AliG

I thought it was a lot but I googled how much gas does a pilot light use and the answer I got was 14400btus a day which is just over 4kWh so is consistent with the amount I was using. Worth noting as most people with gas probably have a boiler also so would never notice this small usage. There is also a thread about it on MSE where people noted similar usage.

It is a Gasco gas stove just five years old. It does have electric ignition but that lights a pilot light which you can then leave on. I only left it on as we were using it every day for a few days. Otherwise it only gets used a few times a year if that.

Recently our boiler was broken. Whilst we awaited it being fixed we were using two gas fires we hardly ever use. One of them has a pilot light which I leave turned off as it is rarely used, but turned on at this point. I looked at my Octopus app and saw we were using gas. I was surprised as the boiler was broken and thought that there was something wrong. Then I remembered the pilot light. It appears that the pilot light used around 3.5kWh of gas a day. That is 1300kWh a year or around £90 a year in gas. It is pretty small compared to our gas bill, but would be equivalent to 10% of the assumed gas usage in the price cap calculation. Boiler is fixed and the pilot light is turned off. So I am not wasting 3kWh a day, justing using 300!

I found an interesting discussion re this here - https://www.cross-safety.org/uk/safety-information/cross-safety-report/no-worse-existing-1148 The argument seems to be that too many alterations get away with saying they are no worse than the previous building and that this has been too loosely applied in the past. Maybe this is what BC are considering. Nevertheless in your case I think the alterations are minor and they new windows provide a means of escape which is an improvement.

The AEG looks like your best bet and can be had here for £671. It is very well reviewed on the AEG site. If it was me I would not be having gas. Just back from two weeks at the in laws. So much less safe than induction with handles getting hot. Way too easy to hit the big sticky up knobs by mistake also and hard to tell what it is set at and if rings are even on under pans. https://www.applianceworldonline.com/aeg-hdb95623nb-black-300084404?/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAh8OtBhCQARIsAIkWb6_n1O10ex3OlP65laYWjQ0JEwl_1b29NPmWV3siHl7vXsGCmlRRyDwaAhcCEALw_wcB If you need 600mm wide then there is the Electrolux hob that was found on eBay and an identical AEG hob, but it seems to be a European import which may affect the warranty. It should come with a 24 month EU warranty here - https://www.vieffetrade.eu/sale/cooker-hobs/electrolux/mixed-hob-cm.-60-_-black-glass-ceramic/kdi641723k/562046

Have some of these Porcelanosa wood effect tiles which we really like. A different look to the tiles you have shown. They are quite a bit more expensive at low £30s per sq metre + VAT if I remember correctly.

The heat output is proportional to the floor temp. If the floor is only getting up to 20C then it is not warm enough to heat the rooms. It usually needs to be around 27C. If you look here you can see how the heat output varies depending on the floor buildup. You could be as low as 30-40w/sq metre which probably isn’t enough. https://ambienteufh.co.uk/app/uploads/2021/10/Ambiente-HeatOutput-Table-Doc-21.pdf The fact that the return temp is lower than the flow temp shows that there is heat input but it is being lost.

I have this kind of system installed in our kitchen with a tiled floor in our last house. Basically it doesn't work very well. A wooden floor cannot transit anywhere near as much heat as a concrete floor. Add the insulation from a wooden carpet on top and you will just make things worse. Also with no insulation below the pipes and effectively insulation above the pipes in the form of carpet the heat could be disappearing into the ceiling void if it is draughty. We had a timber frame house built in the 90s and I had to set the flow to the 50s in the kitchen to keep the temperature up when it was cold outside. In contrast two radiators had worked perfectly well to keep the room warm. The easiest thing to do to see if it is the floor would be to lift the carpet in one room if you can and see if it gets warmer. 190kWh is not a shocking amount to use when temperatures are below 0 for that size and age of house. The fact that you are running 50C flow downstairs suggests that your insulation is not that good. We run our flow in the high 30s/low 40s depending on the flooring in the room.

What kind of actual heating costs are you seeing? Those are pretty poor insulation values. The house has been specified to the absolute bare minimum to pass building regs and as built performance is probably worse. The highest bang for your buck will probably be in finding any wall penetrations and sealing them. It seems you have already identified this. Also I would see if you can seal the bottom edge of the skirting or take it off and seal the bottom of the plasterboard. This is a massive air path compared to sockets etc. As you say, adding loft insulation is the cheapest way to improve insulation levels. On top of an airtightness test, I would consider borrowing/renting an IR camera which will show up any problem areas.

