Ferdinand

Is there a safety issue with some of these? Today I saw a so called 3 in 1 tap in Wickes reduced from £699 to £399, and they said it was a boiling water tap. I think it was Franke. Interested Peter W? ;-) However, there seemed to be only a single spout, which means that someone not used to one or a child(?) might run boiling water on the hands by mistakes. Can anyone who has one of these clarify?

I may have posted this before on Ebuild, but my former Fred Dibnah style Traction Engine owning neighbour got himself a table saw in 4 easy steps. 1 Get table 2 Get saw - circular 3 Cut slot in table using saw 4 Attach saw under table poking through slot. Simples.

TBH it looks high enough to move that small chunk in the middle of the carriageway and drive under. Good tree, though. Greenpeace will be crying into their watercress-juice at the loss of habitat for beatles.

If the tree has bats do they leave it there until someone has installed a bat-sanctuary in the adjacent field?

No. This is Berkshire, where the berks live (and where I used to work). It is a floating version of the Range Rovers which use their peerless 4WD off road go-up-a-cliff-backwards-under-the-guidance-of-an-intelligent-drivetrain to get the tins of tuna for Tibbles from Waitrose. There is an engine and the mast is for literal virtue-signalling, like the waders they wear when changing the water in the goldfish bowl. F

Perhaps it hasn't sunk because it is on the bottom.

Have PMd.

Here is what happened to our neighbour's fence. Half a dozen panels disturbed. I would say the culprit was attaching 1.8m panels rigidly to 3x3 posts. One panel was blown right across the garden. A neighbour down the road had a plastic shed blown away. Ferdinand

What about a half height extra handrail for the 'winks? Even make it removeable for when they grow up? Ferdinand

Returning to topic :-), have we got a good and practical solution for these door thresholds? This has been niggling at me. The option of adding a concrete tongue to the slab by cutting out a slice of insulation seems OK and, as has been said, reducing 200mm of insulation to 100mm is not exactly a huge sacrifice even in the context of a very low energy house. However, are there low conductivity materials which can be inserted as a threshold instead of using a concrete tongue to slab level? One detail would be to make the concrete tongue below the level of the slab to create space to insert a (more) insulating material, which also needs to be sufficiently strong in compression and have a lifetime of perhaps 40-50 years. What could that material be? One option would be Terry's Porotherm blocks, or maybe something with Leca as the aggregate (Leca-crete blocks)? Others that come to mind are the driveway pavers that are made from 90-95% recycled rubber products, or a composite plank (thinking of something like the plastic decking planks but more structural), or even wood (an oak threshold - we use oak as soleplates?). Am I barking up the wrong tree here? Ferdinand

.. for a week or two.

I would say loadbearing from this, based on those being orientations relative to the wall itself. Ferdinand

He has lots of varieties of those already :-). I was trying to match some late 1970s buff bricks, and some Butterleys match, but the Butterley Brick company is now down South somewher - Bedford I think. So none to pick up locally. The Repton conglomerate is Langley's, which came out of a small business which used to supply the mining industry. Now 4000 people internationally and £800m+ turnover. F

It is wonderful that people do this. An entire site about bricks and brickworks from my area. https://eastmidlandsnamedbricks.blogspot.co.uk/ And a wonderful "walking" steam engine from a different site, made by the Butterley company. It ran at 3mph up a 1/50 gradient. Designed by someone familiar with a horse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Horse_locomotive Commendable nerdery. Found due to following a reference to the billionaire with a global conglomerate who lives in Repton. Not, unfortunately, @PeterW 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