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Why increase the thickness of timbers? If you lowering plasterboard slightly just use insulated plasterboard with say 25mm PUR lining. Then 70mm PUR between existing rafters or whatever to leave 50mm ventilation air gap. U value for these iminimum insulation thickness likely less than 0.18 tho.

Often I may come over as a bit of a crusty / sceptical. In mitigation I designed and installed my first UF heating system some 30 years ago.. long before this came more main stream. I'm an SE and designer now.. still learning lots. But many of my Clients are folk that want to build say an extension (some are big mind) the odd new build and some really big barn / church type etc conversions. Most don't have a bean to rub together.. every pound is a prisoner! They have a mortgage and want to protect their asset. Often I say.... hey look you can have fancy controls, systems but lets also look at the value of these when you come to sell. Lets also look at the maintenance costs.. the reality of sticky valves, ducts getting clogged.. who can mantain all of that and at what cost. For example I have some Hive controls... nice graphs on my phone etc but if I want to move house it's difficult to transfer the ownership.. in fact a nightmare. Now many modern systems have software, controls that are difficult to maintain after five or so years. Now if you have plenty of cash to splash and want to make an environmental statement or just like techy controls then on you go as far as I'm concerned. If you are happy with the maintenance and potential loss of value when you come to sell. If that is what you want then I'll get that into the design. Mind you during the design process you may change your mind and come round to my way of thinking! Especially once we start to look at build cost /benefit in detail. This is a good point. Old crusty ends.

My thoughts, additional to the good advice above. Usually rain is fairly vertical and not severe. The water will run nicely down the slope and not go in. In very severe storms and especially with wind, it might drive up between the tiles, but it is unlikely as the overlap is considerable. Then there is the membrane to catch it. We cannot know if the membrane is intact and lapped properly. The eaves and gutter is a mess. For now I would cut out an overflow from the stop end so that any extreme flow can escape...into a butt perhaps. An additional downpipe may solve it. More on that if requested. It is a plastic gutter. They often distort. Can you check if it is in a straight line or twisted....the lowest point will shed water, perhaps inwards. Is the gutter on a slope downwards to the pipe? Downpipes work very much better with flow from 2 sides. You have the additional pipe shedding onto this roof....lots of water at the wrong end from the downpipe. PLUS the flashings are random here....extend the lead fiwn to the gutter and complete the longitudinal flashing. LABC would say that this was built incomptetently and they don't cover that.....unless they had checked it....had they?

I have a 6M Wilo Yonos Pico, which, apart from the traditional 3 speed settings, also has CP (constant pressure and PP (proportional pressure) modes, both of which can be incrementally changed in 0.1M steps to give any required head, this pump also displays (like the DAB Evosta 3), the pump flowrate in m3/hr and the power in watts

Wise words. All this stuff is supposed to be maintenance checked including MVHR & stoves. A lot of stoves get once over every few years I’m sure. HETAS etc say MVHR is supposed to be have flow rates checked annually and ducts cleaned (lol dead on). I doubt many are checked following commissioning. I wonder how sanitary they are after 10 years. Interesting as I never thought much about this before. TBH the MVHR controls are mechanical dampers that are adjusted and fixed in position so shouldn’t need adjustment I guess. Ducts are bound to be lined in bacteria laden dust. Maybe just the extract ducts as filters should protect supply ducts

Now here is the rub. Personally I would live in a house that has some element of air heat recovery in terms of ventilation at a push. But not having windows that open is beyond comprehension. What happens when you have wet dog, want to dry some extra washing on the bannister..or just want a blast of outside air. This is not a home to me.. it's an extension of a crappy sanitized office. Ok you want to have MHVR and a wood burning stove. But I will bet my last cent that you won't change the rope seals every year on the stove door! A rope seal kit is about 12 -15 quid.. but most folk won't do it. As @SteamyTea says.. these wood burning stoves can be a killer. Always have a CO alarm in the room. Design your house and systems to last and look at think how you are going to maintain it and the cost of that. Be practical and not just aim to meet the regs. That is good design that will protect the value of your property and make your effort worthwhile and rewarding in the long term. Remember when you come to sell, some hard arsed surveyor is going to look at all this and may well write down the value if they can't understand what you are up to! This is not Fred Dibnah.. folk need to get a mortgage. Does any one think the same calculations and controls will work the same way in 20 years time? Any takers?

