Ferdinand

>2) how dry are your blocks, I have never worked with durisol but by the looks of them they will suck the life out of the concrete in no time, on that basis the only time you are likely to get a blow out is in the first hour or so, or while the concrete is pumping. The texture is like shredded wheat, except in shredded wheat the fibres are aligned. Kevin McCloud would love to do a demo. @recoveringacademic kindly donated me one at the weekend, so if he ends up with a gap at the top like @Construction Channel, you know where ir went. F

One thing to bear in mind quietly is that it may be easier to remove some things yourself (if circumstances are conducive to this) rather than put them into the planning system via a ground survey, eg someone here had iirc "lead contamination" come up on their Report, which turned out to be paint stored in a since-removed old shed some time previously. Innthat case it may have been easier just to have dug out the soil, cart it away, and remake the ground. Then leavel grass to grow. Once something is in the system it stays visible and if you have objectors they will nail you to the wall on it every time. In my case we treated single small bush of Knotweed, with evidence, before we sold our pot with permission. The next lot of surveyors made teeth-sucking noises because they found a dead stem lying on the ground (lesson learnt), and it is still there in the conditions a couple of Planning Applications later. Ferdinand

It's on your LPA website - which is likely to be a Council or Local Park authority. They have somewhat varying search facilities. It will come under something like "Search all Planing Applications", and you can go via a text box search specifying Road, Post Town, Postcode etc, or get into the Map Search and find your area, which should have some way of identifying planning applications. There should be some form of tickboxes which let you specify the data to be displayed such as eg Planning Records, Planning Records 2017 etc. Once you have the area highlighted there should be details displayed when you mouseover or click. That should give you a link to various Planning Applications, which you bring up, or in a new tab/windows by CTRL-CLICK or RightCLICK. Then you read those looking for Ground Conditions Reports or similar, Decision Notices, and Officers' Reports - the last are the summary by the Planning Officer. Ferdinand

Not quite - depends. Great for toast, too :-o . It needs to be used. If not, you have a large lump of iron sitting there. @gravelld said We were all electric except for the Aga hob (gas was quoted as about 15k for pipes in 198x as it was about 500m away), so 10+ storage heaters. But I am not spending today defending Agas . (Declares victory and retires from thread) F

Why not get a bigger one and just put the leaky one inside a non-leaky one? Or wrap the whole thing in a huge tarpaulin' scrunched at the top like a goody bag. Or a fold down side and sell fast food on the roadside? Or...

If there is little green area left, perhaps all the bats and badgers and hedgehogs are living in your little plot . A Phase I is quite reasonable price-wise. It is when they ask for a Phase II that you need to worry. I think here I would find several recommendations and ask for quotes for the phase I. You need a focus on - at least - ruling out any landfill risk (think 250m should make you safe there), and making sure no one mentions gas percolation tests without a careful explanation. We had to do these on a larger site, but we were much closer than that. I is a bit of a trigger, and tick-box cultures such as exist in Planning find it easier to require tests to be done rather than accept they are not necessary. I think it would also be worth getting all the Ground Condi tion reports (and Planning Decisions conditioned to requite them) so you can demonstrate that there are places between you and the landfill where tests were not required. Should be an hour or two online. Ferdinand

Think they fleeced themselves and the heading should be preceded by: "A Cautionary Tale". I love this: "Andrew would have liked a poured concrete kitchen floor, but settled for an impressive grey vinyl from The Colour Flooring Company. It was £800 including fitting, or less than a tenth of the cost of concrete" That 'inexpensive' sheet vinyl is 3.2mm thick concrete grey "commercial quality" (allegedly) and £28 per sqm, plus fitting by the company that supplied it. About £7 per sqm from elsewhere for thicker stuff. Or you could do uniclic tiles. The concrete comparison is mere smoke. Presumably it is also 100x cheaper than gold leaf - which fact is not relevant either. I would say that much of the £22.5k expense (£6.5k on a couple of mdf custom cupboards aside) is on a desire to have designer items - whch is actually money spent on art objects not the makeover. IMO they have overpaid everything by about 4x or 5x, partly because they do not know better and partly because they insisted on "icons". Ercol stacking chair (£500?). Chandelier - would quite like this at £100 (£300). Kitchen bentwood lampshade (£285 - Ikea version about £70, and I thought *that* was OTT). Bathroom floor tiles (£170 per sqm). New legs for the Ikea bed (£100-£150 for 4). Farrow and Ball paint. Farrow and Ball paint !! Suspect they also overspent by perhaps 50k on the £437k one-bedroom plus terrace flat. Plenty 2 bed or 1 bed + garden flats available for £350k to £450k in Stroud Green. People with too much money in too much of a rush. To give them one due, at least they can take most of it with them to the next place. Ferdinand

