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I had an excellent time served joiner set up to build a wooden garage on the existing slab for £3000 Not an unreasonable amount for such a structure and a within my means.but that’s looking like at least £5500 to build in wood and meet fire suppression regulations. Not within my budget. nickfromwales, you sound like a person that works within the same budget constraints as me. Your imaginative suggestion of a second hand small commercial quality metal framed and metal clad building is well worth looking into. It might just tick all the boxes. Thank you Hope I did not ruffle the feathers of to many retired or current buildings standards inspectors.

I started out wanting to do everything CCT, but then when I i) saw the limited availability (and cost) of CCT downlights ii) read a bit more about the theory, I decided it made sense to stick to 3000K for direct/task lighting and CCT for indirect lighting. I then simplified this to 3000k for downlights/uplights and CCT for just LED's. However, I also wanted to ensure that I had high enough power LED's so that these could be the sole light source for low-light evening/night moods if required so chose 33W tape (only 16.5W once driver is programmed for linear output) and most rooms have full length of one wall. There was an issue with the tape I sourced and it doesn't fully dim correctly, but overall really happy with combination of downlights plus CCT LED's and overall flexibility.

Most bathrooms need some sort of storage. One option is to build storage against a wall and run the waste in the bottom.

Yes think I'm out of date.

What are the LEDs? Bulbs or strips? I've not found much that is externally controlled CCT in bulb form.

@Alan Ambrose I installed tunable white LED's in all rooms 2200-6500K all controlled via Loxone. I have moods etc and use the different temperatures with these, but they also adjust with the time of day on automatic moods. I used EldoLED DT8 Tunable white DALI drivers and meanwell power supplies. Anything else you need to know?

Actually a lot of manufactuers have really good public information including mitsubishi/lg/panasonic. Sometimes it's in a seperate "databook". The Vailant marketing documentation and manual was always very confusing as it wasn't clear what the values represented. This fustrated me so much that i spend hours going to every european vaillant website looking for the actual data until I hit on the now infamous "czech tables" which I shared with Mick and online before Vaillant could take them down. I since found the english version, but I know Mick likes to keep referring to them as the Czeh table given it gives them a bit more mystique 😉 These tables however, don't seem to include defrost apparently (even though they quote a standad that says they should), so you need to be careful using these for sizing. Various issues where installers have installed 7kW units based on ~6-6.5kW heat-loss, and then ASHP can't deliver enough heat when temp is around 0C and moderate->high humidity. This seems to impact 7kW bit more than others.

Enthaphy exchanger also doesn't need a pre-heater to protect the heat exchanger against frost (at least not in UK temperatures). Ours was supplied with one anyway though

Is it a straight run? With 50mm fall I'd say it would work. There, I said it. I'll get a kicking here from most for saying that, but then they'd have to shut up and buy the drinks when it is demonstrated and proves to actually be reliable and functionable. The energy / velocity of the flushed water is quite significant, and when you add in the fact this drops vertically first, gaining further momentum, you'll see this will be shifting at a rate of knots when you flush the WC (or "bog" if you're from my neck of the woods). If it really matters to you then set up a WC in the room loose, run the pipe, see how it performs, decide if you're happy. Proof will always be in the pudding, regardless of what's on paper.

At least with a modular building it can be sold on later to recoup some lost costs, but a free or close to free garage for a campervan is a bit unrealistic to be honest. £600 pcm would rent you something probably close to what you want (so x that x the number of years and then rethink your expectations a bit?) My basic man-shed at the side of the house cost me around £3k to do DIY, 7.2m x 3.6m footprint with metal profile roof, 4x2 timber frame with 18mm OSB interior for racking and same floor (wish I'd gone ply on the floor!!!!). Bottom line is, it needs a sensible budget. I'd start looking for a used small commercial metal building and modify it to fit. An afternoon with a metal cutting circular saw / recip, and some mates around with free beer and food etc should suffice.

Before or after you show her the invoice for the window

WElcome @Garage build A lively question. Agreed with the above:. Unless you are a highly skilled joiner, when timber would suit you, buy a metal kit. I'd be disappointed but not surprised if the kit suppliers don't have fire certificates for structural integrity and also for fire. But you can get help from an SE (who you pay for their 4 years at Uni and minimum 3 more before getting the qualification). Or even on here (But I and the others would not be putting their name to it). Fire must not break through the wall and spread, and the heat should also be held back. At the same time, the building must stay standing at the boundary, which means protecting the structure. Think of it please, if next doors garage fire set alight yours with your car in it. Not really. You seem very annoyed at everything, but I appreciate that construction is not your field of experience. Perhaps you think building is just joining things together. In my opinion it is fair that a person building should pay for all services, which would otherwise be paid by ratepayers who dont need the building. Intumescent paint is the material you have heard of. It is a complex product requiring vast resources to invent, perfect and test, and then is much more expensive than normal paint to make too. £1,000 seems optimistic as you would need many coats then a sealing coat. There are other ways to protect structures. You've had good advice from everybody from the sound of it. Yes I have and so have others above. But our reasonable charge for design or cost to build may be your small fortune. Have you a budget in mind? It may be realistic or perhaps the project is not viable. How secure do you need it to be? There is a big range from making it lockable through to preventing determined and expert thieves. The metal building above would not stand a ram raid or a bright couple of guys with a screw gun, but would deter the idle passer-by thief. btw that front building's vehicle door will cost about £1500 minimum. The building, I'm guessing £8,000 and then there are footings and floor slab. and fire walls. for a contractor to do it all add 30% In my experience a building of that sort is almost more secure with a window. Otherwise it is imagined as having lovely expensive tools or vehicle in it, and gets broken into regularly. Sorry it also sounds negative and disheartening but that is reality.