Most of your costs do not seem to of whack with what was quoted in this previous thread - The problem sounds like you want the network upgraded in a place that will be of no use to anyone else, so you bear all of the costs. Looking at the quote, the one thing I would be asking about is the Land Right costs as the pole is already there and already on your land so I wouldn't think an easement is required. It may be that SP want a new easement drawn up and put into your deeds for future owners. If someone else has power within a few hundred metres of you, it could be cheaper to dig your own trenches and connect to their transformer, but I would guess you have already looked into that. The reality of the costs is that there would be a lot of work and disruption involved for very little benefit to the wider public. It seems like they would have to disconnect other people's power for some period to get you connected. Thus the hand delivered letters, project management etc. It also sounds like it is in the middle of nowhere so they want to charge the costs of getting there. Considering the intermittent use that will likely be made of the site a generator would seem like the best option. It would probably cost in the region of £1k. It depends a bit on what kind of equipment you are using. A hot tub could hold around 500litres of water. It would need 15kWh to heat that from 15 to 40C. That would take a few hours on an electric heater and would require a very large battery on a solar system. I would look into a propane hot tub heater or wood system. https://supaheater.co.uk/product/supa/?campaign=Pmax-Sales-K2L&content=&keyword=&gclid=CjwKCAiA75itBhA6EiwAkho9ewGQa66DZzg8xVZ2V0-1vKDdjlvJmh_Ehz3WM7AEKa6l6wmAsFpB2hoCOW4QAvD_BwE If you take the hot tub out of the equation you can look then at a small generator or solar/batteries depending on what you are looking to do in the workshop.

The grout is sealed but it is just standard grout. This is an issue in our bedroom where the grout breaks up over time and has to be replaced. I have decided that it is easier for me just to regrout part of the shower every 6-12 months than try and remove and replace all of the grout with something more substantial. The pebbles are natural stone. The issue in this shower is simply the run on the pebbles, a former was used, but it was not the whole length of the pebble area. the pebbles have the correct run where the former is in place, up until around 1 metre across the shower. Then there is a small bump. If water gets onto the far side of this bump it causes a small puddle that doesn't drain away and by the time it evaporates it smells. If I was using the shower I could keep all the water to the drain side, but I am not going to explain it to a guest. I would have had the original builders fix it, but it was years in before it became an issue as the room was rarely used. I have spoken to a tiler re coming and looking at then and taking them up to fix it, but of course it is the kind of small job that he isn't really excited about doing. I will ask him again after New Year. Re sealing round the edges, the original tilers decided not to silicone the edge. I decided to have it siliconed later, but in truth it doesn't look great due to it being an uneven surface and the silicone does not stick well to the pebbles. The showers are all tanked and there is no issue with water getting into the edge whether or not silicone has been used. As well as various construction issues, they are just much harder to clean than a smooth shower tray. They are much more prone to water lying in little pockets between the pebbles. When you put all of this together, lovely as they look I feel that I would recommend against having them as they just require a lot more looking after than a tray. We will replace our shower with a tray when the bathroom is redone. The guest rooms don't get used very much so I don't see them being replaced for a long time.

A site visit won't tell you if you need piles. There would need to be a site investigation which is then given to a SE who advises on the correct foundations. BC can only sign off on the paperwork provided. I do agree though that large developers get much less oversight than individual builders, yet individual builders are probably more likely to take care that their build is being done correctly.

The development where my parents used to live was one of two built on land that was occupied by a school. The school was rebuilt where the playing fields were and the land sold off to pay for it. The school was well known to be subsiding, the walls were covered in cracks. It was only around 30 years old when it was demolished. The builders decided on a house by house basis whether or not to use piles. All the houses where my parents were seem to be fine, but a couple of houses on the adjacent development began to subside and had to be demolished. Scotland, so BC not self certified. Still happened. BC will rely on SE reports for this kind of thing.

All painted and finished. Very pleased with how it looks now it is painted.

Can you just use Jeremy's calculator, but assume a higher outside temperature. Heat loss is driven by the difference between outside and inside temperature, so assuming 20C inside, the heat loss at 0C is roughly double the loss at 10C. In practice heating costs go up even more as at temperatures above 10C thereat generated by solar insolence, people and electrics can generate much of the energy required to heat a space. The figures from Jeremy's calculator have proven pretty accurate for our house, I even used it to guess our pool's energy consumption and for my parent's house. The underground temperature is considered to be pretty constant at around 8C. Near to the ground ti varies more, but under a basement it would hardly vary at all. I suspect if you calculated using Jeremy's calculator and a constant 8C outside temp you would get pretty close. You might also want to adjust for the fact there is no roof, above it will be a heated space. You could just set the roof size to as if the temperature above is the same or higher there will be no heat losses up the way. All this would of course go out of the window if running water is drawing away the heat.

