Ferdinand

How much will your rental income be reduced by for those 2-3 weeks per year due to a temporary noisy environment ? £500-£1000 per annum? Or a lot more? Are the works justified?

My Senco collated screwdriver and drill/driver is here. Beautifully packed. And in clean condition, everything included. For £120 inc pp I call that somewhere between good and very good even if I need to spend £40-50 or so on new batteries, and I think I can recommend the ebay seller, who is unfortunately not a tool specialist. . Ferdinand

Cheers.

That sounds like a need for professional photographs for your eventual website (which will not be expensive), and rents priced accordingly. Excellent.

That is sad - clearly very good at the artisan type of work. Why do you think they went through?

Bearing in mind that interest rates are low and due to rise in the next 6 months, I would suggest considering getting a mortgage earlier. I would also suggest considering a longer term fix so you can budget predictably over the length of the build. Thirdly, I would consider keeping as much of your own money as you possibly can as contingency / flexibility funds. 20 or 30k is an amount that can be swallowed by a small number of surprises. Ferdinand

How committed are you to an unencumbered island? Could plan B be something like a set of display or ingredient shelves at one end with a concealed duct to the ceiling from a downdraft extractor? May be less intrusive. Examples F.

Also bear in mind that for an island you will need to design the extractor ducts into your slab - or mess about with stepped floors etc. Also, there are length limitations on the ducting. @Plumbersmateuk Agree entirely. So where is the centre of the ball? Each cross wrongly placed will cost £100-£5,000. Ferdinand

Jeremy is right. The 3.68 (or whatever) limitation on PV is on "right to connect". We have 9.98kwp of solar pv on a single phase, and had to ask the DNO. And on of the faster of the normal car chargers, that was £100 extra when they were installing the normal ones free. Think it is a 7kw device. Ferdinand

Decided I needed to know about these, so I went looking a little. Boras start at about £5k iirc for the "Bora Basic", though I think that includes the hob too. Apologies for food porn video at bottom. Personally I might baulk at that, as it equates to £1 per meal spent on the capital cost of the extractor hood / hob if I use it 10 times a week for a decade (!), and I would prefer one or two extra ensuites. But people who have them, love them. Correction: Actual prices for Bora Basic start at around 2k-2.5k. My 5k is wrong. Siemens brands have things such as the Siemens LD97AA670B Downdraft Cooker Hood which comes out of the worktop like a James Bond television, at a little under £2k. Very cool. Vid at bottom. There are also a Neff one at about £1500-£2k: https://www.johnlewis.com/neff-i99l59n0gb-downdraft-cooker-hood-stainless-steel/p1629490?sku=233668456&s_kwcid=2dx92700024773953252&tmad=c&tmcampid=2&gclid=CjwKCAjwranNBRBhEiwASu908JZzOAr5z6j3NN4yrp5H2vVuyZQCPb4yDShkFUW9TvjVJLM-cM0ZexoCByUQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds If Siemens and Neff are in on it at that price, then there will soon be occasional offers at under £1000 for those at places like Curries and Applicanes Direct. Aha - I see that Appliances Direct already have a Smeg one (another Siemens brand) at £1200, and a Miele (also Siemens iirc) at £1600. http://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/ct/cooker-hoods/downdraft-extractors If you are taking a couple of years to build, they will be rotinely under £1000 if you look and can accept one of those brands. And there are a couple of cheaper ones from lesser known brands: B&Q £592 - http://diy.com/departments/cooke-lewis-cldh-14-stainless-steel-downdraft-cooker-hood-w-900mm/291234_BQ.prd Flavel £430: http://www.shipitappliances.com/cooker-hoods/90cm-cooker-hoods/sia-dr91bl-90cm-touch-control-downdraft-black-kitchen-cooker-hood-extractor-fan?gclid=CjwKCAjwranNBRBhEiwASu908K441DOmm57S6DxnWVYj2TRAIh2FvjFDN7t4ueZoWZYHvZB_pFQgQhoCR8cQAvD_BwE Ebay deal: £350 (like the look of this) http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MyAppliances-REF10219-60cm-Downdraft-Cooker-Hood-Extractor-Fan-Stainless-Steel-/272765613569?_trksid=p2141725.m3641.l6368 Capel £640 https://www.appliancehouse.co.uk/shop/Caple-DD903BK-Downdraft-Cooker-Hood.html?utm_source=GoogleBase&utm_medium=XMLbase_feed&utm_term=Caple&utm_campaign=DD903BK&gclid=CjwKCAjwranNBRBhEiwASu908GpFXdPg27RifOmJMOLdbtyN_nEZR9zZW8RA7i0_iAmCF8x_118TOBoCO6wQAvD_BwE

