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I'm stuck with a hockey stick for broadband in the wrong location in the building. This corner of the house hosts the master bathroom! The Mains Electrical connection is over on the other side of the house. Once the broadband company get hold of this they just want to poke through to the other side of the house wall, terminal the fibre and install a router which needs power. With tiling, waterproofing and no electrics near the bath in this corner, that's not going to be a runner. I can either try to run this upstairs to the bedroom above or snake it to the utility room further down the house on the same side, either in the 50mm wall cavity or service cavity the other side of the wall. I've pozi joists so may be able to lay some 1" or 2" pipe to allow a path to the utility that way but maintaining air tightness will be tricky. I could use the service box to house power and space to install the router there, make it a bigger one like for the mains electrical feed, then I'd run 4 x 10Gb CAT6e to this location and can hook that into the service providers box. The only issue is reliability, temperature, damp and protecting the electrics - I work in IT so I need a reliable connection. Puts the router on the outside of the house though! Any suggestions?!

Hi everyone, how to get the services into my conversion is giving me a headache. Background: the main stable is on a 150mm slab with 600mm foundations Hayshed: Has E shaped foundations (6m piles in clay/trees) to form a small extension, but allow for future enlargement. Best/ easiest is to bring the services up through the new foundations but I can't afford to fully convert this to habitable right now. BUT I need to move into the main stables to save money, so need to explore how the services should be brought in (as I don't think what John Wayne 'planned' was correct). See pic of the hayshed foundations as the builders left it? My questions are about how much an old foundation can be safely chopped. Electric: My main query is can the foundation be drilled (as another builder has suggested) through to bring the cable up vertically? There are metal bars in it and it seems like a mighty job, also the old building had cracks, so my instinct is to be gentle with her. Options: Could make some kind of waterproof kiosk on the outside (which will later be inside the hayshed) BUT still might need a lump of foundation to be chopped out. Or could build up the wall so it stands off? Water: The water connection can be seen going horizontally through the bottom of the wall so will need moving or some boxing in arrangement. As it stands, the water will need a joint in/under the insulation in the kitchen. The other builder suggested doing the major drilling thing with this too. There is a temporary water supply from next door correctly installed in the slab, would it be mad to use this for a while (maybe with a sub meter?) Sewer The sewer pipe can be seen incorrectly following the wall of the hayshed that needs to be changed. John Wayne drilled a hole through the bottom of the wall of the main stable (through brick, under the DPM) so there is no lintel, does that matter? Again, the run will be horizontal initially unless the slab is chopped away. Can anyone suggest how to vent it as we can't have a chimney (conservation area, article 4 directive). Thank you ?

Hi all, Im am interested in building one of those timber frame homes on some land that apparently do not need planning permission as they fall under caravan regulations due to them being considered non permanent structures. I was just wondering if anyone knows the situation with hooking up to services with one of these builds i.e. would hooking up to mains water, sewerage, main electric/gas etc. class this type of build a permanent structure, and so require all the usual stuff re planning applications? I dont know for sure, but would've thought for something like this to be covered under caravan regs alone it would have to function similar to a caravan, with regards to water and gas (bottles) anyway. My next question was going to be regarding 'cost'... If anyone knows about this stuff and can shed some light, it'd be a appreciated. Thanks Rob

I need to finalise this for our timber frame company prior to them installing the raft foundation (they will also site the service ducts and drains). I understand that mains water needs to come in through a 110mm duct/drain pipe to allow space to insulate the main. I want water to go back out again to a garage and/or an accumulator that I can isolate from inside the house. Can both of these water runs fit in the one 110mm duct, or do they have to have one each? Is there a more intelligent way to do it? I understand that mains electricity can come in via a 50mm duct. Can it also go out through the same duct ( to the garage etc) or do they need separate ducts, one in, one out? What about BT, (we weren't going to bother but nothing else is available and the 5G option using Huawei equipment is starting to look dodgy). I presume that needs its own duct and can't share with the electricity? Finally, as a belt and braces option, I'd like to put a spare duct in for a (potential) future ASHP, or AirCon. Would that be 110mm as well? And how would I seal it in a way that I could reopening at some later stage?

