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The house has warmed up and stayed warm! I’ve booked the original plumber to come and do a full service in the new year and flush the system (mostly so I can see him squirm). im going to clean it again in a couple of days and see if it’s got anymore in. thanks again everyone

I’m against most holiday lets on principle as it drives property prices up in nice areas and reduces the number of available houses to buy (or rent) for locals. That said the only people I know that do well out of it are some friends with some bothies they built on their land. All to a high spec and come with the all important outside jacuzzi.

Yes you are all reinforcing my own view. I have had enough years of being a residential landlord, so would never want to go back to that, the inability to get possession of your property when you want to being the big problem with that. Holiday let should at least solve that one issue, but just adds other problems. I share the view that the EPC requirements are stupid, but that is the stated aim of the Scottish Government. Even more stupid is their dream to enforce all properties including owner occupied houses to be EPC C eventually. That one is just hopium But it has reinforced my view that I don't want to buy a really lousy property unless it is priced properly to reflect the work needed. The obvious advantage of our trailer caravan is we can take it to any site we want to, not always back to the same place. Plus our plan is to spend more time on our boat as well.

I have 2 holiday lets, don’t do it. If you cannot manage it yourself all you will do is pay any money earnt out for cleaners and maintenance. Everybody I know who remote owns has headaches with broken stuff on changeover day. As regards regulations, I cannot see how they could get holiday accommodation up to an epc of c the amount of shepherds huts and old mobile caravans by me is crazy. Also if a holiday property is only let for the summer then why would it matter what the epc was. We only let ours until October, so adding extra insulation seems pointless. The new fire regs are ridiculous, I know of owners with 300 year old listed cottages being told to rip out existing doors and fit fire doors and frames to all bedrooms.

I think your quote is notably expensive. I don't understand stuff like "plumber to disconnect", "electrician to disconnect" and a few of the other lines. I would file those under "wtf?". I'd say that in this particular case someone is taking the p, or might it be possible that he doesn't want the job and is trying to scare you off? One question on the existing work is that to me the tiles seem to have similar direction orientation - all lined and joined up, rather than random orientations. That may be one factor in emphasizing the "large pattern" rather than going for a broken up "background texture" look. I had 2 bathrooms quite heavily redone fairly recently (2019) to do with enlarging and adjusting shower cubicles and a new bath put in, changes to the floor structure to correct mistakes by the original self-builder (had used subfloor material that moved in moisture and cracked tiles), sounds insulation, and "accessibility" for my elderly mum. When my plumber-joiner-kitchen-bathroom-fitter needed stuff disconnecting he just made me turn off the circuit at the fuse, or turn the water off at the SureStop switch. I'm not sure what takes a full day to do that, unless it is some peculiar estimating or work system and he has a funny strict contract with his subs for which you are having to pay? I'd suggest getting the rest done, and return to this in a few months with separate quotes from several tilers. Then spend the money (£3-5k?) you save on a nice holiday. There are other approaches you could take, such as full size fabric hangings on a wall or two. Ferdinand

>>> When you say it's easier going to appeal than applying for planning permission, does this mean you can skip the planning process entirely?? As well as refusals, you need to go at least 8 weeks and then you can also appeal for ‘non-determination’ if the LPA has not made up its mind by then. >>> When you say it's easier going to appeal than applying for planning permission By all means appeal. But … the appeal process is properly slow. I have 2 ongoing and the appeals admin guys took 3 months just to ‘validate’ they had the right docs… Also my analysis (a morning’s worth) suggested that the appeals process gets just as random outcomes as the standard LPA process. I put up a thread on BH that describes what I found. If you want to do your own research you can search the appeals portal yourself and also your local LPA’s portal under ‘appeals’. So, if your own LPA isn’t ***too bad*** I would let this one go through and make your best stab at convincing your LPA your bulld project is a good one. If that doesn’t work, then appeal. You get two chances that way. That assumes you have all the time and money in the world BTW you can add extra docs to the application as you go along - at least my LPA allows it. I added some photo-montages that showed what passers-by could see for instance. Probably best to let the case officer know as well when you add new docs.

