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I uploaded my draft floor plans a while ago and I have lived with them a while and am fairly content that they will meet our needs. We have one elderly parent left who we could easily argue needs to move in with us ( that is closer to the truth than I like to think about as it is my MIL not my own mum). That gives us the need to a downstairs bedroom and en-suite. Everything else is fairly normal but of reasonably generous proportions in line with most self builds. We hope to have a comfortable, energy efficient home that we can live in for as long as possible. Our need to move as we get older and frailer will be more to do with the lane that we live on and our inability to get the 1 mile down the track to the nearest corner shop than the house with luck. Low maintenance is a biggie for us of course - we have no wish to be doing regular maintenance as we get older. We have appointed an architect technician to look at my floor plans and check that it is buildable but we have given them permission to come up with better ideas if they can. The house will run from east to west - the longest wall faces south and I have planned an overhang from the floor above along the entire length of that wall to keep the ground floor cooler in the summer. The only window I have planned on the first floor facing south is on the stair well. The east and west balconies will again give shade to the bedroom windows hopefully helping to keep them cool in the summer aswell - a woman of my age needs no help at all to get to hot, especially overnight. I've posted these plans before but as this thread is going to be all about the design i thought it would be a good starting point so that we can see the progression up to and including planning consent being granted (note the confindence in that sentence ). My intention was to have a flat roof so the house would have a very modern look - all render and block like with maybe a little wood cladding as a feature to break up the render in a couple of places. The architects are trying to talk me out of the flat roof as they believe we will struggle to get the plans approved as they are not in keeping with other houses in the area. It's a bit hard to know what other houses they may consider as our nearest neighbours are horses on each side who do have stables but tend not to object to planning permission so long as they get a carrot or apple in payment. Neither plot is likely to get planning appoval for a house in my lifetime (one side has tried and failed). Very few plots down the lane have lawful houses on them but there are a few plots occuplied by one of more travelling caravans, most of which have enforcement notices served on them. So finding what is "normal" is a little tricky. The SSSI which we are close to is a hill that is home to a number of reptiles. We have walked up the hill many times and you cannot see our house from anywhere on the hill, you can see the end of the plot, but not the house. I understand that flat roofs have inherant issues that require careful detailing by good roofers - I have been reading @pocster's thread today to remind me of how badly things can go. I don't like flat roofs. However I like the look of PV panels even less but I know that I want them. We have considered putting the PV panels in one of the paddocks on a ground mount system but the dogs love rompng up and down like idiots. Having space for them to run was one of the big drivers for our move so filling up ground with panels is not something I want to do. A flat roof to me would be the lesser of the two evils and it means I can have PV panels facing any direction that I want. So here are the opions I am seeking from the collective: Is a flat roof a sensible compromise to allow PV panels to be hidden from my view? Is it worth having PV panels facing east, south and west to get the optimum solar generation? What limits are there on PV generation - I saw something today mentioning 4kw and not sure what dictates that? I know we won't be getting the FIT tariff so is there anything stopping us going above the 4kw limit (if that is what it is) and just "wasting" the excess if that is possible so that we don't overload the network? As you can probably tell, I know very little about PV but am reading whatever I can find. I've been meaning to put this thread up for a while now and seeing @Russell griffiths post about solar panels reminded me to pull my finger out and ask the questions. Thank you

With no expansion room at all, then the pressure will rise a very great deal with even a small temperature change. Water is, to all intents and purposes, incompressible under the sort of conditions in a heating system. A 70 litre volume system will try to increase in volume by roughly 0.3 litre for a 20°C temperature change, so with no expansion vessel, and ignoring the slight increase in system volume from the thermal expansion of the buffer tank and pipes, the pressure will increase by a lot, possibly several bar unless a pressure relief valve were to operate. My earlier guess of the PRV letting by around a cupful seems to be about right, too, at 300ml!

