Miek

Its an aesthetic choice. Slates can cost between £20/m for artificial ones and £150/m for new premium Welsh ones, most go for Spanish/Brazilian at around £40/m, but that's just the covering.

For a condensing gas boiler the latent heat recovery is more efficient the lower the return temperature.

A combi operates in condensing mode for DHW since the water comes in cold, ideal. Also no standing losses from a tank. I tried operating my old gas combi heating circuit at 55 degrees (returning at roughly 45) to try and get it to run efficiently but the rads were not really big enough to get sensible heat out. It did work OK, if one was prepared to run the boiler for longer periods.

The Lo Carbon Ventaxia ( which I have one of) has a counterflow heat exchanger ( straws in a pipe type) and two fans for balanced air flows. So not the same as the flow reversal type. IMO the flow reversal types have very inefficient heat exchangers despite their claims due to the way they work. They simply cannot recover much heat since they don't have a counterflow heat exchanger.

I hadn't thought about this, but your right. That will need to be changed to enable trailer charging if more folk are to be persuaded. I saw a model 3 towing a twin axle touring caravan last week in the south wales valleys. I wonder what their range was? Not a lot I imagine

Yes, biomass had been labelled Renewable unfortunately.

They are a supplier, not a generator, just a trading scheme. Greenwash as far as I'm concerned. Buy ones energy from a company who actually invest in renewable generation ( if one cares that is, which I do)

My pump operator placed all the concrete to within 50mm of level, just me with a rake, no need for lots of people , the pump does all the work. If you have a laser its dead easy to get it accurate. Up to you whether you step the footings or just spend more on concrete.

Boxing in seems like more work than drilling to me. Use flexible plastic pipe and an oversize hole and it's easy enough.

Bang on. I didn't know they were called Lucar connectors, thanks for that

I used midsummer. Very user friendly website, decent price too for private individuals. The demand had been high this year..

I had a 3kw tank thermostat (30l zip water heater) fail. It was down to the spade connectors on the wiring loom causing a point of high resistance which then produced excess heat ( to the point where the pastic was going brown) and eventually failed. I soldered the replacement one on to try and mitigate the problem, so far so good...

Or wet plaster the walls instead of plaster board. Care and attention with regards to the floor joists or any wall penetration is important. How is the first floor (if any) built?

If the post sits on the steel I'd get some angle iron, 70x70x5 (as pictured) or bigger and use that. Self drilling screws will work instead af bolts if the wood packers get in the way. Through bolt the angle to the newel and tighten before screwing to the steel to make it a tight fit. Ultimately the newel needs a brace as high up as you can get one, otherwise it's a long lever on a pivot.

I would begin by installing a water hardner to up the PH. My old house has acidic water from a spring and it destroyed the whole copper pipe system and the water tasted metallic. The limestone prewash made a huge difference.

As said, depends where the windows are exactly . If they are fully within the cavity closer then run the strap fully from inside reveal to outside reveal. The window manufacturer should be able to advise as they may have a preference.

I use a Chromecast Audio which for £30 is a bargain. This outputs optical audio into a DAC and old school amplifier but it can also output analogue audio straight into the amp .

If the water is cooler than the ambient air temp then don't insulate the pipe, better to have free air flow and gather some of the heat from the air. Don't glaze it as that will reduce the amount of light falling on it. Cover the pool. Evaporative heat loss is killer.

Exactly. Right in time for the spring heating season, September heat in February and March!

No doubt about that. Would work well in a country where you don't need heating. Dubai maybe 😉 Your better off in the UK using wind to generate heat in the winter, rather than trying to store summer sun.

It's been tried many many times. And won't work . The time constant of several months just kills it. You can store heat for a week or two, but not months.

I'm using Cavalok closers, 300mm cavity. Got them premade from Subframes. They work . I ordered windows off the drawings and did a lot of double checking. They are not load bearing however so don't sit the windows down on them. I'm going to hang the windows from their sides with metal straps.

The reason for filling the below DPC cavity void is to resist potential soil pressure, it can be a very weak mix concrete. I used compacted type 1 with a concrete capping on a 300mm cavity.

Has the wood swollen in the groove and put pressure on the concrete? Hard to imagine that breaking it...

With a budget of 150k it will be very difficult to do a new build IMO. That would mean entirely your own labour for everything at a guess. 2 storey extension might be feasible though.