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Used 25% of it only started 10 minutes ago!.....

Oooo Fable 5.1 - now I can burn tokens even faster for sure!

It probably depends on the business type :) Micro-Entreprise, Entreprise Individuelle, SARL (Société à Responsabilité Limitée), EURL (Entreprise Unipersonnelle à Responsabilité Limitée), SAS (Société par Actions Simplifiée), SASU (Société par Actions Simplifiée Unipersonnelle), SA (Société Anonyme), SNC (Société en Nom Collectif), SCS (Société en Commandite simple), SCI (Société Civile Immobilière), SCP (Société Civile Professionnelle), SCM (Société Civile de Moyen).

For a Passivhaus you are make stuff complex. Just do the towel rads with electric heating elements, then you can use them for the 70% of the year you won't want the heating on. You can then run the heat pump at 26-28 degs.

Well this got super off topic. But as a master of asides I will join in! *ducks* Sales tax/VAT is quite a regressive tax so I'm not hugely in favour. I tend to think that in a digital age (where most transactions are done electronically) we could radically reshape our system. Make bank accounts be marked with a flag that denotes the type of account (I'm sure this already exists but I mean a UK wide standardisation and make this flag part of the transaction). Hugely simplifying, an account can be owned by a person or a company(*). Payments from a company account to a personal account have tax deducted at the time of transaction at the rate of that taxpayer (based on annual income). Other transactions are tax free. It is illegal to derive personal benefit from a non personal account (similar to existing benefit in kind rules). Payments to/from foreign (unmarked) accounts treated as payments to personal account and taxed (allowance for international agreements for tax free transactions to jurisdictions with compatible laws though clearly starting with zero). Possibility of claiming tax back in exceptional(*2) cases. Mechanism for refunds automatically refunding the deducted tax (basically need to enter original transaction ID at time of refund, or request refund using online banking that is then confirmed by company). Likely need an annual land tax also, but these two taxes can cover a wide range of existing taxes. Exceptions and incentives can be created but they are created on the basis of having to claim the tax refund, rather than having a lower tax bill. Claims should be digital and easy to claim (possibly directly through the online banking transaction record). (*) there may be more categories with special rules but they should be limited (*2) exceptional sounds wrong here, there are going to be many cases where you want to claim a refund, but the key is that these are rare overall given the total number of transactions Edit: companies would still have some additional taxes in some industries (carbon tax?) and need to file tax returns in many cases. But amount of work involved significantly reduced. Individuals much less likely to need a tax return. Individual (automated) tax refunds possible on specific transactions avoiding need for end of year return.

Are you proposing *only* to tax wage payments to individuals? Ok if I work for a shop and they pay me £1,000 a month I pay £400 of that to HMRC What if I form a company that provides my labour to another company? Is that taxed? That company pays me a wage of £1 a month and I pay 40p to HMRC. The company provides a house, car, clothes and food for me for free.

Yes. Why would that be a problem? Yes, but the prices of goods and running a factory would be reduced. Also, the taxes would only be claimed on the workers wages i.e. like income tax is now.

Right So I've just had some rewiring done. Electrician charged me £800 and provided wire, consumer unit, sockets etc. total value around £500 I pay him £800 and he has to pay £500 to his wholesaler and £320 to HMRC (40% tax). He has now lost £20 for his day's work. If I were to buy the parts directly for £500 and give them to him and he charge me £300 he'd only have to pay £60 in tax and make £240. every single trade would become labour only. Every shop would have to mark up all goods by at least 40% even if they were simply a warehouse/wholesaler. Every single step in a chain will add 40% to the price so a lump of brass for £10 become £14 when it is sold to the machinist, he has to sell that £20 just to break even to the cabinet maker. He in turn has to price that part at £28 to the kitchen show room. They then have to charge that at £40 to the kitchen fitter who charges his client £56 for that brass handle. And that assumes nobody charges anything for their time and overheads that's just the material cost moving through the chain!

Ok so you're suggesting VAT/sales tax on every single business with ability no exemptions? This is fine - I believe the French have no threshold and vat exemptions are much less common in Europe anyway. But then you get into discussions about what exactly is a business? How does sole trading work? How do you capture the guy doing an odd job for a neighbour and getting paid to cover materials? Do I have to charge vat on selling my CDs on eBay? Vat on selling your car privately? Vat when you sell your house? The reporting requirements around vat are pretty onerous already - is applying that t{ every single transaction between every single individual really the way to reduce complication and administrative burdens? I'm just saying that simple taxes never stay simple. Every single time you will need to make some sort of exemption or rule to stop your tax having undesirable effects. And those are where the loopholes come in.

Every payment they receive. So if you go to work, and earn £1600/month, £400 goes in tax. If you rent a room, or house out, 40% goes. If you sell your car, a painting, your home, 40% goes (consider that a wealth tax). But you won't be paying a lot of secondary taxes like VAT, fuel duties, inheritance taxes, council tax, NI, 'net zero', etc. Would make central government much more accountable as it would show how well they can spend our money.

