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We had our PHPP calcs done, and found we needed to take account of the solar gain. So this is what we did - picture taken from the kitchen where I am typing this post... Yes, its a large overhang - its called a Winter Garden - fancy name for overhang. Kevin WhatsHisFace would call it a Breeze Corridor. Anyway, whatever the name, without it, we'd cook. You are looking through six sheets of glass on the left hand side (one slider moved to the left handside), and no glass to the right of the vertical : that's 2 and a bit meters of open window - 27 outside and 22 inside out of the wind.

We recently used Greengauge Building Energy Company to do our overheating modeling using Passivhaus calculations. We had Mitch work on ours, and I really liked him a lot. We received a detailed report analyzing the house for heat demands, overheating, shading etc. Came up with some pragmatic solutions to help us keep large scenic view windows that risk the house overheating. http://www.ggbec.co.uk/

The problem you have is not specific to plumbing or heating. The issue is generic. In this sector, its hard to compare like with like. To the conversation add the sound of axes being ground, personal preference, petty fogging nit picking, and you have the most common self-build problem: lack of sleep due to an overloaded brain. Picked your windows yet? If you have, you'll know what I mean. If not, prepare for another round of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Sleep well. Ian

By full Change of Use Planning Application.

If it's in an AONB then Class Q PD rights don't exist - any application will fail. It'll be one of the first things the planning officer will look at!

No, exactly the same standing charge as single phase. The wait from my phone call to meter install is around 6 weeks. I too wouldn't shift to Octopus without already having a smart meter as I have heard horror stories of people being stuck on their high variable tariffs for months. At the moment I expect to shift to Octopus Go. I wonder how long they can keep up 5p/kWh during the night when Octopus agile is way higher than that.

Watch Wickes orders .. they are based on local stock not central stock. I ordered a load of timber for a date about 5 days ahead and when it came they had to deliver it in 3 different orders from 3 different stores. It being “in stock” when you order doesn’t guarantee it being in stock when they need to deliver it.

I've just had a load delivered from Wickes, no problems at all. These are Knauf ones tho, not BG. I've got C studs and tracks

I have Makita drills and other tools so had batteries and the charger. The 4.0ah twin batteries lasted well over an HR. Just make sure if you're going down the cordless route the batteries are fast charge. Will mean the difference of 60mins or 4 hrs charge time.

It's not a great deal of time if doing continuous strimming. The last time I did a lot of strimming I think the 4.0AH battery I have probably lasted 15 or 20 minutes or so (sorry I wasn't checking the watch so those figures could be out!). I then switched to the 2.5AH battery I have and that ran out when the 4.0AH battery was about 75% charged. so, in theory, if you had a couple of the 5.0AH batteries I see no reason why it wouldn't last long enough to fully charge the other one. this whole thing is caveated by the fact that I have the multi-tool and a dedicated strimmer/brush cutter might be more efficient. check out the Ego line of tools. I've been very impressed and also have their chainsaw which made pretty light work of the trees in our back garden that came down to make way for the build. https://egopowerplus.co.uk/about-ego I'm sure the Makita ones also do the job and if you're already part of the Makita power tool eco-system then you'll already have the batteries but as I'm an Erbauer user I had the freedom to choose a different manufacturer for my garden tools. hope that helps

Echo, up there with Husq and Sthil

Should make the person an MP or Lord, probably make better decisions and explain them with more clarity

I have a slightly different take on solar gain, my south facing large conservatory I was told would overheat badly, but apart from a short time when it gets as hot as it has done these last few days, the rest of the year the solar gain is very welcome, even in cold weather with sun in your skies the temp out there is lovely, in fact we use it to heat the house a lot of the year by opening the bifolds into the kitchen and lounge.

If the supply line is 25mm MDPE then it may be worth dropping it to 20mm to the garage - you don’t need the flow to an outside tap. I don’t rate those Floplast MDPE fittings - I would get something from Pipestock https://www.pipestock.com/mdpe/mdpe-pipe-fittings/reducing-tee

@Caroline PI think you are asking the wrong question, builder/tradesman insurance is a mundane matter. Your priorities should be: Verify you own the land on which the extension is to be built. It might be communal land shared by the other flat owners or your property Deeds might restrict what you can do. Next port of call is your local authority building control department. They will need to approve your plan and will likely take a keen interest in your structural alterations and also the heat insulation of the proposed extension. Finally someone needs to review your Deeds and management contract to confirm if you are allowed to mess around with the structure of the building without consent of the other co-owners.

Your dead right (but I am an Ovaltine man!)

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/grand-designs-live/?utm_source=MSE_Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=07-Sep-21-50694562-31106&source=CRM-MSETIP-50694562&utm_campaign=nt-oneliners-two&utm_content=11#53597

Yup. The diverter hardly moves, but a mid or 3 position valve has considerably more travel as it goes from heating > heating & DHW > DHW only.

Jesus! OK, the valve is cream crackered. You've had your money's worth out of this one I'm sure, so time to get the plumber in and fit a new one. Do not just change the head, it's the valve body which has killed the actuator head and you'll just be in the same boat in a weeks time if you do. Problem solved.

If the location of "manifold 1" sees a zone / loop that drops down and then rises again, then you'll need to allow the air that will collect in that trapped section to escape. You cannot have a zone or loop that resides above the manifold height unless you cut the pipe, expose it, and fit an automatic air vent to it, as the air then trapped would never get to the factory vent on the manifold. That secondary remote vent can be done, just it would not be my preference. UFH loops air-lock very easily because of the extremely slow rate of flow, so beware how you design and install or you'll need to periodically purge any loops which get air-locked. That is time consuming and laborious.

