Ferdinand

Welcome and interesting plan. You are at a general stage, but my comments. Looks like a good practical general design. 1 - Need to access bins without going into the rain? 2 - Where is your workshop? 3 - It looks seriously short of shed-space / outside storage. I doubt whether 2 bike spaces is enough (policy minimum?) - if you intend to have the option of being a cyclo-family then you will need space for things like enough bikes for everyone, tag-alongs and trailers, and maintenance space. And potentially velo-mobiles if the country comes to its senses on infrastructure. What about the lawnmower and the garden tools? What it comes down to is that you may want 150-200 sqft of shed-type space. What about extending the 'car port' block back behind the line of the house? I might be inclined to build that such that it could be a study or studio in future. 4 - Get that valley right. Enough width to walk along it for roof maintenance without wobbling, and for 2 people to squeeze past ("you have a look at this end"). My preference is to separate walking surface from drainage surface by building up the walking surface but making it dismountable, to protect the former. That landing rooflight is your valley access, I assume? Move it so that it is not over the stairs (so can just lean a ladder through it), and make sure that it is suitably hinged (top or side hung opening outwards, I think, or mid hinge and large - need space for egress for future materials) and big enough for comfortable use when you get to be a fat man aged 76. Make sure the bottom structural edge is above the maximum depth of water / snow you can ever get in the valley, to save your seals, but low enough to climb back in easily with one step onto the ladder. There is something to be said for a notch or bar just below the rooflight edge to lean / hook your ladder on to if you prefer not to have it sticking out above the roof when using. And have storage space on the landing for an ideally sized ladder / telescopic ladder and your window pole. Had an old house with 5-6 different bits of valley / platform that had no access whatsoever before we installed it. You may be up there 3-5 times a year; make it easy. 5 - Do you think you will have enough bedrooms (and convertible bedrooms), eg if you have 5 kids? Try an exercise vs the bedroom gender mixing regs (under Overcrowding iirc) if they are eg M11, F12, M15, F15 and M16. 6 - There look to be interesting games to be played with cathedral ceilings upstairs. Provision for storage / sleeping mezzanine above the bunkroom and /or bedrooms? 7 - Intriguing that 2 parking spaces may be enough, and that reversing out is OK. Best of luck. Ferdinand

I spent some time chatting to the Valspar people at B&Q yesterday; that can be sprayed. Slight care needed as they have different 'contract' paint for new plaster, and another one for going over existing paint. F

My mum watches that. I think they sometimes equate character with "features" - almost as if the aspiration is to live in a Beatrix Potter or other half-remembered book or imaginary situation. But the "mystery house" is always an interesting part of the format - the opportunity for the client to experience things they did not know they would like aka the Unknown Unknowns. Whether a building "works" may or may not be part of the character. @ragg987 I think Estate Agents are trying to summarise difficult ideas with a debased language. I think it is the same problem as paint companies needing to give meaningfully different emotionally-weighted names to 14 or 68 colours that are practically identical; it must be soul destroying. I think I have 2 brief points on "character". 1 - It is a personal thing. There are buildings with a cosy, old fashioned, grandiose (even grandiloquent), friendly, cold, intimate, intricate, or intimidating character. There is no guarantee that I will like the "character" that you do. And it is quite hard to describe what we like - I have tried to add a word to that list describing the character of Coventry Cathedral or East Anglian wool churches full of space and sunlight, but I can't find the right word. That is what imo architects are for; I want them to help me put a character into the building that fits my needs and will make my life richer. And to provide me with a language to describe my thoughts. I don't need someone to tell me how many bedrooms I need - that is easy. Me hating your house, and you not liking mine, are fine. It makes life interesting. Imagine life if we all liked the same things or there was no emotional reaction. This is Mr Data and his new emotion chip trying to describe new concepts (skip the ad) . 2 - I think "personality" is perhaps a good complementary word to "character". I can perceive something of the values and opinions of the original designer and builder by seeing and using a building. For examples of modern buildings with characters I like or not, I would point to eg The British Library seems to be grand but welcoming. If I was not a member I may have perceived it as pompous, but i have worked in the various spaces. The small parks on bomb-sites in the City of London are intimate and illuminating, to me The National Shrine (Scottish National War Memorial) in Edinburgh I found grand but cold, and the Burrell Museum in Glasgow I found involving in its original form. Ferdinand