Ahhh that makes perfect sense although two boilers mean two service bill/maintenance costs and I'd be fretting about which one was driving the bills but that's me all over

Examples of the adjoining other garages on the site might be useful at least from a planning perspective.

It's a 6 month window for VAT reclaims isn't it?

Can I ask a basic question, how big is the house and what is the calculated heat loss. For 36kW, it has to be pretty big, uninsulated and pretty drafty. Is this the case? Boiler are pretty simple in a lot respects. They are trying to heat water, the bigger the boiler the higher the flow of water needs to be to move that heat away. The boiler unless told otherwise runs flat out, throws as much heat as it can initially, then if it senses it can, it will modulate output down. The idea is it runs as long as it can. Your boiler will modulate power output and circulation pump speed to do this. Some boiler have a setting (bit like acceleration rate) where you can set the ramp rate, so how many degrees of heat are added per minute, this slows everything down and lets the system catch up. But the WB8000 doesn't have this. What does exist is I believe is Gradient Limitation (Temperature Blocking) The boiler itself has an internal gradient limitation control: It monitors how quickly the flow temperature rises. If the rise is too fast (above a programmed limit), the boiler will temporarily pause the burner for ~2 minutes until it’s safe to continue So you are possibly seeing this in your video. Your circulation pump is a PWM, so it will try to maintain system dT, to within defined limits. To do this on Rising dT boiler increases pump speed, slows it for reducing dT. Your system seems to be fighting this you have what is described as an open system, big pipes, big radiators etc. So unless a valve is closed, you have a blockage or you pump is failing (doubt that). Has the plumber installed something (gate valve or similar) to force a dT against the boilers wish and as such gagged the flow.

Interesting idea but I can imagine Mrs. P's reaction when I tell her I've opened a Velux for her to climb through. I suspect she'd tell me where to go ('go and get a hammer').

If I was to run the en-suite w/c the full distance it would need to travel 5.6m to get to the stack. I’ve got 50mm at the very most for the fall. Do you think that’s possible? Would be great if it was… I’ll have a building inspector but if it’s the same guy, I doubt they will give it a seconds glance. More for my own piece of mind. He didn’t care a dot about the tons of mesh Il lapped to specific distances and tied beautifully all to the spec of my engineer. More interested in talking about how crap the company he works for is. I’ll try some of that banding and mating. Looks the business.

I have been messaging @craig about this and he has suggested possibly replacing the current striker latch for a day latch on at least one door. It doesn't look that straightforward but may be doable.

It really is amazing how much detail is in the install manuals if you dig into the detail - first manual I ever read was for my glow worm - I only read it because it was driving me nuts and I thought I could dial out it's problems - I got to understand the valiant/glow worm anti cycle settings which was a complete revelation when trying to manage a boiler with a minimum output 2.5 times the heat loss of the house. Despite the boiler being a cheap end of the market the manual at least laid out the critical basics like min flow rate required which is often absent in a lot of manuals I read

This the brink system, we also stumbled on this, whilst doing our research.

Lol, yes indeed. With you reading the boiler manuals and @JohnMo reading heat pump manuals, we're pretty much covered on the BH library of knowledge side. I only really read the manuals when I'm on training or on site!

Fair point - but as I said I quite like reading boiler install manuals and it never hurts to check

Not necessarily. If the boiler puts a slug of heat into the system and it senses it gets too hot in the heat exchanger because heat isn't dissipated quickly enough into the system, then reducing output can resolve this and enhance the heat output. It's behaviour I've seen when boilers can't modulate down enough for the heat load of the property so it fires, tries to modulate, then shuts of and not enough heat gets delivered out to the system. But in these circumstances you often get poor distribution of heat to the radiators, so they fail to even reach set flow temp due to poor circulation. I'm just suggesting this as a process of elimination. Maybe there's a slight problem with flow rates, but then as you say you'd end up with either a very wide DT or a very narrow one. So my suspicion is more leaning more towards the flow temp not being the same as the temp displayed.

I assume they aren't talking about a Building Control Completion certificate but some sort of Completion Certificate for Council tax purposes only? I wonder if the latter could trigger the 3 month window for VAT reclaims. In my case (at a different council) they just sent me a letter stating they are assuming I will be complete on some date. I disagreed and told them it will be complete on a different date a few months later and they accepted it.