Ferdinand

Decision not quite yet made on this. I am going for 25mm celotex plus 18mm OSB, using 25x50mm roofing laths flat as battens. That will give me a build up of 43-45mm plus floor covering. I'll post my further reflections later on. Thanks for for all the comments. PS Forgot to mention that the above OSB would be moisture resistant OSB3. F

In these bungalows the door you can see in the background in the top photo is the kitchen door, so the placement is about as good as it can get.

I think Tesla will make this work, but it could be Tesla Mark II or someone with money who bought it out. The question may be how many lots of investors money it may swallow first. Mr Musk also has other money pits, such as space rockets, that may need filling. Notably successful, but still a money pit. Ferdinand

Thanks for the comments all. Now need to think over the weekend. @Simplysimon @Stones The point about height is well-taken - though I am only 5'11". However they have concrete lintels, whcih is not a ballgame I wish to enter. Following option 4 I can reduce my loss of doorway height to 55mm plus floor covering. If I switch from 36x63 cls to 25x50 pse I can knock another 13mm off, which reduces the doorway height loss to 43-44 mm plus floor covering, leaving me 1.925m to 1.93m as the opening height rather than my suggested 1.890m above. @ProDave thanks for the flooring comments. There's a suitable compromise here somewhere, just need to find it. Part of the answer may be a door design which makes it feel taller eg a vertical design emphases. Time to go and spend half an hour standing in doorways on blocks of wood, and examining doorframes in detail, I think. Ferdinand

I'll post more detail on the Crofter thread. I spotted a Neff Induction hob on Amazon here for £349. It comes with a set of Neff pans alleged to be worth £119. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Neff-T36FB41X0G-60cm-Induction-Hob/dp/B01N4WP20L/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494615325&sr=8-1&keywords=Neff+induction+hob Ferdinand

What is the insulatory effectiveness of shredded or broken up EPS sheet in concrete slabs? I can't see BCO allowing such in any regulated slabs, but for conservatories outside the thermal envelope, garages or workshops I could see an application. Or greenhouses. Ferdinand

WHile I am on doors, Todd Doors have some 4 panel oak veneer doors with the complex mouldings reduced from £224 to £50 in their sale. https://www.todd-doors.co.uk/4-panel-oak-door Not suitable for my property unfortunately, but perhaps an option for some people. That is my normal way of doing insulated floating floors to make sure it will last no matter what. Ferdinand

I may have been a little enthusiastic with my floating floor insulation for the Little Brown Bungalow, and I now need some shorter than normal doors. A classic oversight. The arithmetic is that I have specified 50mm Celotex between 36.63mm battens on their side, them 18mm OSB, then underlay and a floor covering (laminate, engineered wood, vinyl or carpet depending). That equals a need to cut off approx 63+18+10 = 90-95mm, plus any air circulation gap I decide I need. There are 6 doors. The plan had been to go with Geneva or perhaps Shaker style oak veneer doors from someone like Todd Doors, where they can be bought for £60-80 inc. VAT. Existing doors are standard imperial 1981mm height. So without butchering the doorframes, and I do not plan to go there, that means I need doors which can be trimmed by almost 4 inches, or find a supplier of shorter or custom doors, or reduce the floor depth. Options seem to be: 1 - Bespoke eg pine doors. These seem to start at £150-£200, so are probably a non-starter. 2 - Find some doors at OK prices which can be trimmed to about 1890mm, or by 90mm. The best I have seen so far are the Todd Doors' doors which can typically be trimmed by 50mm base and 12mm top = 62mm total. 3 - Use slab plywood doors trimmed as needed and recapped. The bungalow had slab doors before, but I was planning on a more upmarket feel. 4 - Reduce floor thickness - could be done by using 36x63mm battens on their face not their edge and 25mm Celotex not 50mm. That would give me an additional floor depth of 36 + 18 + (8 to 10) which can just squeak under the 62mm cutting limit of the Todd Doors. I would need to store or sell the pallet of 50mm Celotex sheets I have already purchased, and buy 25mm. I will have a use for the other within a few months. Any comments - particularly for trimmable doors - would be welcome. I need to decide this over the weekend at the latest. Ferdinand

That tariff is presumably on just the physical product, though.

I am not sure what the requirements are re: fire etc. Is it required to be encapsulated?

Is the warranty perhaps insurance based? (Hopefully ... Solarworld are huge if it is part of the German one).

OK. Need a long, thin bean bag for about £2 that will go through a loft hatch.