Thankfully she is decidedly unflashy.

The tall unit was £400+VAT, but then I had to pay for 5 extra shelves which was another £140+VAT, so including VAT it was £660. It was maybe £100 cheaper elsewhere but factoring in delivery this gave me a lower total price. Then you have 4 cupboards at about £150 a time plus various top and bottom panels. I could have saved around £100 by making the bottom cupboard one very long cupboard, but I was worried someone would sit/stand on top and break it with a 1m span. DIY Kitchens units are roughly 2/3 of the price I paid but they didn't have the right sizes, they don't do a bookcase, their website says they won't supply cabinets without doors (maybe they would have I had called). But the main issue was they only make carcases in a few finishes. This is fine for a kitchen where they are hidden, but I wanted the open shelves and the doors to match so had to pay a premium for this. They do seems very nice quality, I have always believed that almost all kitchen units are basically the same no matter what you pay. I really wanted to see what I could do having watched the kitchen I just bought go in. It was £5k roughly for the kitchen and appliances and then around the same to install it. The saving is massive if you have the time and ability to do these things yourself. A kitchen of course also need plumbing and electrics, but I reckoned I could do a job just involving cabinetry. I made virtually every cut with a Challenge circular saw I must have bought out of Argos around 20 years ago and has hardly been used, I was really surprised how easy they were to do.

When the house was built, I asked the builders to put some shelves in the hall cupboard. They put in some unpainted MDF and we have always felt it looked a bit cheap compared to the rest of the house. Having watched how easily a DIY-Kitchens Kitchen went into my brother's flat I decided that I would order up similar for the cloak cupboard. DIY-Kitchens did not offer enough customisation options, but they are very good value. I priced it up with a company called Lark and Lark who offer more options for carcas colours and custom sizes, but they wanted £400 extra on top of their normal delivery charge to deliver to Scotland. I then went to DIYHomefit who supplied our dressing room which was installed by the builders. I measured, measured and measured again, then ordered the stuff. Came in at £1700 including VAT and delivery which was more than I was planning to spend. Probably saved a good £1000 by installing it myself. I started ripping out the old stuff at 10am yesterday and finished installing all the cupboards this evening. I have filled the holes and will paint and install hanging rails tomorrow. I was really surprised how smoothly it all went. I had installed a utility room years ago, but it was very simple with no infil panels to cut. That was the scariest bit, but it went pretty smoothly. I now have plans to do cabinets around our home cinema screen in the new year.

Hi @PXR5 You are of course free to leave the forum if you wish, but maybe once things calm down a little you’ll reconsider. People can be a bit pedantic but tbf sometimes posts are also a bit confusing. It’s always best not to take anything said on the internet or forums too personally. I think you’d find the forum useful if you are able to take the rough with the smooth. I’ve locked the thread for the moment.

I have a lot of sympathy with that. Would I want someone else to do the job, especially with their ridiculous explanations. The funny things is the work that has been done looks very neat and tidy.

You don’t need to prove anything. The manufacturer says it has been done incorrectly. That should be the end of the argument. I would write to the roofer and say either he fixes it to manufacturer’s specification or you pay someone else to do it with the retention and you will either return anything left over or pursue him for any extra costs. I am not a roofer but clearly if water gets under that flashing it will go straight into the roof.

We had the most lightning I have ever seen in Edinburgh in August 2020. A while later I found two of my three inverters were not generating electricity. Looking at the logs, they stopped the day of the lightning. I don't think we were hit, I suspect it caused a surge in the grid that blew them. Made me think they should be isolated during lightning. I also got up one day to find a 20 foot piece from the top of a tree in the garden had come off, it was as big as a small tree, we had to cut it up with saws. The break looked burned so I think may ave been struck by lightning.

Original post edited with additional info

If you are playing around with it you might also try and centre the sink on the window, but you’d probably need a smaller sink. I am a bit OCD about symmetry so maybe it’s just me.

Good either way for me. From a usability perspective it might be slightly better if the dishwashers were next to the sink and the bin was closer to the cooking area. You could go top to bottom - bin, dishwasher, sink, dishwasher. You seem to be constrained by the 900mm sink unit which is unusually wide. Depends how much you feel you need the two full size double sinks.