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Friday was a near perfect day for concrete pouring. A little cold at first, but by the time the concrete lorries arrived it was warming up nicely. The pile caps are all tied together nicely. The first lorry arrives. Disapointingly they didn't pump the concrete because of equipment availability. One of the snags of living on an island! The concrete was poured into the dumper, then the digger used to bucket it in to the beam. Half the long run done. Plenty of "watchers" on hand to use the poker to get the air out. The Driveway will take a bit of cleaning up now! The finished ring beam. Order says the house is a postage stamp and thinks the kitchen is way too small. Another view of our tiny new house. And now the start of the celebration for completing stage 1. Only three more to go.

just before you do... some of the Daikin units need re-powering in a certain order. That may be that it’s outdoor unit first etc Definite case of RTFM.

Once set up then they are as simple to control as any other form of electric heating. All I have for our ASHP is a wall thermostat to set the temperature and a programmer to set when the heating comes on or turns off. It hasn't needed any fiddling or adjustment since I installed it.

We have an ASHP so I will answer the "concerns" The ASHP needs to be sized to match the building, if done right it will work properly. A well insulated house will not cool down quickly and only needs a low heat input. So it does NOT need to heat up quickly. I estimate if the heating in our house broke down it would be 24 hours before you even noticed. Yes the HP only heats heating OR hot water. Again if it takes an hour to heat the HW tank you WILL NOT notice that the space heating has gone off for an hour. We live in the Highlands where -10 is common most winters. The ASHP carries on working. There is no doubt heating a HW tank takes longer so you would just fit a larger tank. They are no more noisy than an oil boiler. But the noise is outside the house. Most people are happy to have an oil boiler roaring inside their house, so a similar level of noise outside is not going to bother anyone. An ASHP works best at a low temperature so ideally suited to under floor heating or over sized low temperature radiators. The electricity grid is getting lower carbon all the time as we move away from fossil fuel generation.

FCU = Fused connection Unit. SFCU = Switched, Fused Connection Unit. If the towel rail is too close to a bath or shower it's normal to just have a Flex Outlet Plate in the bathroom and a switch outside the bathroom to control it.

As most people here that have installed them are prepared to put a bit of work in adjusting them to get to work, ask yourself will the people who buy one of your flats do this. As with everything keep it simple.

Some are, and some aren't. You need to pick one that specifically mentions that it has a flex outlet. I prefer the ones that have this flex outlet at the bottom edge, but you can get them with the flex outlet coming out the front, like this one:

There's a flex outlet under the lower edge, usually with a small plastic blanking plug that needs to be removed to feed the cable out, plus there is a cable grip at the rear to secure the flex. Here's a link to the full description: https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/CB4828slash3.html

No, you can get non-switched FCUs, with a flex outlet (it's hidden under the lower edge in this photo): That one has an indicator, handy for a heater as you can see when it's on.

Normal way to wire these would be via either a flex outlet plate (if the supplying circuit is suitably protected for the rating of the flex) or via a fused connection unit (FCU). The latter has the advantage that it can be fused to protect the flex that is supplying the heater. For example, we have heated towel rails that are both wired with FCUs, with the fuses being 3 A, as the heating elements are only around 150 W, and the flex to the towel rails is 0.75mm² heat resistant cable, rated at 6 A. The 3 A fuse in the FCU provides adequate protection for the 6 A rated flex. The FCUs are supplied from the upstairs ring final, via a wall mounted time switch outside the bathroom. The ring final is protected at 32 A, way more than the rating of the flex to the towel rails, hence the need for the additional protection offered by the fuse in the FCU.

Given that you only need this feeling as you walk in, and not all the time (as the house will be at a comfortable temperature) I wonder if there's a way of making a short burst long wavelength IR "illuminator", activated by your approach to the front door? That way it only needs to be powered for a short time.

The house has to sit in a slightly excavated position to ensure that the building isn't too tall in respect of neighbouring properties. That was a key part of getting it through planning. The other issue is threshold level for building regs.

But WHY do they think you need to be a "registered heat pump engineer" to fit them? Yes you need an F gas ticket to gas a split system. So fit a monoblock heat pump and you only need an electrician and a plumber. Or is this more UK "lets bury the problem in extra paperwork" nonsense?

It pays to have ALL the parts, basin AND trap, them do a mock up of exactly where they will go.

