with softened water you should use less cleaning products / shampoo / soap.  Probably not going to offset the cost of salt but it will be a decent %

also electricity cost and increase water usage when it recharges itself.

personally for the improvement in the water its worth it.  and you get nice feeling hair :)

I had a BWT put in a couple of years ago – yes hard water to main kitchen tap and to external taps.

Makes a major difference to keeping stuff clean, we used to have toilets scaling up and looking manky and shower screens a nightmare to keep clean.  No more cleaning much easier – well no more scrubbing / chemicals

I’m pretty competent at plumbing, but in the end got a plumber in as I was confusing myself with how to fit.

Top tip – make sure you measure the space you intend to put it and take into account the extra space needed for the piping and shut off valves.  Ours only just fitted in the under sink cupboard when all the gubbins was installed

pretty much the same as MSP here, ive not tried to push myself for a couple of years one hard ride can mean a week of terrible sleep and impacts family and work.

i have been on the odd ride but very careful not to burn any matches as they say they are just for fun

Ive returned to painting models like i did as a kid. with the added twist of 3d printing

oh and loads and loads of DIY still. starting to thing a self build would have been easier than a reno…

i cant say im particularly happy about giving up proper riding and getting slower and fatter but overall im a much nicer to my family when i get sleep ans im not in loads of pain so that takes priority

rolling 12 months, its our only easy access savings – in case of emergency.  Wife is resistant on moving as I’ve said for some time we appear to be one of the ‘losers’ in terms of return.  The possibilty a big win like lots on hear mention means she is hesitating to cash out and move to a better guaranteed return

£25 on 20k. we are about 3% return. pretty bad

Great finished product, but I call BS on some of their comments / the impression they give.   Especially the underbudget bit.  Yes you can muck in to save a few quid but not 100+k.  I didn’t see any mention of an architect either?  May have missed that bit as was half watching.  Carrying a few thousand slates onto a roof in a nice shiny superdry rucksack whilst looking better than I do when I go out for a posh meal?  Completely staged.

Several red flag BS moments – especially the multi global comment – the fact they left that it in was interesting.  It is in these guys interest to portray themselves as superhuman / incredibly successful at everything they do, it is what drives their social media engagement, which in turns makes more money for them.

But, whilst not my taste, the final product looked amazing.  So fair play for that.

geez.  backs out of thread….

When is your likely last day of employment?  If you can make it into the new financial year you maybe able to keep much more of it.  I believe my father did something similar as he negotated the redundancy payment was in the next FY so was taxed lower (and he had a break of employment looking for the next role)  IANAE!

most people i know have stopped selling on ebay due to the fees so they must have seen private sales dropping off a cliff as they move to the other free platforms out there.

It is normal to not need a tin roof if the felt is in decent condition, or if its replaced – my neighbour is having a lot of work done and their roof is currently just felt and battons

The use of ‘the builder opted’ makes it sound like it was their choice.  In fact its yours, they recommended you didn’t need it, and you agreed.

I also work in IT btw, if your spending many thousands with builders its worth spending some time swatting up otherwise you are going to get a few more of these problems and it could lead to some trouble (speaks from experience after ‘trusting’ a plumber knew the best way to do something rather than explicitly telling them exactly what needed to be done and where the pipes and outlets needed to be….)

Interesting choice of words on ‘builder opted to not use a tin hat’.  I presume if you were insistant you wanted it they could/should have quoted you the price for the job with the tin hat (at a good chunk more) and without?  You are the client after all and define the spec they should be working to.

Unless the water damaged is significant, whilst being a pain in the ass, it is probably still cheaper to fix overall than to have erected a tin roof over the whole house.

Missed the bit where scotland was mentioned.  However, I’d still want insurance to cover the risk, maybe just me that worries about this sort of thing!

Just to re-iterate the liability point, if kids who aren’t yours are playing on the land and you own it you are going to need some form of insurance in case of incident.

