Ferdinand

You want us on topic? Boo. I find that a different method may work for different tradespeople .. some email, some text message, some voice call to the mobile or the landline. One or two the best way I have is to go and knock on the door at home on a Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon can be unpopular due to football. IF they get regular work from me, a visit at home will be acceptable. Or they may answer the phone whilst doing somebody else's job Recently to me my phone failed entirely except for text messages since it had switched itself into deaf person mode where all sounds, including voice, were turned off. F

Yep - in my most I went for pre-primed 94mm MDF bullnose to avoid dust, at £1.60 per metre run, which was low enough to avoid taking on the self-cutting pfaff. Within reason B&Q would cut up the sheets for you.

On manufacturing vs services, we still do it and our manufacturing sector is almost exactly ... give or take currency fluctuations ... the same size as the French one in both turnover and percent of economy terms. There has recently been an amusing media meme about how we no longer manufacture, for example, to some extent by commentators bewailing Brexit https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/06/the-legacy-of-leaving-old-industrial-britain-to-rot-is-becoming-clear But companies still manufacture. TRiumph Motorcyles now turn over half a billion and I have a pair of 100m turnover window companies ... Synseal and Euronics ... manufacturing within 4 miles of my desk. WHat we need is hundreds more similar operations. They have escaped short termism by being privately or private equity held, or by luck, and done long term investment. Both Euronics and Synseal have grown from small companies since the 1970s. One of my favourite manufacturing stories is how the best selling pizza sold in shops in Italy is made in Leyland, Lancashire. @recoveringacademic will like that. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/jun/21/how-good-dr-oetkers-pizza The one thing that will wreck them is if some demented politician decides they know best and interferes. Ferdinand

@MikeSharp01 @JSHarris I am going respectfully to disagree with both of you. If we are talking Holman Brothers Ltd of Camborne (wikipedia link), who manufactured mining equipment, then they were merged in 1968 then eventually asset-stripped by a British conglomerate called Siebe, which became Siebe plc and then part of Invensys. I would be interested to know the timeline for the 1980s, but it seems to me to be insufficiently professional management in the 1950s and 1960s and a company that was resting on its laurels and was not ready when its market evaporated - any govt involved would arguably be "White Heat of Technology" Wilson's first administration from 1964-1970, and by the 1980s I am not sure what any government could do, - how many employees were there in say 1985? And it was a family company anyway. I am also going to disagree on service vs manufacturing - we have world-beating service industries, consider Auction Houses or Advertising or even Architects or Universities for example. I think the issues are around professionalism of management, export orientation and partisan politics. I'll concede there is an issue on short term vs long term investment. The areas where our industry has struggled or evaporated are those exactly where governments *did* intervene - how are National Dock Labour scheme ports or British Leyland doing (Felixtowe is still here and Nissan Sunderland is their most productive plant worldwide)? Ferdinand

If a clean look is important what about a square profile skirting the same colour as the wall. Beware dust traps, however.

Cockney not Barcelonese

Welcome to the forum.

SOme photos here https://www.lep.co.uk/image-gallery/in-pictures-more-than-200-faults-in-our-newly-built-400k-home-1-8998119/8998120/img18998118 Quite a lot of drying out plaster gaps. How much of this is moving in too early, and which party forced that or permitted it?

Can anyone point me to the list of snags? Personally I am sceptical about the 200 figure without full evidence, and the overall seriousness. Especially as they were able to move in,

Need photos :-o .

My only comment is to make sure you take care of your back. LIft 'em and lay 'em correctly even if takes an extra day or two. In addition to @Nickfromwales my maintenance man is going to be looking for an altered career soon as he did an injury being heroic at a road accident decades ago, and every time he does something wrong lifting-wise it tears the old injury. He has lost a month in the last 4 Take care if yourself. Ferdinand

Rates http://www.pimlicoplumbers.com/services/central-heating Expensive, but perhaps not outrageous for Kensington. Eg boiler service 100-170 for weekday to Sunday rates.

And you get to compete with the squirrels. Need to do some admin now ... boo.

I think the last couple of winters should tell you whether you are also a frost-pocket, @JSHarris. Get those vines in and you can have "vinum & oleum" (to quote one of the Roman poets I vaguely recall reading at school). Get a walnut tree in now, and you can have walnuts by about your 100th birthday!

Western Red Cedars (which may not be the exact one you are thinking about) go woooooossshhhhhh like a Roman Candle, and nearly as quickly. Ours did, anyway. I'll leave the detailed species comment for @PeterW. I like the sound of the engineering - in 500 years they will think it was an unfinished mini-Motte-and-Bailey castle.

