Kelvin

Hair is the most likely culprit as it forms a thick mass with soap and scum. I’ve had good success with the pipe cleaner stuff. It’s a bit of velcro attached to a bendy wire. Surprising how much hair gets trapped in the pipes.

I agree with @Nickfromwales based on a sample size of one. Our architect has been poor at answering any questions about insulation approaches and related items so much so I stopped asking. There’s a good website here where can model your fabric build up.

Been searching for it but can’t find it. It was a group of young builders using a mobile panel making machine (I think) So they had all the speed and practicality of using SIP panels and none of the overheads of operating a factory.

There was a Grand Design episode where a young team of builders had put together a process for constructing SIP panels on-site.

It was reading your blog post on this that convinced me to get a proper percolation test and soakaway design done as part of our due diligence before we bought the land. Obviously I could easily enough have dug my own hole and filled it up with water and timed it etc but I just felt more comfortable having it done professionally and getting a report at the end of it.

Sent it to you. Ask on here if you get stuck.

My dad was in the Fleet Air Arm on Buccaneers so grew up around the base. Visited on holiday last summer very different since my time but the old Lossie was still there.

I was born in Elgin and grew up in Lossiemouth. Lovely part of the World.

That does look rather tight.

Why does it need emptying every year. That’s unusual for a PTP.

That’s a big bank! Last Friday 😂

@Piers If you can’t find it let me know and I’ll send it to you

Haha I am also including my garage in the total cost because it’s very big and not that expensive for an insulated building so brings my £/m2 down 😂

It’s still unclear to me if your £2.5k is the total cost to do everything start to finish?

yes but what about the doorbell? badum tish I’m here all day

Bloody hell. What an arsehole. Although inevitable it was going to go in this direction. You need get legal about it now which, of course will escalate things. Do they own all the land around you including across the road? How big are the gardens of the 4 properties caught up in this mess.

Direct from the meter box? For some people (me) that would be completely impractical. Octopus don’t cover my part of Scotland for ASHP installs anyway.

What a PIA. I hope they don’t start dumping pig shit near you!

Where did you think the pipe terminated when you bought the house and what difference would that have made to your problem if it did?

I’m sure you would have said but I assume there isn’t a ditch that follows the road?

But still needs land owners permission to do the works on the land to get there. I know you said it’s hard to speak with the land owner directly. However you really ought to try every avenue. It might be they are unaware of the degree of problem this is causing you but equally they might well be the driving force behind it.

You said in the op that one of the options is to discharge into a waterway. Is this just the EA saying you can (generally after exploring all other options) or there is a waterway/ditch nearby you could discharge to?

Yes but it still isn’t compliant which is the issue for the buyers.

Sheesh. I really feel for you. I know how stressed I got when we were selling our last place. It started off really straightforwardly as we got a buyer for way over asking within a week. The conveyancing was going really smoothly to begin with. We had our offer accepted on a plot of land and had found a rental place after 5 months of getting nowhere. Everything was finally lined up perfectly. Then our sale fell through or rather our buyers sale on her house fell through twice) Then a whole load of stuff was uncovered about our house. Then the mgt company for the 8 barns got really difficult resulting in an argument on the doorstep of the guy that did the accounts. At one point we had a house we couldn’t sell. A rental we couldn’t move to. A plot of land we couldn’t start to get planning permission for. A war looming in Europe set to turn everything upside down. Plus I’d quit a highly paid job to take on the self-build. It was a perfect storm of all the risks I’d written down 7 months earlier. We got through all of that eventually. I’m telling you all of this because things tend to have a way of working themselves out. You just need to find a path through it all.

Reference being cutoff. When you bought the house this drainage access etc would have come up, what do the legals say on all of this? For example the driveway at our last place was owned by the estate (was part of a manor house) but the 8 barns had legal right of access/enjoyment etc. We were all jointly responsible for the upkeep so paid a monthly mgt fee to a service mgt company the home owners setup. We had a covenant in place that everyone had to sign when a barn was bought/sold. Do you have any idea about why the land owner is being so difficult other than some folk just are? Is there some angle they are playing? They are holding you to ransom it seems so they must have a reason for this. Generally it’s money!