Kelvin

Here’s a reasonable article that might help. Every day living produces quite a lot of water vapour in a typical house (20 litres for a family of four according to this article). Your mum’s small poorly ventilated house with plastic in the walls will keep a lot of this water vapour trapped in the building. https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/assets/Services-DCCS/condensation-booklet.pdf

Nordan are less flexible than many others. It also all got a bit difficult with max sizes and weights too. Our sliding door was originally 5m with a 1m tilt and turn window. But Nordan and the installer had different opinions on whether that could be 3G as it was too heavy according to the installer although Nordan said they could do it. In the end we fitted a 3.6m sliding door and a 1.4m French door which was the better outcome for us as the French door is a proper usable door whereas the tilt and turn windows are windows that can open like a door but they aren’t really that practical for every day use and are likely to get damaged.

Our 3G Alu clad Low E Nordan windows including a french door and a sliding door with all the others tilt and turn were £760/m2 fitted. Jan 2023 prices. They went up significantly March/April time apparently. Ours were supplied as part of the timber kit so there would have been the kit suppliers margin included in that.

Yes apologies. I meant you can buy a specific ‘primer’ for new plaster but it’s quite dear.

It needs to be dry which can take a while. I left mine two weeks before applying a mist coat which is just watered down emulsion although I actually used Valspar Express Coat rather than watered down emulsion. You can buy new plaster sealer but it’s quite dear so it depends on what area you are covering. Leave it for 24 hours after the mist coat before applying the next coat. There was one wall I was impatient to get on with and it’s been a pain in the arse so do it right and you’ll be fine. I’m still trying to fix that one wall!

The danger is it just gets passed anyway and you get nothing out of it. The development is going to happen one way or another. While Ian is right about not being rushed don’t slow walk it either. The sooner they start the sooner it will be finished. After all you’ll be living next to a building site for a long time.

A few hundred pounds at most and a solicitor will do it for you. It would then be a notarised legal document signed by you and the developer. One important thing is timescales when you want it done by. I’d have a date in the document. Otherwise they might leave it until the very end of the development. Also a legal document shows intent rather than something you’ve knocked together yourself.

Sadly too often the case. Our sliding door was off square by 20mm and 15mm out of plumb. I didn’t need to put a level on it to see it. I pointed it out to them as they moved onto the next window and got a load of waffle about it was just in and they were going to come back and true it up at the end. Who does that. After that I followed them round every window and checked it. This obviously pissed them off but I was passed caring about their ‘professional pride’ at this point. “It’s been years since I’ve had my work checked” etc. My advice to them of never being too proud to have your work checked fell on deaf ears.

There’s no advantage to you in fitting a GSHP. Loads of installers have pulled out of the market and are just installing ASHP now. They may make more sense in larger installations or community heating. For near passive house specs it’s a lot of cost for no benefit and more likely more downsides. We looked at it ourselves as we happened to have a spare borehole that we never paid for so I thought it might have been a way to use it. But it was still expensive, added a degree of extra complexity, was possibly too close to our water supply borehole, and we had limited space inside for the plant needed. Arguably even an ASHP was overkill for us. I heated the place for months with two small radiators. Took a while to get it up to temperature but once it was there it was fine.

It’s crap yes but also normal for fitters to even discard the fitting kits and do what they always do. We used straps screwed to the windows as this is what our window supplier specified. It’ll probably be fine just check the warranty isn’t impacted.

It also said the bar to allow them was high. Whatever that means.

Listen to Gus. When we were buying our rural plot there were no services on-site or nearby other than electricity. The vendor had vague notes in the sales particulars about water could be provided via a borehole on the plot or ‘nearby’ same with sewerage (treatment plant and soakaway) I made it a condition of the sale that they had to find a plentiful supply of potable water ‘on the plot’ and carry out a land survey to ensure the ground was suitable for a soakaway located within the regulations although, in the end, I carried out the land survey. The plot was worthless without these services easily (cost effectively) being available.

😂 I am planning two bridges!

Won’t affect material costs as much as you’d think unless suppliers have over stocked. A lot of stuff is imported. It will reduce margins however and labour rates. We’ve built in the inflationary year but are still well under £2500/m2

Good luck. Post pics of finished result.

You might know this already. Strip all the top soil from both the area you are digging out and building up first and put to one side. Create your bank/graded slope and then add the topsoil back.

You can grade the land gently back and create a slope. We were going to do this instead of putting a retaining wall up our drive but I wasn’t happy with that long term. Was an expensive decision.

Free draining is just that not getting very wet with all the rain i.e. the water is draining away freely. Given the slope it’s likely draining away following the slope. You might find a neighbour at the bottom with a wet garden. When building retaining walls they retain the ground but water can build up behind them. Generally you add a drain behind the wall (a pipe with holes in it) and weep holes in the wall. If you add drainage it needs to drain to somewhere which is often a soakaway (a big hole filled with gravel/stone then covered back over with earth) Google retaining walls it will be clearer. If it’s all quite free draining then weep holes in the wall might be enough. It also depends on how you propose to build the wall.

How wet does it get and is it free draining? When you add drainage you need to drain it to somewhere.

What you’re suggesting will be fine. Draw out the space on the ground where you think the various items might go. It’ll give you a really good idea for the size you need. When my kids were little I created a garden area for them. It was a small vegetable plot. My daughter especially enjoyed it. Son preferred the creepy crawlies. Now they are adults neither of them have the gardening bug though but was fun at the time 😂

Everything is achievable. Why is it you want to change it? Presumably to make it more useable? If so do you need to level all of it? You could break it up into sections to add some interest. When it stops pissing down I’ll show you what digging out 1.17m looks like on our driveway.

Rather than level slopes it generally better to try and use them to your advantage. I’d therefore look to create some terracing and/or some banked areas with the lawn area in the middle. 1.17m difference is a lot to try and level even if you split the difference and cut and fill. To give you some idea hammer in some sticks to where you think the final level would be and put some string between them. It’ll highlight how much earth you need to move.

Great idea. Lots of old stone buildings do that. There are lots of little details I love about our house this view of the wall inside to outside is one of them.

Thick walls look nicer too in my opinion. Our walls are 490mm thick from outside face of the cladding to inside face of the painted wall. It’s given us deep reveals internally which is partly why we chose this build method. Everything has a more substantial solid feel about it.

Building materials are still dear. They have either stopped going up or are going up more slowly. You are more able to play suppliers off each other though as demand appears to have reduced a bit.