It's My Precious and I'm keeping it. Stay away, Baggins - we don't care how much gold you have in your pocketses ! Just watched LOTR again. Yes. It starts spinning in circles the other way if you have it on your kitchen table . F

Can we add here recommendations for paints which do and do not spray OK. * Interiors For walls, I have tried Leyland Trade Contract White, which is fine. In contrast, the Basic Dulux Matt topcoat was a failure, despite a recommendation from staff at both Wickes and the Dulux Centre that it would be OK. Ended up using a roller. Has anyone sprayed Vapspar White? Valspar mixed? And can anything be recommended for interior woodwork?

A perennial problem with walls is water or other staining. Yesterday I was walking past a fairly new wall, built perhaps 15 years ago. There are an interesting number of white stains now running down the wall. What is the cause? My candidate is probably the weep holes, and also the 'shadow' from the road sign (which should be a few inches further out). I wonder if it also cheap bricks, or an insufficiently considered design. In any case, if stains show up this prominently so soon, then something on the detailing is not right. What do you think, and what would you do differently? ( I have uploaded these at full size so you can zoom in.) Photo 1. Photo 2. Photo 3. Photo 4 . Photo 5 . .

He probably bought it for kitchens. He bought a remanindered warehouse of kitchen unit stock from a company called Kalmar in about 1982, which filled about 7500 sqft 3m high and then some. A significant chunk of income until after 2000 came from using that stock. Ferdinand

Evolutionary change indeed. 25 year old version. If it ain't broke...

Do you mean the walls it is going against, or the worktop when finished :-). ? This is going to cost you £10. The wall is already right-angled, 'cos one side is boarded out make it so. If you meant that, fork out now my friend.

Yep. It is very easy to be idiosyncratic in the wrong direction, which is fine. But... I think the pricing of interesting houses argues that they are more volatile and tend to be 'not average' both to live in and sell. It can go either way. I think it may help ... if we care ... that it can also be normal if desired.

is 5.1kg heavy?

But if you think that without limits you end up with a Geodesic Dome in a Grand Designs house in the Lake District .. .. and take a bath.

Yeah I tried it with the water running but it didn't make any difference. It doesn't matter if the switch is up or down, the water runs, so no failsafe. I don't know how they work but it's probably scaled up as it's before the water softener. The story here is that I had a T leave the water on at the stop tap when they went away in winter in about 2010, and the result was a leak which caused T to be out of the property fro about 8 weeks, 2 weeks of my time coordinating the repairs, and an 8k insurance claim. Fitting the Surestop is just a way to make sure it is easy for the T to switch off the water, and easy enough that I can put something in the rental agreement for nights away that can be enforcible later. As you say @PeterStarck - that requires it to be reliable. The oldest one I have in nearly 5 years old, but that T is still there so I can't take it out to examine. My current arrangements for new rentals tend to be: 1 - Magnaclean on heating circuit when new rads or a new boiler are installed. 2 - LIFF Limefighter 2 (magnetic not electrolytic which is the Limebeater) and Surestop fitted with switch above worktop or inside cupboard. 3 - Term in the rental agreement that the Surestop be used when away overnight. I encourage them to use it when out for a day, and tell them the story of the Great Leak. I think that requiring Ts to croink around with a stop tap every time they are away overnight would make such a clause unenforcible due to being unreasonable. I know that people have opinions about water softeners. My experience at home in the same geographical area is that a Limefghter 2 made a significant difference when we fitted one. And since they only cost £20-£30 compared to £800-1000 for a boiler it seems a no-brainer. I will need to check which order the things are in in the system. Logically the Surestop has to be on the mains side if it is to be a stop tap replacement. Perhaps some thought needed there and to accept that it is a secondary stop tap (and perhaps go for the remote switch but non-WRAS version which would save a few £££). Ferdinand

