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Thanks all, great replies! I was born in South Devon but moved away with work about 35 years ago. My parents and my brother remained there and it was something of a plan to relocate westward once we retired. It didn't have to be Devon - anything which took us away from a busy road and which gave good value for money in housing cost was viable. When we sold and bought, competition was fierce and we offered above asking on this place because it ticked most of the boxes : a lot of house for the money, on a quiet road but not down a long narrow lane, in a friendly village, unlisted, able to get a reasonable broadband speed, plenty of workshop space, bigger living accommodation than we already had and manageable garden/land (not much to ask then!). We wanted something with a bit of kerb appeal and, looks being subjective, to us, it has that, and so much more. This picture is taken from the lane outside. We've since discovered that the front grass was, in olden days, the mill pond. To the left of the property was an overshot water wheel. The wheel pit is still there, as are a few metal fittings for the wheel. Sadly, the wheel is gone. The section to the left of the door was the former commercial mill. The front door was a later addition. The living quarters were between the front door and the end of the front roof section. The two storey bit at the end is my office and a bedroom above (added in the 20th century). The back is more plain - as is often the case. We had decided to try to be patient regarding upgrades. We wanted to find our way before extensive work took place. Already aware that it wasn't to our taste, and only partially functional too, we decided to update the main bathroom very soon in. The house is very much a hybrid so we were able to have something modern but with a nod to the past and are very happy with the outcome. Unfortunately, the chimney sweep ran a mile when an asbestos flue was discovered. So we had to shell out for two new chimney flues, the front chimney needed to be rebuilt (as the render was damp) and we decided to upgrade one of the wood burners at the same time. Then, when we wanted to fill the oil tank, the driver refused to fill it on account of UV damage and hairline cracks. So we needed to have a new, this time, bunded tank. Then we've had issues with the underfloor heating - mostly sorted now by me. I wanted space for a decent workshop. The house came with a three car car port - brick on three sides and open at the front. I infilled that to have a triple workshop. This had to be done quickly because all of my workshop equipment was otherwise out in the open! As for the rest of it, well, in the south east the mentality was always "now, now now". It hasn't taken long to relax into a mentality of "soon, soon, soon". Toughbuttercup is right, it is good to wait and see. I built myself a to-do list with 42 items on it. A few were couple of hour jobs, most were couple of days jobs. Some of the shorter jobs were fun to do and gave a great sense of satisfaction. Other jobs, such as repoint all of the mortar on the cob, will take weeks and can wait until I have the time and the skills to do it. The house wont fall down in the meantime so, no big deal. Equally, all of the facia boards need doing. They appear to have been stained and the stain has worn off. The wood isn't rotten and, with a decent quality scaffolding tower, next year, I'll deal with it. I look at my to-do list and my wife worries that I'm beating myself up over the size of it. I'm really not. I just need a list to that I can remember what needs to be done, not to make me do it. Could we have gone further west and bought, sure. However, even on the Devon coast, let alone the Cornish peninsula, house prices are daft, totally daft, and value plummets. We can be at the coast in 45 minutes from here. We can wake up in the morning, fling open the curtains and there is a magnificent visual vista from our window. Nobody overlooks us. The nearest neighbours are 50 yards away and there is virtually zero chance of the view being interrupted as we are surrounded by a flood plain (only a small bit of our land floods - never any buildings!). Just open fields and a river. In our previous place we had 14,000 vehicles passing each day. The lane outside may manage a hundred or so. A car passing at 7am is considered the rush hour! Totally magical. One final thing: we saw this place back in February and decided to buy. It was a bit of a whirlwind as it was an open day and we had two other places to see in Somerset on the same day. The area we saw in February seemed nice but dormant. When we moved in in May it had utterly transformed. Beautiful green rolling hills, fertile fields, green forests, Dartmoor visible from the garden. A walking and cycling dream! We feel very fortunate to have moved here. ... and we can get to Cornwall really easily too if we wish! 😉 A quick aside - I have notifications turned on but is there a way to get email notifications if people reply to threads that I am following?