Marley eternit was the product . All the trim costs though ! I over used it to hide all cuts . Happy to dig up the cost for you later

@pocster your cladding looks first class, can you tell me what product you used and a rough idea of cost please?

Found a short term solution (well so far!) set pressure at about .4bar and it only rises to roughly 2bar when running. Perhaps this is why it appeared to run ok up till now. I have ordered an expansion tank and will fit it this week.

You have obviously not met my niece ! Unless it is a staircase like the Spanish Steps.

I ended up buying the 12L expansion vessel kit as it was available at the time on the bay, slightly cheaper than others were selling an 8L one. I actually installed if for my first HP but when that didn't work the replacement HP I was given has an expansion vessel inside the HP, so I now have two as I never saw any point removing the one I had fitted.

Quick one but yes ..! Should have an 8 litre expansion vessel in the system somewhere - not difficult to add and just set the static pressure on it to 1 bar (they normally come with a 3 bar pre-charge)

I think your plumber has nailed it. The pressure will rise in the sealed ASHP circuit as it heats up, and there should be an expansion vessel in that circuit to allow for this and limit the pressure rise. I see about 1/4 bar change in pressure between hot and cold on ours, but that's with an expansion vessel. Without one I suspect the pressure is rising to the PRV threshold and dumping a tiny bit (probably only a small cupful) which is then causing the pressure to drop a lot when it cools down.

Would be ginger no doubt ? A McMerkin! ?

For a moment there I misread that as "merkin"... ?

Yes, as p;er what @PeterW has posted, your electrician will make the necessary connections using Henley Blocks

Out of the meter(s) there will be some grey wires about the thickness of a Sharpie marker and similar colour. With yours these go to different boards as there are different meters and you’re on 3 phase . These are meter tails. A single phase conversion would run all the tails from your existing CUs into a set of Henley Blocks, then one single tail into the new meter. This Article is quite useful on what Henley’s do

Remove the mat on inspection day and fit some off cuts of the flooring in the hole, mounted on some ply to bring up to the correct level after the busy body bc have gone put your mat back. ??

Employers cope the same way they always have. I remember my mum and dad talking about the “younger generation” - meaning me and my friends, expecting to walk into a job as MD without getting any experience or qualifications first.

The centipede was happy, quite until the frog in fun said "Pray, which leg goes after which?" and worked her mind to such a pitch she lay distracted in a ditch - considering how to run !. F

I have a similar tariff with Scottish Power and I asked them about swapping to a single meter tariff / economy 7 etc. as I'm completely unable to swap supplier currently. They told me that they would put the new meter in but they were not responsible for rewiring the 2 CUs into a single meter and I would need to engage an electrician and pay for that myself. Essentially I had to get the electrical work done first and everything running from the standard meter and then they would swap it. My rate seems a bit better than yours however. I'm currently on: Standing charge 19.57 Heating meter 7.818 Standard meter 15.116 In the end I decided to stay where I am for the time being because the rate I am paying isn't too terrible compared to what I could get elsewhere, and I can use my heating more or less 24 hours (there are 3 x 2 hour breaks in a 24 hour period at a time of Scottish Power's choosing). Thus I have a TS so that I am not impacted by the breaks. Here is a thread discussing your tariff and who is responsible for the swaps. The second page has recent posts from someone annoyed about the current price increase. It does sound a lot compared to what I'm paying for a pretty similar set up. https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5619838

I don't know the latest regs on it, but it's worth double checking before you start

Before you go hacking it off check that you don't HAVE to ewi (if you didn't want to)

ewi before render?

Nobody who knows what they're talking about has said anything here for 5 hours so I'll have a go: wouldn't something a bit more vapour open (“breathable”) be better than concrete?

