AliG

I would say that the normal thing to do is have it fitted into the WM and DW area(Assuming that they aren't there when it is fitted) and fitted short under the cabinets , people don't generally worry about what happens to the floor under the cabinets, in most kitchens it is just bare chipboard. It is unlikely to get wet enough to worry about it. They did this in my last house and only laid the ply up to the kitchen cabinet feet (or level up to there if the floor is concrete). I bought it from a builder so the kitchen was already fitted before the Amtico was installed. You only really need to worry where you have an item that you might need to take in and out, so a washing machine mainly, followed by DW and fridge freezer. It makes it easier to get them out if they need repaired. If you ply the whole floor or it is concrete then they will bump over the Amtico easily and it will not lift at the edge, the adhesive will run out under the unfinished edge probably and is very solid. Amtico itself ranges from £20-45 per square metre ex VAT. You can then probably add £30 a square metre for fitting including the cost of ply or levelling compound. So if you want the whole floor covered in ply or levelled you won't save the full per metre cost, maybe only half of it depending on the style of Amtico you have chosen. You shouldn't be paying more than £50-75 a metre ex VAT depending on the style including fitting.

You can get £60 cash back on that on Quidco.

5G will be worse for use indoors due to running at higher frequencies. The higher the frequency the less well a signal penetrates solid objects. In the US the Verizon home 5G service needs an external aerial which needs line of site to the node. They currently run on a much higher frequency called millimetre wave which cannot penetrate walls, trees etc and has a very short range, but will be moving to a similar frequency to the UK in future.

How well does your phone work in the house, we get very slow 4G speeds inside as insulation and triple glazing cut out most of the signal. You would probably need an external antenna to get a decent speed.

When 5G comes along this will be a very good option. But I think you could be talking a few years outside of city centres where they want to install it to reduce network congestion. A lot depends on how much data you use and what for. We run Netflix etc constantly, 4G should be fast enough for this. What you would notice using 4G is the latency will be worse so it might take a few seconds for a website to start to load etc. Do you actually have a phone line installed, it can be a bit of a hassle to deal with Openreach and get it organised? If you do have a phone line I would use that and then compare the 5G deals when they come available, if putting in a phone line is a problem, then 4G may be a better option. Three would give you a 5G router if you had 5G home broadband so you wouldn't have to buy this box.

That would probably be a mobile phone Sim, they won't let you use that in this kind of product. Three will give you an unlimited phone sim for #18 a month and you can tether that to a device and use the data. But if you put a sim in a non phone it needs to be a data sim. Their data sim is £29 a month for 100GB.

You'd still need a data sim for it. You are probably looking at around £30 a month for unlimited data. Data sims seem to be more expensive than phone sims as they know that you are likely to use more data. You'd still only get whatever speed is available on the data network in your area which is probably anywhere between 20 and 80Mbps. It might well be faster than on your phone as it will have a better antenna, but I'd start by seeing what speed you get on your phone. Of course speeds can very a lot in any given area by network. Assuming you have FTTC available you would probably pay around £20-30 a month for a similar service with a lower upfront cost.

Is the only way to test this trial and error? There are the various arguments re leaving the heating on all the time running at a low rate versus only heating the house sometimes. I am not sure I have seen good evidence of what is right and I assume it depends on a lot of factors specific to the house. Do all the rooms heat at the same rate under this scenario? I had set up my heating with different rooms warming up at different times depending on their use, so bedrooms would come on first thing in the morning and the study later for example. What I then noticed was that in my case the gas boiler was on for hours heating just one room sometimes. I then adjusted the thermostats so that all the rooms called for heat at the same time in the morning and it reduced my space heating bill by around 30%. So if you have some rooms with a higher heat loss they may be causing the ASHP to run off and on all day when other rooms don't need it, it might be cheaper to heat the floor to a higher temperature and run the ASHP less often. The other thing is whether or not to set the temperature back during the night. Again I had the system set back by 2C during the night, normal overnight heat loss seems to be around 1C as I didn't see the point in heating up bedrooms during the night, in fact I prefer it cooler. But again I found that some rooms, particularly the ones with wooden floors where the heat transfer is slower then take hours to heat up again, causing the heating to run constantly from say 6-10am. I have thus changed the set back to 1C during the night and am considering trying some rooms at 0 set back as the extra time running overnight may be less than the extra time required to heat them up during the day.

These are our gates. It took so long to get these made it wasn’t funny. I scoured google images for different pictures of gates and found something similar being sold by a company in Canada on Etsy. They refused to sell me the pattern. Eventually I found the owners and paid $300 for 90 patterns as they wouldn’t sell me one on its own. Anyway what you are looking for is a cnc pattern that can be cut from sheets of steel which are then powder coated or painted. I wish I could tell you how much this costs but for us the quote was just for gates and we would tell them how they should look. Etsy is a good place to look or Google images. Lots of people sell patterns for just a few pounds if they have what you are looking for available. Some people do sell this kind of panel on line. If you can find someone selling it ready made it will be a lot easier.

We used the leveling compound which from memory was the cheapest solution. A fox then walked through it during the night putting some paw prints in it!

As well as cost and complication, the big issue with dormers like that is that you need lots of downpipes for the gutters. As drawn you would need a downpipe in front of the garage door or across the front of the house, I made this mistake on my last house but we managed to put it inside the garage. You would actually need multiple downpipes on the elevations. The Velux windows would not fix this, unless you put gutters in front of them which is not ideal. You could move some of the Veluxes up to just be in the roof. Edit: I could see better with the new floorplan you uploaded. I do think dormers look nicer than the Velux windows. I would lose the one on the stair window as it is not necessary with the window on the half landing. I would consider making the master en suite window just a Velux in the roof. The problem is the two Veluxes at the front of the master bedroom. I am not sure hot to fix that without damaging the look of the house. You could try a double sized one instead of two separate ones, or making the one opposite the en suite a Velux in the roof, but these may not look right.

The sizing calculations are quite complicated and also depend on the price of the system. The more PV you install the less likely you can use incremental capacity to offset paying for electricity at 12p/kWh so the lower the incremental returns become. Offsetting this is that incremental capacity also gets cheaper. One thing you can consider is what will your peak electricity usage be and how often will you hit that peak. A 11kW ASHP has input of 3.5-4kW for a start, however your PV system will likely generate very little electricity on days when you run your heating. 11kW is a big ASHP for 160m2. Before you do the calculation though, the first thing is to figure out how much roof space you have for the PV panels. They work best when close to facing due south. On our house we have 5kW as it was quite awkward to fit more than that on the roof which has multiple corners, your barn may just have a large straight roof. You will get around 170-200kW per square metere of roof, so an 8kW array would require over 40M2. My guess on the size of house that you have is that a larger system will be oversized.

In the FAQs somewhere they said they would have to see your MCS installation certificate.

You mentioned bamboo flooring in the bedroom, but will you need flooring in the kitchen and lounge? You will need some kind of door frames to hang the doors as well as hinges, handles etc. You can just put in a simple hanging pendant light which can always be replaced by a nicer light later. A pendant light will light a way larger area than downlighters. Consumer units are pretty cheap so get one big enough for the whole house, it might only be an extra £20 or 30, just don't put all the MCBs in it. So you don't have to pay to have it rewired later. Sounds like you plan to put the ducting in but not connect the MVHR. Will you need an extractor for the bathroom? Good luck, it's hard when your other half isn't enjoying it.

The last job is finally getting done, putting in the gates. They are up but still have to be centred and the electric connected. We think they look great. Then the builders have to come back for snagging. There isn't too much to do. Probably around a week's work. I need to jet wash the garden walls.