Can we find a way to use lots of this? Can it be put into some sort of cover (mattress cover? sack? packaging for a tall thin item that is common?) and put it in the loft for insulation? Does anyone still use paliasses? Surely there are cheap covers or bags we all use that would do it? Potential for a service? Suspect it is too low value itself. Ferdinand

Bumping this rather than start a new thread. Can anyone point me to a guide for expansion, and low-expansion foam to use vs suitable applications? My thumbnail guide is expanding foam for bigger gaps with room to expand, low-modulus less-expanding foam for smaller gaps or where something being pushed out of line would noticeable. I am also after a recommendation of where to source it - currently I would use NoNonsense from Screwfix. In my case this is for internal (of the property) use. Cheers Ferdinand

We had a thread about PIR here, and some of it may be transferrable: Insulate around the swimming pool :-). F

On that occasion :-). Mostly it comes down to sit and wait. This one was really misadvertised as a "local collect only" in the deep countryside. Aren't you down south in the Home Counties where coffee-fiends are much closer together and ebay competition much more intense? My worst ebay selling performance was when I sold a chap 5 sacks of ex-church wooden floor blocks for 99p as he was the only one that bid. So much for saving on commission.

I bought the Gaggia MDF grinder and storage unit, which keeps them both tightly together on your worktop and gives you a knocking-out drawer. I have alternative baskets, but have not modded the steam wand. If you hand around the UK Coffee Forums eg https://coffeeforums.co.uk/forum.php and post, there will be someone with the right thing reconditioned if you need it. I think I paid £65 for the coffee machine and £115 for the grinder and unit. At that price it was just to learn, but they seem OK. I double up on pods in hotels. Hail Ristretto ! The UK coffee forum has 15,993 members . Are we off-topic? Ferdinand

Would you get your Coop 5% membership cashback? That might help. https://www.coop.co.uk/membership I am not sure how this works in practice in different areas. The one coffee thing I have that requires paper capsules (the Handpresso) I tend to order hermetically sealed in bulk online.

That sounds like a pet dog or cat :-) . The inkjet printer marketing strategy.

Isn't that a Mexican standonoff - @Onoff working out where he is going to keep the digger while he builds a garage to keep the digger in. PS Welcome Carerrahill.

Heh. That does seem excessive. Aeropress and Handpresso (does OK crema and you pump it like a bicycle pump) should be sufficient. Personally, I can live without steamed milk. For my fairly minimalist coffee kit, I have one of these, a Gaggia Classico and grinder: Came from ebay from a chap in Beverley who specified "local collect only", so his customers were limited to tourists, a few Yorkshiremen, and sheep. He quite happily posted it if I paid but I recently killed the pump by mistake. and one of these Aeropresses. There is something about coffee videos that never quite reaches "cool". and one of these Handpressos, which is good and bike-portable, (cheesily sexist video follows, where the only woman making coffee is on a beach holiday): and one of these Thermos Ultimate Flasks, which really does very nearly work for tea at teatime when out for the day: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thermos-Ultimate-MKII-Flask-900/dp/B013YMS8RM Ferdinand

This is true. I think Nespresso are starting to reach budget hotels now ... Ibises and Premier Inns and so on. However Nespresso capsules cost from about 20p to 60p per cup. So if you have two people having just 3 cups a day each you are into several hundred £££ per year, and then you have to have a "eight supplied request more from reception" type policy, or charge them (prob. not on), or find another wheeze such as supplying two or four per day while refreshing the room if they have been used. Or identify a local cost-effective source. That was why I stuck to filter or cafietiere coffee - you supply them with one variety in one sealed packet, and they can buy their own if needed. Or just supply four or ten of the "sit on cups" filters to get them started. Ferdinand

If you convert that into 4-6 man (team will be at least 2, one climber) days and supplying chippers and kit and so on, then you see it is at £150-175 per man day. F

PS My qualifying criteria for a treeman would be roughly 5-10 years local experience of that Council, such that they can list the names of the TOs and tell me what their opinions will probably be. That is roughly the same as the experience I would expect of Planning Consultant - that they should know the Planning Officers by name, and have an idea of their individual opinions. For me, to talk to the Council first where I have a potential project I want to do is likely to be just too high a risk - especially were I to have already sunk my savings into it eg bought or optioned a plot. It isn't just about doing what I want, it is also about identifying what I *need* to do or finding better ideas, which means talking to a number of people. F

I would usually talk to a Treeman first because - however good the advice - there is a risk of a Council TO (perhaps under incitement by neighbours or NIMBYs or Councillors seeking to gratify voters) slapping Emergency (or worse, Emergency Woodland) TPOs on things almost on the spot, and once it is in the system it can be a sod to get it out again even 10-20 years later. If it is a CO or is TPO'd the Council may want / will require a report anyway most of the time. The exception would be where I know my intentions and there is nothing the Council could possibly do which would interfere. In this case I may have got the work done on the birch / beech, and got a detailed Treeman verbal opinion on the other, and then asked the Council about the Leylandii. Anyhoo @PeterW has already given a brief well-informed opinion. But I am in the position of having a continuing (and slightly too expensive) relationship with a couple of Treemen over the last several years, so I can get such opinions easily. F