it arrives (are any of those trims scrap?) to avoid any of the sticky being on the surface .. tough to get off afterwards. If it does go too badly into corners etc you can usually cut it flush using eg a hacksaw or reciprocating saw blade or craft knife or eg bread knife that is ready to be thrown. I had a foam that lost its top by accident once. You do not forget when that happens. But it will be OK afterwards. You need to worry more when it has nowhere to go and forces your wall facing out wards.

Or buy a Landrover...

I think you need to track th3 source of the noise eg is it water hitting the far side of the pipe, or some sort of resonance effect. Then you could decide eg to instead some sort of diverted or absorber at the top eg stuck on sponge or a plastic mesh where the water hits the side of the pipe, or pad the mounts with rubber sheet, or have an extra mount in the middle. if it It is like bongo drums, then that suggests resonance effects. F

Just think how much stronger your wrists will be, without any aspersions being cast. Unlikely to apply, but sealed dg units are not very expensive, so in the worst case you just have to live with a draught for a day or two! It is always good to do something the long way first time, so you understand better for the future. You are doing great. F

Let me throw you a curve ball or two. I am not sure that completely built-in is the only way. For built-in shelves I would be tempted to put a supporting batten all the way across the front for each shelf, rather than trying do extra support in the middle. Then if you wanted to you could do your slats front to back. if I was doing that I would perhaps put a kitchen worktop across at perhaps 900 should a work surface ever be needed, and leave it for boxes below. Though I might tempted to build 600x600 slatted modules, which can then be moved around. if there was something taller than your shelf gap, you could just move the slatted but on the next shelf up. if you wanted to you could even use any shelf or stainless or plastic grid unit from any kitchen system. Another option is literally off the wall ... use a freestanding system, either as @Tennentslager said or even something like iVAR, though that is not slatted. But if it were me I would look to stainless steel shopfitting systems, or the things they use in hotels. Perhaps a set of built in box shelves with adjustable heights down one side 500 or 600 wide (twin slot?), which would not need more support, then a full height gap for taller things (Hoover, Mother-in-law’s broomstick etc) in the middle, and a movable chromed steel shelving unit like this for the linen. Approx the right size, and with brakes. Not expensive, and less work to fit out. Ferdinand

Afaics it is quite area specific as to which new estate agency network dominates. Here we get Purple Bricks, but not many others. I have seen a few with EMoov, but that seems to be about it. I wonder whether the likes of PB will be introducing a Premium or Top of Market service for ‘prestige’ properties at some time in the future, because the savings for te seller are potentially a lot more in cash terms? I think the varied comments on the thread illustrate just how much it is local factors, local markets and horses for courses. And then that there is another layer of personal considerations on top. We *had* to sell due to a parent becoming unable to live in a large house in the country with stairs and a huge garden, so we went to be near a town centre, and really would have not wanted another winter there. Estate agents here are still ,.. all these years later .... in self-consolation ‘it could be worse’ rather than ‘yay, happy days’ mode. I suspect that we are also seeing some SE landlords or refugees from London volatility and low yields buying up here. We are not a classic ‘buy a street of terraces for the price of your 2 bed docklands flat’ country, which is how certain Northern areas have been seen, but I do see occasional sales of eg terraces by the likes of Savilles at auction, which is a telltale for potential sales to investors from down south. Ferdinand

Look good.

I have been running my bathroom extractor and kitchen extractor hood with some success to draw in air from the other end of the house through open windows or doors. But not overnight. The kitchen one has proved very useful when using the oven. F

Various newspapers and our ‘top’ universities... ?

Tip. Mark the edges of the battens on the ceiling or floor with a soft or carpenters pencil before you cover them. Comes off with a soft rubber or foam pad easily. You can find your battens by tapping with a tool handle or a batteb detector device. F

Sorry @lizzie I meant the other one ?. You are in the wise planner ahead category. i had an 8k claim, which is why I now go some way .. but not £500 worth ... to improve water leak resistance.

You need a customer with a previous 10k claim for water damage and a month in a hotel. Like that one? F

We have Purple Bricks everywhere here. If they stick around so think it is very due to optimists not yav8ng had enough cold-shower type advice. Or perhaps market testers. Te market still seems to be sells quickly or sticks, with not too much in between. Though in our immediate surroundings we have had a couple of South East downsizes / retirees looking for more house or less frazzle. F

Looks good.

My outside temp has now fallen a bit since 4am. Everything is open for half an hour !

Welcome to buildhub.

Neat.

I had te house closed up all day to day to go on a Fish Cooking course. All that filleting has gone some way to convincing me that rustic presentation of whole fish is best. Back on point ... But on return, the outside temp as read by the car has been 33C, but the inside core temp at home as read by the Hall stat is 24C. Big difference. The house is I think to approx 2010 regs. Tonight there is very little I can do to purge the heat, since outside is warmer than the inside. So it would need active cooling. Hoping for a period before breakfast where the air is cooler for a bit. Ferdinand

One way to think about it is to take would be that the slab is starting your approved garage, and it just happens that you never finished it but put a mobile home on top. A Council vpcannot enforce completion of a project usually, I think. But this is very much playing the system like a violin, so I would want careful advice from somewhere. F

On delayed faults and people not checking. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/author-will-self-flees-with-his-children-after-roof-of-1million-georgian-stockwell-townhouse-7781222.html https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/may/25/deborah-orr-roof-collapse-insurance They seem cross that their 120 year speculative build isn’t still perfect.

Have just re-educated myself briefly on Agile and Lean development. They seem to me (like every other named methodology I have ever seen from SSADM and SASD onwards) to be substantially a repackaging of ideas that have always existed in a slightly different order with a different wrapping. Eg Frequent releases or subrebreleases which allows requirements changes to be managed, rapid development, sometimes getting the customer to test it !, constant coordination and conversation and so on. ISTM that the key th8ng is always never to swallow any single package of techniques / philosophies uncritically. My favourite software engineering paper was from about 1982-3, arguing that software systems essentially controlled their own maximum rate of evolution because of innate complexity, ie on an established system management can do fook all to get it done any quicker because of how it was already designed. You can design in stuff to make it easier, but only at the start. I can see that that applies to complex systems such as houses. For self build, istm that the biggest block on adopting such a methodology is that the customer and the project manager are overwhelmingly the same person. So the important point about not changing requirements btsoyp is a mental discipline rather than a relationship and a conversation. The concept from TQM that I find most useful is the Balanced Scorecard, done monthly as a way to keep focus.

“A board is thick and rigid. It is made of wood.” Arthur C Clarke. Ish. Context: The Book A Fall of Moondust said by the Chief Engineer of the Moonbase after he has been audited by the Accounting Board.