Hi Russ, With 4.0kWp at your location, due south, 20° roof (your roof is one shallow pitch isnt it?) The PVGIS page says you should generate 3840kWh per year A new but cheap 4.0kWp system should cost you <£2k. DIY install. Assuming your grid electricity is 14p per kWh (today's prices, will surely be more next year) So when you have consumed 14,286kWh of PV generated electricity it will have paid for itself. (200000/14) If you consume 100% of the 3840kWh generated that is 3.7 years payback (14286/3840) Realistically you may only consume 70% so 5.3 years payback (14286/3840*0.7)

Completely agree. In fact I’d go as far as to say that the higher education system in this country is morally bankrupt.

Silicone applicators....let's not forget them!

I think as mentioned it will be hard / impossible to satisfy building regs means of escape, it certainly would be in Scotland. Our house is 1 1/2 storey and I "enlarged" the upstairs space by adding "gable ends" A sort of variation on a dormer that is more common on the West Coast. Here are a couple of pictures It does not add anything to the overall height, but it gives a LOT more usable headroom and ensures all bedrooms have a proper window on an upright wall with only the en-suite having a roof window as it's only window. I have to ask though, as you are clearly working with a restricted ridge height, why waste height by having a 2.5M height downstairs when the standard 2.4 would be fine?

On thing you may need to think about for the planning stage is the subsequent building regs. I think the bottom of one of those roof lights in a room need to be a max of 1.1m off the ground for build regs (I will need to check). Also it needs to be a minimum size for an escape path.

Got a similar height at one side of my eaves. 1200mm. Works well for a desk then also have bath along this wall as you propose. Seems to work fine but where you position your beds will be important and think about wardrobes

Well, finally an update. We won the appeal. The inspector pretty much confirmed what we were saying all along about "overdevelopment" and visibility ("intent observer" wouldn't be able to compare the houses in the row due to vegetation) and the neighbour's houses not being the limit the plot can take. Happy days. Big thanks to everybody for the support and advice during this process. On the back of a recent post by @Big Jimbo and following a quick conversation with Mr Luxton at one of the shows I am seriously considering putting in another application that utilises space behind the existing attached garage to form a gym (ground floor only). I do want to bully the bastards who pretty much stole a year of our time - if I can. More questions to follow :-)

So... uPVC is inert, resistant to all but the most corrosive of alkalis and acids, and does not cause condensation like metal products. Galvanised steel on the other hand is mildly reactive, usually put together with aluminium fixings that create galvanic corrosion with any moisture in the air, and is also prone to condensation unless properly insulated. So, I’d say the chance of failure is a lot higher with steel than plastic ..!

Lead welding,battering ,steel work.And digging for more steel work

One for those with a business or a sole trader £50 off a £100 spend if you sign up (for free) for Amazon Business. Time limited offer. Sign up by 12th Feb and you have to use the voucher by 17th Feb. You HAVE to go to Amazon via the Head For Points link / advert (you may need to whitelist the page to see the ad), if you have extra strong anti tracking protection it may strip out the referral link, and you have to opt into emails (so that Amazon can send you the voucher) https://www.headforpoints.com/2019/02/03/amazon-business-50-offer/?fbclid=IwAR11U92811QuQjGLnGSBr3-m9FUjrBHfqiZelr62zL2SG2mbXvoE7s4UdTc Some are saying that you need to enter a VAT number but they have found a way round that - if I find out what that is I will update this thread. Edit - the FAQs say this about the VAT number: Do I need a VAT number to register? No, adding a VAT number is optional. If you do not wish to add a VAT number during registration, leave the field blank and continue with your registration. If you choose to add a VAT number, it will be printed on your invoices. You can add your VAT number any time after registration through the 'Ordering and shopping preferences' on Your Account to enable this functionality. Why do I get an error when I add a VAT number? You may get an error message if the VAT number is incomplete or not in the required format. Make sure that the VAT number you add is complete and in the following format - GB123456789 (2 digit country code followed by a 9 digit number).

Yep flat roofs - especially of ‘ non standard ‘ design are a nightmare. We had no proper plan for it , and by that I mean the architect didn’t . Hopefully though we are moving forward on that aspect .