Here is a very contemporary version: Here is something similar where the spindles are lighter in colour, though I wouldn't have done the treads this shiny or this colour really:

No problem at all. Indeed that's one of the benefits of using a 5A socket for plug-in lights as it prevents you plugging something else in (e.g. TV) that wouldn't like being fed by a dimmer. Make sure your bulb is dimmable though.

Hello LSB. Don't worry, the confusion will wear off as you make progress, it's a learning curve, main thing is to enjoy the journey and drains are part of that! Lot's of good info already posted here for you to digest. To add a bit.. one helpful thing to do is to try and not make your treatment plant too deep under the ground. If you do then if the water table rises it has a tendency to float when you empty /clean it. Also, once you go below a certain depth (invert depth) for the tank it needs to be "stronger".. and these ones cost you more not just for the tank but the installation cost too. Your site (paddock) may have a slope so you need to make sure you can get the "Honeysuckle waggon" close enough and not too high above the tanks for cleaning. There is plenty info on the web from the tank suppliers, good laymans guides on this and how you comply with the regs in your local area regarding access, depths of tanks and water table level. You don't need for example to run the access road right up to the tank, but you can't have a bull in the field when the tanker driver comes..health and safety you see. If you have long runs say from the garden out to the paddock then you could look at using 110mm diameter pipe locally around the house. Then do a straight run to the paddock in 150mm diameter pipe carefully laid. Here you could have a 1:80 fall, less even. The LABC allude to the fact that you could achieve a 1:150 fall with a 150mm dia pipe! Fine, maybe not for me at 1:150 on a self build type project but I would ask the treatment plant supplier to give you a 150mm inlet so you don't get a restriction at the inlet to the tank. One way to figure it out is to draw it out to scale on a bit of say A3 paper. 60m run overall straight run say is not huge but it's still enough to make you think. I think with a little more research you'll find just the right solution for you. Using the 150mm pipe for the long run means that you probably only need a few simple 150mm couplings which are fairly cheep comparitively rather than lots of expensive bends and funny offset bends etc . save these for the smaller 110mm pipe around the house.

Hire place offered one when I was hiring a few years back. no extra charge.

Our plot had a footpath across it but the paperwork to divert it along the edge was in place when we purchased it. All we had to do was level and grass the new route and get the paperwork finalised by the footpath officer. Sounds easy but... Footpath officer was a pain. We got the route levelled and seeded but Footpath officer wanted to come and inspect it. He came, looked at it and said we had to wait for the grass to grow before he would finalise the new route. Until then our builder couldn't legally start because the old route was still live. So overnight we turfed it and called the Footpath officer to tell him it had "grown". He still wanted to do another inspection before allowing us to proceed and drove over 35 miles each way to do so. All this despite there being another official footpath exactly parallel with ours just 1m away the other side of our boundary. These two paths meet up at each end of the garden. Fortunately this other path is the route everyone walks because its through a church yard. In 10+ years I've not seen anyone walk the footpath through our garden. We haven't bothered to fence it off. The OS maps are still wrong. Things to bear in mind.. You need permission to put a gate on a footpath. Suitable justification could be to contain livestock. Not sure about other valid reasons. Every now and again someone gets a bee in their bonnet about access to the countryside for the disabled. I've no issue with this at all but I've had people suggest footpaths should be tarmac. After leaving our garden our footpath leads about a mile across a farmers field that is heavy clay ploughed a few times a year. I usually tell people I will consider it if they persuade the farmer to do his field first.

You can't beat graphite lock lubricant. Often in a powder puffer. Saying that I have had a decent one in an aerosol from Lidl/Aldi.

@mike2016, take the handle off the door and see if the handle or the latch is causing problems? Sometimes aluminium handles cause problems as they are soft metal and don’t make good “bearing” surfaces which grab each other.

Still struggling to understand why people use buildstore, absolute waste of air?‍♂️ Ecology.

Give ecology a call. Your cash and LTV is better than ours and we had no issues.

So just three manifolds, one for each floor of the house and treat all three sub levels of the ground floor as one level?

The heat loss from a window is the u-value. The heat you get into the room from the sun is the g-value and a low g-value reduces the amount of solar gain. You want something with a low u-value (to reduce heat loss) and a higher g-value (to increase solar gain). The third figure is the Tv value which is the amount of light (think bright room) that gets in. With a lot of glazing this isn't an issue. It's a balancing act. Here are some examples (they will vary from company to company so using them as a guide only): Glass type and designation Structure G Ƭv U (mm) [mm] [-] [W/m2 K)] Single glazing 4 0,87 0,90 5,8 Double glazing 4/ZR/4 0,78 0,82 2,7 Triple glazing 4/ZR/4/ZR/4 0,67 0,72 1,9 Double heat protection glass, coated 4/ZR-AR/b4 0,63 0,80 1,1 Triple heat protection glass, coated 4/ZR-AR/4/ZR-AR/b4 0,50 0,71 0,5 SOLAR + triple protection glass coating 4/ZR-AR/4/ZR-AR/b4 0,62 0,73 0,6 Looking at the above if you had standard double glazing you'd have a g-value of 0.78 which would be good for solar gain but that u-value is terrible. It would almost loose heat as fast as it gets it. For standard triple glazing you've a g-value of 0.67 but a poor u-value of only 1.9. The top spec triple glazing with a SOLAR layer has a g-value almost as close at 0.62 which will let almost as much heat enter via solar gain but a very low u-value of 0.6 reducing heat loss considerably. In short I think you're far better off sticking with triple glazing but getting a high g-value (circa 0.6), low u-value (circa 0.6) and using the internal doors in summer to stop the house overheating.

???just re read that , not quite what I meant, I meant I have taken the head off and waggled the valve, not that I have given duff info quite a few times ??? @Nickfromwales is dead right ?(as always)