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Massive bargain.

Yes, we painted the end of a stub wall in our last house with red chalkboard paint and it was ace for shopping lists and random doodling.

Has anyone had wet underfloor heating installed on the ground floor using spreader plates? How did you insulate underneath it? PIR board would seem to make sense as it is foil faced and would reflect heat upward, but it wouldn't conform to the shape of underside of the tray.

Does anyone know if you can get replacement fabric-backed foam for goggles?

Can you convert DWG to other formats? We had a measured survey done and they provided .dwg (and .pdf) formats from which our architect worked up plans, so I assume they're a format you can start from.

Is DXF only for 2D drawings? What we ideally need to be able to do is generate sections, which I understood required 3D models (but I have virtually no knowledge on this).

Thanks, much appreciated.

Cross-post from the "How do I...extension" thread:

Any designers, architects, architectural technicians on here?

Is there a universal format for architectural drawings? Our architect is ok to release some partially complete drawings to us for someone else to finish off, but wants to know what format we want them in.

Is DWG the way to go?

Any designers, architects, architectural technicians on here?

Is there a universal format for architectural drawings? Our architect is ok to release the partially complete drawings to us for someone else to finish off, but wants to know what format we want them in.

That's not what "intrinsic" means.

Scumbag thieves melt down priceless antique silver candlesticks because the silver they're made of has intrinsic value.

EDIT: apologies I see you were making a more subtle point, but it feels like what you're describing is utility (?) rather than intrinsic value.

They changed the 1p coin from bronze to copper plated steel for this reason.

https://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/coin-design-and-specifications/one-penny-coin/

You seem to be using "intrinsic value" in an odd way (although the whole concept is slightly oxymoronic since value exists due to the valuer, not the object itself). A big gold coin has more intrinsic value than a small gold coin because gold itself is considered valuable regardless of its shape. The same is not true of bank notes or base-metal coins.

Currency nowadays doesn't have intrinsic value, it has agreed value. The same is true of bitcoin but that doesn't make them the same.

Nobody can force you under threat of imprisonment to pay for anything in bitcoin. You can be forced to pay tax in the relevant fiat currency.

Try "mining" some sterling and find out what the difference is.

A government isn't just an arbitrary group of people. They have the power to enforce the relationship between their currency and actual physical stuff in the country (barring revolution) and to force you to use that currency to pay tax to them because it is their money.

The difference is that fiat currency (not backed by gold) is issued by a government, essentially as a means of "keeping score" of everything that's under its control. That's why you have to pay tax to that government in their currency. Bitcoin is not keeping track of anything tangible, just (as described) the value of the work done to discover/mine it.

Bargz https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/296309638089?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=eleqAwoLSiK&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=2oiWpP7gSxu&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Exactly this. Taking out a massive mortgage when we moved house allowed us to hold onto some capital from the sale of our old place. Add in some savings etc. and we've got a sum that we can just about do what we want with (or could before inflation screwed us). But it's going to be a long time before we can top up the coffers beyond an emergency buffer.

Exactly this. We love our house and can see ourselves living here for the rest of our lives, but it would be massively improved by the addition of a bedroom so that friends can come and stay and by enough space for us to work from home. The problem is that achieving that appears to be only just possible within our budget.

I'm not moaning about having to spend money to achieve that or the fact that it won't add equivalent value to the house. I'm frustrated by not seeming to be able to get to a place where we have an agreed spec at an agreed cost to be delivered under an agreed set of terms because we can't seem to get the people with the relevant expertise (i.e. the builder and the architect) to give us all the information that we need to make all the interdependent decisions that we need to make in order to actually get the project started.

Maybe not, but that's not really a question we care about.

We've been in contact with 3 or 4 builders that have all fallen by the wayside for one reason or another.

There are some things we could probably do in stages, but it would just inflate the overall budget to do so. For example, we could get the existing roof redone, but some of the upstairs window sills need replacing, so the obvious time for that is while the scaffolding is up. Doing them at different times and getting the scaffolding done twice is the kind of thing that would put the overall build way out of budget by spending money really inefficiently.

Yeah, it's sort of that. So much of our house needs redoing (it's barely been touched since the 50s) that we know it's going to be uninhabitable for a while, so we know we'll have to be out for a bit. But there doesn't seem to be a sensible way of doing only part of it. We seem to be stuck in a situation where we can't get firm answers in what different options (e.g. ASHP Vs boiler, metal vs. single-ply roof, natural vs. synthetic slate + many other choices) so we can't make the necessary decisions to get the build to budget where we can do it.

It seems to be more a problem of project coordination, we just don't seem to be able to get a decent grasp of all the hurdles to clear and all the information to get together to make it happen, which is why we might have to pay someone £15k just to make it all happen.

Unfortunately it is quite time critical as we might lose our builders which would be the mother of all arseaches. Our architect pulling out of this has royally fucked us.

You may be right about adjusting expectations though. We've previously considered much more limited options for improving the house, but none of them make much sense as they'd all be things we'd want to replace with a better solution at some point. So it wouldn't be doing it in stages so much as doing a fairly complete build before pulling a load of it out and rebuilding it in a decade or so.

Fair question but the answer is nothing that we'd fancy being in or that would work nearly as well for us. Our place is pretty special in terms of location.

Having endless money to chuck at it would be ace but, failing that, how does doing it in stages resolve the issues? Genuinely curious because there's almost nothing in our house that doesn't need sorting, so it's not clear how we'd do it in stages.

I'm seriously at the point of selling our house because we just can't fucking work out how to actually make our build happen. It's fairly complex and involves a full rewire, replumb, reroof, new heating system, new kitchen and bathrooms, new windows, some internal rearrangement, plus a timber extension on top of the existing single-story garage. So we're looking at over £200k+VAT. We've been working with an architect who got us some preliminary drawings that were enough to get some builders on board, but he now appears to be unable to continue with the project so we're left with not enough detail to finalise a load of decisions or costings (which only ever seem to go up from the original estimate) and the only option appears to be to appoint an independent QS to administer the contract, which will cost us another £15k, which we can't afford.

Genuinely at my wits end with this, how do people actually get these projects going?