I’ve just been making a wardrobe in an alcove where in the space of 1200mm they have managed to be out by 40mm (1.5 inches in 4ft for our American folks) Trying to be within 1-2mm and deciding on referencing a side wall that’s curved but making the room “more square”, and having a variable depth wardrobe or making something that looks right but that I know is a parallelogram. Either way a future guy with a tape measure will ask “what idiot built this?”

What is the most private way to register a domain? Considering switching from hotmail to a Raspberry PI (postfix) mail server.

We have two doors that go into the garden, one in the dining room one in the kitchen, if we let our rescue Collie out of one she will wait by the other to be let in. Collies are smart, ours is defective.

I’m not aware of any insulation and rendering options that allow breathability of the sub structure. This is why any internal leaks need to be fixed and rising damp needs to be mitigated with DryRods.

Pretty much the only buildings that cannot be insulated without a massive amount of work is where the floor of the building is sitting in groundwater without a waterproofing membrane.

I agree, but then articles like this are the reason these people are so annoyed at the installers, they make it sound like there are mysterious procedures and practices which are not being followed, while failing to detail any of them and making the problem worse.

Anyone reading this will only ever come to the conclusion that they had a bad installer and won’t want their help, all while their house is turning into a stroganoff.

I know a lot about building and insulation. The most likely cause of this is pre-existing damp that was just exasperated by the insulation making it warm on top of the damp.

If there is any sign of “rising damp” the modern way of dealing with it is by installing a layer of DryRods, however if the insulation was installed during a particularly dry period there might not have been evidence of a pre-existing problem.

Other than that possibility it could be an unrelated pipe leak, physical damage to the insulation and render, or an issue with the guttering.

Finally cold-bridging where a portion of the envelope of the house is uninsulated and forms condensation, this is pretty much the only issue which could be a mistake on behalf of installer, but even then it should be obvious and made worse by failing to open windows or turn on extractors when showering, drying washing or cooking.

Any of this information could have been in the article, it’s absence is suspicious. Whatever the reason the first thing you need to do is let the contractor investigate.

It sounds like the company is offering to come back and fix whatever problem is causing the damp but the homeowner is refusing to let them fix it. Sounds like they’re just idiots.

The article doesn’t say what installation standards are not being adhered to. It’s not rocket science, you take insulation boards, you glue or screw or both to the house and you mesh ad render over the top. It sounds like whoever wrote this didn’t do much investigation.

What a waste of money, ask any independent climate scientist what you could could spend £22bn on, carbon capture and storage wouldn’t even be in the top 100 suggestions.

Maybe, but if you are a disgusting human being anyway you may as well do everything they want and they might give you another 10k next year.

Wow nice! I have done the same but I always forget and stick a fork through them at least once a year!

Every time I consider the plastic/stainless pipe option I think about drilling holes all down it and putting a hose fitting on the ends for integrated irrigation… then the project gets to complicated and I stick a 2x4 across instead.

One day though.

Those look to be very long boards, every time I do this in ~1-2 years they tend to flex outwards under the weight of the wet compost and start to collapse.

Just wondering if you have anything in place to prevent flexing?

I’ve been considering plastic pipe or stainless rod bolted to each side through the soil.

Ah I see, yes app/web OTP is one of the best methods, unless people are calling to report the app/website not working (a workflow I’ve seen many times) The industry has put hundreds of millions into voice recognition but the sample size required for AI to trick voicerec is really low now.

You actually want them to do this, it’s terrifying easy to set up a cell tower or call centre and convince banks and people you are customers or banks.

This is correct, i should have said “telephone banking password/passcode” but also the security questions are at best hash encrypted (so basically plain text). I had thousands of hours of call recording and millions of customer details on my work laptop all unencrypted. The security for enterprise telephony companies is seriously lax, I wouldn’t be surprised if a few unexplained leaks originated from these companies.

The company that provides your banks phone system has full access to pretty much every piece of information your bank holds on you, including call recordings, phone numbers, addresses, debts, credits, and your phone password. We can trick our own systems into thinking it’s you on the phone.

Avoid calling your bank at all costs, and if they call you say “no thank you I’ll do that online or in branch”, as soon as you pass security the phone system is accessing all your data. If possible go into branch or do everything on a banking app which has far better security.

This is absolutely correct, let’s not forget how amazing the turnaround was in road network and car industry after Hitler came to power in 1933!

Emotional damage

I really thought they would wait a little longer after the Adblock crackdown. Oh well, Grayjay to the rescue!

Don’t let prefect be the enemy of good. Right now Sunak is enriching himself and his friends with corrupt policies (HS2 Land sale, India trade agreement, net zero rollback, etc.) if Starmer did that Labour would be minced by the press. Better to have a (so far) non corrupt leader who will be held to account.