We had an Electric Aga (vintage perhaps 1998). Big one - 2 oven traditional electric ovens in the 'storage heater' but, with an add on with 2 more ovens and with an add on with 2 more ovens and a propane gas hob. Cost something like 14-15k (fitted !). Running costs were ££ but we were off mains gas and annual energy etc bills were the best part of £3-4k anyway in 2010 even being economical - the AGA was probably £600 of that. Was a 500sqm house going back up to 400 years. The traditional AGA ovens work well for some things that are surprising, such as using cast iron pans on the oven floor (far cleaner for a fried breakfast since all the splatter self-cleans off the oven wall rather than landing in your kitchen). They do a 3-pin plugin version. I can see an Aga working well with PV solar if your house needs the heat. I do not think we had *any* vent pipes or cooker hoods. Just a stonking iron sheet blocking off the old chimney above. Incidentally, the beam directly above the front of the Aga is made of fibreglass - cosmetic covering for a steel. Ferdinand

Are you a furniture making area? Around here I could probably find a small setup that would do me a custom job using their industrial sewing machine. If you are worried about the stiffness of the multi foil try 110mm soil pipe as your wrapping tube. Ferdinand

My understanding of solar in Spain is that the state run Electricity system is losing something like 30 billion a year, and in the absence of political will to charge what it costs they are groping around for cash cows, one of which us to tax solar produced electricity. http://www.mariscal-abogados.com/sun-tax-on-photovoltaic-systems-in-spain/ My further understanding is that having walked into this lamppost, they now find themselves having to backpedal. It may already have gone. Or not. https://cleantechnica.com/2016/03/10/parliament-spain-removes-punitive-sun-tax/ The only thing you can be sure of is that you cannot be sure. F

Can you not rivet a patch over it? That was how they built the Titanic .. er.

Does the crate need ventilating? You are halfway there.

Thanks for the responses. We had a two wheeled one tears ago ... difficult at corners and in not quite straight lines. I do not think I will get an electric one through due to cost. One thing I have not mentioned is that an ideal loaded height would be 12 to 15 inches. Cheers for the comments so far.

Ironically, £30 is exactly what it costs me for a new builders' barrow. The local BM do identical barrows in chrome, black and green at 3 different prices. Ferdinand

Certainly for tomorrow morning,

+1. Works.

All fur coat and no knickers may have a bigger chance of being preserved.

For the record. 1 - drink whisky. 2 - imagine naval gun whilst in drunken stupor.

You threatened that months ago. I call all mouth and no trousers.

I am looking for a smallish wheelbarrow suitable for my mum (81, 5'2", uses walking stick) to use around the garden. Does anyone have any experience of models they would recommend? I get nobbled for any heavy or prickly jobs, so it is mainly for moving eg plants and pots and clippings around - that kind of thing. (Yes, I know at all the older - undefined - people on buildhub could construct a lighthouse on Rockall in a morning using a Mirror Dinghy and Medium Density Breezeblocks, but there does come a time when we become a little less Incredible-Hulk-like). Ferdinand

Yes, but can he build a 14 inch naval gun out of a set of bagpipes and a crate of whisky?

I hadn't realised until this morning, but Eurocell are one of our local successes, and seem to have a very good reputation. They are a £200m turnover business based within 5 miles of where I live, and manufacture their products in Alfreton, Derbyshire. Largest UK based PVCU profile manufacturer / recycler. I hope they stay independent; we require a Mittelstand. Founded in 1974, , and hahave been through a couple of ownerships; now independent and on the stock exchange. So, yes ... buy Eurocell if they meet your needs. Hopefully suppliers like Sunamp will follow a similar or better growth pattern. Ferdinand

Looks good. How do the two levels of roof work? Ferdinand

That could be one to ask on the Gardenlaw forum, Rights of Way topic. The key thing is probably who has a right to go down it, and who *does* go down it, and in what mode of transport. Agree with "caution". But it could be one of those "no idea" conclusions. If the numbers were small and it was short term (ie less time than it would take someone to do something about it), I might check my insurance and chance my arm. You need to worry about the person in the hospital with a brick which landed on their head, as well as the neighbour wanting procedures following, Chatting to eg dog walkers may be a help if they are the main users. Ferdinand

Depending on when you need them, another option is to ask local worthies (vicar or RC person where the East Europeans are more likely to be found, trade union branch chair, local councillor) for names. Another option is to ask someone who works at a manufacturing or depot type place to put something on the noticeboard. That might find former or trained but never made a job due to recession brickie and trade type people who moved into a different skilled or semi-skilled position. They may want a second regular or occasional job. Another source could be to ask for recommendations from the head of dept or lecturer at your local college construction dept. Ferdinand