Holiday letting works for us, but it's not quite the passive income that you'd hope for. We have to lean on family and friends to help out, far more than we'd like. Of course it helps having lived and worked in the area for ten years first. I still have misgivings about it due to the dire housing situation in rural areas. No wonder nobody can get cleaners or gardeners. It's simply not possible for a couple living off seasonal hospitality wages to buy a house in most of the more desirable parts of the world. I console myself by thinking that one of our properties wouldn't exist if it wasn't built specifically for holiday letting, and the other one is still our primary residence whilst we are long term travelling. So we're not denying a family a place to live, and it's temporary anyway. What really winds me up is the houses that are left empty for 50 weeks of the year. At least a self catering property is putting people in the restaurants etc. I'm sure the average tourist spends more per head than a local. But empty properties kill communities. We've not found the new licensing scheme to be too much trouble, but it varies depending on your local authority. I gather in Edinburgh the costs are very high. Councils were instructed to set reasonable fees but some of them are taking the mick. I don't think it's as arduous as getting set up for long term lets, and frankly it was a bit ridiculous that there was no regulation whatsoever of the short term sector.

It’s all good. Many ways to skin a cat. @Thorfun I will never refer you to the man of dubious grout colours. Stick with me lol. Just been absolutely crazy busy with work lately, shouldn’t complain, so I may have to get @Pocster to temp for me now and then

Experience has made my wise beyond my years . Yet my knowledge lands on usually deaf ears … ” Old Chinese Pocsterisim “

Beware some are coated carbon steel and have an anode to be replaced. Think the Edel is stainless so ok. Some thoughts - A 200L direct UVC was less than £500, so you are paying £1500 for the heat pump part to save upto £1.30 a day, if you get a a CoP of 3, based on 7kWh of hot water a day. So about 4 years to get payback, without the additional installation costs.

I am a new member of this forum. I will be happy to help in any way I can, particularly in the field of interior design.

The alarm keypad won't do anything if ripped off wall, no one would bother takingit out. The main box is usually deeper in the house, both it and the outside alarm box will have battery backups, once the alarm is triggered the external bell will sound until disarmed or dies. If your alarm has nighttime mode, any downstairs opening will trip the alarm and wake you up except main door which gives you 30 seconds warning. The exit doors have to be opened without a key for egress in a fire. Seal the letterbox and install external postbox. Get security film installed on all downstairs windows, slows them down a bit. After that master blaster alarm or security fog but only to trigger if no one in the house. Grt cctv with speaker and human detection to trigger on perimeter breach at certain times. Also remote alarm and cctv app on your smartphone. Or move!!

What have I learnt? The pipe cutter tool was brilliant. Straight cuts and no bits, in seconds. I expected to have to rotate the tool, like a copper pipe cutter, but it is more like scissors. So expensive for all those bits and 25m of pipe. About £200, tho that might half if I'd managed discounts (requests politely ignored, if you are in a hurry). Only jdp, of 5 merchants, had the right parts for the black pipe connection. Working with such a concentration of joints is tricky. Not enough flexibility. Bits falling out of a connector are best not falling in the hole. TS and SF are getting worse for what is in-stock, so the tools came from Amazon.

now you tell me! I should've listened to @Pocster. 🤣

Any reasonable alarm system will have tamper detection in the controls and sensors so if any are disconnected it will alarm. The central wiring panel is normally somewhere hard to access (ours is in the loft), but even if that is taken out with an EMP then the sounders should have their own battery backup and sound if disconnected from the panel.

I had thought PIV as well. I toyed with the prospect of it being a simple job ( ie not pulling up floors), but after discussing with my partner we decided we wanted to take an overkill approach. The reason is because both of us have health issues which can be exasperated by cigarette smoke, so we decided it was a priority to do everything we could to address the problem. Given the house needs renovating anyways I don't mind pulling up the floors (most of the boards are exposed at the moment anyways). The last thing I want is to do renovations only to discover that PIV isn't sufficient and so have to pull up new floors anyways. So my plan has been to get under there and see how comprehensive a seal I can create. But then my second thought was that currently the flat has no mold or moisture buildup problems, and this is almost surely due to very good air flow within the building, so this is leading me to seriously consider a mechanical ventilation system. I understand this could also have the effect of introducing a positive pressure in the flat. I have money saved for renovations, so I don't mind investing in a permanent fix. Can you elaborate on what you mean by an absence of perpend? Also where might I find the air bricks? The flat is two storeys, and most if not all of the smell is coming from under the floorboards of the second storey (and out from the light fixtures in the ceiling of the first floor), so I can only conclude there are gaps or porous wall exposed in that space. To seal things up I had been recommended applying Aerosana Vsiconn and using fibre paint for bigger voids and air tight tape for joints etc. The food smells are actually usually some kind of ragu -- I don't mind it so much, it usually makes me hungry!

