Ferdinand

Shouldn't you be able to find your usage from the online stats of your account? For mobiles, mine has a traffic measurement and trigger warning facility built-in to Android.

There may be some useful background and guidance here: https://www.homebuilding.co.uk/?s=barn+conversion

Looking at all these numbers, I am thinking: 1 - Having more space makes a real difference. 2 - Capital for expenditure tradeoffs are probably worth it much of the time.

When I put everything through my mobile phone for a month, it was about 20Gb ;-). Excluding television, but including a couple of episodes of the Grand Tour.

I reckon there is 40% approx in the materials. Looks OK. F

On the roof connection, I think you just plumb it as continuous drainpipe that runs straight into an underground pipe to the tank. Rather than into a ground gutter. I have such pipes on my house but I have never built one. Ferdinand

The only test hole I have ever dug I later fell into in the dark when poshed up. Not a good idea. It was not very deep but it was full of water testing the percolation in clay. Unfortunately the percolation in clay had been insufficiently brisk to be of much use in the circumstances.

You get some leeway / allowances .. but I don't know what without really checking. And at present I am buying not selling :-).

Our Aquatron was perhaps £1500 (in 2000 or so) for the spinner which had to be imported from Scandnavia, then we had to build an Aquatron house (small brick shed) and plumb it in. Then zero running costs. They are now available for a much larger range of sizes. Ferdinand

There is also a piece in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/feb/12/foreign-billionaires-london-choosing-rent-avoid-stamp-duty

Reading the recent thread about treatment palnts has made me wonder if we are overcomplicating things. We have all sweated blood to reduce our heating bills by perhaps £1000 per year, and cut the concomitant environental impact. Good. But spending £400 or £600 a year to run a treatment plant seems to me to be a backward step, as it is as much as, or more than, mains connection (South West excepted!). As a household we are now on mains drainage, but at our old house we spent 15 years on a septic tank, which was then replaced for 15 years by an Aquatron (ie a whole house soil closet with an inert centrifugal separator - a plastic spiral with a hole in the middle - for Number 1s and Number 2s) . The Aquatron requirement was an initial install, no power, and a visit once a year with a wheelbarrow and shovel to get the compost. From the business end it felt just like the septic tank or mains connection. Is there another race-to-technological-gimmicks going on here - like the ones we have seen in Grand Designs where Sophie and Sebastian use the enviro-savings to install an enviro-cost which is not actually necessary. Just musing. Ferdinand

I am not clear whether I get all the Stamp Duty back, or whether I take it off the amount liable for cat and get a fraction of it back. iirc you are darn sarth so I would probably need to buy about 5 houses to pay the same amount of Stamp Duty. There was a fascinating piece in The Times yesterday about how the rich are now renting their £5m pads in London because the transaction costs of buying cover about 5-7 years of rent. Stamp Duty on a £5m house bought through a company which is your second house is 15% = £750k and then there is an annual Enveloped Dwellings Tax of £55k on top. How to kill the Golden Goose :-) Ferdinand

I am after ideally 8x10 or 8x12 but 9 x y would be OK and possibly up to x x 16. Saw one done out as a dance studio in Mansfield on eBay at 8x16 with a laminated floor and disco lights and mirrors. That would be fun. Ferdinand

I believe it is 4m is a double pitch roof, and 3m if a mono pitch. Ferdinand

Ideally I might be within 1m. Belt and braces :-0 . So I would still like one under 2.5m. F

The perimeter is nearly as important as the area as that/0.6 tells you very nearly how many tiles will need to be cut potentially.

I am planning to put a site office type portable unit at the side of a house just behind the line of the principal elevation, with a sheltering fence in front, within 1.2m of the boundary. I can rely upon the portability aspect if anyone complains and the council tries to enforce etc, butor could apply for planning. BUt I would be more comfortable being under the 2.5m height where PP is not required, to kill even the possibility of any challenges and remain Permitted Development. So... can anyone point me to portable buildings under 2.5m overall height from the ground. An alternative is to get a slightest higher one and put the legs in small holes, but Inwould prefer a lower one. The unit will be site official type with at least insulation and power, and perhaps windows in place. If I can get a sink unit already Ina swell that would be best. IF anyone has one I am in Notts/Derbys. Cheers Ferdinand

That for me? We have few problems.

At this point you could stick the remaining payment on a 36 month interest free credit card and pay off gradually until 2020 at almost zero extra cost. At the least the cash could be saved somewhere which would give you an extra 2k or so.

Clock? Neighbours love clocks.

Not that keen on inset shelves. Extra complication and my 80 year old mum would not be able to reach. We have a floorstanding unit like this that stands in a corner of the shower, about 90cm high. I quite like the glass cleaner mount, though I would probably have a suction book to the glass. Ferdinand

Interesting Headline: " Welcome to rabbit-hutch Britain, land of the ever-shrinking home " Paragraph 7: Paragraph 19: The data table prominently displayed is from the first - older - one of those two studies. They do not link to the report that seems to render the screeching headline untrue. I am not saying don't read it, but reinforcing my previous point about our media and accurate reporting. I have added a comment, but last time (the "acoustic guitars were designed in the shape of women's bodies" myth they simply deleted the request for factual information 4 times). Ferdinand

IIRC the Water Supplier has responsibility for shared pipes now which may change the evaluation if a new section of shared pipe is being created in private land. So creating new shared pipes may not be something they want to do. I wonder if one could covenent to pay the maintenance on the newly shared bit, or pay a commuted sum in advance? Ferdinand

I have one. There was a previous useful conversation somewhere. The key (!) was to put it somewhere where it is seen everytime someone comes in, so in the case above the locks can be changed expeditiously.

I had them asking a couple of years ago for proof of an inspection and maintenance regime on a tree from previous years, when the requirement for 3 yearly inspections only came in with a policy that had been in place for a week under which the claim was made. Denial of liability was threatened. Eventually I lost patience and ignored them (not necessarily a good idea), and they have not come back. Ferdinand