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With future legislation on Green Energy I thought it worth posting an image of the Integrated Solar Modules installed on this staining seam this Self-Build at Graven Hill. increasingly popular

A couple of years ago I worked on a very large house overlooking lake Windermere He had 600x600 speakers set in the ceilings We simply plastered over them Super cool idea and worked a treat

My own system is an old, 1980's audio system that just happens to have remote control. So it sits in a cupboard out of sight, never needing to be visited unless you do want to put a CD in to play. It spends most of it's time playing music via the Pi Music Box that can stream internet radio and all the usual spotify type services, or play music files stored on it's own memory card. you can control the music box from your phone or computer. If you want to play music that is on your phone then HiFi Cast will do that and the Pi Music box accepts streamed audio from that. When it comes to speakers, my big floor standers in the living room and a smaller wall hung pair in the kitchen / diner and another wall hung pair in the sun room.

We went for Nudura mainly because we could get a mixture of assembled and unassembled units, the later meant we could wrap them around the steel columns which the planners insisted we kept. At the time there weren't any other systems that offered that flexibility. The product has been great in terms of quality however if I were building a house without these obstacles I would definitely research the market. Amvic was better on price but didn't offer the unassembled units. Initially we looked at Durisol, which meant a slightly different approach to our superstructure build i.e. building walls between the columns rather than encasing them as we've done now, but their pre-sales was so appalling that I just gave up in the end. Nudura was dead easy to use but it didn't eliminate the need to understand all the other construction interfaces e.g. drainage, finishes, flooring, etc etc, something you need to consider with any ICF. This is where someone with design experience of your chosen product will pay dividends. Same goes for choosing an engineer. Nudura support was ok but not great, comes down to the distributor I think as I'd imagine they all provide online literature/videos which incidentally there's plenty of for Nudura. The guy that sold me Nudura said he felt he didn't get the support he needed from the company hence why he moved to a different ICF.

Are you staying put? I overheard a woman in the local post office, when I lived in East Kent, say that she had moved back from Cornwall because it rained too much. Must have been a waste of money to move 300 miles for a year or so and then move back.

My recently built garage/workshop extension looks roughly like this: The new glazed pavilion and floor above has been added on to our original workshop/garage. The intermediate gable was demolished at first floor level to create one large room above. Regrettably the insulation levels are to building standards only, and no heating has yet been installed. I did put in a UFH loop in the ground floor screed in preparation though. Unfortunately this was all planned and constructed when energy costs were nothing like the major issue they are now. Now I'm trying to figure out what kind of heating to put in to make it usable all year round, so I've been collecting data on the actual thermal performance comparing it with some rough heat loss calculations and I'm not sure if it all stacks up. All I've done is very crudely worked out the fabric heat losses (the original cavity walls are more like guesses) and put in a 2kW digitally controlled heater set to 10C, monitoring daily power consumption vs. mean outside temperature. As shown above, the loss calcs suggest 10kWh for a 5C delta. The actual data agrees with this almost exactly but I'm suspicious! After all, there's no account taken for air exchange and there's been no other heat input during the monitoring as the place is currently unoccupied. Should I trust this experiment and base my heating decisions on it?

Yes, but I think the running costs are relatively low. That is the major selling point of nuclear. Like @SuperJohnG, I like nuclear, but the costs soon run away. The cost of decommissioning is also in the strike price, and who can tell what those will be in 60 years time.

£11bn/GW. If it lasts 60 years, and generates all the time, that is 2p/kWh (I think). Strike Price was about £92.50/MWh, 9.25p/kWh. Still a good deal if I have worked it out right (for EDF).

This is definitely a reason to fit PV but I am not sure it is a reason to fit more PV to an existing install. What I am seeing is the cost of electricity Vs the cost of Kerosene, is making a diesel generator set up as a CHP unit is starting to look attractive.

Indeed. Fortunately, the chances of allowing a new build with a 3000 sqft outbuilding are slim to non existent. But scotland, chief mammy aside, is looking more appealing as the weeks and years roll by.

Yes, round these parts you should be able to get a good plot for about £50K, that is what we paid for ours. There are of course plots, particularly closer to Inverness, with higher asking prices. But move half an hour outside the city and you get good prices.

I would make her knock it down because it looks shite.

One problem with measuring volume is that the density of the liquid changes with temperature. The UK has only just started to fit temperature compensation to transport fuel pumps. Nice to know, for the same price, I get a few kWh extra energy in the winter. You may be able to get an ultrasonic flow meter, but probably expensive and not that reliable. The best way is load sensors on the feet of the storage tank. Then you can calculate from the specific energy density, correctly. We should really but fuel by the kg or MJ, not volume.

Much easier to calculate the volume of tank and make a dip stick. anything that obstructs the filling flow will cause problems. ifyoudont believe the delivery truck gauge get them to put 20 litres into a container where you know the level. highly unlikely a reputable retailer will be fiddling the meter.