It seems I got a bit carried away when I wanted to test the (expensive but very good) 220v 16 channel DMX dimmer. I thought it would be a good idea to have a light in each room controlled from a spare laptop in the study for the winter so I don't have to mess about with extension leads in the dark. But I might have taken things a bit far when I realised the free DMX controller software had a basic web server interface and came with the source code. So after a couple of evenings (sometimes becoming mornings 🤪 ) of tinkering and learning basic Javascript I have a web server that enumerates the lights in the house based on the DMX software configuration and provides a dynamic web page to any device logged in to the airgapped house control network. The "boss" seems to like it so I think I might have found my 20 year supportable technology for light switches. TCP/IP, HTML and Javascript don't appear to be going away any time soon. And above all, it has been a cheap way to get the lights functional for the remainder of the build even if we control the DMX with a more commercial off the shelf solution. Here's an early picture of the interface - nothing fancy for now since it's only aimed at letting us work in the house - there is plenty of potential in both the lighting software and the web interface for cleverness. The gradient filled bit is a dimmer slider for each light that the server has in its configuration. All off is for going home at night! What I need to figure out now is if I want to take this a bit further what are the best (and cheapest) devices I can use to make the physical light switches from. Old smart phones or tablets are a surprisingly good candidate although there are some battery issues. A Pi or a Pi Pico and a small touch screen are also looking sensible although I am yet to find a reliable source of touchscreens. Anything that can render a fairly simple web page will do. The switches will need to sit on wired Ethernet so POE will easily power anything. I'm not a lover of WiFi for infrastructure. Suggestions for hardware are appreciated - I'm well out of the loop on what's currently available.

You may struggle to get 70mm pir into 70mm studs as there is probably a tolerance of +/- up to 5mm on the pir boards. 70mm studs seem pretty light tbh; I think I'd be considering filling the studs with mineral wool insulation, and fixing the 70mm pir on the inside of that with battens. Someone clever will hopefully be along shortly to advise on vcl and condensation risk.

Just takes a lot longer as floor response time is slower. So basically set everything as per loop lengths and adjust from there.

Simple solution I have seen used https://amzn.eu/d/4efKE89

A bit of repointing, if weather allows, and then clearing out the garage, followed by numerous tip runs, ready for the insulation to arrive in the new year. Parents have just had a new pre-fab garage installed. It's 100mm higher than their drive so I've said I'll put them a ramp in at some point too.

Homework! Installing battery backup.

ok thanks. so i can crank up the temperature a bit more than 20°C. The house isn't airtight yet so ventilation shouldn't be an issue, plus we will be running dehumidifiers to assist in removing the moisture in the air as it evaporates.

The reason for slow drying of screed is that the water is essential to hardening and avoiding shrinkage cracking. After a month in damp confitions the chemical reactions are complete. The temperatures of ufh shouldn't be a problem. Evaporation will reduce the slab temperature, so don't expect it to feel warm. You might need lots of ventilation.

It's normal, the mold is actually eating the sugars in the timber. Will go away and it will all weather

It’s normal It will all turn the same colour eventually

As @SteamyTea says, it needs to be worked out for each house unfortunately. ACH is based upon the volume within the thermal envelope and the m³/h.m²@50Pa figure is based upon the gross inner surface area of the thermal envelope, ie. floor, walls and ceiling/roof.

Welcome. You mention rock in the vicinity. You sound as if you're not near a main sewer. So my first question for you is - foul drainage? All OK there?

Morning, there are many buildings out there with roofs 100’s of years old so it’s difficult to put a timeline on things. When you look at what a roof has to endure you start to appreciate why some fail sooner than others. wind, rain, snow, orientation, pitch, airborne salt, sand etc. moss … if moss gets hold around slates they soon start to crumble. any photos so we can give you an idea of condition?

