Ferdinand

The usual presumption for rainwater would be a Sustainable Drainage System these days, I think.

Welcome. How big are your rooms, and are there any fancy bits that stop you covering over all the walls? You will need to be thinking in terms of insulating everything well either inside or outside, then ventilating the interior. F

That's why the fence is different, isn't it ! The neighbour's predecessor left so little space that he couldn't get the fence behind it, so just continued in line with the extension inside the boundary, perhaps. Very ouch.

The cheapest resolution will be for the neighbour to buy 2ft of land, and pay to do whatever to the garage. Cost: 75k? Or planning may do something. Or the neighbour will be a doormat and the bodge may stand.

Very true. Planning will say "Boundary disputes are not a relevant planning matter." But there may be other avenues. Which fence is the boundary line, do you think ? ?

He would have a right to access for maintenance under the Access to Neighbouring Land Act. Would not help with garage, though.

Strange case. Neighbour should have insisted on an immediate STOP notice, or gone for an emergency injunction. I suspect he has now lost, as the Planners will go for minimum disturbance for the planners. As it stands the finish seems to be block ie perhaps no outer leaf, which is probably not acceptable. Might get them with that. Fence seems to be on different lines front and back. F

"Final layout to be confirmed by others" = is -ese for "Not my fault, Guv". ?

Might work in Whipsnade.

I would say mine the content of the site very hard - there are scores of threads about exactly this issue. In a lot of detail. At present the lobby inside the bedroom seems like completely wasted space. F

If those are about the size I think they are (~20 ft?) then a birch will reach that size in a very small number of years, so personally I would not pfaff with transplanting. The most environmentally friendly was to remove them is with a medium sized elephant. Very useful things, elephants.

A quasi-easement is likely to be an easement type thing but where the 2 plots were in the same ownership when the quasi-easement was created. I think it is quasi because an easement is only possible between different parties. Check with a solicitor or conveyancer. A number of those covenants may relate to the developer protecting each plot as they were built, so that a new purchaser could not interfere with the next bit of development, or the next set of plots etc. Things created for that reason will be unenforcible quite soon legally, unless they are worded to apply to all future sales. Post the anonymised text of the covenants with your post on Gardenlaw - image is good. They will need that. F

Have you considered doing them vertically - like a canal bank ?

I think you get a digger and knock 'em in like a hammer, then clear what is left from the front. Essentially you are piling to create a bank. The other source I would look at is piles for canal-banks. Has a local company got any used ones left over?

If it is not especially important in the character of the listed building, and it sounds not if you can drive over it, then it should imo be straightforward. Personally I would just crack on. If somebody wants to complain, let them do so afterwards. If you change nothing physically, then I would not worry. If things on the land are mentioned in the listing, then I might be more cautious - as imo the obligations will run with the land and you will pick them up. Perhaps get a written confirmation from your solicitor that there are no problems. If there are common interests be clear on the new relationship. Check this: https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/listed-buildings-and-curtilage-advice-note-10/heag125-listed-buildings-and-curtilage/ Ferdinand

This looks slightly interesting. It is claimed to also reflect IR.

I like toast. (Tip: Turning off Javascript seems to break that particular bit of the Economist ferewall.)

It's gibberish. --------------------- The fuel involved is usually natural gas. This is burned in a central boiler in order to heat water that flows to radiators elsewhere in the building. Britain's government would like to change this. From 2025 gas-fired boilers will be banned in newly built homes. By the mid-2030s installing new gas boilers in existing houses will be banned, too. The question is what will replace them. Unlike electricity generation, where renewables are proving popular, or cars, where battery-powered vehicles are rapidly becoming established, the market for green heating is anyone's to play for. The usual suspects (assuming any electricity supplied is generated using appropriately carbon-free means) include electric immersion heaters, heat pumps (devices that work a bit like refrigerators in reverse, in that they extract heat from a building’s surroundings and then pump it into that building), and burning hydrogen instead of natural gas. Engineers at a small British company called Heat Wayv, though, think they have another contender: microwaves. The principle is the same as in a microwave oven. Many molecules, water included, are electrically dipolar. This means they have a positive charge at one end and a negative one at the other. They will therefore rotate to align themselves with a strong electromagnetic field. If that field is oscillating, as is the case with electromagnetic radiation such as microwaves, then the molecules themselves will oscillate too—bumping and jostling their neighbours as they do so, and thus creating heat. But there is more to building a microwave boiler than simply repurposing the parts used for an oven, says Phil Stevens, one of Heat Wayv's founders. Most microwave ovens employ magnetrons—chunky devices built by surrounding a cathode with a carefully shaped anode that is designed to produce electromagnetic radiation of a specific frequency. With the help of a pair of big chipmakers, Heat Wayv has come up with a solid-state device that performs the same job, but which fits on a 10-square-centimetre silicon chip. Arrays of these devices beam microwaves into water in a boiler, heating it up. The pipes that carry the water are also made of microwave-sensitive materials, as is the insulation that lags them. And a heat exchanger recycles residual waste warmth. The upshot, says Mr Stevens, is a boiler that is about 96% efficient. The best existing gas boilers rarely exceed 90%. Efficiency matters, because the move away from gas may mean higher heating bills. Electricity generated from fossil fuels is necessarily more expensive than the fuels themselves. In Britain, at the moment, a given amount of energy delivered as electricity costs three or four times as much as the same amount delivered by natural gas. Switching to renewables is unlikely to change that much. Though the “fuel” involved (wind or sunlight) is free, other costs are often higher than for conventional power stations. Forced by law to switch from gas, then, customers will surely have their eyes on the cost. Heat Wayv argues its technology offers advantages over rival methods. Immersion heaters must run continuously to deliver water at a suitable temperature. That often warms water which is never used. By contrast, and like existing gas boilers, microwaves heat water quickly enough to provide it only when it is needed. Heat pumps, too, have drawbacks. Their efficiency plummets on cold days, when they are needed most. They are also bulky. And they generate water that is warm rather than hot, often requiring the retrofitting of bigger radiators or underfloor heating. Hydrogen, meanwhile, must either be extracted from natural gas or created by running electrical currents through water. Both processes are inherently inefficient and the former is hardly green. Also, the infrastructure needed to produce and deliver hydrogen in quantity does not yet (and may never) exist. Heat Wayv hopes to be producing microwave boilers for sale by 2024, in time for the first stage of the government’s ban. Mr Stevens says the idea has attracted interest from most of Britain’s big housebuilders. Soon, perhaps, microwaves may heat people’s water as well as their food.

Thought we did this. https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/19819-microwave-boiler-early-april-fool/?tab=comments#comment-319637

Do you have a business case? Who would want to visit? >But that’s not allowed anymore. How's the Black Eye?

I have one Eucalyptus, and that is enough for me.

Welcome to the site, @fiaraziqbal. I just rewatched the Joe90 titles. Imagine the fluff that would ensue now if a children's programme had a pistol in a 9-year old's schoolbag.

Certainly on some systems you can cut blocks, and presumably you can cut the plastic formers too. So I don't see why not. But if it works with whole blocks, why do it?

What a good post to link to @PeterW. This is the diagram, though it was also aimed at how to grow a high hedge quickly.

I'd guess that they want to preserve as a building plot with no limitations.