Ughhhh... ex-smoker here. I can now smell if someone's smoking in the next village . ExFagAshFiends like me are the worst. I thought you meant wood-smoke from a fire..... But when - in the pub say - when anyone can smell the smoke on the clothes of the DoorWayDesperates who come in after a quick puff outside, you have an enormous job on your hands. In the days when people sent one another letters - remember them - I could easily tell if the sender had been smoking. And it must be so much worse for you. The only way is to create a positive air pressure in your house: and thats going to cost you. Sorry, I wish I could be more positive.

To be in condensing mode it the return temp that is important not flow temp. You are well inside condensation mode.

Perhaps you could create positive pressure within the house, just depends where you could get “clean” air from I guess.

There’s a lot of evidence out there that shows that alarms don’t significantly reduce your chances of being burgled. If you’re really worried and live in a high crime area move to somewhere less likely to be burgled. Look at the kind of cars you have and determine if they are the most stolen or not (Audi BMW Range Rover etc) Don’t have expensive easy to steal items on display or fit blinds/curtains/external shutters. Make your premises hard to access but also visible from the street with plenty of external lighting. You want tall fences hedging at the rear of the property and low at the front. Plant thorny hedges. Install gravel driveways and paths. Alarms and CCTV can act as a deterrent but if thieves view your house as an easy target because they have plenty of cover and there’s stuff worth stealing they’ll target your house. I’m serious about the cars. I had an Audi RS4 Avant for a while and sold it because they were so knickable.

I believe alarms still sound even if internal units are disconnected (interruption in loop wiring) but as said above lots of people ignore alarms. Good locks and good insurance is my Choice.

An option is just to live with it for a couple of months. Then if you’re still bothered by it, take the leap and get it re-tiled. A bodge in between may still bother you anyway. It all depends on how much it bugs you - but some stuff your brain just tunes out after a while.

If you have any more floors like this to do, then there are other possible constructions that will be more user- friendly. On the bright side. The land was free and you've got PP. You are willing to learn. The concrete hadn't gone in. Sharing more on here will help, but make your blog less interesting.

I’m still struggling to understand. I asked you to explain what you meant by too loud. Do you mean you wanted a more subtle effect? And instead you got very obvious veining that is too stark in comparison to the white background, that there is too much of this veining, and that as a consequence the whole effect is too busy? No, I meant that it appears that your tiles are glossy, whereas a matt effect marble imitation would probably have looked better if you were going for marble imitation. Not because marble can’t be glossy, but because matt tends to look better with artificial lighting, and gives a cosier more refined feel than glossy. Believe me, I have had to learn a lot about colour temperature as part of our build. It has a huge impact on the feel of a room. Warm lighting will really help here. I would swap out the LEd and or the controller to ensure you can only have 2700K or 2800 Can we see a photo showing the floor with the beige tiles against the wall tiles? If it’s not been tiled yet, I think you can rescue the situation by just changing the floor tiles to a dark grey, matt large format tile. Something like a slate effect tile in 75cm by 75cm or if your bathroom is too small for that, 60cm by 60cm, or 40cm by 80cm. Install with 3mm joints, with a grout colour that is the same colour as the tile. i don’t think beige would work at all, sorry. To explain: you are bothered by the degree of loudness/busy-ness and the fact that it is high contrast. But a beige floor will add to the busyness by introducing another colour. Whereas a dark grey will help ground the room, and keep within the theme, particularly if you get something that looks like a real stone, slate or granite.