I believe the more usual number has been 10000 hours. That is the equivalent of 5 years full time work on that single skill.

Just read the story of the demise of Holman's ... a local company with a couple of thousand people asset stripped, if the account is correct. Ouch. F

If it is a common house type in your area then a local surveyor or your council BCO may have some knowledge of similar occurrences having happened previously.

I've been struggling how to call this one. 1 -Your proposed financial feels high risk, intricate and too-easily derailable. Needs detailed assessment. Operating so heavily from borrowing is very fragile. That personal loan could knock a huge hole in your mortgage capacity - from here it looks like 3-4k a year repayments. It feels as if too many stars have to align successfully for it to come off. 2 - My gut feel says that your cost allocation needs to be more like 30-35k plot, 75-80k build and 10k more on your contingency because of the riskiness. 3 - And yet ... and yet ... you clearly know a lot of the stuff and this type of project *can* work. I would have confidence in your ability to self-build at some time, and question the wisdom of doing it this way now. My concerns are around: 4 - Expenses and risks that you may have missed out or have not yet appeared - eg several k to hire or buy scaffolding, or if there suddenly turns out to be 10-20k of work underground that you have not yet found. 5 - Which says that should you go ahead attention to detail and completeness need to be your top priority. 6 - Have you got the practical skills at this point substantially to build your own house? If forced to recommend I think I would suggest a need to find a lower risk path, at least for this time round. I would suggest a conventional mortgage on a renovation to which you can add value (best street, worst house, room to extend or into loft etc), ideally with a potential plot in the large garden. Then I would suggest a renovation project first, and plan to self-build once you have a more absorbent financial base. My opinion. But the best of luck whatever you do. Ferdinand

I would check the maximum allowed width of a cross country mobility scooter and a tricycle.

You will lose things like the depth of drainpipes and posts off the width of your finished accessway. If you are building you want space to put your scaffolding on your land comfortably, or it gets potentially more complicated. Some regulatory things also kick in for widths of under 1m from the boundary. And exact measurements require you to know exactly where the boundary is to make sure the measurements are exactly right. If it is next to the boundary next door can measure where it is with a ruler, so you need to be correct and your measurements defensible. My dad was an architect and on one occasion someone was trying to build the side wall of a bungalow 300mm closer to the bungalow he had built next door than the plans allowed, and as they were close together it was noticeable, and he made them move it. The problem was that they had made their bungalow a little bit too wide for the plot by undermeasuring the plot, then set out starting from the other side and kept it the same size. And in the small space a relatively small error became significant. Personally I would leave about 1.2m to the face of my wall to the boundary even at the risk of a slightly smaller room (build a thinner wall), because getting it wrong can be a real problem. 1.2m would be enough for a 1.5 tonne mini digger to get through with a.margin.

PRobably quite significantly dependent on neighbours and their attitudes. Were you to follow @Pocster's 1m higher next door to me, I might not let it go, or similarly if it was detectably closer to my boundary ... say 2m not 4m away compared to the Planning. If it was inconsequential and I could not see the difference I would probably let it go. If I thought you were taking the P out of planning I might do something. The last one I asked them to enforce On was.a high density room by room landlord who was ignoring his Planning Conditions and creating parking havoc in a congested area.

TIme for a serious comment, @Vision Of Heaven. I am surmising that your house is perhaps 3500sqft if it is Victorian and 14 rooms. I am not clear what you mean by Complete Refurb - are you replacing all th windows, taking the walla back basically to brick, and digging up the floors to insulate underneath or put floor slabs down? IF you are, on your own this is a 2 year full time, or 5-6 year part time project, and you are facing a total bill of perhaps £100-150k. Unless you mean something different to me by Complete Refurb? If you are paying someone to do the work it will be quicker but more expensive. JUst a new set of windows will be perhaps. £15k in upvc or £30k for 3G or wood. IF you are looking at greenish heating systems, that will add another 10-15k over something conventional, though you will get most of that back. The most important thing you can decide now is the quality of fabric you put in. You need to decide whether you want your future energy bills to be £1000-1500 in 2018 money, or £4000-5000. TO achieve the former, you need to renovate your basic structure to a standard substantially superior to that required by building regulations as applied to refurbishments, and need to start asking those questions. I have just renovated a 1966 bungalow to a standard where energy and water bills should be about 55% lower than before. IT is not difficult, but you have to decide early on There is not much point going green unless you are going for a highly efficient fabric for your building, Once you have put finishes on your floors and walls or boarded them out to a lower standard it is too late. Looking forward to your comments. Ferdinand

Whatprice repointing page may be helpful. http://www.whatprice.co.uk/prices/building/repointing.html#axzz55sQrvmru

Expensive sister :-).