That seems tricky on the face of it. It would have to take in many factors such as growth, inflation, behaviour change etc. I have not looked at the recent figures but seems to remember that about 40% of the countries GDP is taken as taxes. So about £1tn/year. I may have to look that up again as it was nearly 20 years ago I studied economics. Most of the taxes are income tax, NI and VAT. So under my system we could tax all incomes at just under 40% and fill in the gaps with my 'sin' taxes.

Sorry I don't follow? Are you (or the op) saying there should one tax (let's say income tax) at a flat rate and no vat, no sales tax, capital gains tax, no IHT just individual income or that there should be multiple taxes but each one has exactly the same rate eg income tax is 20%, vat is 20%, capital gains tax is 20% and so on?

And what's considered an individual's income!

Building a house, and was going to have UFH throughout but realised that it was going to be pointless to do so upstairs (Building to Passivehaus standards) but decided to fit AC instead knowing it could provide heating. Decided to keep towel rads to dry the towels in the en-suites. However during first fix the rads were put on a single zone. Opened by a motorised valve. (Hindsight is great) Shame as we should have put them on the manifold independently and used individual stats to link to the JG underfloor rf controller. Unfortunately that can’t be rectified now. The JG underfloor controller controls the pump (the hot water is pumped independently by the Nibe heat pump) but does have connections to control hot water (which aren’t being used) - the motorised valve, and timer controls. Can I use these and utilise a Tado set up. Rf rad stats feeding back to a controller?

You've missed the point of what was being proposed (not by me I should point out - refer to post). You imply there would be multiple taxes. One single rate, applied in different ways. Income tax, Sales Tax, Profits Tax etc, etc, etc. If its a sales tax, yes. Every business, no threshold. You wouldn't With no threshold, this is a moot point. What would the single rate be? Variable from year to year. One calculation showed a rate of only 12% was viable for one of the countries my friend consulted on. One of the suggestions was holding referenda for certain capital investment when such things are required

Another tip @flanagaj if mixing by volume try to get hold of the 15l painters tubs empty. I always found half a cement fits in these whereas they dont fill up a 25l builders bucket. If you're not careful you're getting more sand than you want in the mix. @Mr Punter does it give it any flexibility or self repairing once its gone off or is that no chance with cement?

i run mine at 42 at the manifold. Any lower and its short cycle city from my combi which is at 50.

That's what we have done. Noggins around the Finn Joists. Currently the 22mm T&G is in place, ready to be cut through when the duct is installed. Ours are 108mm insulated pipes.

Oh my! If you could see what I can see. Just trying to get the Indominous locomotion to be acceptable - then it will be video construction time!

It is not bad, just very unpleasant to breathe in, stings in cuts and eyes, dusty. Much more volume than cement. It does make the mortar nice and creamy and workable though. I wouldn't cut the bag in half.

Blimey, you have been busy! I've been kicking back in the Alps on a full AI detox until about 5am this morning. Just got back to reality combined with cyberspace already - Claude and Deepseek providing their suggestions in parallel.

Yep. https://openheatloss.com. It will do all the UFH output calcs room by room based on flow/return temps, room heat loss, pipe spacing and floor covering etc. and provide floor surface temps and over temp warnings.

If you want the BUS Grant, then you have to have MCS sign off. The important thing to understand is if the 'designers' have actually calculated in the MVHR into the heat loss. Most don't as they either don't have the understanding or the tool they use doesn't use a method that deals with whole house MVHR. For example, the new 2026 CIBSE Domestic Heating Design Guide method specifically excludes whole house MVHR. So check this before making a decision on the heat pump. You can use my tool at https://openheatloss.com as this does cover the BS EN 1281 standard for whole house mvhr. 105l may be okay, but it's important to know the minimum modulation of the heat pump first. Low temp running loves lots of volume. The Panasonic wifi connection is required for the 7 year warranty on these pumps. But commissioning cannot be completed merely using remote access as proper commissioning involves a lot more than this and has to involve an onsite visit. Unfortunately proper system commissioning is often misunderstood and undervalued. To get it done right it takes time. This design has other advantages often overlooked. It has built in expansion vessel good for a system of 200l volume. It also has a backup heater available in 3 or 6kW size so if there's ever a breakdown you have backup heating for your house. Overall, using the bi-bloc unit can be neater and more space efficient than installing another monobloc with all the additional expansion vessels and controller wiring as this is also all contained within the bi-bloc unit, especially if the alternative heat pump also requires an external circulator. E.g. installing a Grant heat pump is a pia in comparison and that's an easy heat pump to install.

Why is lime bad? Can you cut the bag in half like cement or will it be too much volume as lighter? Whats better for workability the concentrated admix or lime?

It would but pretty sure you cannot have “reachable” lead now .. we were doing an old listed place and the lead trays around windows had to be trimmed back flush with the frames to prevent kids, animals or other intelligent locals from picking or licking the exposed lead.