I can confirm the last paragraph. I had a pile of Rockwool on our drive taht was for insulating under the floor of the Little Brown Bungalow. When the handyman got around to taking it over, he complained very slightly about the (small number of) lone-living bees from our old stone wall that had taken up residence. . Ferdinand

You can have an opening in the roof like Asterix . Alternatively, there are extractors which suck the fumes down through grills in the worktop, and a few people here like those. But they are not cheap either. Someone will be along in a minute who knows about them. Ferdinand

Congratulations on getting it through over (I think) the officer recommendation - I think that is quite remarkable even if you were landed with a reasonably large S106. I would have assessed your chances at about 12:1 against, or higher. There are a couple of people around, but no one I know who had actually done one themselves. On Ebuild there was a chap up in the lakes who was doing a similar cul-de-sac in the country thing, who was knocking around for several years making changes to his plans. I think his development was Flosh Meadows. He was selling off individual plots. I think it may be useful to have slightly fewer simultaneous threads than you have launched. Project thread plus extras for significant issues? Ferdinand

I think ours is 3 minutes, and it is one or two speakers for each side - objectors have to select one. If you have not won the argument in advance of committee you will not win there. It is about reminding them of your case - you cannot build a substantive argument in 3 or 10 minutes. That should have been done in your Application and in conversation with Councillors, Objectors and the Planning Officer first. However if you annoy them they or insult objectors they may get narked. Do not waste time on peripheral matters which are not material to planning, beyond a 5 second dismissal. That is for Officers to educate councillors and to be swatted on Appeal. So it can be important to have a Councillor on your side, as it is stand up, speak up, shut up - so if anyone spouts gibberish you cannot correct it. Also write to all Committee Councillors a few days in advance (or hand deliver) with a *concise* statement of your case. If it is more than a couple of hundred words they will not have time to read it. You should have already written to them in advance of that. If you have you could write individually composed letters to tickle their predilections and hot buttons. I had my agent speak for me, but it was an intricate argument based on no Local Plan (for some reason the Local Plan dog's breakfast had been on the front page of the local paper a couple of time in the months before) and National Policy presumption to develop. And it was politicised so we expected to lose.And we had Lib Dems on the case using us as a whipping post to place them at the head of a crowd. Ferdinand

Cheers. IIRC someone said they are the same as Ryobi.

Cheers. Bought.

You lot are 'orrible. Now you have me wanting one. Two more SENCO DS202-14V DuraSpins on Ebay. This one, on its own: £100 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SENCO-DS202-14V-DuraSpin-DS202-14V-Cordless-Collated-Screwdriver-/282622613945?hash=item41cd9ed9b9:g:EcgAAOSwLzhZniWZ This one, which includes a Senco SD300 Drill-Driver in a double set: £110 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Senco-DS202-14V-Cordless-Collated-Screwdriver-SD300-Drill-Driver-2x-Batteries/182717067711?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649 Does anyone know if there any issue with the double set? Is it, for example, an old product that is >5 years old (say)? Cheers Ferdinand

@ryder72 This may or may not be what you are after. However, if you are spending £50 per door then you are within touching distance of a product such as these reduced rom £140 to £84.: https://www.todd-doors.co.uk/iseo-c4500-white-door It says "semi-solid core", but they weigh 30kg each so that sounds quite solid to me. Ferdinand

One advantage of buying through Amazon Prime if the eBay seller will is high for pp.

If they have not asked for one, I would think twice about submitting the soil survey, but perhaps might consider a para in the Planning Statement which would serve to demonstrate that one is not necessary. Planning permission is formally not precedent forming, and pre-app advice is just an Officer's opinion anyway, so just because it has been mentioned before does not mean it is relevant now. I would address the trees FIRST. Very important. Know what trees you want still there and make sure that that is the position before you submit anything, once you are fairly sure you will do so. Cannot overemphasise this. I might also check exactly where the 250m landfill boundary line is, and if it is across a corner of the plot make the application site a little smaller excluding that part if feasible. Then make the bald statement that the application site is outside the landfill whatever zone. I have never done that so I am not sure if it would work as a tactic to head off a soil survey at the pass. Might the same tactic work with the Heritage Site thing? Not sure why they want a material schedule. What is that, anyway?

The only reason I would buy at TP is that the local £5 delivery gives them a small bulk order sweet spot sometimes. Obviously I have an account.

Looks like it will fit in well.

Cheers.

For the CU I bought about 3 weeks ago I went with Hager but bottled out on the RCBOs - went for a split board with each half with a pair of RCDs and MCBs on the circuits. I decided to go with Hager as a quality brand, but it was a short notice purchase and the RCBOs were about £28 vs <£5 for the MCBs. That was beyond the balance point in that situation. More research needed next time. Ferdinand

I am with Mike on this one. I do not want *all* the lights out due to a dodgy fuse in an ipad charger.