Unless someone on your street is a contracts / property lawyer you won’t have a chance of sorting that out in time.  If not you are probably going to have to add on some pretty high solictor fees if you want to do it properly

If you are set on buying you are best of talking to a few good neighbours who you know well and can trust and buy it between you on a gentleman (woman?) agreement, one of you buys in sole name and you resolve the legalities of shared ownership in the longer term.  Therein lies a bunch of risk whether you trust these people or not.

If you open it up to the general public I would be concerned about liability.  Often why developers fence stuff off and then let it sit there looking a bloody mess until they can finally get planning

I might have to take a look at all these bargain rim brake road framesets.  My rose is got to be getting on for 10 years old now, still really nice with 10speed force and zipp 404s, but fancy trying something different.

I too mostly just keep my bikes, kids are getting to the age where soon they will be able to inherit bits and bobs.

Just built up my old dmr sidekick with 9 speed and pike454’s.  Nothing wrong with, lots of fun still.  Does weigh the same as the moon though

very useful vid thanks for posting

maybe, press has been saying similar for sometime, just like the ‘they will run out of shells / missiles / kit / troops’ comments.

Assuming floor up, and false ceiling / overboarding are out your only real choice is to take the ceiling down.  As its a garage it might not be plastered, if thats the case it would be a few hours work to get it down.  you may even be able to remove the existing screws and reuse the stuff afterwards

If its plastered it is a bloody messy job removing, cleaning up is 90% of the job (I’ve replaced 3 ceilings now).  Also getting rid of the waste costs as you can’t just chuck it in a skip or take it to the tip

As suggested up there, make an inspection hole, big enough to get your head in to take a look (keep the cut out, its fairly easy to refit and fill).  Or you could do an endoscope thingy, I had a cheap one from amazon but it was rubbish.

the casulty chart on the report is telling.

they literally emptied the prisons and told them to run at machine guns….now theyve basically run out of convicts its volunteers and regulars. soon it will be growing numbers of conscripts.

Ive found many horrors through our renovations, but tbh very few could have been picked up before purchase.  Stuff like old rusty steel and lead pipes in use under the boards, nice new plastic in all visible areas.  Why replace a kitchen and bathroom and not renew the pipes…. who does that??!

Anyway, other thing to do is check the planning portal / building control see if there is anything relating to the property on there.

We have a second floor extension that judging by its age appeared in the 50s sometime, with no permissions.  And as it turns out very little in the form of foundations either….fixed now at expense

Recently found cracked lintels when redoing the hallway windows so thats another horror to go on the list to get repair

Joys of home ownership.

I suppose the other way to look at sanctions, is what would the situation be like if they weren’t in place.  Certainly they are making things more difficult for Russia (and for everyone else too)

They won’t single handled push Putin in retreating from Ukraine, but they will make it much harder and more expensive for Russia to continue with the invasion.

I doubt any rational thinker believes that sanctions on their own will bring about the end of the conflict.  It is not black and white.

That Yuan link up there is interesting.  I was of the view China was a staunch ally of Russia, maybe that is only as long as Russia can pay….

stop trying to get a bite.

Toropets lies about 380km (236 miles) north-west of Russia’s capital Moscow, and some 470km north of the border with Ukraine

Incredible that ukraine is able to pull off these types of attacks.  Been reading they have some highly clever AI learning which is helping to create the drones flight paths based upon known AA sites and where previous drones have been unsuccessful / destroyed.  Could explain why they have a reasonable success rate of these types of missions.

It is definitely a massive escalation.  Short term it will have a massive impact on Hezbollah’s ability to attack Israel.  But, I can’t see them throwing the towel in and going, well that is ok

I bet every Iranian official is getting their phones / pagers / etc… checked over asap.

Israel was also making threats against the Houthis for recent rocket attacks as well.

yes I thought of that movie too when I first read about it

and now on bbc,

I would have never even thought this was possible if true.

It is scary how many innovative ways humans can come up with to maim and kill each other

I wonder why it wandered off topic. There is a strong correlation with certain posters and this thread descending into opinion led bickering

just got an alert from the beeb about gunshots near trump. surely not another attempt. he is safe though

I suspect the first we will know restrictions have been lifted 100% is when an airfield gets blown up.

