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As an update, a cheery Welsh chap turned up yesterday evening. We rigged up a light for him, gave him a cup of coffee and he fitted the meter. He didn't ask to see any paperwork and didn't ask any questions. It was all rather painless in the end, thank goodness.

didn't know you felt like that Nick! Thanks for the reply - 1 less box on each wall now. Tidy.

a rest! then we shall see. there is a really nice plot coming up soon near us but it may be out of our price range.

Ditto - I think we can all decide for ourselves which people we want to invest our savings in and I for one, think some of the people on this forum are far more worthy of the loan and I would be far more likely to get a better return on my investment than many other places.

Welcome to BuildHub Simon. I didn't realise there was a trend for 2017? I don't think doors are like Kitchens or Bathrooms where you have a trend. I suppose you could argue thermal performance was a factor?

@Nickfromwales thanks for th advice and the links, just bid on one of them. Happy days. Now off to buy replacement drill batteries.

And that would cost? £5000? 100 of us £50 each. @ProDave moves in. Too simple?

I run cables around the room at socket or light switch height. As long as there is ONE accessory on the wall at that height, it is a safe zone for the entire wall. If you need to get past a window, go down to socket level and across in that safe zone. If there is no safe zone there, go up to the 150mm ceiling safe zone. As a matter of course, all my service void battens have gaps at socket and switch height. I have tried many times to get joiners to pre drill them, or even as I do just leave a 1" gap, but none will ever do a simple thing to make it easy for the next trade.

I think a well-managed P2P scheme is an excellent way to be in far better control of your investments than using ANY recognised financial institution. Like many, I've been bitten (three times) by financial institutions making contractual promises and then breaking them: First the endowment miss-selling scandal (I did get back about 60% of our loss after 12 years .........). Second time was a few years ago, just before I retired, when RBS openly lied to me about the nature of some investments I'd asked them to advise on (in writing) and make for me. I had specifically asked for zero-risk investments, as I knew I wanted to draw the money out for the self-build within around 3 to 4 years and didn't want to risk losing the money - they invested in stocks and shares, something that I'd specifically told them not to do, and they charged a whopping commission up front, without telling me. That took the best part of a year and a complaint to the FSA (as it was then) to get them to refund the investment, plus interest, plus their commission, and, to be fair, a small "good will" payment (I still changed banks the next day, though). The third time was when we wanted a small mortgage on our old house to help fund the new build. Santander agreed, we paid the arrangement fees, had the valuation survey and received the written mortgage offer, with terms. A couple of months later, when I went in to start to draw down from the mortgage account they told me they had arbitrarily cancelled it, as their lending policy had changed recently. Four years later and I'm still battling to get back the arrangement and valuation fees from them, again it's in the hands of the regulator (now calling themselves the FCA). The argument against P2P lending/borrowing is that it can be outside the regulatory powers of the FCA. Frankly, based on my experiences, I'm not at all sure that is a significant issue. There have been unregulated borrowing schemes running amongst the Jewish and Islamic populations here in the UK for decades, and they seem to generally work OK. A well-focussed P2P investment/borrowing scheme, say aimed only at self-build, is probably no greater risk than dealing with a bank or building society, in my view. It's easy to focus on the negatives and risk, but with lots of small investors lending to someone of a like mind, and who understand what the self-build financial roller-coaster can be like, it doesn't seem to be a very high risk to me. I would be very interested in making small investments to fund self-builds when we have our money back from the sale of the old house. Not only would it probably give a better return than the banks or building societies (not hard) it would give great satisfaction that the investment was contributing a little bit to someone else's self-build dream.

The heat in any boiler always goes to the PRIMARY HEx ( what the burned fuel actually heats ) and then from there if it's a combi it gets diverted to the plate / secondary ( DHW ) HEx. The oil boiler here will be treated as a heat only / open pipe setup as the huge amount of residual heat in an oil boilers HEx needs to be dissipated after the flame is extinguished. Every oil boiler you buy these days has a pump control terminal on the PCB which fires the pump and does PoR, likewise with any modern system or heat only unit. It's infinitely more problematic with oil and more again with an old oil boiler as it'll likely have a manual resettable high limit stat. If left to boil, then cool, with no PoR, inevitably that safety device will nuisance trigger.

No. That's not a safe zone. Run the cables in proper safe zones in the service void you have.

You will still need a pump overrun ( PoR ) with that setup as it's a heat only boiler When the cylinder is hot the DHW ZV will be shut, and when the demand for heating is lifted that ZV will shut too, therefore creating a sealed loop where residual heat in the exchanger will be free to boil and knock the OH stat out. Any arrangement with PoR needs a path to a heat loss circuit ( which EVER that is ) which is open in the standby state or worse a power failure. Ok. Assuming the hot tank is staying as is long term and is still plumbed in and remains in commission. What I'd do ( as a long term / end solution ) is do the 2 x 2-port ZV's so you you have an s-plan, and energise the DHW valve from the 'heating off' terminal in the time-clock. NOTE : 28mm ZV on the hot circuit if it's 28mm pipe So, when the heating runs, the DHW ZV shuts ( from stored energy ) as it de-energises, and the heating runs through the heating ZV as per normal. When the heating demand is removed the heating ZV will close and the DHW ZV will open ( these will operate nigh on simultaneously so you'll never get a closed circuit as far as the pump circulation is concerned ) and and residual heat will then be free to naturally ebb away via the gravity circuit to the tank. The return water in the DHW gravity loop will be ambient ( cool / cold ) so will cool the boiler down nice and quick. As for normal DHW production, when you recommission to use DHW again, you just leave as-is but then connect the power for the DHW ZV to a simple timeclock for timed DHW. A nice side effect of this is you get to have a gravity DHW system but retain the option of having the DHW off whilst running the heating. It would need a tweak to the wiring to achieve that. No complex timers / non-standard controls too so ongoing maintenance / repairs are easy.

Switch that thing on and it will be like a bog on the space station ...!!! You’ll get vacuumed to the seat....!

@richi I used a din-rail timer that I had kicking around and true off is generally the more expensive timer variety, but something like this would do- https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Power-Off-Delay-Timer-Time-Relay-0-3-Minute-3M-ST3PF-with-socket-base-AC-220V/32607096370.html permanent feed to it and the current pump supply signals it.

Makes sense to just add a delay relay, then . Easy enough to add, you'll need a suitably protected mains supply for it, the switched supply to the boiler and a suitable delay relay and box. If you get a small DIN rail box (the smallest are the ones intended to house double pole isolator switches) and then fit something like this: https://www.rapidonline.com/finder-80-01-0-240-0000-time-delay-relay-timer-1-changeover-contact-ip20-50-5328 with a blanking plate over the unused single module space you should be OK. If you don't have a suitably protected switched mains feed for this, you could add a 6A MCB in the same enclosure, run a spur from the boiler supply in 2.5mm² (assuming that the boiler supply is rated at more than the relay rating) just to get protection plus a means of independently turning off the over-run relay if needed.