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Overnight means basic kitchen or utility, plus power / lights / heating, and at the least a composting WC. Is there mains power on site? And cold mains water (assume so for irrigation etc)? I’d make a ‘large shed’ and say nowt further. Leave it a year, see if it gets any attention, then start sneaking stuff in. The UK is littered with (often terribly or illegally) converted garages and outbuildings, rented out to who-knows-who, so I’d just ask forgiveness should anyone actually care what you are doing there. After a year anyone who does care would have made themselves known to you, so gauge it on that. I built a 3.6m x 6.1m ‘shed’ at the side of the house, a bit closer to house and boundary than ‘they would like’ but not a single eyebrow raised so far and it’s been there 5 or so years now on the street view. My 2 cents is use it as you wish, annoy nobody, enjoy life. How big is “small”?

Aren't MicroLourves fairly widely available? ie: https://www.solar-shield.co.uk/microlouvre-screens

No, i wanted it to be prior to starting but i never planned for it to be. I just wanted to build as good a house as i could arrange. My ACH of 1.4 for example is a slight disappointment as i wanted to get below 1. House is 201 sq metres by the way.

I was planning to use Smart Louvre next year, but I've just found out they went bust! SmartLouvre Technology : Sustainable Shading for a Cooler Planet It would have been perfect, as we could still see out, and set away from the walls by about 400mm it would also have shaded the walls too. The visibility through your fabric blind looks quite good - do you think this will be the case if set away from the window? I made a diy timber brise soleil which worked well, but through experimentation we worked out it needed a very long overhang, which had significant engineering challanges - and it ruins our view of the sky. Sounds daft, but if feels like living in a letterbox! I'm now planning to make removable frames that anchor to the ground and the eaves with some form of semi-see through material. I need to make this as rigid as possible due to the high winds we experience from time to time. Unfortunately, there is nothing else like smartlouvre available. I saw this work on a building I visited and it was amazing; every new build should have it fitted as standard. I can only think it was lack of marketing that kept it from being successful. I was planning to campaign for the local bus company to fit it to bus windows to make them more comfortable in summer...

Nick has answered it all. Mine is wired in 1.5mm buried direct in the ground. The only reason for using 2.5 as stated is should you wish to use the fact you have a cable there and also feed a socket from it. If you want to save even more, use 2 core and use the SWA as the CPC.

Before spending on the plinth, it's worth confirming where the heat is going. On a cold morning compare the floor surface temperature mid room with the strip along the external walls using an IR thermometer or thermal camera. If the edges are a couple of degrees colder, you have a perimeter bridge and the plinth is worth doing. If the whole floor reads much the same, it's more likely the finish: tiles on a dense slab feel far colder underfoot than a suspended timber floor at the same temperature, and 150mm of concrete is slow to warm. As your inner leaf sits on the slab, heat can leak from the slab edge through the blockwork and down into the ground beam, so also check that the cavity fill runs down to at least the level of the underslab PIR rather than stopping at DPC. SimonD is right that it's normal practice. If you go ahead, keep the plinth and its capping below the DPC so nothing bridges it, leave any weep holes clear, keep finished ground level 150mm below DPC, and bond the XPS rather than fixing through it below ground.

Well…..I’m no electrician……lol. But! That’s less than half an amp. 25m of 1.5mm2 will do this 41 times over (@ >18a current carrying capacity) so you are very much fine by a country mile. My only reason to suggest going to 2.5mm2 is (as the cost difference is not worth the argument) if you’d find it handy to have an outside double socket at that location, and then you can run off a 20a breaker; caveat is that you’d either plug the STP into one side of that or make it off to a switched FCU (to downrate the supply to 10a (or 5a or 3a even)). Otherwise 2.5mm2 is massive overkill. Voltage drop is way less of an issue when the cable is buried (directly) in the ground as the temp of the cable is much lower (eg the resistivity is lower), and “yes” you can bury SWA direct and do away with the duct. If the STP has an option for a remote indoor repeater for status / alarm you may want a small duct to pull that cable back to the house. Some do some don’t, but if it’s 25m away you have no way of knowing if the thing has tripped or popped the fuse.

Congratulations. If the CIL is a thing in your area get your exemption forms submitted before you do anything on site.

+1 If you implement the planning permission expect to have to pay the S106 agreement. You should get a copy of the planning permission and S106 agreement from planning.

Firstly don't use the term allotment as it has very precise laws. Allotment gardens cannot be built on without being essential services and also providing equally good replacements. I think your term would be be smallholding or market garden. But if it is already agricultural then I'm pretty sure you simply grow things on it. Buildings are another matter and so are holiday lets. the latter are encouraged on farms by way of diverse income for otherwise struggling existing farms. Farms need planning permission for barns, and have to demonstrate their need, but probably not for polytunnels etc. I'd say research further, start growing things, but don't expect to ever make money from it.