Hello, welcome! Can I make a suggestion? You do absolutely nothing for a year - maybe two - while you look at what the house does - and doesn't do. How cold is it in winter .... hot in summer ... drafty is it in westerlies.... how much electricity does it take to keep resonably warm .... how shaded is the roof .... where might you put solar PV.... what does the sparky say about the wiring ... what state is the roof in .... cold roof - warm roof ? In other words gather some data about it. Then you can set priorities. If you're feeling invincible, ask @SteamyTea round for a totally biased opinion on what you might like to do first ( hint : data, data, data)

Welcome. Pictures, we need pictures!

At the other end of the spectrum, you know when your air tightness is good, when on a windy day you can open ONE door or window and not feel a draught entering or leaving the building through it. Every house I have know before, if you open a door on a very windy day, somewhere in the house an internal door will blow shut or blow open due to the gale blowing through the house.

We had 25-45mph winds yesterday and they were hitting out house front-on. You could hear the wind rushing through the warm-roof sections. This gave me an idea... would opening a window on the back of the house depressurise it like a blower test? The answer was a resounding "Yes". I have no idea what pressure difference that created (anyone want to guess?) but it revealed air leaks I didn't know about. I wish I had a way to quantify the flow. While each draught was small, the flow under the shut door of each room was sizeable, and was the way I measured the relative draughtiness of each. Some highlights starting upstairs: Front bedroom Coming up under the flooring in the bay window and at the flooring cutbacks in the corner of the bay window My wife says her feet get freezing sitting there Through the crack in the ceiling direct from the loft (less than 0.5mm wide) Plug sockets Suspect the "strips of shame" round the double glazing are all leaking through hairline gaps around the frame. Caulked a lot of them but... For the size of flow under the door, must be more leaks (under the floor?) Bathroom No unknowns here, extractor fan, waste pipes under the floor, and a little from the aging double glazing Bedroom in the newest extension I thought I'd got this pretty airtight but opening a Velux in the room showed leaks under the skirting board all round the room (starts to explain why in windy weather dust blows across the laminate flooring towards the middle of the room) plug sockets eaves storage (these leaks were known; I've foamed everything but can't get it airtight. The garage is also underneath) A room at the back that spans the 1920s house and the first extension via a gap knocked in the old rear wall When opening the Velux window in this room... Enough coming in from the eaves storage (which I lovingly taped and foamed in 2020) to make the loose MDF board move back and forth!! Under the floor around radiator pipes and cracks between flooring and walls. Significant volume of air. With the cracks I couldn't feel with my hand, but a flame would flicker every time a gust passed over the house Plug sockets Heading downstairs, I taped the cloakroom extractor fan shut and then went straight to the dining room which is hard to get warm. I shut the doors into the hallway and lounge, and taped a dust sheet over the opening into the kitchen. To create the pressure difference I opened an 80cm x 55cm window. The results: Masses of air from kitchen Much air under door into hallway Bigger Much around doors lounge (but didn't block under lounge door into hallway, so skewed test) A little coming out under skirting boards - I've sealed some already It was impossible to keep the dust sheet taped over the kitchen entrance. Here's a picture of it filling like a sail with the draught coming in via the kitchen. The kitchen has a concrete floor and no heating built in and is always cold. I found a few air leaks: Kitchen extractor fan. A massive known problem. The louvred vent outside does nothing to stop air blowing in Door to garage. It's got a brush strip at the bottom and is not sealing well Minor (in comparison) leak near the hinges of the UPVC side door. Most annoyingly, a stream of air from behind the kickboards under the fitted units. I found one airbrick; need to see if there's others. I taped up the extractor fan (a balancing act on steps as the wind whistled up the narrow gap between us and the next house) and it reduced the flow from the kitchen to dining room maybe by half. Dust sheet still filled like a sail but not as much. So... we got a few heat retention problems. Plug sockets and skirting boards are easy wins. I don't know where to start with the wind blowing through the first floor floor void. I'm guessing t's going to need floors up or ceilings down, and then taping joist ends and insulation adding to slow down whatever wind still gets in? All in all I had MASSIVE fun doing this testing 😀