I used an old pillow stuffed into a bin bag with a few holes in the bag at the bottom to stop the bag becoming mouldy. That solution won't fleece like those expensive chimney sheep, which are shear rubbish, methinks. Ewe could use a pillow too, just ram it up the chimney! Baa humbug? 😄

All these points are so helpful. Merry xmas. Updates to follow asap. "Did you leave the existing founds and masonry below ground?" Yes I believe so but I will ask this to the builder to be sure but what he told me was "no new foundation was built" A local developer seems to be reasonably sure that this will not warrant enforcement but I will not be resting on my laurels till this has been resolved!

There is a lot of water arriving at the left hand end of that gutter, but the only down pipe is at the right hand end? Have you stood outside in heavy rain and observed how the water flows into the gutter and does it over spill? I would be looking to re jig the downpipes so there is a downpipe from the left hand end and try and route the upper pipes directly into that rather than onto that roof.

Bit of an inconclusive update. Got a replacement flow sensor today, but was unable to install as the pipework is clamped so tight around the existing one I can't open the threaded connectors out enough to remove it. Decided that's a job for after the holiday. But then noticed the instructions say it shouldn't be mounted up downward flowing pipe, only upwards or horizontal, which perhaps is the cause of it failing. Firing back up the FTC controller then failed in error code EE, comms failure with outdoor unit. Checked all wiring, all seems fine. Did many power cycles to no avail. Eventually re enabled the flow sensor dip switch 2-8, and it boots right up. But now I'm back to the L9 error whenever it tries to do any work. It's four years since install.

Thank you!

As a rule a room sealed stove in a room with a supply vent should be safe but even safer if overall the house is slightly pressurised I would be more concerned with an non room sealed stove and look for a "flue gas interference test" as proof. There were concerns raised about the risks when refueling which is OTT IMO. Similar risk with an open flue solid fuel effect gas appliance. But your gas fitter should check draft

I love @SteamyTea post above. In a few lines he spells out what you need to do and why. Don't forget the saving that you will make on the standing charge for gas and electricity.. it maybe only a pound a day but that could pay for maintenance of a generator. changing the filter and so on. That's my tuppance! Combined heat and power (CHP)..it's a no brainer in my mind.. there is a massive amount of heat to be extracted from the exhaust gases of a generator. Mind you it needs to be done safely..I would make sure I put all that gubbens in an out house. I think this may be an advantage prid pro quo.. provided you design your house more as a box, like a long house.

Is your house completely in the middle of nowhere? Can you settle for a smaller supplier and buffer it with an on-site battery for peak loads? Would it be possible to organise the routing from a suitable transformer to your house yourself and just bury a chunky cable on your land? Can you move the house?

I didn't find any reason not to have a roomsealed woodstove in an MVHR-equipped house, but I *did* understand that I could not have extraction in that room; our stove is in a room with only a supply vent, the kitchen end of the house may get a gas stove some day as that's OK in a room with extraction. I also chose to run the house at a slight positive pressure to reduce the chances of smoke being pulled into the room if the stove door is opened to rapidly etc.

How many people in the house? BALLPARK numbers here..... 30m³ per person per hr, normal flow rate for an MVHR unit is about 30% So if a Brink 450 is I assume 450m³/hr in a nominal setup then it'll do 4.5 people. If you have 6 people get a Brink 600 (if even such a thing exists).

Nice.... I'm nicking that.

I would say that unless the pipes are very warm, say 50deg+ then it's unlikely that they caused an issue. Vacuum the cobwebs out of the rear of the fridge radiator and make sure the drains are clear . Don't push it quite so close to the wall either and I bet it'll be fine.

If you asked me to guess, I’d say it was just a fault with the fridge. Sometimes those drains get blocked with general fridge gunk.

Respectfully, you need to do a test and get the results. If it’s worse than you think then maybe a 450 won’t do it, if it’s much better (sub 1.0 ACH) then the 450 may suffice.

Also, was building control involved in all this and are they local authority? Ah, I see the answer is ‘yes’. Then it sounds like one part of the council is telling you to do something … without warning you that another part of the same legal entity is going to try to profit from it. Strong letter to head of council suggesting unethical behaviour to start with as such behaviour could be interpreted as a revenue scam. That’ll probably do it. It wants to be worded carefully, so maybe you want a cleverish lawyer to write it.

Or maybe just some Talon trunking? Link

Brilliant, thanks Gus.

Wouldn't hurt to stick some thin insulation like Armaflex into the pipes behind the fridge!