From the estate agents particulars: "Building project for sale. Due to unforeseen circumstances the current owner has been forced to pass on this unique opportunity to build a home set in approximately 0.8 acres, in a sheltered plot close to Loch Migdale. The plot is surrounded by mature woodland in a picturesque location. It comes with planning in principle (19/00212/pip), however full planning permission and building warrants are required and the existing wooden structure will need to either be altered or removed. This offers an exciting opportunity for someone looking to build a new home in one of the most picturesque parts of Scotland and we are delighted to have been asked to bring this opportunity to the market." "General Information: Services: Mains Water & Electric are available but not connected. No septic tank has been installed " So I was right in my assumption that it would get planning. Just what was the owner thinking? It had planning in principle. All he had to do was apply for full planning with the final house design, and then a building warrant. but instead he just built this wooden building with no planning or building warrant, and has not connected it to any services. The owner knows how to waste money. No way is it worth £150K as a plot. It might be worth that if you could keep and complete the existing building. But it seems the wrong building for the plot. I have not read the PIP and any restrictions it has, but I am pretty sure you could have built a normal size 2 or 3 bedroom house.

as in a flow meter rather than a contents gauge? Both are possible, but how will the oilman connect his dispense head leak-free to a flow meter?

Adding to what Stones has said about the misleading perception from using your hand to detect extracted air flows, if you've got access to the exhaust vent (even temporarily removing the ducting to it if need be) you'll get a much better feeling of flow by checking there. Of course it'll represent the total whole-house extraction but it'll still give an indication of things operating as expected (or not!).

Its very difficult to detect the extract air movement by hand - and in comparison to supply where there is a positive flow it feels like there is very little movement. A very easy way to test that air is being pulled through is to hold a bit of tissue up flat to the extract vent - the extract air flow should pull the tissue up against the terminal and at least reassure you that it is extracting. You could also close all but one extract terminal and see the step change at the one remaining open one, again to show you the total volume of air being extracted.

Those fittings are 1/2" BSP. Does this help

If you want to commission them yourself then just do it and supply the information to the architect. Bear in mind that any missing information or difference in what's needed for to complete the design will be your cost and responsibility, we generally get quotes from surveyors for our clients because we have a lot of experience in knowing what we need to satisfy a local authority or what would be useful later in the process to avoid redoing/adding more information to surveys later and most of our clients might not understand the difference in scope of services so just look at the bottom line costs...

Just a shame neither picked up on the issue the LPA refused the CoL application on…

My experience is they will be happy to check it, and even if it turns out not to be at fault they won't charge you. It might be that what you are seeing is just a conduit that is containing the cable and the cable inside is fine and it is just cosmetic, but you really want that diagnosis from the DNO

Yes, you should definitely use the PME earth terminal in the kiosk to provide earthing for the wire armour up to the caravan. There shouldn’t be any need to put any additional earthing into the kiosk at any point, HOWEVER there are some new regs coming in which are not terribly clear, but seem to suggest that from some point in the future in new houses and structures, there will need to be an additional earthing arrangement built in - effectively putting a TT onto every new PME installation! Exactly what form that will take is still unclear… These guys probably explain it better than I can… and they’re well worth following. Very clear and informative electrical insight.

If you have any exterior render The render company should protect exterior windows frames and cils

You've never been in a house in the UK that you thought was too hot? I find that surprising. I've been in several. As for cooling the floor, to save me repeating myself, have you read any of the several threads on floor cooling? Having worked in air-conditioned offices for many years in Australia, I find floor cooling to be a much more comfortable way of cooling a space than air cooling. One hot day is fine. A couple is okay. It's when you get a run of several hot days that the heat gradually creeps up. Having cellulose insulation in the walls and roof is a blessing and curse - it buffers heat really well, but when it eventually warms up, it has a lot of energy to re-radiate into the house. It takes days to heat up, and days to cool down. We don't have insect screens (something I'll definitely be addressing eventually), so we can't ventilate at night. We do have an ASHP and concrete floors with UFH, so it makes sense to cool them. We also have a lot of PV, so on sunny days, cooling is effectively free - I only tend to run the cooling during the day when the sun is up. These are more interesting questions imo. This year, much of summer was mild and very overcast. We only used it for maybe a week. Maybe two or three years ago we had a couple of multi-week hot, sunny periods with high overnight temperatures. I believe we ran the underfloor cooling for at least a month or maybe even six weeks over the course of three or four months that year. At a guess, I'd say we've averaged three or four weeks of cooling across the summer over the last six summers since we moved in.

I used ballykelly joinery in Banbridge for mine. Got all my internal door frames from them as well.

@Onoff I've never had one with a backnut. Tbh, it's rare to get rear access so you'd never get to fit one anyway. The one you've got fits as follows. : 1) you measure the diameter of the fitting, the chrome bit after the brass thread. 2) you get that size tile hole saw and make a hole 2-3mm bigger. 3) you fit an outside tap backplate into the wall at about 1/4" shy of finished tile face. 4) you tile and grout after blanking the outlet and pressure testing. 5) turn the fitting into the outlet until its tight. At this stage it'll likely have bottomed out without the chrome going past the tile face. 6) measure what you need for the chrome bit to finish 3-4mm into the tile. 7) cut that much off the brass thread. 8) you put 22-26 turns of ptfe onto the last 25mm of thread ( so 50 turns or so in total to get the thread covered ) 9) turn the outlet into the backplate until it's pointing down and just shy of proud of the tile face ( slightly recessed ) 10) do not go so far that you have to back turn anti clockwise 11) clear ct1 the tile hole tobthe brass thread by pumping it full. 12 ) push the cover ring down the outlet until it rests on the tile. It's NOT there as a waterproof seal, and the rubber o-ring is only a friction ring to keep it parked. The ct1 forms the watertight element. Clear as mud ?

What a fantastic roof. So much potential for shading.

did it escape BC inspection too then?