If you are looking for comparisons, My rolling 12 months usage for ASHP is 1200kWh in heating mode and 700kWh for hot water. That's electrical power into the heat pump. Measured with a dual rate electricity meter (old dumb E7 electricity meter) No idea of COP my heat pump has nothing to measure output power of even how to estimate it.

That is the kind of thing I want to know.

Yes, hemp is a good insulation. It's not going to slump and it will usefully increase the decrement delay (keeping the house cooler for longer on hot days), in addition to its eco benefits. Be aware though that you need a saw with a wavy-edge blade to cut it - an electrical one is vastly quicker than a hand saw, so strongly recommended when house-size quantities are involved. Maybe the factory can lend you one as part of a potential deal?

6100 - ASHP usage of 2650 is 3450 Electric used by other appliances so that's a little over the average but then so are we at around 3600 (2 people in 4 bed house with a reasonable level of tech/convenience) The scop is good too!!!

CoP sounds good, but heat generated how does that compare to your design energy usage? If 12,000kWh is correct all good. But I thought your house was near Passivhaus standards, so maybe high depending on house size and hot water usage.

Just check the datasheet to ensure chosen heat pump does it, then never mention it again to the installer or umbrella company - it's just a can of worms that very few understand or want too. When I was looking at heat pumps I looked at the scheme by CoolEnergy, but their heat pump offerings weren't really suitable size wise for us, either a little too small or oversized. So read the datasheets before committing.

That's better.

As it happens our total electricity use since the board was made live is exactly 6100 kWh as of 2 hours ago. This includes the couple of months prior to us actually moving in full time. so there will be a little consumption not accounted for elsewhere. Small amount, i dont think it changes the figures enough to care.

If you implement the planning you will be liable for the S106 payment. Once you get the paperwork your solicitor should be able to advise. That is a fair chunk for a replacement dwelling and you may be able to reduce this.

OK guys i get what you mean. Apologies. So, that 2650 kWh is what the Vaillant app records as energy consumed. For a generated 12119. so a SCOP of 4.56

Update I had a nice chat with the woman at the VAT reclaim office. She said wardrobes are notoriously difficult to get a successful claim on. The fact that they have to have no back on them (you must see to the wall) and only one rail and one shelf. Ditto with hobs with built in extraction. She said HMRC had taken legal advice on hobs and they consider that as the hobs main use is for cooking and not extraction they are disallowed. I suggested they updated their information as it seems very outdated (no extraction hobs are mentioned and they have been around a while now). I didn't resubmit these two invoices and put it down to experience. Won't be self building another property EVER again! Good luck all with your builds.

Yeah i thought about white, but thought it may be a bit too 'in your face' to look at from the street side, so I stuck with a grey similar to my window frames. I've got plenty of thermal images of my windows from the various heat waves this year, so will try and collect some next year (if we have any, probably won't now i've made these!) and upload them to compare. I don't currently have any ceiling fans, only portable ones which I can move about, but the noise tends to keep me awake. I do have an evaporative cooler which i get out when its rediculous hot, which when filled with ice packs knocks about 1C per hour off the bedroom temperature with the door closed, with the downside of adding a lot of humidity, but again, i don't have it on all night, usually set a timer for 1hr when i climb in bed, and a good 75% of the time i don't hear it switch off, but the ice packs only last an hour when its really hot

I think @Post and beam was declaring the electric consumption of the heat pump rather than the heat generated (which would work out as a cop of 1) @Post and beam if you are pulling usage data out of Octopus it can be a bit flakey - I've reverted to the old consumption page because it doesn't have missing data as often as the current consumption data extract

It suggests a CoP of 1. Cost me about half that on E7, storage heaters and an immersion heater.

All good. I worry a bit that I'm coming across a bit negative. I do like your design. This is all a matter of choosing where you want to spend your money (or otherwise control the cost) and as long as you consider that things you like might cost more that's fine (so long as you have the money). Sure. I was saying that more just in case you were concerned about losing space. I think if you have extra space it should go more to the bedroom areas. Equally, you could go overall shorter if the building is a bit wider. Good points. Wider does potentially have undesirable consequences vs longer. Extra length is easier/cheaper but maybe doesn't help with layout as much. True. You can get some very 'stair like' loft stairs that should be easier to climb. But if you are planning for everything to be fully accessible then it's not the way to go. Again if the building is 1m wider you could move some plant to cupboards along the corridor. If longer, could be cupboards against the kitchen wall around the door way.