thanks. sorry to hear about your problems too! I'll take a look at their alarms but I have a high water alarm, plus a Shelley flood detector, plus I plan on (as per @pocster's recommendation) notifying my HA system when the second pump is running as that would indicate an issue with the first pump. I'm very confident that my new solution will do the job and will check the pumps annually (if not more regularly) like @pocster suggests. fortunately for us I guess, the basement probably won't be finished for another couple of years so I have that period of time to test the new solution. 😉

Definitely a rip off in my opinion . Every 12 months I just pull all pumps floats up to make sure they work . Clear any debris around the pump and float . Also have a spare pump for those “ just in case “ moments . Been doing that on my rainwater pumps for around 4 yrs - all good .

It's possible Environmental Yield is the difference between thermal output and electrical input (i.e. is the energy savings made vs resistive heating). Which gives a slightly more reasonable (4474+7983) / 4474 = 2.78 Bloody ambiguous way of presenting the data, whatever

Pretty much, yes... Although a good starting point would be 50@-2, 37@15 - the 37 being chosen to keep people quiet about 'the radiators aren't warm'

So roughly 75% on the night rate, that is actually pretty good. 7 kWh a day is pretty good as well. So say you use 2 kWh during the day. That is about £1 to £1.30 a day. A battery system would have to be around 5 kWh to give it a decent longevity, and be able to reliably power a decent size inverter, around 6 kW so it could cope with kettle, oven and a cooking ring (hopefully you have an induction hob as they are just better all round). Now I would think you would be looking at around £8,000 to have something like that installed, and it should last 10 years, so £800/year, plus the running costs i.e. the night rate electricity. If your night rate is around 15p/kWh, and you can get 80% efficiency on the charge/discharge cycle, that is 54p/day, £200/year. Not looking good. But you will save on the high daytime rate, that is between £365 and £475 a year, a real saving of between £165 and £275. Not looking good at all as it cost approximately £800 a year, a you are in the red somewhere between £525 and £635. You could probably save more by showering for 1 minute less each day, or 1 inch (25.4mm) less bathwater.

I looked on my latest bill and the estimated usage is day rate 2088.6 kWh and night rate 280.9 kWh adds them both up and divided by 365 so sorry it should be 7kWh (roughly)

I always do mine at night, my washer has a delay timer on it. I lune dry. Never use the tumble dryer. Not a huge saving, maybe 30p a wash. Don't think a lizard is going to take much, unless it is over lit (assuming IR heater here). Lizards were like vermin where I grew up. Working from home need not increase usage much. I am at home during the day, I work the late shift. Laptop is permanent on, kettle on a fair bit, usually cook lunch. Use about 1.3 kWh/day. I lit the the E7 window to between 3 and 4 hours a night. No need to charge the DHW and storage heaters up before they are needed (storage heaters close a flap when charging, then release it when not charging, so some savings to be made there). My ratio of day to night is approximately 1:4. My biggest saving is having almost nothing drawing power when it is not needed. Easier to do than many think.

Pocketing the joists Into the wall is bad for airtightness. A Tony tray works. Or resin fix a ledger to the walls (after parging) and hang joists on hangers

No, I have been banded from building work for December by my good lady. I had to leave it to the professionals, progress has been made, coincidence I think as I left them the easy stuff to do :🤣

Thank you for the advice, I think I need a good run at doing the maths to see if it’s worth it based on your savings, I understand everyone’s is different, it would be worth investing and pay for itself within a couple of years. If they phased out economy 7 then it wouldn’t be worth it and I genuinely have no idea what I’d do apart from eat cold food and live in the dark - the son and lizard would have to go 😂