Well with the trench blocks in its time to sort out my services and stuff for drainage and waste i basically COPIED the paths from an identical house but as I am doing the pipework and paths myself (as much as i can anyway) I wouldn't mind a bit of the usual good advice from the sages on here ! In your guys (or girls) honest opinion 1. does the waste and rainwater make sense ? ....do you think i need to add anymore feeds for RW at the top left? 2. The services (sadly) enter the house on the wrong side (see blue arrow) ...I have to get virtually EVERYTHING to the Blue cross as this trench carries it all 30m to the road Sewage, Water, Electric, Gas and Telecoms (too possibly) How would you lot do it ? ..as in what way? I have some pics below that could help you visualise it a) planned water paths b) roofscape ( the bit on the right is a single storey sunroom c) example of identical house built a few years ago any advice is appreciated

The first big money was spent today - I signed my contract with MBC and paid the deposit. I think I could use a menopausal hot flush about now, to counteract the cold sweat that comes over me at the thought of spending all that money. I haven't been idle since getting our planning permission through, either, as I know that the clock is ticking on loads of things that would be done later due to the type of build. Stuff like how the cabling from the internet satellite dish will run into the house. I rang the ISP and asked them how they would normally approach things - "well, we will just drill a hole through the wall". Oh no, you won't! I'm waiting for them to call me back to have a chat about cabling requirements. I also found out exactly where the water meter is and the route of the supply pipe. I have been known to be lacking in powers of observation for things I'm not interested in, and a water meter would definitely fall into that category. However, I have specifically looked for it a few times but not succeeded and I found out why today - it's a few hundred metres down the lane, outside someone else's house in what the water company described as 'a large chamber'. All very gothic, but at least I know where to look now. The architect is moving at his usual glacial pace with things, so I have my rockets ready to be inserted in strategic places to make sure he keeps up with everyone else rather than slow things down as I think will happen if left to his own devices. The glowing taper is approaching the blue touch paper. Currently waiting calls back from: Wessex Water Architect His preferred BCO (for a quote and a chat about the house build) Highways management (what we need to do when creating the new vehicular access to the garage) Planning case officer (about the bats and our roof, to agree timing on removal) Time to go and do some paid work now. Sigh.

To anyone who has done a demolition and rebuild, and lived on site, what did you do with your BT phone / broadband supply? can we just strip the BT box off the exterior wall of existing house, recover the internal cabling and somehow connect to a static van temporarily? or is it going to be more complicated than that?

Foundations going in next week, weather permitting. What concerns me now is all the things that go through the foundations : foul drain, water, electricity and rainwater recycling - and in our case MVHR. How accurate do we need to be in determining the place that these services come through?

Plodding through our Mechanical Services architects notes, I read; '...Generally, the contractor should use the same trenches for other services, where possible, provided they are installed to the correct depth and distances between services are achieved....' And as luck would have it, I'd quite like it if our sparks and water shared the same trench - because that way we can keep them both at the very edge of our site, and protected from delivery wagons and errant Great Crested Newts (Found a large one minding its own business inside our bedroom last night: rare they ain't. ) But thinking about it, if I am to achieve that desirable state of affairs, and since both sets of contractors are never going to be on site in the same week , I will need to maintain the trench, and drain it aren't I? Oh..... and catch bloody GCNs in it. I'm thinking it ain't worth trying? Right?

I'm hoping for some shared knowledge please being a complete newbie. We are in the process of buying a plot with a barn on that needs renovating. It has PP and the plans state 'foul water drain leading to new bio treatment unit' we have seen a tap on site too. Can I assume we will not need to connect to the main sewerage system? Julie