And the irony of Russia using NK and Iranian missiles to strike Ukraine….

watched on tv a very interesting documentry on the english volunteer, Chris, who was evacuating civilains in ukraine last night. well worth a watch. rip.

my one contribution is to fund studying medicine free, or heavily subsidised.  Studying medicine is ruinously expensive, and therefore junior doctors expect a large salary

provide the opportunity to many more to study medicine, rather than just those who are from money or willing to take on a huge debt.  Increasing the number qualifying will reduce pressure in the system

more qualified doctors makes the skillset less unique, and with less debt the pressure to pay more is reduced.

stop paying doctors ever more money whilst keeping the system shit.  All it does is enable them to retire earlier or go part time.  You need to sort out the conditions so it isn’t shit, before you pay more money.  Increasing the number of junior doctors is one of the pieces in the puzzle

* I seriously considered studying medicine, I had the grades, I didn’t because I was a self funding student and I couldn’t / wouldn’t take on that level of debt, so I went into IT…..

yes they are there to look after the traffic lights.  The supervisor I had a moan at said they are supposed to be manually controlling the lights during busy times to aid the flow of traffic.  In a week of a guy parked outside my house all he did was sleep and browse on his phone.  The actual dig bit, and fix a water meter was less than half a day but we had traffic lights for 10 days and this guy paid to sleep…

dont click that link on your work pc.  Just been flagged as a restricted category due to ‘weapons’

brilliant thats me on the naughty list

Alarm you garage with a very very loud alarm so when they return it wakes up the entire neighbourhood and hopefully gets them to run off

Well done on getting it back.  Maybe they will leave you alone now they know you have a tracker…

Other tip for when planning your layout is take multiple measurements, if you house is older it is very unlikely to be perfectly square and there can be quite a difference in one corner from the other which would potentially leave you with a sliver if you didn’t compensate.  (found out the hard way with wavy walls!)

I’ve given up on fixing and moving suppliers, I think the whole process is ridiculous

I had no end of trouble trying to sort out who owed what when I had 2 companies go bust in short order, ended up getting threatening letters sent even though the last ‘bill’ said I was owed 1k.  Then of course when they went bust access to the account with the online meter readings I had been doing disappeared and I had no proof of what the hell I owed or not.  All down to some idoit meter reader than transposed 2 digits, so every time I moved I had to spend hours on the phone trying to recitfy

After the hundreds of hours I will not move to a small provider

My bill is going up approx £250 with eon.  Enough for me to consider getting back on the merry go round

They were pretty good with ours, we had a few bits missing and they turned up the following week.  That was three or four years ago now though

Re the door – presume you can’t use the supplied door as the handle/hinges is on the wrong side?  It is a pretty straightforward job to drill out the door and swap over.  If you are painting the door anyway you can easily fill the old holes with dowel / blank and filler and it would virtually be invisible.  Yes, not what you should be doing, but if the alternative is to have a shed with no door for months I’d give it a go.

Or, if its a double door, just completely removed the furniture and screw it to the frame until the replacement arrives.  So you will have one working door.  Again not ideal but solves the problem

Thanks all for your comments.  Must admit I like those degus, surely they are going to need a much bigger space than gerbils though?

Maybe we should start with gerbils though, as others have said I expect after the initial interest has worn off I’ll be the one doing all the cleaning and feeding.

I have a 3d printer, so I had day dreamed about making them cool little setups and toys but sounds like they will just eat them and make themselves poorly :(

that most definitely looks like a deliberate strike by the pedestrian to me. both should be charged.

plenty of illegal e bikes smashing it around our city. mostly delivery riders. on the road Im less.fussed but when they are smashing it through pedestrian areas or parks they should be stopped and charged. amazed there arent more accidents

yes both mine started out on frogs. 7yr old is still on his 55. you should be able to get a decent one 2md hand for £150-170. well thats what i sold our last couple for last year.

they will get scratched up fast so no need to buy new.

eldest is now on a bargin buy vitus from the crc fire sale.