So, rooting through the power tools inherited from dad I finally investigate the router. It turns out to be one of these Eru MOF 177/2 Type 2, with an 1850W motor. The exploded parts diagram in the manual is stamped Apr. 89. Dad certainly bought good tools. Given that ELU were taken over by deWalt (subsidiary of Black and Decker) in 1994, it must be 1989-1994 vintage. I think it still exists as the evolved deWalt DW625, which can still be bought in Screwfix. I am seeing posts from about 2009 saying "an old 'un but a good 'un - pity they were taken over, buy one secondhand. I have had mine 25 yeas and it is still going strong". So they would be the bees-knees when we still had bees. So presumably dad's choice of tool was pretty good. Is there anything i need to know, never having used a router before? The context is a worktop needing fitting with 2 right-angles on Monday or Tuesday , but for that I think I will oppo for somebody who is experienced, despite having grasped the concepts. cheers Ferdinand

+1 But Wickes gave some WEIRD prices and discount structures for kitchens, especially the split between the designer showroom and the boxes in the store which I have seen at up to 300%+ different in price. And people get snobbish about them. The seller of our current house got quite stroppy when we remarked that it looked like a Wickes kitchen.

How are you going to attach your newel posts? Or if none are intended why are there slots for the glass screen? F

ISTM that logically a *single* humidity sensor would need to be somewhere credible for adjusting the whole system, which might be say in the inlet or outlet. A sensor in the bathroom would risk throwing all the rest out of whack while the bathroom was being humidity-reduced. But - and a big but - I do not have MVHR in my house, so I could just be wibbling. F

@KaraB Welcome. Nice to see a question from a renter. Ferdinand

We are @SteamyTea'a substitute for the Great Egg Race, engineering version.

There is a template for that.

Morning, Caliwag. I do not like the D word. My problem with "Delight" (but not the concept) is that it has become a fashionable term and a boilerplate label in passages of architectural marketing bollocks. It is not really clear it means, unless it is used of roof windows. IMO a word to be avoided in general use. If I applied the word to something, it would be the folly farm tank court, or a camera obscura inside someone's house. I can imagine some interior decorator asking Hilda Ogden "well, Hilda, are you delighted with the spatial narrative as you walk into your new home", and coming out with one of those rigid hotwater bottles, and a porcupine, justifiably inserted somewhere. I think that RAs winter garden may eventually meet the criteria, but I hope he uses a different language. We have seem the same thing with "human flourishing" ("living within an optimal range of human functioning, one that connotes goodness, generativity, growth, and resilience.) as a compound noun related to quality of life. Likely to occur in UN reports and rhetoric from Diocesan Social Responsibilty Advisers, and diversity reports, but no one has a clue what they are nebulating about.

You can control that in due course. Once branches start falling off or it seems dangerous, a call to the Tree Officer may get some action. F

Welcome. Are you at risk of those trees swallowing that view, and what can you do about it? (Suspect not a lot)

Cheers. So potentially a good idea if you know you will use around half of it immediately, which would save £4-5 per tube if using all of it. Ferdinand

Know whether they are on the Planning Committee, and perhaps find out a bit about their record first - just as a check so you know about them. Generally I would say talk openly, but if they have a record of politicising stuff for personal electoral reasons (eg are they a Lib Dem or other 'pavement politics' type ? *) then you may want to keep a low profile if you are pushing limits. I would also ask them early in the conversation (or their gofer beforehand) about if there is anything you might say by mistake to make them recuse themselves from Planning Committee decisions (though this is usually because they have a family link or personal interest). These are rare red flags rather than usual issues. Ferdinand (* Happened to our bigger housing estate application 3 days before Committee via a mass-distribution leaflet but it was controversial locally in nimby terms.)