I did a dry run, positioned the sink on the pedestal and sorted the solvent weld waste before I boarded and tiled the wall. I had to guess the floor tile height. Thought I'd be spot on. I wasn't! Also the standard McAlpine siphon trap clashed with the waste. I bought a second telescopic McAlpine waste and made one out of two i.e a telescopic, anti siphon trap! Telescopic as @PeterW says should account for any discrepancies!

Just to add my bit. my pipe runs have lots of ic I could remove half of them and use long sweeping bends WHY? I want to access every pipe directly inline with its final point why would I want to increase the rodding length from 7m to 14m i want a house that functions well and is easy to work on. If you are having a very posh drive and don’t want to see an ic then I can understand why you would want to reduce the number, but if you can hide them in garden areas I see no reason to reduce the number.

If it’s not seen you just need a telescopic bottle trap Same in chrome if visible.

I am doing this right now in my own en-suite. I have built the unit that the basin will go on, so with that stood in place and the basin on it with the trap fitted, trap at mid point of it's height adjustment, I marked on the wall exactly where the waste pipe needs to exit. Then I fitted the waste pipe to a coupling that sticks half way out of the wall to join the tail pipe from the trap into and plasterboard the wall. I will take some pictures later and update my en-suite thread.

Here goes the next stage. Building the reinforced concrete ring beam. The plan is to build the steel cages off site in a shed due to awful weather, then deliver to the site. Lots of things arriving on site! The yellow plastic takes the place of traditional shuttering. Apparently this is faster and therefore cheaper. This will help pay for the huge amount of claymaster I need. It's still a little wet out here so digging might get interesting. We're armed with pumps and a couple of diggers so what could possibly go wrong? It took a couple of hours on Monday morning to measure out the site accurately, then the team got on with digging and cutting the piles to the right height. The cages started to arrive on Tuesday and installation was swift. The kitchen and family room cages nearly complete. The building inspector was happy with the progress on Wednesday so on with the show! With a bit of luck the concrete arrives on Friday. Then we can open the first of the four bottles of Cava allocated to the significant milestones.

I put together a 4kWp system for £1500 including panels, inverter and mounting frame for ground mount. I seem to be self using about £250 worth of electricity per year so should get payback in 6 years. That might improve as I have some shading issues. I cut 2 trees down over the winter so I will see if that improves things this summer. It took a LOT of shopping around to get everything at rock bottom price.

Yes it is. 12 x 260W = 3120Watts or 3.12kWp. At about 900kWh/kWp you should get about 2808kWh/year so you need to re-calculate!

We did. I haven't sorted out all the photos so no new entry yet. The weather was perfect for the pour.

Second update: water poured all over the roof light this morning. First in the area nearest to the problem on the inside. Nothing dripping through for 5 mins. But then we moved to the higher end of the roof light (it’s on a slope to allow the water to run off). Almost immediately the drips started. And continued for a few minutes after we turned the water off. So we have found the problem. Now to contact the roof light people. we can’t see any solution other than to break the seal, crane out the glass, check the frame and (assuming we are tight) remove it and then check the upstands. Looks like the mastic may have failed at a different point but that the water might have run round within the frame to the low point where it then descended thorough into the roof void. so happy we have found the leak. Now the next bit begins.....

Nah...you’ve just copied some pictures from a magazine or a holiday website?

Had to look that up? Read The F*cuking Manual

Sadly my Fermacell experiment has come to an end. We've found it very difficult to get a smooth flush finish to the boards with a less than smooth and uneven timber frame to attach the boards to. Where resilient bars were used it went someway to help but that hasn't been fool proof. The precision required to ensure that endless filling and sanding isn't needed prior to the Fine Surface Treatment is very time consuming and has been problematic. As time was running out we ended up getting the first room skim plastered, which made me weep as all the time and effort to get it pretty good was then buried beneath a few mm of plaster. The plasterer hated the Fermacell but he's done a great job. I had a go with the FST in one of the cupboards and I didn't get on with it very well at all. With more practice and time I may have got to grips with it, but I don't have the time so the final decision was made. No more Fermacell. I wished it had worked out for us because it's really quite disappointing to be introducing so much water into what was a nice and dry house but such is life. As many advised: It's heavy. Dust created with power tools is hideous. It does indeed eat power tools and their blades alive. It is of course expensive.