You’ve probably covered all the solutions in your don’t want list Except replace the frames with the correct size frames

You have to careful when you compare, it's actually on an apples with apples basis. As there are several ways to calculate efficiency, for example passivhaus institute use a different method to most. The energy required to raise one cubic metre of air through one kelvin is 0.33 watt-hours, i.e. its heat capacity per cubic metre is 0.33 Wh m–3 K−1. Thus the total ventilation heat loss, Qv , will be: Qv = 0.33 × n × V × ΔT watts So using a 100m3, and a change rate via mechanical ventilation of 0.3, -3 outside and 20 inside 0.33 x 0.3 x 100 x 23 = 228W heat loss Same calc for 90% eff 0.33 x 0.3 x 100 x (1-0.9) x 23 = 23W heat loss Same calc for 80% eff 0.33 x 0.3 x 100 x (1-0.8) x 23 = 45W heat loss So we are taking quite small numbers an additional 0.5kWh a day at worst (when comparing 80 to 90%) in a boat that possibly leaks heat like seize anyway. If your boat isn't air tight and leaks enough to ventilate itself, without additional mechanical ventilation, then MVHR actually adds to the heat losses, as its ventilation is over and above normal air leakage.

Have a look on the websites for MVHR manufacturers try Vent Axia or Zehnder or BPC https://www.bpcventilation.com/

I think we have answered the question. Please be precise about whatever might still be unclear.

This what we found - We did it, sold them now. Costs You have to pay extra duties on purchase, as it classed as second home (Scotland). If you register as a business you may be able to get small business relief instead of council tax, which when we did was zero rated. But if you don't register as business, you may be hit with double council tax (a new thing the Scottish government is implementing). But you may also get clobbered with commercial water and sewage rates. You also have to pay for utility charges, and decent broadband is expected etc. General stuff People leave their rubbish, don't recycle, put used plates back into cupboards, without cleaning. You have to find someone who is reliable and good at cleaning (which isn't easy). Overall everyone made money, except us, we got all the grief and running about. Over 4 years and two houses, we made very little, made money on the houses when we sold, but both had lots of work done to them after we purchased. Buy premium bonds, zero risk. Stay in a decent hotel or someone else's holiday home.

@ETC Thanks for your offer, I would like to take you up on it and see if we can make something special.

@de devil tail great views/plot/project @ETCis offering to help you design your house. For free. He’s an architect. I’ve seen the stuff he’s posted here before and you’d be bat shit crazy not to let him do that.

What have the objections been? Are they of reasonable and of merit or just plain silly (eg “I don’t like the design”). Or locals with pitchforks who want to remain in the 1950s etc. looks like you are wanting to build in a rural location a partially timber clad low level house somewhat hidden by trees. Nothing obviously crazy or offensive about that TBH.

Yeah, I think it's all in there although it's a long read. In practice, I used one of the summaries by stove suppliers e.g. https://www.woodburnerwarehouse.co.uk/building-regulations https://www.stovesonline.co.uk/stove_building_regulations.html https://www.imaginfires.co.uk/blog/log-burner-regulations/ I guess in theory you can't rely on those 100%, but I think I did - it was 4-5 years ago I did mine. Re getting max heat out into the room - I wonder whether a reflective sheet of stainless behind the stove might help?

Overtiling one wall with something very plain will help. If it doesn't do another wall. This should not be expensive as you're starting with a completely flat substrate Regards Tet

Is it hidden in here https://www.gov.scot/publications/regulation-electricians-scotland/pages/1/

Brilliant thanks @Thorfun I had read quite a bit of that thread but missed that bit, probably fell asleep as it’s 23 pages in and a monster thread, very informative in places though 😀

Engineers should. Technicians may not. Really about time the term 'engineer' was protected. Most places require a higher level qualification at least. In the UK all you need is a printer. Self identification could be killing people.

That is stretching the imagination a bit isn't it?

Everyone with OCD.

I’ll try my best . Been busy doing intellectually higher things than tiling and plumbing . That’s so beneath me now .

There's an obvious answer with what to do with the cash here. Do another self build for the amusement of the forum!!

Yes constant slow running PIV into bathrooms and kitchen might ensure your neighbours smells don't enter. If the bathrooms are on a party wall, they may even benefit from your "exhaust air"

Flow should be the hottest, and Return coolest. How that correlates to the TRV and LSV depends on which way round they have been fitted. TRVs used to be directional - and hence would be located at the Flow end - but these days non chattering valve inserts are generally used thus making them bidirectional. Whether new or old you will have to work out which way round each of yours are by measuring the temperatures as you have been doing. Not that it matters too much for balancing - it will always be the LSV that you will be adjusting regardless which end of the radiator it has been put.