Ferdinand

Let me just remention that B&Q are still running their 40% off 50mm celotex offer (on the 1200x450mm) size. Ferdinand

Not fake news, but poor PR. This has been brewing for a year at least. Plenty of opportunities to sort it. I am sure there are a few free riders - but a group of 1400 for an annual output of 4000 homes is a lot. Back in December it was only 600. It seems that the trigger for wider coverage was a profits warning, followed by a Hail Mary Pass compensation offer following on from badly designed incentive payments to building staff. Twitter account set up in Feb 2016, for example: https://twitter.com/boviscomplaint?lang=en

Hmmm. Average Bovis selling price in 2016 Q1 and 2 was 254k, so 250-280 will be spot on now. They are making a pretty good margin compared to other big builders. http://www.bovishomesgroup.co.uk/pdfs/interimresults2016.pdf One interesting one to me is their cost per consented plot is £50k, and they are Southern-biased in where they build. Another is that they spent £56.8m on Section 106/CIL and £31.8m on Education planning gain taxes in 2015, plus whatever they spent on building 848 affordable homes. I am loving some of the diagnoses of the cause of the problem in the Guardian comments. Loving the picture of half finished tiling in the kicthen, and the comments about holes in the roof. Bovis Homes down by 10% on the shares. They will be back - good time to invest :-). F

3mm (or 5mm) plywood would also be suitable, depending on your radius. And there would perhaps be less time spent about bending it etc.

On community broadband, the earliest project I am aware of was Hayfield in the Peaks, who went live in 2003 with a Rabbit Grant. Remember Rabbit? It was driven by a volunteer group of techies and community people networking through pubs and local organisations, and institutionalised as a village development trust. THey have a website. That it is a little out of date says the service is reliable. http://www.digitalparish.com/ Trust website: http://www.developmenttrust.org/ Ferdinand

Curtain wire will give a very natural curve, as a way of creating the original for a template.

Or just use a Smartphone hotspot. Unless you live in a hotspot blackspot :-).

Cheers all.

@ProDave Cheers for the comment. I am happy that the monthly payment is a reasonable proxy here because it is based on a fixed usage of gas and electric, which is in my current usage, and I know that I cannot and will not do much more to reduce it in the next couple of years except for a new A+++ washing machine. I think I have most of the low hanging fruit now, short of doing an air test and wandering around with a Cigar. I think that avoiding the price fluctuations is perhaps more important. I can do more energy wise by optimising my solar array, which is tree pruning and perhaps moving some of my east facing panels to the south side, but I would need a car port first to put them on. When I talk to the energy supplier I will make sure that they do not just promise cheaper mo they with no substantive changes. Cheers and thanks for the heads up. Ferdinand

Thanks. I will have a conversation this week. I am sure it is cheaper to retan a customer than get a new one :-). My fixed offers are (differential comparison on base of £65 a month): a First Fixed March 2018 v6 Online - £78 pcm b First Fixed March 2018 v7 - £80 pcm c First Fixed June 2018 v5 plus - £82/pcm d First Fixed April 2019 v5 plus - £85 pcm e First Fixed April 2019 v4 plus - £85 pcm f First Fixed March 2020 - £86 pcm Their opening gambit was b d or f plus a £50 immediate cashback. The best online cashback offers for switching are about £75 or 6% (of what?). The best 12 months fix I can find is £67/month from Iresa (who?). The best 2 year fix is £77/pcm plus £30 from Scottish Power (" Help Beat Cancer Fixed Price Energy January 2019 v2 Online "). Now if that was for Diabetes I'd risk Scottish Power customer service. Will have a little chat this week. Target seems to be 10-15% off the 2 year fix offer. Ferdinand

Does anyone have any ideas about the likely direction of energy prices? My current dual fuel deal is up for renewal in April. I am paying £65 per month which is slightly above usage which would be £60. I am inclined to go for the longest fix possible which would be 2 or 3 years, as I think we may be due for some volatility. I am keen to avoid smaller players. I will take a bit of an increase of £100-200 no matter who I go for, and I am happy with my current supplier First Utility. The renewal offer is +250 ish with a £50 cash back sweetener. Any comments are welcome. I am inclined to negotiate the renewal offer to see how much leeway they have. Ferdinand

Impressive presentation from the landlady. http://www.roomsinreading.co.uk/

It is a bit early to say it to this detail, but perhaps my greatest annoyance is the changed flow to the drainage. We have a large roof area - something like 100 sqm, and where it runs down the valleys from the now high roof it scoots over the edge of the guttering in a rainstorm. Not enough to be a problem, but it means i have to pay attention to keeping gutters clear. Do not underspecify gutters etc. Ferdinand

Absolutely. Horses for courses and polytunnel structures for weather regimens. It is a potential use for all the left over waterpipe from that big reel we all bought and were left with 25m or so. Alternatively one could use the compressor, some gubbins and an appropriate ball and make some sort of neighbour annoying Iraqi-style supergun embedded in the verge of the roof. Ferdinand

Excellent things. We used to have one for veg for years and years. One side was entirely strawberries :-). Can make your own eg by using water supply pipe slotted over tough stakes driven into the ground for ribs and wrapping in polythene or fruit netting can be used. Good for the UK climate. Or get a real one. The main problem was that some vermin e.g. Foxes might eat their way in. Ferdinand

Is this like ufh? Put the hidden ducting in but leave it sealed and a future owner or you if you turn to be Escoffier can fit the hood. F

= Vacillating Added Time

Still going strong... http://www.tufnol.com/index.aspx

Naive question. Is it functionally useful to provide a diversion by either trees close by or a mast of some sort (we used to have our satellite dish on a 6m metal mast near the house)? I expect the answer to be ... it might help, but only randomly and sometimes. F

Welcome. Our conversion has gables to front and back of a former bungalow. A huge amount of extra space over hips.

Apropos of a previous thread I cannot locate, Curry's replaced my suspected killed-by-a-power-cut 6 month old microwave without turning a hair. All I did was turn up at the shop with a copy of the receipt and the corpse of the microwave, and they gave me a new one on the spot. Technical explanation was limited to "it died". Impressed. Ferdinand

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Until the 14k quote arrives and you realise that the payback might benefit your children if they stay until 2050.

The other test to apply to a proposed staircase is the normal length of your nearest and dearest's comfortable steps walking in the house, and to compare that to the length from one step to the next on the stairs. That is sqrt (rising squared + going squared). Can also be done with arc tan if you are a masochist. I suggest that the step up the stairs should be a little shorter. Having said that , I have never designed a staircase :-), so just call me an architectural consultant. Ferdinand

Ono. Cue dismantled bathroom and more airproofing...